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Vital Worship
Feature stories ... for inspiration, learning, and group discussion
| Collection of stories |
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
David and Asaph wrote them. John Calvin had French translations set to music. Sixteenth-century German, Dutch, and Hungarian Christians translated the Genevan Psalter. Hungarians who survived persecution and torture in the 1950s and 1960s call these musical poems "our daily bread." Now young North Americans are experiencing the sustaining power of the Genevan Psalms.
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN-In 1998, when Beth Lantinga first traveled to Eastern Europe to meet with Hungarian Reformed teachers, she encountered people whose lives and faith made an unforgettable impression.
A man in the Ukraine cheerily explained why his knees ached. "He had spent several years on his knees, picking coal in a mine shaft only a few feet high-as a guest of the Communist regime," Lantinga says.
She met a pastor's widow, "filled with grace and serenity," whose husband had been arrested and had disappeared during the Communist era. And at a teachers' retreat, she listened to a lay leader of the Reformed church-persecuted and denied ordination during the long occupation-who never lost his trust in a good and loving God.
"The Lord has heard my cries"
The people she met had been betrayed by neighbors, ripped from their families, starved, tortured, and imprisoned. Their ancestral lands have been carved and re-carved into present-day Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Croatia.
Lantinga wondered why they weren't bitter.
Then the former teacher had what she calls an epiphany. It happened in a village church, where worshippers brought their own Psalters. In the pew ahead of her, one man's voice boomed above the others. "Light flooded his worn face. The words rang out, expressions of anguish and faith as old as the psalms themselves. I wondered about his testimony. What memories had his work-hardened hands recorded?"
Since then she has worshipped with many Reformed congregations that endured unspeakable sorrow.
"Whether led by an uncertain organist or confident foresinger, their singing is strong and sure. While many may have felt abandoned by God or humankind, I've met people whose faith never faltered. The ancient words and tunes of the Genevan Psalter surrounded and uplifted them. Their testimonies should not disappear," she says.
That's why the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship funded her proposal to "translate" the Psalter and Hungarians' stories into something that would "speak to young people in Eastern Europe and North America." In summer 2003, Beth Lantinga and Dr. Linda S. Welker, a Calvin College theatre professor, traveled overseas for a final round of interviews and photo shoots.
Divine Reverberations
Welker's Laboratory Theatre class began the fall 2003 semester with a five-inch stack of interview transcripts, background articles, and book chapters, plus hundreds of photos and hours of audio and video tapes.
They had three months to transform the material into performances scheduled for December and the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship.
As a head writer, Calvin senior Noah Thomas searched for dramatic threads to weave the stories into a powerful experience. "Divine Reverberations is a story of human trial, human faith, and God's faithfulness to his people. We used the Psalms to punctuate and clarify that story," he says.
The play's vignettes plunged each audience into the fear, indecision, compromise, and conviction that flooded Eastern Europe after 1948. Should pastors and families cooperate with the new governments, trusting that God could bring good out of evil? Should they flee? Resist?
"Horkay Dolorosa" revealed how she smuggled a "Grease Bible" when her husband was in a Siberian gulag; she hid Scripture pages among care packages of home-baked biscuits. "Richard Wurmbrand" told how brutal guards forced prisoners to defile the Cross. At their lowest points, alone or together, the Hungarians sang psalms they'd learned as children.
Calvin senior Becky Carpenter played one of several characters who recited these lines:
"The most frequently sung psalms express the feelings of the people: 5, 16, 23. They express like a sigh, a sigh that brings relief to your soul. When you sigh you feel a little relief.
"And when a whole community, a congregation, sings the Psalms, especially the villagers-who did not have such a fine musical education-they sang loudly. And we could feel the windows in the church quaking and trembling. And everyone inside was filled by the Holy Spirit. When you came out, you felt totally changed. And that is what the Psalms mean. It is not only tradition, but nourishment."
Engraved on memories
The play ended with the ensemble and audience singing Psalm 116. "The singers, representing God's kingdom, literally overpower the chaotic, mundane noise of Communism, an earthly kingdom," Thomas says.
In the discussion afterwards, audience members always asked how it felt to be immersed in the survivors' stories and Genevan Psalms. Carpenter said it gave her something she can turn to in the future.
Ryan Hoke was waiting backstage for his last entrance one evening when, he said, "Instead of running my lines in my head, I actually listened. All the girls were onstage singing. I think it was Psalm 125. It was beautiful, powerful-worship in the truest sense. Our singing and acting was a response to God's faithfulness, not only to people who struggled under Communism, but to us as well."
He played the role of Visky Ferenc, sent to Siberia for continuing to pastor. Visky's youngest son, now a playwright and theatre professor in Cluj, Romania, saw Divine Reverberations during the worship symposium.
Visky Andras appreciated seeing his people's stories brought to life. "But I'm a little bit surprised that, here in the Reformed culture of the United States, the Psalms are not so much known. For us they are daily bread," he said.
LEARN MORE
- Hear a mass choir sing Psalm 116 and read how to order the CD or a Genevan Psalm 65 choral arrangement
. - Read Beth Lantinga's stories from Hungary published in Reformed Worship and see additional pictures.
- Read why Visky Andras, who spent his early childhood in a prison camp, still treasures the Genevan Psalter.
- Listen to midi files of dozens of Genevan Psalms.
- Book Emily Brink to speak with your church about psalmody.
- Read about Hungarian art and history.
- View photos of Hungarian churches and worshipers.
START A DISCUSSION
Feel free to print and distribute this story at your next church council, music, or worship committee meeting. These questions will get members talking:
- Spend three minutes writing down titles of songs or hymns that express the heart of your congregation's tradition, theology or mission. Share your answers and record which titles are on all or almost all your lists.
- What makes these songs matter so much to all of you? Is it their Scriptural relevance, theological bent, emotional appeal, the match between words and notes, ability to shape your actions, association with an event, something else?
SHARE YOUR WISDOM
What is the best way you've found to gather church members' views on which songs and hymns have lasting value? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas.
Whether you do these or any other things, we'd love to learn what works for you:
- Interview senior citizens about the church songs they have loved since childhood.
- Write stories about favorite songs in your church newsletter.
- Have a church school class poll different age groups about what gives a song lasting value.
- Organize a songfest that includes songs from different decades and centuries.
- Dream up an imaginative way to teach unfamiliar songs to your congregation.
- Have a sermon, seminar, or church school class on what makes a song both energizing and deep.
This copy appeared in the program booklet for Divine Reverberations.
In 1944, the Communists liberated Eastern Europe from Nazi oppression, but by 1948, the Communists had imposed complete tyrannical rule. They tried to forcefully silence Christians, because Christianity was a threat to the regime.
Christians were manipulated and forced to preach propaganda thinly veiled as sermons. Christians who resisted were imprisoned in prison camps called gulags. In these gulags Christians were starved, beaten, brainwashed, and killed.
Over 40,000 Hungarians were used by the regime to spy on their neighbors. By 1953 almost every family had a member in a gulag. Forty percent of men taken to the gulags never returned home. In the Ukraine alone, 21 million people died under Communist rule (roughly three times the number of those killed in Nazi camps).
Many, but not all, of these pastors knew each other, and, while all of them were imprisoned, not all of them were imprisoned together.
Visky Andras (Visky is the family name) and his wife, Sarolta, live in Cluj, Romania, with their four children. Andras is a poet, playwright, and theatre professor at Babes-Bolyai University. The play he wrote about his mother's life won a prize from Magyar Radio and is now in its second season at Thalia Theatre in Budapest. Sarolta is a founder of and teacher at Protestant Elementary School, the first Hungarian Reformed school of its kind in Romania. It uses the Montessori method and raises scholarship money to take in orphans and street children.
Visky Andras attended the Calvin Worship Symposium in January 2004. He saw Divine Reverberations, which included his father's stories; he spoke with the actors and audience; and he shared these thoughts.
We are Hungarians, ethnically Transylvanian. My father, Visky Ferenc, was a pastor. He was sentenced in 1958 when I was one year old. My mother, Visky Julia, continued the church activities of my father.
We-seven children and our mother-were taken away a few months later, when the authorities realized she could not become coerced or frightened. We all came back, practically together, in 1964.
I have an official paper that says that I, at almost two years of age, was a dangerous animal of Communism. We were put in a prison camp in southeast Romania. German prisoners after World War II constructed the village streets in the shape of a hammer and sickle.
Prisoners are the most free people, because everything for them is about daily survival. It's a great experience to know that not just your stomach is hungry, but also your bones and skin. Hungriness is your shape, your form. Hunger becomes a metaphysical problem.
We developed a deep relationship with grass-my mother tried to prepare it well. When we arrived in the camp, my oldest brother was only 11. My brothers learned to fish during the night, when the guards couldn't see them. Not so far from us was a very very nice vineyard. During summer, when it was easier to survive, my brothers would steal foods for us.
My mother was a genius in trying to help us forget our hungriness, telling us stories of our father, learning us to sing, to pray for something to eat. We fell asleep listening to endless stories of my father.
I don't remember to have a Genevan Psalter in the camp. But we sang them daily. My mother was a church organ player. She had a lovely voice. People were telling her that in other circumstances she would be a professional.
In my family the Genevan Psalms are considered traditionally the most valuable way of singing. When my father would go to a new congregation after prison, the first thing he would do is find out how many psalms they knew.
There was a Franciscan priest in that camp who was Hungarian. But we were the only Hungarian family. We didn't speak the Romanian language. A Romanian university student, sentenced for helping Hungarians, was very kind with us. He taught us to speak the language, so we could go to the school in the camp. The teachers there were also prisoners. Now all of us have university degrees.
A very important Romanian literature professor was in that camp, and he was so kind to my mother. He would come to our hut and say, "Okay, Julia. I will take three or four of these boys off with me for a while. You rest now."
We had one Bible. I remember this very well. When we left the prison camp, my mother gave it to the professor. Even now when I meet him, he reminds me. He is amazed to find me a professor.
At our mealtimes now, we sing, we have a Bible passage, and we pray together. For my teenage daughter, the most precious is Psalm 24. We sing Psalms in church, too. In the Transylvania Reformed Church, we have two districts. I was raised in the west district, which had psalms in our hymnbooks. Now I live in the east/central district. I advocated to change our hymnbook and now we have every psalm.
I am not a very conservative thing. I am doing theatre. But the Genevan Psalms are very important to me. At my university, the students have to know and learn about the Psalms. Otherwise they cannot understand the Hungarian literature.
In the gospels, we read we are to be stewards of the kingdom, stewards of the old and new. We need to acknowledge the whole of Christianity. It could be easy to make our Christianity uniformized-but that is not Christian.
To a congregation, the body of Christ must mean various languages. I am not you. You are not me. Still, the Genevan Psalms can be so vigorous in expression. Please don't forget that David and Asaph were great poets. If we would not forget Shakespeare, we should not forget Asaph. (Asaph is actually a family name, not a person.) The Psalms have been part of worship since ancient life.
I had a rock band in high school. You know what the name of our band was? Asaph. My brother Peter is a minister nearby, and our sons and their cousins have a band. They chose a name-Asaph Junior.
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http://www.calvin.edu/worship/.
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