December 1 is the anniversary of this monumental series and a good day to start reading one sermon per day

... or six sermons per week (leaving out Sundays, if you want to be exact), which will take you to Christmas Eve. 

This December 1 is the 501st anniversary of the beginning of the preaching of the series, which was published in 1524. (So in terms of publication, it is still the 500th, if anyone else is keeping track.)

Here is the hardcover at B&NPress, here is the paperback at Amazon, here is the Kindle, and here is the playlist of introductions to the series. See previous post for the soundtrack to the videos.

Backing tracks for The Reformation of Preaching

If you have enjoyed the soundtrack behind "The Reformation of Preaching," i.e., the 30-minute introduction to Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John, or the music in the short five-minutes introductions to the individual sermons, here is the record from which those instrumental tracks were taken.

The album is called The Great Western Road, named for the three-part guitar suite of the same name. That suite was written in stages in the period 1991-1994. Strange how some gifts come seemingly overnight or in a matter of minutes, while others take years and years. 

Playlist

So here is a growing playlist with all the tracks (five so far) from the forthcoming Revenant Psalms, Vol. IV, i.e., the singles that have been released with videos.  

Oecolampadius' Sermon on Luke 11 (Third Sunday in Lent, 1525)

Just finished translating this sermon preached in Basel in 1525. Here is the first sentence:

"The singular failing in which all misfortune occurs is ignorance of God and of ourselves. But if we knew how good and powerful he is, and indeed how wretched and weak we are, we would have instituted [institueremus] a much different life."

That sounds strikingly similar to the opening sentence of Calvin's Institutes, the first edition of which emerged eleven years later, in the same city. But to be fair, Oecolampadius' sermon was only published by his successor Myconius in 1536, the same year that Calvin's Institutes first appeared in Basel. But until I have time to investigate it, I can only imagine the conversations between the two (Myconius the editor and successor to the Basel reformation and Calvin the second generation Reformer who would make his way to Geneva). 

Here is another line from the sermon that should be instructive to everyone, especially preachers:

"... no one speaks properly who does not treat God as holy."

Amen to that.

Downstream from the great watershed

So they say politics is downstream from culture. OK. So what is upstream of culture, if not faith or some choice of "cult" (in the technical sense)? As Joshua said, "Choose this day whom you will serve." And where does faith emerge? Surely at the great watershed that is everywhere attested, between faith and sin (Romans 14:23b), between the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked (Psalm 1), between the water of life (Ezekiel 47; Revelation 7:17; 21:6; 22:1, 17) and the water or gall of bitterness (Numbers 5; Acts 8:23), etc. And what is upstream of faith? Faith proceeds from the Word, the promise of God; it is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So if we are looking at a political reformation downstream, which many indicators suggest we are, what role do preachers have, what role the church, in guiding the stream of good and godly sources of faith into the formation of a genuine culture that is worth (re)building and preserving? As accountability begins to make its way through the media, the music industry, Hollywood, academe, etc., the church should not fail to supply what is needed — and quickly — from biblical and from the tried and true, the most trustworthy theological sources: the commandments and the covenant, the 3000-year-old "prayerbook of the Bible" (the Psalms), the entire NT, of course, the earliest ecumenical creeds (Apostles' and Nicene), children's catechisms, the Book of Confessions, etc. 

This, by way of reminder, is the vision and purpose of this website. If a corrupt culture is dying off and a corrupt political establishment is about to be banished from the swamp, if things are going to be (metaphorically) slashed and burned back to the very root or stump, remember: "the holy seed is the stump." (Isa 6:13)

Psalms 60 and 108 [Gird Up]

These two psalms overlap with a number of common verses, so I combined them into one track. The unique verses in Psalm 108 seemed to require a fresh and distinct musical section, hence the reggae (with photos of friends from my Jamaican chapter), after which the shared verses from Psalm 60 warranted a return to the previous setting, but a new tempo to set it apart from the first iteration. I hope you like it. Right now this is the leading candidate for the opening track on the forthcoming Revenant Psalms, Vol. IV.

A good reminder after any election, whatever the result

Another new track and video are in the pipe, but this 30+ year-old offspring came to mind this morning. It debuted through the Late Late Service (in something called the rolling magazine tent, if memory serves) at the Greenbelt Festival in 1993. I'm still so very grateful for the use of Andy Thornton's Jump Studio and his patient mixing and his generous addition of the ethereal speech tracks. We are made in the image of God, and the referent for that, we now know, is the Word of God. Among many other things, we are speech creatures or language animals as Charles Taylor puts it. Enjoy.