I have written before about festival worship, most prominently here. Festivals do put us in danger of paganism and emotionalism, but there is not not much other choice. We are created with bodies, and the body is supposed to participate in worship as well. Jesus liked bodies well enough that he consented to occupy one. The distinctions we make between the physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects or worship and apprehending God are modern ideas, and likely not always good ones. CS Lewis thought that a hearing a child singing to himself "Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen" struck the right note. If we are serious about a holiday we attach foods to it that become part of the celebration. Are ham or jellybeans necessary aspects to understanding God - well, certainly not. Nor is beautiful worship music, dressing in best clothes, or seeing family what Easter is "really about." We know this, but we are tied to not only rituals but physical pleasures. It is who we are, and despite its dangers there is nothing shameful about it. Many pagan things that are not real food are mixed into our stew of worship, but the stew would have little savor without those herbs and spices.
But this Easter we have to go in the other direction. Apophatic theology is the contemplation of God by subtraction, of understanding him by what he is not. "Not thus...not thus...but as You really are, and not as we picture you." It is the approach to God of mystics, and it is more common in the Eastern Orthodox confession.
We will dress for church tomorrow. We will sing, we will eat traditional foods, and we will try to keep what scraps we can, trusting God to assemble them into coherent worship. Yet we will also know more powerfully this year that these are not the real thing. They are vehicles to the adoration of God, they are not God Himself. We are not used to doing this, and we likely won't do it very well. Yet we trust our Father in heaven for the result, and pray that it instructs us to know Him better when the familiar world comes back.
5 comments:
I wonder if it's fair to call some of those things "pagan." True, pagans used them first, but were they so integral to pagan worship that the pagan taint remains? "Knock wood" is pretty clearly a residual pagan ritual and has no other use, but an egg hunt is a fun game no matter what inspires it--the pagan meaning not only isn't central, it's been lost.
True, they are no longer pagan, whatever they meant when they were taken into the church. I learned from CS Lewis that there really is no other choice. We will have symbols, objects, foods, underlying philosophies, and mental pictures anyway, because that is how we think and move in this world. We can try to separate the True God from our poor representations of Him, and should sometimes be fully aware that these are not Him. Yet with such cautions, I think we can fully embrace the smells, the music, and the joy of fellowship without apology.
Spherical cows? You must have been reading Sarah Hoyt!
I usually skip everything of hers, but I did run across the concept again recently, after not hearing it for many years, so it could be because of her.
Natural theology is also still open. God can be known by his work; and so he must love viruses, because he made so many of them.
It’s a beautiful day in the spring. It’s a strange world, full of blossoms and death. Wonder remains the only appropriate response, because we don’t understand at all.
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