MetaCatholic

A tremendously appealing statue from the Church of the Visitation at Ein Kerem. The many tablets around the wall show the opening words of the Magnifcat in different languages. Today, for those outside the liturgical tradition of the Church, marks the feast of the Visitation.

Church is strange. I know there are people who make heavy use of nearly contemporary music in worship who level this accusation at people who prefer more traditional patterns, but, truth to tell, just about everything Christians do when they meet together is either going to be exceedingly strange or reduced to entertainment. Corporate singing, talking to an invisible person (sometimes together), and reading out loud to adults are all decidedly weird activities.

There are people who talk about making it all accessible. The problem is, everyone has their own different idea of that. The church I was visiting today seemed to think that you made your worship booklets accessible by printing them in Comic Sans. (Ugh!) Shame they forgot to give the booklet any page numbers. 

Personally I think we just need to accept that church is strange, and people will need to be acculturated to it, especially while it’s evolving through a time of rapid social change. What we need are better relationships outside the liturgy, good opportunities for “halfway-houses” (on Sundays or weekdays, and in homes, cafés, pubs or churches) and, when someone does venture into a liturgy ancient or modern, a warm but non-patronizing welcome.

I really don’t know what to do with Lingamish’s meme on weird worship songs, despite being tagged. His meme has also resulted in a mix of responses. I shall widen the mix simply by rambling.

I have been scathing about songs on plenty of occasions before, but I should note that weirdness has been with us for a long time. I am not remotely sure why Peter Kirk thinks Psalm 150 is weird, but I quite agree with him that Psalm 137: 9 is weird. What an extraordinary way to climax a song.

May God get really riled,
And just bash your child (oh yeah)
Your babies bash
Their little heads dash
A great bloody splash
Against the rock
(Rock of ages, do-be-do-be-do)
Your children’s brains
Like autumn rains
Cover stones with stains
Yes! Their skulls are gored
As we rejoice in the Lord
As we praise his name,
As we praise his name.

Well, that’s not quite what it says, but it certainly brings out the weirdness. I’m not sure even the worst of modern songs can quite compete (Oh, yes they can), and I’m not sure I know enough to pick five. I may, in some people’s eyes be cheating by choosing some that have been around for 25 years or so (Peter Kirk will tell me that is so last century) but I am going to start with one of the older ones.

I have never understood why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to sing “Jesus, take me as I am, I can come no other way” Ooh, missus. How naïve do you have to be not to spot such an unfortunate double entendre a mile away? It sounds like Mills and Boon gone mad.

I have ranted before, and will take the opportunity to rant again about Filled with compassion. I really do not know (whatever the supposed allusions) how anyone can seriously sing:

From every nation we shall be gathered
Millions redeemed shall be Jesus’ reward
Then He will turn and say to His Father
Truly my suffering was worth it all.

The picture of Jesus waiting around to see if the church evangelized enough people before deciding Calvary might just have been worth it is truly bizarre.

Then there are songs which mangle their metaphors unfortunately. (Yes, I know that’s nearly all of them). One I find particularly unfortunate is Jesus, melt my cold heart. It piles one metaphor on another without regarding how they (don’t) work together. Linguistically, I find the ways in which songs use metaphors are often weird. 

Jesus, melt my cold heart,
Break my stony emotions,
Cos I’ve been playing with the waves
When I should be swimming in the ocean.
Take me deeper, show me more.
It’s all or nothing …

You sort of get where it’s coming from, but I’m afraid I find myself why emotions are stony? And do you really enjoy playing with waves if you’ve got a cold heart of stony emotions? Surely the image is one of carefree childhood. And if God doesn’t want me to be a carefree child, why does he want me to be a fish?

Finally, I wonder at the weirdness of treating worship as a human experience. So many songs are fixated with “my” feelings, creating a kind of emotional dissonance between what I sing I’m feeling, and what I’m feeling (which is often “this is crap”), but they mistake this “what am I feeling, what am I doing” expression of attitudes for worship. So, for example, Vargeson’s song, Almighty God:  “in my worship, I want to meet with you”. Huh? If you’re worshipping, you are meeting God. If you’re worshipping, you’re not fixated on what you want. “In my worship I want” is that extraordinarily weird thing: a liturgical oxymoron: eis-stacy rather than ecstasy.

Update: I was so weirded out, I forgot to tag anyone. I’ll take a rain check on that, since plenty of people are getting tagged already.

Although in yesterday’s post I deliberately (for the sake of concentrating on one point at a time) bracketed out the gendered language of the song “Father God…”. I was not at all surprised that the women commenting on it nonetheless zeroed straight in on the phrase “I am your son, I am adopted in your family”.

Most of the web discussions I’ve come across about gendered language seem to focus on Bible translation. While discussion of gendered language in liturgy and song covers much of the same ground, it is somewhat different in the immediacy of its in-(or ex-)clusiveness. That is, hearing the scriptures say: “so you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir, by God’s own act” (Gal 4:7 NJB) is different from singing as one’s own phrase “I am your son”.

As a question of translation, there are serious interpretative judgements to be made. The overall context of Galatians suggests that Paul saw this as an inclusive use of “son”, so it is quite reasonable to do as the NRSV does and translate as “child”. Equally, because the language is dealing with concepts of relationships as they were conceived in a very particular culture, and the metaphor of inheritance in that culture, one could make a case for maintaining the strong point inherent in describing women as “sons” at that time and in that text. Either way, in reading and hearing the scriptures, we are more aware that they are ancient writings in need of translation and interpretation.

It is, I think, different in the language of prayer and worship. Surely the whole point is that we need to learn ways of speaking to God out of our lives and our culture, and not simply put on the linguistic dress of a past age. I have got used to the fact that I say words that would sound hopelessly sexist today when I’m using the 1662 BCP. (I’d rather not use it all, but am not quite brave, powerful or autocratic enough to ban it completely.) But I am aware that in using it I am drawing on the linguistic and theological mindset of past centuries. But contemporary English is significantly different. Faced with a particularly stubborn congregation who didn’t see the point of changing our liturgical language, I invited my “fellow men” to stand. The men stood, the women remained seated. I asked them how it was possible for them to go on insisting that in the phrase “sinned against you and our fellow men” they really meant women as well.

Older hymns and prayers can often be adapted. Sometimes one is faced with the decision whether a hymn will lose its integrity or meaning if so adapted. Then we must ask whether we sing it as a period piece, or cease using it entirely. But there should be no excuse for contemporary songs and prayers being so full of inappropriately and outmodedly gendered language that people feel unable to use them. Ironically some of the more egregious offenders are more recent (the last half-century) where liturgy and worship has taken a turn towards the human, our world and our relationship to God. Older material focussed much more on the praises of God, and less on human feeling and attitude. Consequently it avoided many of these problems.

Our so-called worship songs might generally benefit from more of a focus on God and less on “God and me” feelings. This is one specific area where they might benefit most strongly. But the more a song presents itself as contemporary, the more the patriarchal linguistic associations of past phrases will stand out like a sore thumb, and the same words that were unexceptional in the poetry and prose of past centuries, will sound exceptional and excluding.

Michael Bird posts today a video of what he says “is in my top three favourite worship songs”. It’s almost exactly the opposite of what I think, since this song always makes me grit my teeth. At least, the lyrics do; I rather like the melody. This put me to wondering whether this is taste or theology, or something in between. Here are the main reasons I dislike it:

• “Father God”. This is an expression I always find odd, but can never quite say why. It’s certainly not one that has been common in the liturgical tradition. I know a lot of people use it in extempore prayer, but then again a lot of people say “really would just” also. I think part of my objection is that it seems to treat “God” as a name, or makes Father sound like an honorific. (Consider the ways we might use Father + another noun in any other context in the English language.)
• “the knowledge of your Parenthood”. I have real problems with the register of “parenthood”. It seems to belong on forms, or discussions of family planning. Who actually uses this term with the connotation of a close relationship? “Hey Mum, your parenthood’s amazing!” I just don’t think so.
• It doesn’t fit everyone. How many people actually do go around wondering how they managed to exist before they became a Christian? And what are those who’ve been Christian all their lives supposed to do with this line?
• “I am your son, I am adopted in your family”. Leaving aside the interesting question of gendered language, at one level this is an unexceptional statement. At another I have problems with it as an assertion in a song that makes no mention of either the Son or the Spirit. Conceiving the relationship between myself and God as Father-son, without relating it (however lightly) to the Father-Son relationship I share in through the Spirit of adoption, is something I find problematic.

So are these questions just unimportant ones of personal taste, or does this song raise theological ones about its usage?

There’s always a worse worship song out there than the last one you thought had plumbed the depths. Today the bar was lowered further as I was confronted by what I can only hope is exceedingly disposable. Shame, really, as the title was promising: “Filled with compassion for all creation”. (And I quite like, for example, the same authors’ “All heaven declares”)

But unfortunately, despite the good intentions of the chorus, (”Stir us to action, Filled with Your passion, For all the people who live on the earth) the bad theology just mounts up.

• “There was but one way that He could save us” Really? So much for divine freedom, grace and election.
• “Having no Saviour they’re lost forever, If we don’t speak out and lead them to You” Well I guess we could debate the different ways in which evangelism relates to salvation, but this really does make it all depend on us.

To this point, this song is no worse than many, and charitable interpretations are possible of the lines that I’ve scorned. But what really makes it unacceptable is its appalling conclusion:

From every nation we shall be gathered
Millions redeemed shall be Jesus’ reward
Then He will turn and say to His Father
Truly my suffering was worth it all

At the moment, apparently, Jesus isn’t sure right now that the cross was worthwhile, but when we’ve shown just how good we are at evangelism, he’ll feel rewarded by what God does with our efforts, and say “Wow, Dad, thanks for blessing all that evangelism, it actually feels like the cross was, well, you know, okay.”

Truly, Mr Brain has left the building.

It seems to me that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, while significant in all the gospels, is perhaps most important in Luke’s. It is, after all, the climax of the journey to Jerusalem which has functioned as an organising motif since chapter nine. Luke also adds both some dialogue and details which help shape the narrative differently. By contrast the entry narrative is perhaps least significant in John’s gospel, partly because John has detached the temple incident and placed that story near the start of his narrative, partly because it is drawn into the larger and more significant Lazarus story.

It is then ironic that the day on which the triumphal entry is recalled is so widely known as Palm Sunday. John is the only gospel to specify palms (John 12:13 – τὰ βαΐα τῶν φοινίκων), whereas Luke, far from specifying palms, has even got rid of the branches (Matt 21:8 - κλάδους) or leaves (Mark 11:8 – στιβάδας). In Luke it is cloaks, and cloaks alone, that are spread on the road before Jesus.

Somehow I’d missed this, but here’s a repeat of a defence of the Good Friday prayer for the Jews by none other than Jacob Neusner (scroll towards the bottom of the page).

He begins:

Israel prays for the Gentiles. So the other monotheistic religions, including the Catholic Church, have the right to do the same thing, and no one should feel offended. Any other attitude toward the Gentiles would block them from encountering the one God revealed to Israel in the Torah.

It’s worth a read, as taking a different line in this otherwise controversial debate. (HT Scott Carson)

This is cross-posted co-operatively as part of Nick Norelli’s Trinity Blogging Summit. When I volunteered, I’d intended to do all sorts of reading and thinking about the topic. When the date drew near I’d done absolutely none, and resorted to that old stand by: a stream-of-consciousness make-it-up-as-you-go-along. I hope it’s still at least semi-coherent.

Trinitarian language is embedded in the liturgy. From the traditional opening invocation of the divine name in the Western rite of Mass (but also in many other forms of prayer) to the closing formula of blessing, God is named as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Between these Trinitarian punctuation marks, the language ebbs and flows more widely. There are many places where all three persons of the Trinity are named, most often in doxologies and other endings. Equally there are many places where one or other person is addressed, most usually the Father. The doctrine is scarcely spelt out, yet the language is pervasive. It is impossible to join in the liturgy without learning to speak Trinity, whatever sense one might make of how the language is organised, or the persons related to one another.

There is a counter trend within this, which is that a great many prayers simply begin “Almighty God …”. These prayers end with variations of a formula “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” To the less alert, this traditional collect structure appears to suggest that there may be a sense (at least) in which the Father is properly “God” and somehow Jesus and the Spirit are more means to God. To the more percipient it sets up something of a puzzle. The Father is addressed as “Almighty God”, yet all three persons are referred to in the closing formula as “one God”. From time to time, a prayer may be addressed directly to Jesus, and (less frequently) the Spirit may be directly apostrophised and invoked – “Come Holy Spirit”.

Most noticeably in the Eucharistic rites, Jesus tends to be directly addresses in relation to receiving Holy Communion: “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world …”, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you …” . The sense of personal engagement with the risen Jesus properly receives its greatest stress at this point. Yet this address of Jesus may also be Trinitarian in expression, as in one of the prayers of preparation to receive the Sacrament “Lord Jesus Christ, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, your death brought life to the world …”. In one way or another the liturgy is ineluctably but often inchoately Trinitarian, but the purpose is always engagement with God, rather than organising one’s doctrine of God.

This seems to me to mirror the language of Scripture, which is resolutely non-systematic in its speech about God, but cannot avoid talking of God as Father, the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit, often in one breath. The diversity of language both demands and escapes organisation. Perhaps it is also no coincidence that one of the most developed Trinitarian expressions – “The Grace” – is a closing prayer in both its Pauline origin and its most common usage. Likewise perhaps the one place where Paul may call Jesus “God” comes in an ascription of praise (Romans 9:5).

This current seems to run through the history of worship, theology and the church. If you had asked a Christian if Christ was God at the beginning of the second century they would probably have said “No” or at best “Depends what you mean.” But to an outside observer looking on, one of the most noticeable things about the movement was that “they sing a hymn to Christ as God”. (Pliny Letters 10.96). St Basil’s treatise On the Holy Spirit is in many respects about what the correct scriptural understanding and form of the prayers should be, and whether they express the right relation of Father, Son and Spirit. The church’s practice of baptism (following the Matthean formula given by Jesus) is a major plank in his argument.

There is a long-standing and deeply embedded conjunction of Trinitarian language and the liturgy that means engaging in worship is always about learning to speak to and of God in Trinitarian language. This goes back to the very beginnings of Christian description of God, and ascription of praise. You might come away from Christian worship entirely confused about how the language works, but you come away unable to articulate the story of God without using language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It goes more deeply than this, however, and in the remainder of this post, drawing on Augustine’s idea of the trinity of Lover, Beloved and Love, I want to explore the idea that worship is not simply to use Trinitarian language but to enter into Trinitarian life.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” The invocation of the Trinity that introduces the Western Mass (and many other forms of prayer) is traditionally accompanied by the making of the sign of the cross over the body. While originally the sign of the cross was accompanied by a variety of formulae, the one that has stuck is the one that names the Trinity. Likewise the Mass ends with a blessing in which the sign of the cross is again traced over the body at the naming of God as “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. For any regular participant this association of triune name and sign of the cross becomes deeply embedded and habituated. To name the Trinity is to think of the cross.

This is not simply a liturgical coincidence. At the heart of the Mass and the Church is the sacrifice of Christ which recreates us as God’s people. We are invited to experience ourselves as offered to God with and by Christ, we are invited to experience God offered to us in and through Christ. The former tends to demand language of the Almighty Father from us. The latter tends to demand language of the life-giving Spirit. Yet neither can be adequately talked about without some kind of threefold naming.

To be drawn into communion with God is to be drawn into a relationship, yet it is less what it is commonly referred to “a relationship with God” and much more “a Relationship: that is, God”. The cross of Christ is the ultimate worship (Malachi’s “perfect offering” much loved in patristic Eucharistic theology) of the Father, the place and time at which humanity has fully said the beloved’s loving “Yes” to God. The cross is also the Father’s ultimate mission through his sent Son, the fullest extent of the divine Lover’s outstretched arms. The love between the Father and Son is enacted in history, and through the incarnation humanity is drawn into the beloved’s yes. The death, hatred, and violent division which always threaten the permanence of our human loves are let loose on the divine love, which indeed proves stronger than death. Within time, the Spirit belongs to the new era, because it is only in this historically enacted division of Father and Son by death that the unbreakable unity of the love which was always there becomes clear, and comes into its own. (Yes, I know that needs all sorts of qualifications.)

Paul speaks of God as the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17). In a later letter he, or his interpreter, makes a similar, seemingly more interconnected parallel between Christ as “first-born of all creation” and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:15,18). It is possible to see these not simply as parallels between God’s power to create and raise, and Christ’s role in creation and recreation, but, from at least one perspective, different aspects of the same work, the same role. The work of creation involves the making of that which is other, not God, or the developing of a space in which the other that is not God might be brought into being. The Father, who characteristically knows himself first as Lover, seeks to love the world into existence. To be brought into being as “not God” is to be loved, but not to love equally (or at all) in return. Instead of reciprocal relationship, asymmetric relationship characterises what is created. The perfect love of God both seeks and demands that love is met by love for what is made truly to enter into the fullness of existence. What is “not God” is always intended and desired to become one with God, chosen by God that it might come to choose as God chooses.

That creation might be completed, the Son comes into the world. The Son, who characteristically is himself first as beloved, enters what the Father loves to enable it to return that love. He is the God who goes where God is not, and so his coming into the world must lead him to the dissolution of death, to face the abyss of non-existence. The Cross is where he is most truly the first-born of all creation, because it is on the Cross that creation is made possible as more than “not God.” Creation is cosmos redeemed, that can enter into the movement of love, and begin to glorify God. If creation is God’s work of mission, redemption is creation’s participation in worship. So the cross is the apotheosis both of God’s mission (his outgoing love) and creation’s worship (his returning love). Worship then happens (perhaps, simply, exists) through a sharing in the Spirit, who characteristically knows himself first as the love shared by Father and Son, and a standing with Christ both as beloved, and the one who fully and equally returns the Father’s love.

This is why the relation of Eucharistic celebration especially to the sacrifice of Calvary matters. It is wrong to use language which suggests a repetition, not so much (as the reformers thought) because the sacrifice of Christ is unrepeatable (though it is) but for the same reasons why it is wrong to use language which suggests only a memory of a past event. At Mass in a particularly focussed way, but in worship, prayer and life more generally, we are invited to participate by the Spirit in the relationship which God discloses to us and for us on the Cross of the eternal Son. Just as “The cup of blessing that we bless is a sharing in the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a sharing in the body of Christ” (cf 1 Corinthians 10:16) so a sharing in Christ’s sacrifice, this body and blood, is a sharing in the relationships that are constituted by the nature of the Triune God. It is at the Cross that worship is truly disclosed, and so it is at the Cross where we worship by means of the gift Christ gives us to take us there. The language of Christian worship is naturally Trinitarian, because the activity of worship is essentially Trinitarian: it is a participation in the Triune relations of the one God.

Our parish has recently signed up to the extremely useful Song Select service. This provides, along with the CCLI copyright permissions agreement, access to a massive database of hymn and worship song lyrics for downloading, and either printing or projection. It’s well worth any church considering it, so don’t get the rest of this post wrong: I’m not dissing the service or the idea.

BUT

Bizarrely the songs are delivered without any normal punctuation. In my view this works against comprehension, and in some songs renders them little more than disconnected strings of phrases. I am unsure how easy it is to parse, for example, this (exactly as is):

One day every tongue
Will confess You are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains
For those who gladly choose You now

It’s somewhat disturbing that this syntactically challenged and logically unrelated string of phrases hits the number four spot in their current top hundred.

Another feature you may have noticed is the capitalisation in the above selection. Some of this is, of course, a mixture of a house style and personal taste. I would have thought, however, that the whole trend in English is, and has been for a long time, away from capitalisation of nouns and pronouns. Capitalising the initial letter of each line further confuses the sense already lost through lack of punctuation. Where do sentences start and finish? Using capitals for “God” words (beyond proper nouns and titular phrases) also has its problems, not the least of which is inconsistency. This inconsistency is inevitable, and affects the songs of this catalogue as much as any other. However, compared to the problems of sense, it is a minor matter of style.

One feature of the scheme I admire is that (although rooted in an evangelical initiative, and predominantly used by more evangelical and Protestant churches) it does not censor any of the words in its catalogue according to theological taste. That means that anyone who wishes to can see what others actually sing, provided the publisher is signed up to the licensing scheme.

I confess, in that light, to being deeply disappointed by what the most popular songs are. At number one we have Stuart Townend’s “In Christ alone.” Some of it is excellent, and the music is powerful, but it is, in my view, totally ruined by the lyrics:

Till on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied

That is exactly the distortion of penal substitution that Steve Chalke rightly called “cosmic child abuse“. (Is God really saying, “No, I need more pain, more pain. I’m still really angry. More pain!”?) No song with those words should ever be sung by anyone with a half a brain, or the remotest desire to be biblical. It is a travesty of atonement theory, yet it is currently the most popular song, at least in churches that have stopped using hymnbooks.

Nearly as bad is another of Townend’s songs (which has the same musical power): “How deep the Father’s love” which comes in at number three.

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished

No, I say, and a thousand times “no”! This is exactly why I think the doctrine of impassibility matters. My sin doesn’t have that kind of power. It is God’s free choice, Christ’s free will, the gift of love which takes him to the cross and holds him there. (Sin is not in any case a finite amount of a thing or power to be exhausted.) Claiming what this hymn does is simply wrong, and denies the freedom of God. It is a shame that such powerful music (and some quite good lyrics elsewhere – Townend has real talent let down by bad teaching) should be vitiated by such frightful rubbish.

Yet, clearly, for most people, it does not ruin the songs that they are invited to sing such appalling words. They are, and this needs repeating, the first and third most popular songs among churches using this service. That suggests that they are currently the most popular songs among UK evangelicals. Now perhaps evangelicals (and others) do embrace such a travesty of the atonement, as their opponents frequently say. I rather doubt it, although these songs will certainly lead them in that direction if they remain popular. But what I think is happening is that people are having a good sing to powerful and emotive music. Just as they happily sing random phrases strung together without punctuation or logical coherence, so they will sing heretical ones.

Paul said “I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.” (1 Corinthians 14:15). The second phrase of that sentence has now, it seems, been excised from many modern Bibles.