UPDATE: Streamers now added. Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Pandora, Deezer. Watch for YT, Tidal, and others soon.
Just released, this epic 10-minute track for an epic psalm. If there was ever a psalm for a blue Christmas, this one is it.
And in case you are wondering what all these psalm recordings have to do with Year D, well, it is these very individual lament psalms (those excluded from the lectionary) that started me on this Year D project in January 1999, during a course on the Psalms with Walter Brueggemann, going on a quarter century now.
Friday, December 1, 2023, marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of this sermon series of twenty-one sermons by Oecolampadius preached every evening during Advent in December 1523 (leaving out Sundays, but leading upon toe Christmas Eve). Though it was a weekday (evening) series, the lectio continua style of straightforward, comprehensive Bible teaching (1) represented an historic reclamation of patristic expository preaching, and (2) set the standard that would be implemented by ordinance in all the pulpits of Basel some five years after these sermons were published. Though Oecolampadius was gone by the time Calvin arrived in Basel, every church in town was ringing with the form of preaching offered here. There can be no doubt that Calvin will have had a copy of the series, which sold through several editions in multiple languages very quickly. Surely for this reason, among others, Oecolampadius can be called, and indeed he has been called, Calvin's "spiritual father."
Not only are the sermons lively, accessible, and illuminating, Oecolampadius' selected book of the Bible, The First Epistle of John, proves a perfect focal point for this Advent series, for a fresh approach to the then-current debates over the doctrine of justification, and as he himself says, the book is a veritable "Handbook for the Christian Life."
Here is the playlist of videos consisting of one 30-minute introduction to "The Reformation of Preaching" and 16 very short intros to the individual (or occasionally groups of) sermons:
Corrected edition is up, just as the last days of 2023 (500th anniversary of Oecolampadius' first year in Basel) tick down.
The First Year in Basel contains the earliest German mass (published three years before Luther's), the next nine letters between Oecolampadius and Zwingli (the first two having appeared in previous volume: The Sermon on the Vernacular and the Correspondence with Hedio), excerpts from the famous Isaiah lectures, three prefaces to his Chrysostom translations (including those to the Psegmata and the 66 Genesis homilies), the four Theses for a Disputation, a painful rant from Capito against his colleague Hedio and Oecolampadius' pastor response, and his long letter to Bernhard Adelmann On the Distributions of Alms (or not discriminating among the poor). All (or most of it) "first-time-in-English" stuff. Perhaps the latter might make for instructive reading in Basel at the Bank of International Settlements? That may be too much to hope for. But certainly Presbyterian "Matthew 25" churches should read this.
Releasing this single—a bit of music therapy from our Holy Paraclete—from the distantly forthcoming Revenant Psalms, Vol. III. While this is an ongoing project, the prospect of a third volume is so far off, it seems best to release this track now, as the "healing balm" offered by this classic metrical paraphrase of Psalm 141 (slightly modified by yours truly) is sorely needed now on so many fronts, from the personal and the individual to the international, global, and cosmic. With so many losses being borne and with a friend in her 80s soon to inaugurate a stone labyrinth that she personally installed in her back yard—all of these reasons seemed to lobby for sending this contemplative track out into the world to do its pastoral, therapeutic work.
Here's a nice link to listen ad-free (where you can also access your preferred streamers):
Listen closely and you will hear the plodding guitar track doubled at the mid-point when the psalmist asks for help in avoiding going astray, "when evil footsteps lead the way," and then finds his true yoke-mate (as it were) to keep his steps on the straight and narrow. At the end, "Charlemagne the dog," the true rock-star of the family (pictured on 2020's Persevere), makes a special guest appearance with a couple of well-timed percussion solos—first just outside the studio door, then on the way out the hall—with his nails on the parquet, no doubt summoning me out for another prayer walk ... no telling where.
Like other works of indie artists and authors with a day job, these tracks have no sponsors behind them or prominent promotional platforms from which to break through the brave new world's batteries of bots and algorithms, just word of mouth and your willingness to share organically. So do please share widely, especially with those in need of peace, comfort, solace, and healing, with worship leaders, and with those inclined to intercession and prayer walking. Thanks and may God bless us everyone.
UPDATE: This post was originally from December 29, 2019. Seems a good time to bump it to the top of the stack.
I really like and frequently recommend these one-year Bible reading plans, as much for their manageable structure as for their probing and thought-provoking devotional commentary.The Spirit at Work starts at Pentecost. The Word at Work starts on the second Sunday of Easter. Now I see there is a new one, Sitometrion, that starts (or started) on Christmas Day. Each of them, with just a bit of adjustment, can be taken up at any time of year. Just jump in on the day (you can ignore the year for the most part), then wrap around when the time comes.
Subtitle: Daily Reading as the Seedbed of Sermons.
It's looking like I'll be teaching preaching a lot to various constituencies and at various levels in the near and foreseeable future, so I figured it was time to boil down the basics, as I see them, into a "short course in preaching." Includes a "Second Short Course" in the form of a sermon on the Benedictus, and a first English translation of the ten summary paragraphs of Heinrich Bullinger's 1556 Summa, which was itself a summary of his famous sermon series, Decades. The Decades were as important and popular as Calvin's Institutes for several centuries and generations. So imagine having the Institutes boiled down—twice—into seven pages. I have included these paragraphs here as a way of (unofficially) supplementing the Book of Confessions as a tool for dogmatic testing.
The first 22 of Bullinger's 101 sermons on Revelation. What more orthodox and trustworthy (human) interpreter of the Apocalypse could the church ask for than the author of the Second Helvetic Confession?
