We're getting closer, friends. In less than 24 hours we'll know who will be competing against Harriet Bedell for the Golden Halo. Yes, you heard that correctly, Harriet Bedell! Did anyone who filled out a bracket have Harriet competing in the championship round? Anybody? Harriet capped off a stunning Cinderella-like romp through Lent Madness 2014 by defeating Lydia yesterday 54% to 46% and will vie for the Golden Halo on Spy Wednesday with either Charles Wesley or Phillips Brooks.
But first, Charles and Phillips stare one another down in this battle of wordsmiths. Hymn writer and preacher. Though, to be fair, Wesley preached a bunch of sermons and Brooks wrote some hymns. And many generations have been inspired by their passion and creativity.
To make it this far, Charles Wesley defeated John Wesley, Thomas Merton, and Anna Cooper while Phillips Brooks turned away Simeon, Catherine of Siena, and Julia Chester Emery.
Oh, and congratulations to the Lent Madness Faithful for helping us achieve our goal of 10,000 likes on Facebook! We had great faith in you and the milestone was tripped at 10:18 pm Eastern Standard Time by a Canadian (of all things) proving that Lent Madness is indeed a global phenomenon. Or at least that Maple Anglican is a lot more influential than we thought.
After watching Tim and Scott's last Lenten edition of the award winning (well, not yet but we're optimistic and/or deluded) Monday Madness, let's see what the Archbishops have to say about today's match-up:
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley Writing, by Richard Douglass
The other day, I asked a friend what I should say in order to convince you, dear reader, to cast your vote for Charles Wesley in today’s Lent Madness match-up. I was given a definite and absolute answer: “it’s all about the hymns!”
In one sense, of course the case for Charles Wesley centers on his 6,000+ hymns. For me, those hymns have been present at some of the most dear and cherished moments of my life –- I’ve attended weddings and funerals and sung Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. I recall the Christmas Eve eucharists as child where I would be so excited to sing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Easter morning was never complete without Christ the Lord is Risen Today/Jesus Christ is Risen Today.
His hymns punctuate the seasons of the church’s year (as with Come Thou Long Expected Jesus and Lo! He
Charles Wesley, from St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco, CA
Comes with Clouds Descending), and they provide language to express our desire to offer our highest praises to God (O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing!). At times, they simply stand in awe and amazement at God’s incredible love for us (And Can it Be That I Should Gain?).
But in a larger sense, I like Charles Wesley for way more than writing my favorite hymns. Because for Wesley, the hymns -– magnificent as they are –- were but other tools in his toolbox –- yet another way of striving to reach every last person with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Charles Wesley wanted every last person on earth to have that same feeling of confidence and assurance in Jesus Christ’s love for them, just as he had experienced his own “strange palpitation of the heart” and assurance that Jesus loved him on that Pentecost Day in 1738.
It’s no secret that this mission of Charles Wesley often led him right up to the edge of trouble. With his brother, Charles received disapproval from church authorities when, casting aside long-standing practice, he went out into the fields to preach the gospel to people who otherwise never would have had an opportunity to step into a church. And preach he did –- to thousands upon thousands.
And the hymns…Charles Wesley’s many hymns were to him yet another means by which the gospel could be heard, that Jesus Christ could be known, and Jesus’ love could be felt by everyone. The famous 19th century American preacher Henry Ward Beecher once confessed his understanding of the power of those hymns to stir the heart when he said: “I would rather have written that hymn of Wesley's, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat on the earth.”
Charles Wesley was described by those who knew him as “a man made for friendship.” And for him, that’s what all those hymns, all those sermons, and all his work was all about: friendship with God and with neighbor.
That’s a commitment, and a ministry, that we can sing about today and every day, even as we, like Charles Wesley, cast our crowns before Jesus… lost in wonder, love, and praise.
-- David Sibley
Phillips Brooks
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In the later decades of the 19th Century Phillips Brooks, rector of Trinity Church, Boston, was a national celebrity. It was a time when, unlike today, being widely-known, much less widely-respected and beloved as Brooks was, was no small feat.
Once clocked by a reporter at preaching more than 200 words per minute, Phillips Brooks must have been a been a magnetic, not to say breathless, preacher. We can’t know. Thomas Edison’s phonograph was not widely in use by Brooks’s death in 1893, but Martin Luther King, Jr.’s son has claimed that the cadence of Brooks’s sermons influenced his father’s preaching style. If we have Brooks to thank, in small part, for “I Have a Dream,” then we owe a great debt.
Upon reading his sermons more than 100 years later, it’s remarkable how overcome I am by a potent jolt of inspiration. I want to be a better person. I want to serve God with my best self and my whole heart. Sign me up!
Listen to the man:
The danger facing all of us -- let me say it again, for one feels it tremendously -- is not that we shall
Hall of Fame of Great Americans, Bronx Community College
make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel that life has no meaning at all -- not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God -- and be content to have it so -- that is the danger. That some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life -- and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one's friends may be spared -- satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle and thrill which come from a friendship with the Father.
Brooks knew that it all comes down to love, as he shared so eloquently in a letter to young Helen Keller.
Trinity Church, Boston
“There is one universal religion, Helen - the religion of Love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.”
The words Brooks shares are not bound by time. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Indeed, they are met in Christ every night of our lives. And his call to prayer to a God who knows no bounds sounds like it was written yesterday.
“Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings.”
-- Heidi Shott
Vote!
[poll id="106"]
165 comments on “Charles Wesley vs. Phillips Brooks”
For those of you who want a little Phillips Brooks this Eastertide, here's a hymn he wrote.
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/h/a/ghatsent.htm
For those who want your Charles Wesley with something other than organ here's a contemporary setting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8ERYc985s&feature=kp
I can't say how disappointed I am that someone would vote for someone in the belief that he'd lose the next round so a woman would win. The nice thing about LM is that it lacks that kind of basketball stuff. I may have to reconsider doing this next year.
I am so grateful to this community, which has made this the most joyful Lent of my 50+ years. I know I'm supposed to save this for Sunday, but Hallelujah!!
Amen, sister!
Thank you so much for posting this.
You are quite welcome.
Anyone who's bio mentions Dr Martin Luther King gets my vote.
I may not hit the vote button tomorrow.
All these nerve-wracking choices are driving me Nuts!!!!!
Shoot, let's distribute haloes to everyone.
Ah, Madeleine, but they already do have them. I rather hope the halos are like the angels' wings painted by Fra Angelico, a rainbow of color.
Ooo, Ooo, is Fra Angelico eligible for LM next year? Equal opportunity for visual artists!
Thank you, Fr. Tim, Fr. Scott and CB volunteers for a wild and crazy Lent Madness 2014 ! It's been enlightening and stressful. Sort of like difficulties encountered by many of the saints. But, only sort of.
Thanks for introducing these 32 saints to us Moderns!
Happy Easter, one and all!
Love that painting with the dog and Charles Wesley's happy smile. Some Saints look so grim...
While I'm at it, thanks to the sec for yet another LM filled with hair-pulling choices. You guys are sick!
Neither. They both beat out far more worthy women for reasons passing understanding except for musical ones. So I vote for Julia Chester Emery. And at the church I serve, on my bracket she will be receiving the Golden Halo.
Okay, went with Charles. I'll be humming hymns for many days.
And then there's this - not sure how it didn't make it into the kitsch round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCISiaxCTtI
That is TOO funny! Makes me glad I voted for the man (although it was the toughest choice yet.)
Madeleine,
Here's a website with some pics of happy snails to brighten your day:
http://www.boredpanda.com/snail-macro-photography-vyacheslav-mishchenko/?image_id=macro-photography-vyacheslav-mishchenko-9.jpg
Thanks for the gorgeous Gastropoda! While I was lost in mollusk admiration I thought "Wesley would write a hymn about this, and Brooks would compose an oration." I would rather sing about snails than listen to a snail-centric speech, so Charles gets my vote today!
"O for a thousand snails to sing . . . "
My sentiments exactly.
Ditto! It looks we will go down for the fall, though, and I will have voted for the loser the last four races. Honestly! Some people's children....
Harvard comes through again! He's got a prep school named after him as well.
Phil -- your thoughts here seem partly in response to my musings earlier on whether Charles Wesley would beat Bach head to head. And I still wonder about such a hypothetical contest, especially free of false attributions (Wesley taking credit for a favorite tune, Emery taking credit for the Underground Railroad, Mozart taking credit for the libretto, and so on). Perhaps Bach wrote the words and music both to his chorales. I don't know. Perhaps you do.
And I doubt I'd ever have said "mere" poetry. -- above my words were "sans music, as poetry" -- free of misattributions.
The fact is hymnwriters and hymn composers are NOT separable in that fashion nor is any musical form with words like opera, or oratorios, or canatas separable into lyricist/librettist and composer: they go together, and a composer cannot write the music without the words, nor can the librettist/lyricist write the words without the music! Die Zauberflöte would be nothing without Mozart AND Emanuel Schikaneder (the librettist), W.S. Gilbert would be nothing without Sir Arthur Sullivan and vice versa. Bach's cantatas were never meant to exist without the words. Handel's Messiah would not be the magnificent piece it is without the words. Hymnwriters like Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley and Fanny Crosby, and many more, did not write in a vacuum -- they intended their words to be set to music not as "mere" poetry. There is a special talent required to be a hymnwriter, lyricist, librettist. Those words are indeed an integral part of the "music", not separate!
Bernie Taupin for GH 2015
Bernie Taupin! Yes, for "Border Song." Although, a GH for one song seems...disproportionate. Is he a saint?
That. Is. Awesome.
Well, here's how far off my bracket choices were. At this point, I had the faithful four thus: Lydia Vs Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Aelred Vs Julia Chester Emery. Then, Aelred triumphs in the end (against Harriet) . Friendship was Aelred's "thing" and since that was mentioned in the write up of Wesley today, I'm one of Charlie's Angels.
"The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God -- and be content to have it so -- that is the danger. That some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life -- and have really missed life itself. " That settled it for me.
I have learned about more than many wonderful saints during Lent Madness this year. I have learned that I am just as susceptible to 'tribalism' as the most devoted sports fan or political junkie. When my demigod Bach lost in the first round, my attitude turned to sour grapes. I really didn't enjoy the rest of LM very much because my choice was out of the running, in spite of my belief that he should be the winner of the Golden Halo, and especially because I perceived the voting wasn't done by using the same criteria when comparing. So it has been a lesson in humility for me. It is a good Lenten lesson.
Love both saints, will be happy either way. Decided to cast a vote for Brooks because 1) I agree with the liturgical sign of pulling the altar away from the wall and bringing it into the middle of chancel 2) I want “Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully" on a mug or t-shirt 3) Couldn't have said it better myself: "He is here. He knows me and I know him.
It is no figure of speech. It is the realest thing in the world. And every day makes it realer.” 4) I'll never forget Heidi's "The Empire Strikes Back" connection to Trinity and 5) the lithograph with “O, do not pray for easy lives! Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!”
P.S. Helen Keller.
P.S. "hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."
P.S. all the prayers, hymns, and sermons that I look forward to discovering in the future
Such awesomeness! I cannot believe I didn't do a youtube search for Phillips Brooks before the kitsch round. In the words of Jacques the cleaner shrimp, I AM ASHAMED.
Still, PB's had a good run and I can take comfort that - unlike a CB I could name - I did not rely on a cute pet doggy painting to help him get to the Golden Halo.
...Round. Golden Halo Round.
The Deaconess is not to be underestimated.
Note for next year: cute painting of favorite saint with cute dog--sure vote getter!
I think "O Little Town of Bethlehem", the Phillips Brooks hymn, sounds great sung by Richard Crooks:
http://youtu.be/Ih2bRXjNTWM
Sitting at my desk at the office trying to decide, & then:
"Pray not for crutches but for wings."
Oh, great, there are those dratted ninjas slicing onions.
Tough call, but Brooks.
You'd think on this first anniversary of the tragedy at the marathon we'd honor the Bishop of Boston, but I guess we'd rather sing!
Boston Strong!
I do love Wesley's hymns, but Phillips Brooks' words are fabulous. Yes, pray for wings and remember that it is all about Love.
What a difficult decision! I've always loved the Wesley bros--spent my first 18 years in a Methodist parsonage, in fact. No one was United back then. But Phillips Brooks surely knew how to touch people's hearts w/ his preaching, & as an American, he helped develop this country's values & ethos. So I had to show my care for our country which surely needs all the help it can get right now. I won't be unhappy with either of the final choices, tho.