Wrap Me in Your Arms [originally posted June 2006]

I have often wanted to write about what my kids teach me about God. More often than not, what I learn is something about the kind and comforting word of the Gospel -- about how easy it is for God to love us and adore us and want to be with us, even in the midst of our sin and ugliness.

I learn this because that's how it is for me with my own kids. I love them so much. I'm convinced this (among a few other reasons) is why God chose to use the image of Father when he wanted to tell humanity what he is like - for millenia all could understand, yes he disciplines, but oh, how he loves!

Today, I had one of those learning moments.We were singing in worship and Ewan (on the top) was with us. He had been down on the pew looking at Bibles, laying down and making "honk-shew," fake sleeping noises when we got to this song.

"Wrap me in your arms, wrap me in your arms, wrap me in your arms" went the chorus. Normally, I'm a little annoyed by such over-individualistic, self-centered worship songs, but this time I had a big desire to just reach down and pick up Ewan and wrap him in my arms.

I don't know what it means to him to have a dad who just likes to hold him while singing and worshipping--or who likes to kiss the top of his head and say "I love you" at random intervals. But I know what it does for me. It is the expression of my heart. And so I did. I picked him up and wrapped him in my arms.Of course, this is real life--not the movies, nor some well-constructed sermon illustration--so what does Ewan do? Lay his head on my chest and warp his arms around me and snuggle and sway? Nope. He squirms. He squirms and complains. He wants down. He wants to take all the offering envelopes out of the pews and throw the golf pencils on the floor and generally make a scene on the front row.

At this point, I have two choices: 1) Let him down and feel sad that he doesn't want me to love on him. (And maybe feel a little silly at myself for trying to get him to enter into my emotional moment.) or 2) Hold on tighter and see if he will settle down and let me hold him. Rather than give up on the image of us and God being played out in a perfect way, see if the deeper, messier reality of redemption can't shine through.

(Here I am indebted to the Protestant sensibility that all of life is holy. And I think that maybe the messier and less ideal it seems at first, the deeper and more powerfully daily life teaches about The Holy ways of God.)

So, it goes something like this in my head: Sure, we stand here and sing "Wrap me in your arms, wrap me in your arms, wrap me in your arms" but 30-seconds ago we were thinking about fleshly, selfish desires. This morning we were screaming at someone in the car. Or in 15 more minutes we'll be justifying ourselves against God's laws right in the middle of the sermon. We don't desire God as much as we say we do. We like the idea of a mushy-huggy God, but only on our terms.

When he wants to love us, give us what we really need, spend time in relationship with us in prayer and abiding (i.e. John 15), we squirm. But here's the cool thing. God is not surprised by this. He doesn't get huffy and complain and drop us to the floor and say, "Fine! You don't want me? You don't want to spend time with me. Fine!" No. He (like I did this morning) holds on tighter.

One of the more surprising things I've learned as a parent is that discipline and restraint can often feel like love to a child. I can't explain it, but more than once I have gotten the sense that one of my children (often Ewan), struggles, talks back, fights, and disobeys until he pushes my button far enough to make me resist him and discipline him. It's like he wants to be reined in. He wants to know that Daddy has a boundary, that Daddy is in control--in a good way. In a way that serves and loves him and let's him know he doesn't have to know or understand. Daddy knows. Daddy understands. And Daddy will act.

Today, I held my squirming boy, and I delighted in a Father in Heaven who acts. Who grabs me--in the middle of my intentions to sin and my lack of intentions to love--and wraps me in his arms and doesn't let go until I (like my son) stop squirming and lay my head down (like Ewan did) and rest in the knowledge that: Daddy knows. Daddy understands. Daddy will act. Daddy loves. I remembered that sometimes, it's in the middle of my struggles with/against God [remember "Isra-el" is to "struggle with God] that I know he loves me.

Perhaps it is the same with you?

One more thought: On the wall of our chapel where we worship is a big replica of Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son.

As I held my son and gloried in my Father, I had one more thought: Here's an adult son wrapped in the arms of his father. No matter how old Ewan gets, I will never tire of holding him. As an adult, I'm sure my father would never tire of holding me. And today in worship, and throughout my life, I'm sure I will need to be able to just be a son, and to let my Heavenly Daddy wrap me in his arms.

Uncle.

So much for posting everyday in Advent. Oh well. At least it got me writing more. I'll be back at it soon.

thanks to any of you who read this!

"Absurdity, Absrudity, Everything is Absurdity!" (Short Thoughts on Ecclesiastes)

Last night, I was delighted to participate in our bi-weekly Old Testament Seminar here at Durham University's Department of Religion and Theology. The presenter was Dr Stuart Weeks, who is working on a book on Ecclesiastes (or Qoheleth, as it is known in the Hebrew, which means something like "Preacher").

Qoheleth (pronounced, ko-HELL-ett; which is my preferred name for this book since "Ecclesiastes" tells us almost nothing about its content or origin) is a peculiar book that has puzzled biblical scholars for a long time. Many of the pronouncements in the book seem counter to the rest of the ethical standing of the Old Testament. When, Qoheleth declares in 7.16 'Be not overly righteous,' one wonders if he is part of the same "Be holy even as I am holy" camp as the rest of the Old Testament writers.

If one were able to be light about it, one could just ask, "What's with this guy?" and move on. But since the book is in the canon of authoritative Scripture, many are forced to ask along with one of the guys in the seminar last night, "I just keep wondering what the compilers of the Old Testament canon saw in this book!" The answer to that question is more complicated than I can offer now, but we can at least share in the sentiment in this way: What are we to do with Qoheleth as authoritative Scripture?

One tried and true method -- one I have employed liberally in my own teaching -- is to call upon the unusual epilogue of 12.9-14. These three paragraphs are definitely intended to set Qoheleth in its/his place. Typically, we call upon this to say something like, "Ecclesiastes is full of human advice which is not well-considered in light of scripture. The epilogue tells us to not worry about what has said and to focus on fearing God instead."

This interpretive move actually ends up being difficult to make when you really look at the actual words of the epilogue. Actually, even identifying the epilogue, says Weeks, is tricky.

So, what are we to do with Qoheleth?

I'm not in a position to give a full "take" on the book, but here are some interesting things I can share that I am mulling on:

• Qoheleth is a character.
• He's a peculiar character. He has unique Hebrew accent and vocabulary. Weeks suggests that perhaps he is of a kind of lower-class and is folksy in his iterations.
• He's materialistic. He is probably a business man whose drive has been for personal gain, which is realizing is a futile goal.
• He makes a keen insight: Nothing I have is mine, it will all pass from me when I pass. But nothing really is anyone's. Everything will pass. Only God's works remain.
• This book was probably very popular among its original Hebrew audience. It may have been intended to be performed.
• The Hebrew word which translators often offer as "vanity" really has a meaning closer to "vapor" or "exhaling," and thus, here, for Qoheleth, "absurdity" (suggests Weeks). Personally, I like "puff!" (Seriously.)
  
• It's possible that, according to 12.10, that the words of Qoheleth are meant to be "pleasant" and amusing. "Is he a kind of stand-up comic?" we wondered last night.
• If so, he's a dark comic, one who, yes, is comedic in his foolish wisdom (to the point of begrudging his children their inheritance from his labors), but he is also in touch with pain. It is striking to me how often Ecclesiastes is quoted (and sung) in times of pain. It's a free voice in Scripture, an authorized lament. A way to say you are MAD at the absurdity of a life lived this side of heaven where often the rules God says will work don't seem to work, and yet, because you can quote it from Ecclesiastes/Qoheleth, you can't be slandered as "non-Christian." You're maybe "just venting."

It's this idea of freedom to speak about the absurdity of life and the way pain makes us see how the good don't always get good rewards and vice versa about the wicked that really sticks with me. It's just so true. And even though, there is a way (a very strong way!) in which the promises of God are fulfilled to those who "obey his commandments." There is INDEED another way in which pain still makes its ugly call on the doorstep of the righteous and ... it sucks. It's absurd. To use the terminology of Mary Douglas, it's anomalous. It doesn't make sense. And God made us to want to understand, to see sense and good order in the world. And the world just ain't there yet.

And SO Qoheleth, I think, is a Preacher of the Gospel. For only with Absurdity as its stage, can God's redemptive play, make its power real. In Advent, only the absurdity of a virgin pregnancy end up calling the angels and nations as eternal witnesses of the miraculous. Mary must have thought God was crazy. That her pregnancy with Jesus was a cruel "puff" of insanity.

But, only on the pavement of the pain of the Cross, can the empty grave of of our Lord do its dance.

Absurdity is the staging ground for Joy.

That is what I know about Qoheleth today.

Did God Ordain Rituals?

I have just finished doing a long report on the first two chapters of Mary Douglas's, Purity and Danger (1966). Douglas (who passed away in 2007) was a premier anthropologist who worked a lot with Leviticus and its meaning for Israel.

As a fundamental viewpoint, Douglas rejected the idea that rituals were merely 'magical' parts of an older, more fearful day gone by. She felt that rituals and, specifically, 'rules for uncleanness' were part of how a society determined its own identity and confirmed its own cosmological worldview. She thought this was true for both Israel and for other religious communities as well, including our own. Far from being a thing of the past, Douglas suggested that rituals and rules for uncleanness exist today as much as they did back in Leviticus.

The fact that Douglas makes this argument means that there has been (and still is?) a counter-one out there. Her opponents advocated for a view of ritual that presumed a kind of evolution in culture, i.e. there once was a day when people used to perform rituals to keep themselves from being hurt or injured or to give themselves a sense of order, but now, we realize that was just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo (literally) and we know that true religion is internal and spiritual.

There is truth in both sides. The Bible has within its own pages both affirmations of ritual (e.g. Leviticus) and condemnations of its effectiveness (e.g. Amos 5.21 and Matt. 12.7, quoting Hos. 6.6). Even in our own churches we have some which are 'high church' (believing that rituals can be used by God or even ordained by him to teach us and to guide us into worship of him) and some which are 'low church' (believing all rituals lead to legalistic dependence on them).

I am, of course, more of the high church mode now. But I grew up in the low church, and I am deeply committed to its concerns.

The question I have today is more about what God is doing with ritual in the Old Testament.

• Was He merely communicating to the people of that day in idioms that they could understand? (i.e. sacrifice was just something people did back then, so that's why he told them to do it.)
• Or did he make humans for ritual and, even through history, he guided the context of Israel so that it would learn ways of worship (cf. Moses' education in Egypt, Acts 7.22) but with it properly redeemed and re-formulated by God Himself?

I could get into more specifics about the implications of these positions, but perhaps this gets the ball rolling enough for now.

I close with this thought: What tips me toward the latter of the two is the Incarnation and Cricifixion of our Lord.

In the life of our Lord, God did not simply come with a whole new plan downloaded into Jesus brain for him then to explain to others in a spiritual way. Instead, he actually orchestrated the ways and moves of history so that other people (not Jesus) did things in just the right way that his birth might be in Bethlehem and his death on a tree, both to the fulfilling of Scripture and to the glory of God.

Might not God have done something similar in guiding us in how to worship him?

What do you think?

The Gift of the Scribes

What do I learn from translating Hebrew all day long?

This is a question I have been asking myself today. My whole morning (and part of the afternoon) has been spent transcribing and translating the first 8 lines of column 2 of the 11QMelchizedek scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sounds exciting, I know. ;-)

The discipline of transcription and translation is hard and mindless at the same time.

The mindless part is the transcription. For me, this happens on a computer, using Microsoft word and unicode font (thanks to my Tavultesoft program which I was turned on to by my Greek prof at Trinity, Rod Whitacre). I type the unpointed Hebrew into my computer, line by line, my left hand pointing to my place on the page and my right hand typing in the letters. It has become very important for me make sure I type in this unpointed shin/sin (pronounced 'sheen'/'seen') consanant. Typing in a pointed shin, when an unpointed version is the one in the text, is usually right about 90% of the time, but it can really throw me when the word ends up using the sin instead. It's mindless, but if I do it wrong, I can waste a lot of time later.

One thing I learn from this is the simple re-enactment of the life of a scribe. With my wollen beanie cap on my bald head to keep in the heat and sitting some 100 yards are so from the tower of the cathedral (I have a desk within the cathedral grounds - with almost this exact view), I am reminded of the many, many scribes who have come before me to whom I am endebted. The ones who sat with their quills and parchment in the hot deserts of Judea or in the cold halls of monasteries and mindlessly but nevertheless vitally the words of Scripture (not that 11QMelch counts as Scripture, but you get the point).

During this week of Advent, we recall the witness of the Patriarchs. Whose lives of faith (and of blunder upheld by grace) are the longest testimony we have (with their candle burning the lowest by the time of Christmas Day) to our God and King. But in between them and us are the scribes. Who sat. Who wrote. Mindlessly. Faithfully. Carefully. And so, do I. Thankful for them. Disciplining my heart to meditate on the language of his word.

Having said so much about the mindless bit, I'll leave the hard part to just a comment: Words take time. They probably don't take near the time I have to take with them when you are a native speaker (of Hebrew, in this case). But for the translator, words take time. They take time to consider:

• the nuance, i.e. Can 'azav' mean 'to free from' in addition to just 'to leave'?


• the likely usage, i.e. Is this 'Melchi-Zedek' the guy, the figurative persona, or just 'my king of righteousness' (which is the meaning for the name)? Should I trust the other translators who have taken this word as a name or if I think of it according to its meaning will I pick up something new they have missed? Or, more common in my work today (all these examples are from my work today), should I trust this previous scribe's reconstruction of a text which literally has holes in it, where worms and decomposition have eaten through the scroll?

When I work on all this, I think about how much there is to know in theology and biblical studies. I hear the guy behind me tapping away on his Patristics (study of the early church fathers) work, and I am well aware of just how MUCH he is reading on the volumes upon volumes of early and important interpretation of Scripture and theology. I am just as aware of how much I am working on Hebrew word after Hebrew word. Mostly, I am aware of how much we need each other. Scholars need each other. We cannot make it alone. (Over 1600 years ago, in De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching), Augustine said the same thing about Jerome and other scholars of his time.)

Mindless and Hard.

Scribes upon scribes. I am thankful to be in their midst. Doing my part; however less adequately than they.

I'm thankful for God's hand of grace over us all.

Advent Blogging

So, I hope to start blogging once a day for the whole season of Advent.

I have no particular plan or agenda in mind. I know I often fail at these things, but I feel a growing urgency for an outlet of writing about the things that I am learning and thinking. Perhaps advent is a good season for (no more than 20 minutes a day of) writing.

For my first post, I just want to pass on this little reflection on the meaning of Christmas. Still perhaps the best one I know of:

Charlie Brown's Christmas

I remember this with fondness from my childhood. I saw the TV show very rarely, but I had an audio tape of this little monologue, and it still makes me tear up. (I 'm such a softy.)

An Email Response to a Question about Liturgy and Worship

One of my friends recently wrote me this question, and I wrote a response back. I thought I would post it here to share. -- jdp

Hi,

I hope you are enjoying your studies and settling into the new pace of life
well. I have a question about your take on liturgy as a teaching tool. Do you
have any thoughts on this or resources about this? I am thinking of the
traditional liturgy. Do you personally believe that something is lacking in the
more "contemporary" non denominational liturgy format (like we used at [Church
X])? Just wondering what you think.

[Your Friend]

Hi [Friend]. You always ask such good questions! Liturgy as a teaching tool, eh? Hmmm... I think this could mean a couple of different things, so I'll take a stab at answering you, but you may need to ask me more depending on what your really going for. So, here goes:

Liturgy, as you probably know, literally "the work of the people." Liturgy always exists because people are ritualistic by nature (a la Thoreau's pathway through the woods). As the old joke goes about baptists, "We're not liturgical," they say, "...we just do the same thing every week." So, there is always liturgy because it is the form in which people together approach God.

Liturgies also change over time. This is both good and bad. There is a certain amount revival that needs to take place in any ritual, but the changes can also lead to throwing away activities of worship which were installed for good reason and which one might only be missed once their removed (i.e. the saying of the Creed). The classic place where liturgy needs to be renewed is when it is subject to "piling on." This is when actions are initially done in worship for very practical reasons but which later are then ritualized and the reason for their existence becomes lost, changed, and/or redfining worship in a way that is not helpful anymore. (We have lots of stories about this in the Anglican chuch, like the use of a pall over the priest's host in communion, it was initially put there to keep bird poop from falling on the table and now there are all sorts of people who can't have communion without one because it has come to represent the grave-clothes of Jesus or something like that. People are funny.)

Anyway, that's all to say that liturgies are always teaching us things. We learn most by what we enact (or don't). These liturgical actions (again, I am definitely including [Church X] and other non-denom churches in this broad defintion of liturgy) always teach us things about ourselves and about how we worship God (and who he is). When I don't bow in service and I call shouts out to "Jesus," it teaches me that Jesus is my "friend." Which is biblical and not necessarily bad. Just as when I do bow and always use "thee" in my written prayers to "Our Father," I learn that God is to be reverenced and treated with respect. Again, biblical and not all bad. For years, liturgies have by the sheer fact of their set structure taught people that the Holy Spirit cannot/does not move spontaneously among his people in worship services. The charismatic/pentacostal movement shifted us strongly away from that lesson. I think 1 Corinthians encourages both structure and leaving room for the Holy Spirit. The trick is how to lead worship in such a way that allows for this (along with a careful reading of Scripture about how worship is supposed to happen in the church today, i.e. in what way do the specific formularies of worship laid out in the Old Testament and then passed on to the synagogue and then the church impact our worship today).

So, I think we always have to be conscious in our worship as to what we are unintentionally (as well as intentionally) teaching. This can be somewhat ponderous, so I am advocating it in small doses and with lots of prayer and dependence upon the Holy Spirit for guidance.

You may have been asking more about performing a "teaching liturgy" where we actually pause the service and explain to the congregation (reminding them and ourselves) why we do what we do when we do it. One of our priests did this early in our time at Christ Church Plano, and I remember it had a big impact on Amelia as a new Anglican. It helped her a lot to know the whys, to worship God in sync with the flow of the service, but mostly it made her appreciate the richness of the Gospel as always and constantly portrayed in our weekly worship. I think ALL churches would benefit from doing this from time to time, no matter how "high church" or "low church" they are.

I guess this is where I, as you probably suspected, have distanced myself from the liturgies I grew up with. I think that, in the end, the lessons they taught me about God and humanity and the Gospel were not usually wrong (or no more wrong than any church can find itself in any worship service--there is no "pure" worship), but they feel *inadequate* to me now. There's just not enough thoughtfulness and carefulness about what is and is not being communicated in that lower church/non-denominational atmosphere. Maybe a better way of saying it, is that what I really *appreciate* about the liturgy in the Anglican church is how pretty much every piece of the worship is there for a reason and for the uplifting and benefit of the church in its worship of God. That's more in my heart. I feel a great love for liturgy now more than a dislike for what I used to have.

All that being said, I still have concerns about the liturgies I participate in now. I am concerned especially about things like spontanteity and freedom of the Spirit and worship being overly formal rather than descriptors I'd rather have like "familial," "awe-filled," "loving," "Spiritually powerful [note the capital 'S']," and "gracious." I intend to seek God's will in this for the rest of my life.

I'll just close out this first foray to you with this one thought that has kept coming back to me time and again. Last year (I think it was), I took a church history class at seminary where we talked about the nature of the earliest Christian churches, especially in their "house church" format. What has really stuck with me about that class was the picture of the church as a "house." A house where the extended family of God gathered and, to some extent, lived. I could say reams about this, but I just want to say two right now: 1) I was amazed at how consistent the picture of the worship place of God as a "house" is *throughout* the Scriptures. (Just do a search on house in the OT and see how many times it comes up in this worship context.) It's a picture, I think, God *wants* us to have about our place of worship. 2) I often find myself now evaluating the worship services (and spaces) I am in based on whether I feel like I am in a "house" with my family. Now obviously this is VERY culturally-laden and what *I* would think of as "home" from my Canadian-American upbringing and what my good friends who are Chinese, Korean, Latino, or indeed, British(!) might think of might be very different. But I think this is a good frame of reference for me anyway. In the home, there is trust, respect, dialogue, joy, laughter, feedom, learning, constraint, and love all wrapped up together. It's not just going through the motions whatever "liturgy" might be at play.

Some thoughts.

Thanks for your provocative question. It was fun to think about. Please feel free to come back at me with more!

Grace and Peace,

Jon