*A series of four meditations delivered at the Devotions of the University Church Music Seminar, Sheboygan, Wis.

I

Matt. 4:10: For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.

This text is one of great significance and importance to all Christians since it gives a command of the Lord Jesus. You will recall that our Lord directed these words to Satan during the temptation. At the conclusion of the temptation the devil departed, completely vanquished by this sweeping statement. It is a passage that is reminiscent of the giving of the Law in Deut. 10:20 and also of our Lord’s own summary of the First Table of the Law. It speaks of the unity and singleness of purpose of worship. It lays down the principle of the nature of Christian worship, which should be directed only to God.

Worship includes many things, since the entire life of the Christian is to include all phases of worship. This text has one of the chief elements of Hebrew poetry—parallelism. It contains the characteristic known as synonymous parallelism, in which the second portion of the verse reiterates the thought contained in the first in similar terms. The two terms are worship and service. Worship implies prayer, praise, obedience, and all virtues. Service implies doing the work of His church, such as preaching His Gospel of salvation, training the young in His doctrine, and finally the performance of our several tasks faithfully to His glory and for the welfare of our fellow men.

One of the phases of worship is corporate or public worship. This phase of worship has made use of the arts to give greater glory to Him who is the Author of them all, and to edify both those who appreciate the arts and those who practice them. Perhaps the art that is the most significant in Christian worship is music. At the same time, because it is an art that is so vast in its scope, it is one that, curiously and paradoxically enough, is the most misunderstood and abused on the one hand, and on the other, it is one that is most appreciated and practiced with as high a degree of perfection as is humanly possible.

The Church of all ages has closely practiced the art of music. The poetical books of the Scriptures give numerous indications of such practice. Isolated poems in other books of the Bible clearly indicate that such was the practice in Old Testament times as well as at the dawn of the Christian era. Some of the poetical books are certainly well known to us, as, for example, the Psalter. The superscriptions of many of the Psalms indicate with certainty that their conception was a musical one. Numerous references are made to music throughout the Word of God from Genesis, beginning with Jubal, to the Book of Revelation, where we find the song of the redeemed and the song of the multitude.

We are worshiping together at a service opening a Church Music seminar. Certainly it would be most pertinent to call attention to some of the great songs of Holy Writ so that we who are called to sing the praises of Almighty God might derive inspiration from our predecessors. We whose vocation it is to do a very important phase of the work of the Church can be encouraged by the singleness of purpose which motivated the ancients to practice their art for the worship and service of God alone.

First of all, we think of the songs of Moses, the great lawgiver and hero of the faith. The Bible has preserved for our inspiration two of his songs. The first is the song of deliverance on the occasion of the flight of the Children of Israel from the Egyptians. The climax of this song is found in the words: “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex. 15:1–19.) The other great song of Moses is the one that describes the Lord God, Jehovah, as the mighty rock (Deut. 32:1–43).

Another beautiful song of the Bible is that of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5, which was occasioned by the victory of Israel over the Canaanites. In striking poetical thought, this piece gives utterance to the great power of God in upholding Israel in order that he might obtain the victory.

Of a different nature is the song of Hannah, who sings her song of thanksgiving upon the occasion of the birth of her promised son, Samuel. In this connection we are reminded of the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary after the Annunciation.

Finally, before we leave the Old Testament we must call attention to David, that greatest of all singers. It is from his pen that many of the Psalms have come down to us.

As we come into the New Testament, it would be a grave omission not to think of others besides the Blessed Virgin who have given voice to their praise of God in poem and song. We think, for example, of the high priest Zacharias, the father of St. John the Baptist, who, when his tongue was loosed, first gave utterance by praising and thanking God for his great goodness and mercy in the words that we today know as the Benedictus (Luke 1:67–79).

The other great canticle that has found its way into the liturgy of the Church is the Nunc Dimittis. This poem was spoken by Simeon at the presentation of our Lord in the Temple. Probably the greatest of all the songs of which there is record in Scripture is the song of the angels at the birth of our Lord. We have already made reference to the songs of heaven found in the Book of Revelation. We need only to include with them also the song of Moses and of the Lamb, which gives praise to God for His greatness, holiness, and might.

We, who are the spiritual heirs of the ancient Church of the Old Testament, ought to carry on in this singleness of purpose in worshiping God and in serving only Him through the practice of our art. Our ancestors of the Christian era continued the practice of the musical art. This is attested to by numerous references in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. This fact has even been recorded in some pagan documents.

The Church of each age has made its contribution to our noble art, and the sum total of these contributions is what we have in mind when we speak of our musical heritage. The Apostolic and post-Apostolic Church received as its heritage the musical concept of the Temple and the synagog cults. To this the Gentile converts brought the strophic hymns of their Hellenistic and Roman heritage. The Church of the Middle Ages developed its musical thought around the liturgical rigidity of the Eucharist, and the Church of the Renaissance found a new vehicle for the same liturgical concepts in a rich polyphony.

When Martin Luther, in the age of the Reformation, speaks of music, he does so not as a dilettante, nor as a great man of another field who feels that he must give lip service to the art, but he speaks as a sensitive and well-informed practitioner. The music that he has in mind is the rich polyphonic music of the Renaissance Church. But the needs of the new Church were such that not only those versed in the art might give voice to their worship of God, but that the humble and oftimes ignorant laborer also might do likewise.

If all are to worship the Lord our God, and serve only Him, it must follow that an art that is part of that worship and service should be made available to the lowliest or that the lowliest be brought to such a degree of proficiency that he might be enabled to understand a difficult and complex art. History has shown us that the Reformation attempted and succeeded fairly well in doing both. Thus as the Church of the Reformation contributed enormously to the Christian musical art, it is without question our task to preserve the musical treasures of this as well as that of all ages of the Church, and likewise to make our contribution to the Church of our day along the path that guided our ancestors.

We are living in an age of extreme materialism, secularism, and nationalism. The arts, and that includes the musical, are under the strong influence of these forces and are directed at satisfying the dictates of, and paying homage to, questionable ideals. The music of the world is aimed at pleasing man and glorifying his perishable exploits. Without question we are completely surrounded by these manifestations of secularism in the arts. This text has a warning for those of us who have the grave obligation of practicing the greatest art in the service of Christ. If we wish to follow the injunction of this text to the letter, we must be on our guard constantly so that the music we make or compose is music that is conceived purely for the worship of Almighty God. We must be sure that the underlying force that compels us to make music is one that is dedicated only to serving Him and Him alone, without so much as an eye on the approbation of man, the aggrandizement of self, and the furtherance of selfish interests.

May God Almighty, who is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and who is the Source of every good and perfect gift and talent, and who is the mighty Protector of the arts, give us that wonderful gift of His Holy Spirit, so that we may worship and serve only Him in our calling to practice the art which blessed Martin Luther called the handmaiden of theology. With this dedication the deliberations, the discussions, and the making of music will be both profitable and blessed. Amen.

II

Ps. 96:9: Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

For our meditation this morning, we have selected a verse from the Psalm that we have just read together. This we have done because of the great and important message it contains for us who are called to be leaders and singers of the Church.

In our meditation of last evening we discussed our Lord’s command to worship and serve only Him, and we saw that the heroes and saints of the faith throughout the history of the Church did this in the practice of the arts. This morning, using the verse of this Psalm as our guide, we shall briefly discuss how we are to worship.

“Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” The Psalmist sings of beauty and indicates that it is begotten of holiness. Holiness, as we all know, is an attribute of God, for only He is absolutely holy. God, being holy, is also the very essence of perfection. The beauty of holiness implies perfection. Here we see the connection between beauty, of which God is the Author, and God certainly would endow His creation with His own attribute of perfection, and absolute Perfection itself.

In human terms, we also conceive of beauty as a manifestation of perfection, for we think of a thing of beauty as approaching perfection. Especially in the fine arts do we ascribe a human degree of perfection to beauty. We look for such things as symmetry and balance, both of which concepts are inherent in the idea of perfection.

The worship of all Christians, then, should be beauty itself, since all believers are the children of God, and beauty is likewise the creation of God. The devotion of the regenerate child of the Almighty should be the constant flow of beauty of mind and spirit; it should be the outgrowth of the beauty of life; it should reflect that perfection for which we strive continuously.

Applying this thought to us who have dedicated our lives to the practice of our art for His cause and in His service, the perfection that is inherent in beauty should be our goal. As far as it is within our power, and to the extent that God has endowed us, we should shun mediocrity and strive for mastery and perfection in the practice of our vocation. As those of you who strive for such mastery well know, its attainment is possible only to a certain degree, and only through physical discipline and mental and spiritual exercise. All of this is possible only through the loss of self and dedication to Christ.

There is a very important thing to remember as we strive toward perfection, and it is this: that our greatest efforts are quite shabby when measured by God’s perfect standards, and it is Christ, our Lord, who makes up for our insufficiency. This thought must be ever present in our minds when we deal with those whom we teach and guide, or those whose mastery does not match ours, lest we become like the wicked debtor in our Lord’s great parable.

May God, our Father, the Creator of beauty, the Essence of holiness and perfection, give us His Spirit and fire us with such zeal that we may dedicate our entire being to Him and His service as we strive for mastery and perfection in our calling, that we may rightly worship Him in the beauty of holiness and with pure minds, hearts, and lips join the Psalmist in praising Him and saying, “Let us sing unto the Lord a new song.”

III

John 4:24: God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Perhaps there is nothing more difficult for the human mind to comprehend than the things that pertain to the Spirit. So bound up are we with things material that spiritual matters are almost, if not completely, foreign to us. So attached are we to physical needs, urges, and impulses, so closely are our lives associated with the senses that it is very difficult for us to break the fetters of physical being so that we might be able to fathom and search out the things of the Spirit. Yet that is exactly what our blessed Lord has commanded us to do if we would come into closer communion with Him.

You certainly must recall the background of this beautiful and powerful text. Our Lord spoke these words toward the close of His conversation with the woman of Samaria at the Well of Jacob. Her conception of worship was purely a physical one; one that was concerned with times and places, as she clearly indicated by her statement. She had said to Jesus: “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Our Lord then indicated to her that neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem would men in the future worship God. He continued with words that paraphrase the idea contained in our text. These words are themselves a summary of the first part of His reply: “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.”

We should be sympathetic toward the poor woman, for all of us are in the same condition. Too often are we tempted to think of the worship of God in terms of types of services, external organization, denominations and sects, and thus we lose sight of the very essence of worship, which should be of the spirit. The Church has been called the mystical body of Christ, a concept that is a most spiritual one, but all too often this spiritual idea has suffered because His mystical body has been adorned with the curious vestment of denominationalism.

Yesterday morning we discussed beauty and its relation to holiness and perfection. We see now that all of these concepts belong to the spiritual realm, for they cannot become absolute for us in terms of things material and physical.

We whose vocation is that of servants of Christ in a very specific way are most fortunate in the practice of our art, for no other art is as intangible and spiritual as is the art of music. This art is bound neither by the confines of time or space. It is the only art that is mentioned in the Scriptures and as such was dedicated to the things of the spirit, even though it was often associated with the poetic art. The other arts must be graphically portrayed and thus must be physically bound in order to be effective. On the other hand, the musical art has never been and can never be adequately conveyed by any or all of the systems of notation that have ever been devised by the genius of man. Though dependent upon physical and human agencies for execution, we know that music far transcends those same agencies.

Music thus dependent upon physical means for spiritual expression is not unlike faith, which is dependent upon external agencies for its growth, that is, the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the Sacraments. Our Lord knew our condition and as a result realized our dependence on physical means. For that reason He established particularly the most blessed Sacrament of His body and blood as a means of conveying spiritual power to man.

It has been said by some that the mystical conception of God makes Him remote, yet since He is a spirit, such an approach to Him must be part of the life of all who worship Him, especially those who practice the art of music in His Church.

Let us, then, approach our task with our minds focused on things of the Spirit through contemplation of the mysteries of His grace, through meditation on His wonderful Word, and through prayer for the gift of His Spirit, so that the same Spirit may guide us in all truth and lead us through fruitful lives in our work unto that life of the Spirit where all material and physical things shall have vanished.

IV

Acts 17:24, 25: God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath and all things.

In our meditation yesterday morning we spoke on the spirituality of worship, but we did not mention another condition of worship contained in that passage: truth. It, too, is a spiritual concept as are beauty, holiness, and perfection. Worshiping God in truth would then imply a recognition of the purpose of worship. For this reason we have taken a part of St. Paul’s powerful speech to the Athenians on Mars’ Hill as the basis of our meditation.

St. Paul, himself a man of great intellectual capacity, had a profound respect for the great learning of the Greeks, and he was very desirous of making himself heard among these intellectuals. You will recall that he was very much concerned over the attitude of the Greeks toward the Gospel. In the first chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians Paul refers to the Greeks as being seekers after wisdom. He feared that for many of the knowledge-seeking Hellenes the Gospel of Christ Crucified would be foolishness. At the same time we cannot conceive of the Greeks as seeking after knowledge and wisdom without at the same time seeking after truth, for both of these quests have as their ultimate objective truth itself. In fact, many of the wisdom- and truth-seeking Greeks had come so far as to recognize the utter worthlessness of their polytheistic paganism, as is evidenced from the fact that they had erected and dedicated an altar to the Unknown God. It is even quite certain that some of them had knowledge of the God of Israel through acquaintance with the Septuagint or contact with great Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora such as Philo of Alexandria. This true and living God St. Paul is now prepared to reveal to them.

It is true that when St. Paul told his hearers that God the Lord did not dwell in temples made with hands he was directing his remarks against the polytheistic, idolatrous worship of the Greeks and was paving the way for the spiritual worship of the true God. Yet St. Paul’s remarks to the Athenians have a very special application for us today. Faith in the living God must of necessity be accompanied by a desire for truth. A recognition of that truth will make it quite evident that we are totally and completely unworthy to stand before a holy and just God, were it not for the merits of Christ our Lord. Such a recognition will produce in us a spirit of humility and would make us realize that we cannot harness the Spirit of God for material purposes. The works of our hands, the praise of our lips, the sacrifice of our substance, are acceptable to God only through Christ.

Why should we worship, then, if God has no need of it? The answer is very direct and simple—because God has commanded it, and the fact that He has no need of it does not mean that He does not want it! Further¬more, it is we who have need of it, since it is in our worship that He will reveal His truth which will make us free. As far as it is necessary for us to know truth for our salvation, God has revealed that truth to us. It is, then, our duty to worship Him in that truth. It is for us also who have been called to serve as were the Levites of old to seek after the truth so that all of our efforts in the practice of our art will be closely allied with that quest for eternal verity and in bringing it to those with whom we work.

To sum up, we who would stand before God in a special way by reason of our vocation should worship God constantly—we are to worship and serve only Him, we must worship Him in the beauty of holiness, and finally we must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume IV (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1954). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.