The winter session began with a study of the 39^th chapter of Isaiah and a review of related chapters “36-38) by Carl Springer.

     These chapters are diff from those that have gone b4 them as well as those that follow. They are narrative and biographical.  Unlike the prophetic chapters that proceed and follow.  These 4 chapters recount the life story of kin Hezekiah (715-686 bc), king in Jerusalem (the southern kingdom).  A more comprehensive acct of Heze

kiah life can be found in 2^nd Chronicles 32.

     Hezekiah’s faith-life starts out with great promise, but then it begins to wobble.  He joins the ranks of those like Solomon, Eli, and David, uphill followed by downhill.  But in his formative years Solomon was surrounded by David’s prayers and promises.  Not so with Hezekiah.  His father Ahaz was a notorious idol worshiper.  Daily Hezekiah had to share the throne with his wicked father, for he ruled as co-regent with his father.  When Ahaz died, Hezekiah undertook a general house cleaning. 

     This reformation was not just a matter for the king and the levites but for all of Judah.  Thus did the reign of Hezekiah start out with great promise. 

     But as so often happens Hezekiah reformation spirit began to fade.  A great an mighty nation, Assyria, has risen up in the east.  Seemingly, none of the kings of the near and middle east could withstand the might of Assyria.  One after the other of Judah’s neighbors fell. 

Soon it was Judah’s moment of truth.  The Assyrian host was encamped around the walls of Jerusalem.  Humanly speaking there was nothing the king could do; his resources were exhausted.  With great sighing Isaiah called on the lord, his only hope, and the lord delivered Judah out the hands of the Assyrians. 

     Judah’s deliverance from the Assyrians was the highpoint of Hezekiah’s reign.  After this things started to go downhill, almost inperceptively at first.  Hezekiah became terribly sick and took to his bed.  His counselor, Isaiah, told the king that his sickness was fatal.  Hezekiah cried out to the lord, reminding Him how he faithful served Him.  In response the lord allotted him 15 additional years. 

     How did Hezekiah make use of the 15 years?  First of all, with a psalm of thanksgiving, typical of the Jews (Isaiah 38: 10-20) but there was yet one more test for Hezekiah.  Sharing the great Mesopotamian valley (today’s Iraq) with the Assyrians were another people, the Chaledans or Babylonians.  The 2 nations were utterly unalike.  The Assyrians lived for warfare and the hunt.  The Babylonians, however, were famed for learning, commerce, and architecture (home of the famed hanging gardens).  Assyria was an eastern Sparta; Babylonia an eastern Athens. 

When the Assyrians no longer posed a threat to its neighbors, the Chaldeans/Babylonians decided to see who their neighbors were (with special attention to their strengths and weaknesses).

     The king of Babylon (chapter 39) put together a nice gift, along with a letter, “for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick and was recovered.”  This present was to be delivered in person.  When an ambassage came to Jerusalem, Hezekiah showed them all the royal treasures, his armory, and everything of value in the kingdom.  Were Hezekiah‘s visitors sincere in their concern for Hezekiah‘s health, or were they spies, or were they merely taking inventory against future developments? 

     Hezekiah may have been taken in by these ambassadors, but God was not.  He took Hezekiah to task not only for his gullibility and boasting, more seriously for failing to have borne witness to the strength of Judah. 

     When the visitors were gone, God rebuked Hezekiah for his indiscrete behavior.  The days are coming God said, that Jerusalem with its able-bodied men and all its riches will be carried into Babylon.

     On hearing Isaiah’s word of judgment, Isaiah says: “good is the word of the lord which thou hast spoken…for there shall be peace and truth in my days.”  (at least I will not live to see this calamity.  One Assyrian-like siege in my lifetime is enough.  As for the generations that are to come, that will be their problem, not mine.)

     How shall we rank Hezekiah among the kings of Judah?  Certainly, his last years (his reaction to the visit of the Babylonians) did not measure up to his first ones (the house cleaning of the Ahaz’s idolatry).  But his spiritual flip flopping was typical not only of individual kings but of the nation as a whole.  The common people followed the leading of their rules, and Old Testament version cuius regio, eius relegio (the religion of the ruler must be the religion of his subjects). 

     But if Hezekiah was not all he could have been, neither was his ancestor David.  David had his better moments (slaying goliath, his psalms with their tones of repentance) no less than his lesser moments (his treachery toward Uriah and his adultery with Bathsheba).  Even so, summing up, Hezekiah was a believing child of god, an Israelite in whom their was no guile.   His lapses certainly showed a lack of character and his psalm of thanksgiving does not measure up the psalm of David.  But let every man work with the gifts that god has given him. 

     The high priest Eli is another Old Testament character whose life is a disappointment, who had a golden opportunity laid in his lap (high priest of Israel) but muddled through it.  The same may be said of all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. 

     What strikes us the most about Hezekiah is not his shining moments (ridding the land of idolatry, calling on god to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrians) but his slowly sliding into death.  This is not unique with Hezekiah. David’s last months are weak and embarrassing.  Likewise Moses falls under the judgment of god.  Never will Hezekiah be anything more than a minor player.  Whether it be for good or for ill, the same factors that moved David (or Moses or lot or Solomon or many others) work in each of us. 

     Similarly, old Simeon holds the Christ child in his arms, and while doing so speaks of this child being set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign that will be spoken against, and, turning to Mary: this will be a sword that will reveal and pierce many hearts.  But Simeon continues: lord, now let us now thy servant depart in peace.  Is this not the same prayer as that of Hezekiah?  We need not interpret this as whining and selfishness and insensitivity toward his fellow believers.  We can see in it a longing for union with Christ.  Simeon’s song is part of our liturgy, yet no one would think that Simeon is selfish when he says that he is now ready to depart, for he has seen the light that will lighten the Gentiles.  His prayer is the 7^th petition, “deliver us from evil.”  What does this petition mean?  “We pray in this petition, as the sum of all, that our father in heaven would deliver us from every evil of body and soul, of property and honor, and finally, when our last hour shall come, grant us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this veil of tears to himself in heaven.”—Luther, in the small catechism. 

     What is appealing about Hezekiah is his childlikeness.  Even though he is a king (and kings by definition are general sophisticated), his reactions are childlike as when he turns to the wall to pray and weep and later on when he boastfully shows all of his treasures to the visitors from Babylon, nor does he have a professional prayer-man on his staff to do his praying for him.  In a way he reminds us of the apostle peter, and he speaks and acts like a man who speaks from the heart and whose god is a friend of long standing. 

     This is a striking resemblance between Hezekiah and Eli in that each of them has godless progeny (Manasseh, Phinehas and Hophni).  It must have been a crushing blow to have such sons (unbelievers, too, mourn after their wayward children.  Sorrow is not the exclusive property of believers).

     To lose something of earthly value is a cause for sorrow.  Far worse, however, it must have been to look on as the prodigal packs goods and hastens to be gone, leaving behind him a legacy his father has stored up to pass on to his offspring.

     But the sons fault is not his alone.  In each case the sin of the father (David, Eli, and Hezekiah) are visited on the son, be those sins harsh and violent are no more than a gradual slipping away of the first love.  Hezekiah was not a second David.  David was a mind of heroic proportions.  In the Old Testament seemingly never tires of recalling David as his exploit.  David did things on a grand scale, but we do not read that Hezekiah practiced treachery, adultery, savage warfare as did David.  Among the kings, should we rank them, Hezekiah would fall into the “good” category.

What of us?  Are we Eli’s and Hezekiah’s, thinking of ourselves as independent of God and our work and walk as unrelated to His rulings?   Have we neglected the work God has given us to carry forward?  True enough, God will make up for our lapses.  If we fall down on the performance of our assignment, God will find someone else to do what we have neglected.  The kingdom of God does not thereby limp along.  We were never anything more than his agents of change, and God has others ready and willing to take up the tasks at which we have failed.  That cold, January night in 1927 when Professor Ruediger encountered Professor Koehler, after Koehler had rebuffed Ruediger were returning after his unjust dismissal, Koehler confided in his colleague that events at the seminary were rushing towards climax, and in some: wir muessen bekennen, dasz vir der grossen Ausgabe nichts gerecht varen, “we must confess that we weren’t equal to the great assignment (of rousing the synod from it’s coma).” 

     It does not depend on us.  The Holy Ghost working through the Word will see that what needs to be done gets done.  God does not depend on us, but we depend on Him.  And yet He wants us to have a share in the building up of the Kingdom of heaven, so that a portion of His joy becomes ours.

     Our attention now turned to church music at the Wauwatosa Seminary in the early years of the 20^th century.  When Professor Koehler came to the seminary in 1900, he organized a seminary choir whose mission was to awaken in the Wisconsin Synod an appreciation for its Lutheran musical heritage.  He enlisted the seminary students, thus introducing future pastors to the tradition Lutheran excellence.  For the soprano and alto voices, Koehler called upon young women from the Milwaukee area.  The Seminary choir presented public concerts in the Plankinton Hall in downtown Milwaukee.  The concerts included lectures offering background to the music that was being presented.  The choir sang a capella and in parts, occasionally up to eight voices.  Koehler would take a familiar chorale tune and have it sung as interpreted by three composers, or as reflecting three eras.*

     The reaction in Milwaukee’s musical circles was generally favorable, a regular “bomb shell” as one newspaper put it, much to Koehler’s chagrin.

     Koehler assembled a collection of the music the Seminary choir would be singing.  The first publication in 1905, Perlen alter Kirchenmusik (Pearls of ancient Church Music), is a collection of 22 examples of Reformation era choir music.  The accompanying essays later appeared in the Quartalschrift of April, 1906.  The second collection in 1911, Das Gemeindelied, follows the same format.  These lectures have been translated and have appeared in Faith-Life.

     The Lutheran chorale is our unique heritage.  The Calvinists have their own heritage, largely inferior, marshmallow as opposed to Lutheran diamond.  The contemporary “Lutheran” preference for Calvinist hymns proclaims the loss of Luther’s theology epitomized in the Reformation hymn.

     The Divine Service is the highlight of the Christian week.  It comes into its glory when the pastor fulfills his ministry in his manner of leading the congregational worship.

     Paul Hinz presented a biographical sketch of the English hymn translator Catherine Winkworth (1829-78).  Her specialty was the German chorale.  She became the premier translator of Luther’s chorales as well as hymns from later German hymn writers.  Her translations are meritorious and in number an astounding on hundred plus.

     Winkworth labored at a time of revival in the Church of England in the Victorian era when in England there was a great deal of interest in things German.  But that interest withered in the two World Wars.  Since then England has occupied itself with its own heritage.  In our own circle, Winkworth’s translations have become so familiar that we have all but forgotten her name, which would have pleased her because the whole object of her lifelong endeavor was to promote the gospel glorified in the Reformation chorale.

     Before adjourning we also heard but had little time to respond to a refreshing teddy of Mt. 5-7 by Robert W. Christman under the title, “How the Lord introduces Himself.”  It was printed in the July/August number [of Faith-Life] beginning on p.11

*See The Muses of Zion, pg. 14 of the September/October issue of Faith-Life.