John Ylvisaker: An Appreciation

John Ylvisaker has died. He composed such wonderful worship music as I Was There to Hear Borning Cry, Sweet Release, Amigos de Cristo, Rejoice, several liturgies, and other great tunes.

John's project as a musician was to compose church music that had an immediate familiarity and accessibility for worshipers. In the bargain, he managed to compose some classics that will stand the test of time.

John and I were not friends. I spoke by phone with him several times and on occasion through the years, we exchanged hurried notes. Most of what I knew of John personally came through our mutual acquaintance, the theologian and wonderful preacher, Dick Jensen.

But I did spend several memorable days with John back in the 1980s.

In fact, the most frightening car ride of my life came with John at the wheel. We were heading from Bowling Green, Ohio to the parsonage of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Okolona, Ohio, where I then served as pastor. John was joining us to lead a singalong on Saturday night and then, our music the next morning for worship.

We traveled through a driving rainstorm and, during most of the trip, as John's mind was occupied with our conversation about music, I didn't know if we were going to stay on the road.

At one point, we found ourselves on a bumpy country lane. John kept hearing honking noises. He repeatedly looked around, making the car swerve with every turn of his head, as he tried to find the source of the honking horn. He thought that some impatient driver was telling him to get a move on or to get out of the way. It took John a while to realize that he was the one producing the honks by the loose way he held the wildly vibrating steering wheel on that piece of road. "Oh, it's me," he said and continued to talk.

I've often thought since that drive that the phrase "traveling mercies" had special meaning for John, who traveled to share his music with people across the country and elsewhere; surely, God was merciful to this musician He had called and that we all needed.

We made it to the parsonage in one piece that Saturday afternoon, for which I thanked God. That night, we had the singalong at the church and a rehearsal for church musicians who wanted to play for worship the next morning. The singalong was fantastic and our musicians were well prepared to play the special accompaniment John created on the spot once he saw what instruments and musicians he had to work with. (We had no blank musical staff paper around. So, John took the blank copy paper I handed him, graphed out the bars on the page, and created an arrangement for each musician as I watched.)

John stayed with us at the parsonage that night. He and I talked mostly music and musicians until three in the morning. He also told me some of his theories about composing music for the Church. We talked theology, our faith, the life of the Church, and mutual friends. But we always came back to music.

When, during our marathon conversation, I mentioned Canadian rocker Bruce Cockburn, I found in John someone as mesmerized by Cockburn's talent as I was. "He's got one line," I said. And with just that slim cue, John knew which line I was talking about. We ended up saying it in unison: "Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight." Then John said, "I would kill to write a line like that!"

The fact is that John wrote many great lines and many wonderful melodies that helped God's people sing praises to God, all in ways to which they could relate AND that were also faithful to Scripture. There was a theological depth and emotional honesty to John's songs that are often missing in today's "praise and worship" music. He was an incredible gift of God to the Church and to the world. We need more of John's ilk in Christ's Church today!

On the Sunday morning that followed that wee-hours conversation, we used not only Ylvisaker songs but Ylvisaker liturgy for our worship. John led us. The congregation was familiar with three of the pieces; there were nine more that they didn't know until that very morning...when John introduced them. Yet no one complained about the lack of familiar music.

In fact, at the end of the service, 300 people stood largely silent and still. It felt to me like the Transfiguration: Nobody wanted to leave this moment behind; John had ushered us into the presence of God with songs the people loved singing. One man told me afterward, "I kept hoping that we could stay a little longer." That was the power of John's music for God!

One of my favorite Ylvisaker pieces is Sweet Release. The title is rooted in the most common word for forgive in Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written by the apostles and evangelists, aphiemi. It's a word that literally means release, as in "When I am forgiven by God through Christ, I'm released from my slavery to sin." The lyrics are Biblically sound and the melody resonates of American folk music, the kind of tune that generations of Americans, no matter what their race, have sung together.

In published versions, the song is made up of three verses. But John also occasionally recorded his songs to introduce them to people. In the recorded version of Sweet Release, he sang a simple bridge he'd composed. I loved Ylvisaker's bass voice singing those reassuring words meant as a prayer to God:

When I feel afraid, I know just where You'll be
Your love is such a tender mystery

Those lines bring tears to my eyes as I remember and sing them now, serving still as a reminder of the grace, forgiveness, and life that God makes available to us through Christ.

You didn't need a verse or a line as great as Cockburn's, John. In those two lines, focused not on our efforts to bring light to the world, but on God's provision of light and love given by His grace through faith in Christ that we cannot earn, you surpassed Cockburn. You really did.

I look forward to seeing you one day again with all the saints as we exuberantly enjoy eternal life in the presence of God. You can lead us in praising our Savior and King. I know that you'll help us all, even we non-musicians, to keep up.





[My daughter, who was very young when John Ylvisaker stayed with us at the parsonage at Okolona, just reminded me that John liked to put orange juice on his corn flakes. She has a fabulous memory and is right about that, although I'd forgotten it.]

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Lutherans and making the sign of the cross

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther suggested that Lutherans make the sign of the cross both in the mornings and the evenings when we pray.

Doing so helps us to invoke the names of the triune God of all creation--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--over our waking and our sleeping.

It also helps us to remember the covenant God made with us at our baptism. This is a huge comfort to me as when, Luther says elsewhere, the devil makes me doubt that Christ really has covered my sins. Under those circumstances, I can shout to my doubts and that old liar, the devil, as Luther did, "But I am baptized!" This reminds me to trust in the God Who sent Jesus to keep claiming me as His own as I turn from sin and entrust my life to Jesus! No matter how I feel at any given moment, I can trust that the Lord Jesus to Whom I cling for life is working for my good and is good for His promise of eternal life for all who believe in Him!

I like this little step-by-step illustration of how to make the sign of the cross from a blog called Pastoral Meanderings. (I love how 1940s the illustrations are! It reminds me of some of the pictures that were in The Boy Scout Handbook back when I was in Scouts.)

There are a surprising number of variations on how Christians cross themselves, though. So, if you don't do it exactly as it's illustrated here, it's no biggie. And your salvation won't go out the window if you don't cross yourself, of course. But, for the reasons listed above, it can be meaningful.

After making the sign of the cross, I always touch my heart three times, again "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," expressing my love for God, doing so after I receive Christ's body and blood in Holy Communion. (Or, on those rare occasions when I'm blessed to be in the congregation worshiping as someone else leads the service.)

"Bold Lutheran" Need Not Be an Oxymoron!

[This is from my devotions for the Saint Matthew Church Council this evening.]

Tonight, I'd like to look at three passages of Scripture. The first is John 14:1. It comes from the same section of John as our gospel lessons for the past few Sundays have come. It's what scholars call the Farewell Discourse, words spoken by Jesus in the presence of the twelve apostles on the night of His arrest. In John 14:1, Jesus says:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me."

Martin Luther had some especially important things for Lutherans to hear about these words of Jesus.

First, Luther said:

...if we Christians stay close to [Christ], we know that He speaks to us.

Those who trust that Jesus is God and Savior and is risen and is living, seated at the right hand of God the Father, know that, to this day, Jesus speaks to us.

• Jesus, first of all and most assuredly speaks to us in the only book in the world the contents of which were breathed into its writers by the Holy Spirit: the Bible. 
• And, Jesus speaks to us in what one pastor calls "whispers," bits of guidance, messages to the heart, that the Holy Spirit speaks to the minds of those who follow Jesus. (Those "whispers" will always be consistent with what we know of Jesus from the Bible, by the way. Whispers that urge us to sin aren't from God!)
• Jesus also speaks to us through the Sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the "visible words" that have been instituted by Christ, involve physical elements (bread and wine or water), and bring the forgiveness of sins. 

Luther then says this of Jesus' words in John 14:1:

We can be sure of this: a sorrowful, timid, and frightened heart doesn't come from Christ.

Wow! We Lutherans need to especially latch onto the truth in those words. That's because when it comes to living our faith out loud or sharing the Good News of new life that can belong to anyone who turns from sin and believes in Jesus, we Lutherans tend to be timid.

Words on a T-shirt I saw not long ago give a good characterization of we Lutherans:

I'm proud to be a Lutheran...but not too proud.

I want to tell you that our hesitation about letting the light of Jesus shine from us and about telling others the Good News about Jesus does not come from Jesus or from the Holy Spirit.

Our hesitation is learned and cultural, not spiritual. It's not of God!

A second passage of Scripture I want to look at underscores this fact. It's 2 Timothy 1:6-7. These verses come from the second letter we have in the New Testament that was written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul writes:

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

All Christians have the Holy Spirit living within them. The Spirit is sometimes portrayed in Scripture as a burning flame. Paul says that we need to rekindle this flame, stoke the fire of passion and belief in Christ within us.

We do this by daily contact with God, especially by praying throughout our days about anything and everything, seeking God's help and guidance and praising Him, along with regularly reading and studying God's Word.

The Holy Spirit is not "a spirit of cowardice." The more we Christians rely on God, the more the Holy Spirit ignites and sustains our passion and makes us bold in sharing our faith with others.

We need to seek the help of God's Holy Spirit so that we can live with the same boldness and conviction shown by Paul in the book of Romans:

...I am not ashamed of the gospel [Paul writes]; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [or Gentile, the non-Jew]. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."

May God's Holy Spirit fill us with boldness as we spread the good news of new life that belongs to those (and only to those) with faith in Jesus Christ!