Itâs practically noon, and Iâve only been up a couple hours â the cost of being glued to ESPN until the wee hours basking in the glow of a Cubs World Championship (canât stop humming âThe strife is oâer, the battle doneâ either; sleep deprivation and Easter hymns â gonna be a strange day).
But the lifting of a 108-year-old curse wasnât the best thing I got to witness last night. I hope you were at the Advent for Mozartâs Requiem Mass because it was, as a friend just put it, âstupendous.â Mozart gave us an amazing cultural artifact, delivered last night by supremely talented musicians (led by the best choirmaster in the world), to a full house.Â
Hereâs what Iâm still thinking about on the day after, even in the wake of something like that Game 7 â itâs the Dies Irae. Iâve heard the words a thousand times, even celebrated Mozartâs Requiem Mass once as a curate back in Washington, DC, but last night was different. Somehow the rhyming had always seemed, I donât know, hokey? But Thomas of Celano or Latino Malabranca Orsini, whichever one (or neither) wrote the Dies Irae, got something right. Itâs something we desperately need. And itâs something we miss almost every day:
I hold a high view of God, I guess youâd say. I preach about the holiness of God a lot. I quote Lewisâ Mr. Beaver:
âCourse he isnât safe. But heâs good.
Or I crib Annie Dillardâs warning about our explosive God:Â
It is madness to wear ladiesâ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.
When and how did we make God a house cat? Whatever we think weâre worshiping, I suspect it ainât God. We need the Dies Irae:
Day of wrath and doom impending /Â Davidâs word with Sibylâs blending! /Â Heaven and earth in ashes ending!Â
Oh, what fear manâs bosom renders / When from heaven the judge descendeth / On whose sentence all dependeth!Â
Thatâs why I need more 12th and less 21st century in my life. Modernity, an old seminary professor of mine says, has âflattenedâ everything. The modern God isnât holy, he isnât even all that âheavy.â But the God of the Bible, and of whomever wrote the Dies Irae, is aflame. That old seminary professor again:
Without such a vision of the burning holiness of God, âworship loses its awe, the truth of his Word loses its ability to compel, obedience loses its virtue, and the church loses its moral authority.â (John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2010): 56 (quotation omitted).)
The church needs the Dies Irae. (Oh, and by the way, itâs not all medieval superstition and bluster, either, just in case you were wondering. Think, kind Jesu, my salvation / Caused thy wondrous Incarnation / Leave me not to reprobation. Hello â the Gospel, anyone?)Â
We need the mass, not a concert.Â
We need worship ⊠real worship.Â
Without worship of a burning God, the church doesnât have a chance. But on nights like last night, that God sneaks up on us and comes crashing in. Thatâs what He does for a living. N.T. Wright says:
Godâs way of action, now as then, is through a people, maybe even though an individual, who have glimpsed a fresh vision of his fire ⊠. They will almost certainly be unlikely people. Like Moses, they wonât be expecting it. They may well not want it. But if they will only stand in fear before the living and burning God, they will be enabled to stand without fear before the Pharaohs of today. (N. T. Wright, For All Godâs Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmanâs, 1997): 72-73.)
Iâll never forget last night. Been waiting for the Cubs to win a World Series for my whole life. But I suspect the thing thatâll stick with me, or at least I hope what sticks, is what happened in Boston, not in Cleveland. I remembered God is a fire. And I wouldnât have got that but for what happened in worship. Check that; make it Worship.Â
Gives a whole new meaning to #FlyTheW.
Thatâs just a thought â
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