Jane Melton came to our church and played the harp. It was nice and very soothing music and I enjoyed it very much. Jane liked the liturgy and came to church and took an adult information class. She was going to join the church by “affirmation of faith” when she came back from a trip down South. After our classes she realized that she was a Lutheran all along.
Jane died a week after coming home and never did the affirmation of faith. I often think of the harp music and her appreciation for the liturgy but she also liked guitar music and some of my songs. One of the great issues in our life together is music and the liturgy. Some say there should be room for different types of liturgy and music and some insist that it has to be the ‘historic liturgy’ and only a pipe organ will do.
I just read a portion of a ‘historic’ liturgy in which the worshiper says “I have not neglected the poor or the orphans” or something like that. I don’t see that response in LSB. So which historic liturgy are we talking about exactly? All the references that I can find to music talk about the timbrel and the lute and the lyre and of course the harp. The reference to the martyr’s does not say that they worship before the throne and play pipe organs, but to each his own.
To each his own is part of the problem. At what point does my personal preference give way to the needs of the many? Who is the arbiter of what is proper in church and Divine Service? The Minnesota North Convention started yesterday. President Fondow was reelected. My prayers are with him. My guess is that much of what he will deal with over the next three years will have a lot to do with our life together and that includes worship. I would love to have a Divine Service accompanied by a harp sometime. Unfortunately the only harp lady that I know is celebrating the great Divine Service and singing “worthy is the Lamb to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” in a much fuller divine service.
