Friday • 9/29/2023 •
We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.
Sing a Widescreen, HD Paradise
I am unutterably grateful when a Christian artist enables me to see spiritual reality in widescreen, high-definition. Ephrem the Syrian, a brilliant hymn writer for his era (ca. 306-373), does that for me. His lyrics – especially his Hymns on Paradise– still captivate.
The beauties (of Paradise) are much diminished
by being depicted in the pale colors
with which you are familiar.*
* All quotations from Ephrem are in Ephrem & Sebastian Brock, St. Ephrem: Hymns on Paradise (St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998).
Sing the Power of Metaphor
Ephrem trumpeted the mystery of Christ’s incarnation. He resisted the demands of those who “over thought” the faith. They insisted on a straightforward explanation of Christ’s person, one that fit normal categories of reason: God or Man? Which is it?
One group wanted to make Christ just like us, merely human. OK, maybe not merely human, but certainly more human than divine. A different group wanted to make Christ so divine that his humanity was nothing more than apparent – “drive-by” at best.
Ephrem’s response: God doesn’t give us neat, tidy definitions. Instead, he provides a profound relationship with Someone the Bible describes in elegant metaphors and similes:
[God] clothed Himself in language,
so that he might clothe us
in his mode of life.
In one place He was like an Old Man
and the Ancient of Days,
then again, He became like a Hero,
a valiant Warrior.
For the purpose of judgment He was an Old Man,
but for conflict He was Valiant.
Grace clothed itself in our likeness
in order to bring us to the likeness of itself.
He gave us divinity,
We gave him humanity.
Sing the Whole of the Human Story
Ephrem celebrated the scale and sweep of Christ’s mission. He refused the heresy of mystical Narcissism. Back then, many were looking for a personal experience of “mystery,” just a little spiritual “somethin’ somethin” to help them get through. Today their spiritual descendants turn to Jesus as some sort of “rabbit’s foot,” a personal avatar they can enlist to make their lives (of which they remain firmly in control) turn out better.
To counteract the spiritual Narcissism of his day, Ephrem wrote his Hymns of Paradise against a backdrop that includes the whole of the human story. My salvation comes with everybody else’s; everybody else’s includes mine. Thus (though it rather stretches the actual biblical text), Ephrem built on Hellenistic Jewish notions about Adam’s name coming from a Greek acrostic:
“A” (Anatolē = East)
“D” (Dusis = West)
“A” (Arktos = North)
“M” (Mesēmbria = South).
[God’s] hand took from every quarter
and created Adam,
so has he now been scattered in every quarter…
For progression is from the universe to Adam,
and then from him to the universe.
The old Adam is all of us (“from the universe to Adam”); the new Adam came for all of us (“from him to the universe”). For this reason, Christ’s followers come from all quarters of the globe and our mission is to go to all quarters of the globe.
Sing the Whole of Christ’s Work
And while then as now, many well-meaning believers whittle down Jesus’s work to one manageable dimension, Ephrem challenged believers to think large so they can thank large.
Thus, Ephrem sings redemption’s story across a wide canvas: from original Paradise to a new, pristine Paradise. From the loss of Adam and Eve’s original “Robe of Glory,” to the Second Adam’s “putting on the body” from Mary, to His laying the “Robe of Glory” for us in Jordan’s baptismal waters, to our “putting on Christ” in our baptism, and finally to our being “Robed in Glory” at resurrection. Ephrem sings that the angel’s sword barring us from the Tree of Life becomes a centurion’s lance opening the way into Paradise:
Whereas we had left that Garden
along with Adam, as he left it behind,
now that the sword has been removed by the lance,
we may return there.
Sing Widescreen, HD
At the invention of the small-screen, black and white, low-definition television, who could have imagined today’s widescreen, color, HD home theatre systems? Today’s experience makes yesterday’s seem, to use Ephrem the Syrian’s terms, “diminished” and “pale” by comparison.
Ephrem offers us a glimpse into a reality that “has come” and “is coming” where the colors are even more vibrant and the definition even sharper than we’ve yet begun to imagine.
May God grant the grace to grow in our capacity to worship in yet bolder colors, more vibrant textures, sweeter sounds, and sharper shapes. The reality is that good.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+