I’m in Minnesota visiting family and then performing a wedding for two of my parishioners who hail from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Today was our planned excursion to the Minnesota State Fair. I’d been lamenting my inability to attend the Rush concert in Maryland in September. What are the odds that they would be playing the MN State Fair the day I attend?

I bought the only thing left – obstructed view – but I could see almost the entire stage. I’d seen Rush twice before, but despite their age—Geddy can’t hit the high notes as easily as before—they are better than ever. My past impression of their concerts was technical perfection but an almost mechanical approach to their complex music. This show outshone my past experiences in every way. The trio has aged well, not only honing their craft but playing more loosely, almost with abandon – yet losing none of their precision.

The band opened their second set by playing the entire Moving Pictures album, and it was incredible.

It is hard for me to see how Rush is not one of the best two bands of the modern era (the other being Yes). They transcend their genre – Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neal Peart are world-class musicians who have an uncanny musical symmetry. The show’s encore finished with an entirely reworked “Working Man,” which was pure joy to listen to. If you can see them on this tour, do it – it could be your last chance.

I didn’t keep track of the songs in the first set, so that is from memory:

Rush Time Machine tour

Spirit of Radio
…
Faithless
BU2B
Freewill
…
Subdivisions
…
(Amazing instrumental that I was not familiar with – the woman next to me said it was from Counterpoint)
Stick It Out
…

Set 2
Moving Pictures in its entirety
Caravan
Peart Drum solo
Lifeson guitar solo
Closer to the Heart
Temples of Syrinx (2112)
Far Cry

Encore: La Villa Strangiato
Working Man

God wills that the light of chastity shine in our entire body and all of our members.

-Martin Chemnitz, Loci Theologici, Sixth Commandment

What do you think about the following statement? True or false?

Those things which have been commanded [by God] are necessary as the fruits of righteousness, even if they are not necessary for righteousness itself which comes alone from faith. For it is not the freedom of the Gospel to be able to omit the commandments of God.

I found this quite interesting, especially the appeal to tradition with respect to homosexuality (but not, obviously, with respect to ordination of women).

Is it true that ordaining people who are in same-sex sexual relationships is the same as the ordination of women or as changes in church teaching regarding slavery?

No. There is significant Biblical support for the ordination of women. The ELCA’s predecessor churches made the decision to ordain women by studying the Bible and based their decision on Scripture. It also was through reading Scripture that Christians came to challenge slavery as an institution. Those asking for the ordination of practicing homosexual persons are asking the ELCA to reject the clear teaching of Scripture on homosexual behavior and the consistent teaching of the Christian Church for nearly 2,000 years. They are asking that we make this decision on a basis other than what the Bible teaches and in spite of what the Bible teaches.

From Lutheran CORE Questions and Answers on ELCA Sexuality Proposals

I expected to see many from the ELCA come flocking to Missouri after the ELCA’s church-wide assembly repudiated the Biblical view of human sexuality last summer. Perhaps not congregations, but people. For a time we had a steady stream of ELCA visitors at Immanuel, but that has stopped. Now it appears there will be yet another church body joining the alphabet soup of American Lutheranism. What little I know of the grandiosely named North American Lutheran Church makes me think it is destined to go the way of the ELCA. They claim to be “traditionally-grounded,” but they reject the Biblical tradition of the Office of the Holy Ministry, ordaining women against the apostolic command. There’s nothing in the “Common Confession” about the Office of the Ministry. Is that because they don’t care about it, or couldn’t agree about it? Either way, they have set aside the Holy Scriptures on this matter, and there’s very little “Lutheran” about that.

I suppose that means the LCMS never had a chance in the window of opportunity that has all but closed, since the NALC would not correct this fundamental error. But it still raises the question, How do people outside the LCMS see us? A pastor in another Lutheran church body that I have been corresponding with recently wrote to me, “I believe that the Ablaze movement is the worst thing to happen to North American Lutheranism since women’s ordination.” He has a point. If I were looking at the LCMS from the outside, would I want to be a part of it? That’s a hard question for me to answer. I love my congregation. I would gladly join many congregations in the LCMS. But there are far too many others, it seems, that are animated by a different spirit. It seems American Lutheranism is farther than ever from the goal of a united church.

I disagree with the common saying, “Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living.”

An important function of a funeral – a Christian one, at least – is the reverent disposition of the body. I think everyone deserves a funeral. God cares about the body, and we should too.

The practice of medicine has changed enormously because of technology. In his book Medicine and the Reign of Technology, Stanley Joel Reiser observes,

So without realizing what has happened, the physician in the last two centuries has gradually relinquished his unsatisfactory attachment to subjective evidence—what the patient says—only to substitute at devotion to technological evidence—what the machine says. He has thus exchanged one partial view of disease for another. As the physician makes greater use of the technology of diagnosis, he perceives his patient more and more indirectly through a screen of machines and specialists; he also relinquishes control over more and more of the diagnostic process. These circumstances tend to estrange him from his patient and from his own judgment.

–Quoted in Technopoly by Neil Postman, p101.

If “Praise and Worship” music was even mildly interesting musically or lyrically, would I have a different attitude about non-liturgical worship?

I doubt it; but it would make it harder, I suppose.

Here’s a great bit from a certain John Jeremiah Sullivan (source unknown; I found it here), writing about a “Christian music festival,” on how “Christian-rock” has “excellence-proofed itself”:

These were not Christian bands, you see; these were Christian-rock bands. The key to digging this scene lies in that one-syllable distinction. Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off of evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility—one the artists embrace—to “reach people.” As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability (the artists would say clarity), which in turn means parasitism. Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies—”If you like Drakkar Noir, you’ll love Sexy Musk”? Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off-brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that’s because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please…while praising Jesus Christ. That’s Christian rock. [. . .] And here, if I can drop the open-minded pretense real quick, is where the stickier problem of actually being any good comes in, because a question that must be asked is whether a hard-core Christian who turns 19 and finds he or she can write first-rate songs (someone like Damien Jurado) would ever have anything whatsoever to do with Christian rock. Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety. [. . .] So it’s possible—and indeed seems likely—that Christian rock is a musical genre, the only one I can think of, that has excellence-proofed itself.

Ephraim Syrus on tomorrow’s Gospel, Mk. 7.31-37:

That Power Which may not be handled came down and clothed itself in members that may be touched; that the needy may draw near to Him, that in touching His manhood they may discern His Godhead. For that dumb man [whom the Lord healed] with the fingers of the body, discerned that He had approached his ears and touched his tongue; nay, with his fingers that may be touched, he touched Godhead, that may not be touched; when it was loosing the string of his tongue, and opening the clogged doors of his ears. For the Architect of the body and Artificer of the flesh came to him, and with His gentle voice pierced without pain his thickened ears. And his mouth which was closed up, that it could not give birth to a word, gave birth to praise to Him Who made its barrenness fruitful in the birth of words. He, then, Who gave to Adam that he should speak at once without teaching, Himself gave to the dumb that they should speak easily, tongues that are learned with difficulty.

Posted for “pseudepigrapha,” who cannot place Rush in his top-ten list of Rock bands. Seriously? SERIOUSLY???

I can’t agree with the lyrics of this song at all, but it’s a great conversation starter. Here’s Rush, returning to their hard-rock roots.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCMq6_vEZZw

I was brought up to believe
The universe has a plan
We are only human
It’s not ours to understand

The universe has a plan
All is for the best
Some will be rewarded
And the devil take the rest

All is for the best
Believe in what we’re told
Blind men in the market
Buying what we’re sold
Believe in what we’re told
Until our final breath
While our loving Watchmaker
Loves us all to death

In a world of cut and thrust
I was always taught to trust
In a world where all must fail
Heaven’s justice will prevail

The joy and pain that we receive
Each comes with its own cost
The price of what we’re winning
Is the same as what we’ve lost

Until our final breath
The joy and pain that we receive
Must be what we deserve
I was brought up to believe