Tag Archives: liturgy

I Want to Talk Like God Is Real & Is Here

I was speaking with a Mexican friend the other day. I told him he had a beautiful family, and he said, almost automatically, “Gracias a Dios.” Thanks to God. I don’t know why it struck me that time in particular, since it’s a very natural and unremarkable expression in Spanish. But it did strike me. It made be think how devoid of God-language English has become.

This is especially true of the benighted Frozen Chosen, of whom I am, at least marginally, one. But even if we come from a tradition that uses expressions that actually make it seem like the Lord Jesus might actually exist in a way that affects their lives, these phrases often feel very artificial. Pentecostals and every sort of gnostically-inclined Protestant sound clunky and overly pious when they insist on appending “Lord willing” as a qualifier at the end of any definite statement of plans in the near future based on this passage in James 4. It is used almost exclusively among people who will recognize it as a sign of to-be-admired piety, but seldom at work or in the company of the father-in-law. The more sacramental Anglicans might be comfortable with more Christian phrases, many from Scripture, that invoke God’s blessings in an everyday sort of way. Sadly that is only an accident of phrasing; there is nothing everyday about the Anglican and his liturgical language. There was once, but that is a relic of the past.

Also please understand that I’m not talking about buzzwords and catchphrases that the latest megachurch or youth movement or earnest book  has introduced. I’m talking about really universal phrases.

So ingrained, for good or ill, is “Thanks to God” in Portuguese that “I’m an atheist, thanks be to God” is a natural-sounding joke. And not quite on the same level as “Thank God I’m an atheist”, relief being the only emotion the English “thank God” is able to convey.

I don’t mean to call out any particular Christian traditions. For many years I and nearly all the Christians I’ve shared the table with (not just at my current church) haven’t even made pentecostal- or Anglican-level attempts at shaping our everyday automatic English this way. I’m not calling out, but I am resolving to add certain phrases to my vocabulary, and suggesting that you consider doing the same.

Of course, there are problems with Christ-saturated language. Or even just religiously saturated language. Portuguese and Spanish are my comparison gauges. Portuguese features a word that is used very commonly, oxalá, and Spanish has the same word, ojalá; it comes from the Muslim occupation of Iberia, and means literally “if Allah wills it”. Oxalá is used as a part of everyday speech, with almost none of its users knowing the word’s origins. It replaces “hopefully” and “keep your fingers crossed”.

There is an sense in which the use of certain Christian phrases can be like oxalá, that is, said reflexively and without any real thought or awareness of its meaning. It can even be done superstitiously. But that’s no reason not to do it yourself. Many people talk of the “churched” population of the South, of the ubiquity of churches here and the religiosity of Southerners as if it were an evil to be condemned as leading to inevitable hypocrisy. While the ubiquity of some form of Christianity in the South has its own problems, it is surely better to be Christ-haunted that to have no glimpse of Christ at all. Christian culture is good, and so is Christian language, even if it gets abused from time to time (or often). Some might be superstitious, some might take the Lord’s name in vain, but there are only two ways that will change. Either everyone forgets the name of the Lord, or all the righteous call upon him. It’s because I prefer the second option that I’m going to make an attempt to use certain phrases, which I’ll here list, in my everyday speech.

1. God be with you/Be with God. You can say it coming and going. You can use it to salute Christians and to bless unbelievers. And as these depart, you can say Go with God. The word “goodbye”, by the way, is an alteration of “God be with you”. Portuguese, like Spanish and French, says goodbye by saying “to God”.

2. God willing. I want to avoid using it after any mention of plans or the future, as in “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.” I grew up around people who felt guilty making any declarative statement about the future (I won’t say I wasn’t one) without using that phrase. But that can end up being a piety-stick that risks being as boastful as the men mentioned in James 4 were. I do, however, want to use it as an invocation, as an acknowledgment that although breathing and going to the supermarket are gifts of God, this other thing would be a special gift from my father. “God willing our baby will be born healthy.” “God willing my parents get here safely.” Or even, if you wish, “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.”

3. Thanks to God/Thank God. This is the most awkward one to use in English, but the one I am most anxious to introduce into my vocabulary, since I’m an ungrateful sort of fellow. In Portuguese it sounds very natural to say “Our baby was born healthy, graças a Deus.” Or “My parents got here safely, graças a Deus.” Using “thanks to God” in those sentences sounds stilted, but using “thank God” only sounds relieved. Relief is all that is left of that phrase in English.

4. God bless you. This is one in which English has a leg up on the Latin languages, which merely wish a sneezer “health!” But I, as have most English-speakers, have been trained to say simply “bless you”. Since I intend to invoke the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I will say “God bless you”. This is the one I’ve had the most success making a part of my speech patterns, because it’s the one that takes the least courage. If the mood is lighthearted I will say to a sneezer, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.”

I’m going to go for it. I’m going to use the phrases. Lord willing. And I’m going to try not to sound like an ass. I’m going to try to sound like I am a son of God, and that God is with me. Ask me in a while how that went.

Ordinary Time Is Awesome Time: Your Joy No Man Taketh From You

El Greco, “The Pentecost”

Please find here the text of Peter’s post-Pentecost sermon, a.k.a. The Sermon. One of the best things about The Sermon is that it is a response to mockers; to those who in another age would be known as player haters.

The mockers say “These men are full of new wine.” Peter doesn’t try to justify himself to the haters, as is the compulsion of so much of the modern church. It would be easy to read the passage that way if your only way of thinking of the pulpit was as a place to “meet people where they are”. He doesn’t hasten to explain, “No, no, no, don’t worry guys, this isn’t what it looks like,” then spend time making excuses and explaining away, nor to say that God longs to be accepted by them as they are.

Peter pricks them in the heart. He hurts them. He tells them that Jesus has been exalted as king and will put all his enemies under his feet. He accuses the listeners of being traitorous regicides.

He tells an amazing drunken story of resurrection, repentance, baptism, and salvation.

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There are a lot of separatist “fundamentalists” in my neck of the woods. These Christians separate themselves from the world, refuse to drink alcohol or expose their arms, and leave tracts instead of money in tip jars.

Who are these people? What do they matter to you and me?

They don’t matter at all.

They haven’t filled themselves with excuses and a longing to be liked by men, but neither have they been awesome. No one accuses them of being full of new wine. No one is amazed, or in doubt, or says to another, what meaneth this?

Pentecost Sunday is past. We are now in Ordinary Time. You have been given the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom is come in you. The Kingdom makes demands, it pricks in the heart. Live a life that demands the question, what meaneth this?

And if I may suggest it, perhaps you’d like to do that with the emphasis that I’ve chosen for my own good-spell telling: unapologetic feasting. Listen, these are not drunken as you suppose; they are filled with joy, and the Holy Ghost.

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We are a special people.

Yes, special like the short bus.

Special like Batman.

If you are single-mindedly obsessed with saving the world, you will look ridiculous. If you act as if God is your joy and comfort, as if all your needs will be met by him, you will look ridiculous.

Live the sort of profligately joyful life that the world could only call foolhardy. As if the resources of all of Creation were yours. Because they are; your Father has promised them to you. Suffer and rejoice. Feast in your poverty. Give alms; care for widows; you will always have enough. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

This summer the Swait family is throwing a party, our second “Swait Summer Soiree”. Last year’s was a blast. We bought all the beer and provided all the food and hosted over a hundred people in our back yard. We made a huge deal out of it. Friends came from all over. We invited everyone we knew, and so many people came. There were children running all over, kicking beach balls into the street and making Kimberly fret about her newly planted blueberry bushes. There were young married couples sharing beers with divorcees on the stoop. There were rugby players and artists playing poker and smoking cigars under the dogwood trees. I tell everyone this, so you’ve probably heard me say it, but I went to sleep around two and left a dozen people hanging out around a table in our yard, keeping the party vigil. It might have been the most awesome party ever.

It was a wonderful refresher and source of joy for us.

The reason we decided to host that party last year was because I was not getting enough work, and not getting payed enough. We couldn’t pay our bills. We were struggling and weary to the point of exhaustion. We were dry and lost and grieved.

So we threw a party. Seriously. It was crazy.

And now that we’re not in crisis, and haven’t been for months, we’ll throw another party.

Let the mockers say that you are full of new wine. The truth is that you are full of the Holy Spirit. You know that you are held in the palm of God’s hand; that is why you behave the way you do. That is why you are full of joy.

This year we’ve hit Ordinary time. Easter and Pentecost are over. Where is my Risen Lord? How can I live without you here, Lord Jesus?

I have a Comforter.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.

Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.

Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them, Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me?

Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

Easter Time: Counting To First Day Every Week

The way you learn to count time when you are young is the way that sticks with you.

I left Brazil when I was twelve, fluent in both languages, using English at home. English was the language I thought in, but I had gone to Brazilian schools, so all the lists and litanies of my life, including the memorized lists for time, were in Portuguese. To this day, if I’m trying to remember if May is the fourth or fifth month, I subconsciously start counting my fingers as I list in my head janeiro, fevereiro, março, abril, maio. Fifth month.

I love the days of the week in Portuguese. Their beauty is that they are not just a list, but are part of the cycle of time. They are named as if they were part of how people actually keep track of their year. This post is not a call to action to change the secular calendar. But it will urge you to consider making the/a liturgical calendar a part of your life. Time ought to be counted in a human way. Our watches are already inhuman, full of artificial concepts like “Daylight Savings Time” and “midnight”.

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As has been noted by many, Christian time is a line that is going somewhere. This stands in contrast to pagan ways of tracking time, which are circular and endless. Still, within the linear progression of Christian time are the natural circles of creation, the year in its farming and liturgical seasons, the weeks within the procession of Sundays.

In English our day names mean nothing to us. And even if we know that they are all named for pagan gods or forces, they are not part of a cycle, they have no part in a liturgy.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. (Or, heaven forbid, “Monday, Tuesday…”)

The French day names begin to head in a better direction. Etymologically, nearly every day in the French week is also nearly completely pagan, but with a less Nordic feel. Lundi for the moon day, mardi for Mars’ day, mercredi for Mercury, jeudi for Jove, vendredi for Venus, samedi for Saturn. But Sunday become dimanche, the Day of the Lord (1). Thus in French the first day of the week is a Christian day, sanctifying, one presumes, the rest of the week.

Spanish improves upon this a bit. Beginning again with the profane days, we have lunes for the moon, martes for Mars, miercoles for Mercury, jueves for Jove, viernes for Venus. So far, so the same. But now we get an entire weekend, perhaps because of the long history of Jews in Spain for so many centuries. We have sabado for Sabbath, and domingo for Lord’s Day. It’s a whole religious weekend! And for Christians, this week begins with the new covenant of Jesus, and ends with a reminder of the old covenant.

Portuguese is where weekday naming reaches its Christian apex (I admit, this is only out of the languages I know, which are at this point exhausted). The week is bracketed, as it is in Spanish, by domingo and sabado. But in between are segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, and sexta-feira. A little repetitive, no? The names mean simply Second Fair (or Market), Third Fair, Fourth Fair, Fifth Fair, and Sixth Fair. From Wikipedia:

A feria (Latin for “free day”) was a day on which the people, especially the slaves, were not obliged to work… In ancient Rome the feriae publicae, legal holidays, were either stativae (“fixed,” that is, recurring regularly, such as the Saturnalia), conceptivae (movable), or imperativae (appointed for special occasions).

When Christianity spread, on the feriae (feasts) instituted for worship by the Church, the faithful were obliged to attend Mass; such assemblies gradually led, for reasons both of necessity and convenience, to mercantile enterprise and market gatherings which the Germans call Messen, and the English fairs. They were fixed on saints’ days (e.g. St Bartholomew Fair in London, St Germanus’s fair, St Wenn’s fair, etc.).

In the Roman Rite liturgy, the term feria is used to denote days of the week other than Sunday and Saturday.

Find here a list of fifteen European languages for which Monday is the day of the moon. Like the names of rivers and mountains, the names of days change very slowly, if at all, staying the same through changes in people, race, religion. The names the Western nations and peoples learned in their youths were the names that stayed with them, even when they themselves changed.

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Look at the progression mapped out by the quote above. We start with rare “free days” for slaves. These become occasional Christian “feasts”, because the chains of slavery have been thrown off. Finally, every day that’s not Sunday or Old Sabbath is officially named a feast day. Sure, it also means market day. That just emphasizes that life is a feast. We need to buy the pork and potatoes and greens and ale that it takes to make every day a feast.

No pagan gods. No Daylight Savings. Just counting Christian time from and to Sundays.

You and I learned as kids to count time in the fashion of the pagans, and to the tune of modern humanistic society. But we are not pagans, and we are not humanists. We are Christians. For us it is too late to think of April as being in Eastertide first and being April second. But it’s not too late for our kids.

“What day is it, daddy?”

“Today is Second Day, my son. God remade the world on First Day, and on Seventh Day we’ll watch the sun set and know that when it rises, it will be First Day, and Easter Morning, all over again.”

Every week. Find a way to rename your time, if you can. Find a way to live out your time from Sunday to Sunday.