by CCW | 18 March 2015 10:00
This is the second of four Lenten reflections on Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ. The first is posted here[1], the third here[2], and the fourth here[3].
Lent is the season of penitential adoration. It concentrates our attention upon the Passion of Christ. But the term passion is complex and perplexing for us. We tend perhaps to associate it with our desires, what we often term our passions and more often than not we associate it particularly with erotic desires.
Plato, to be sure, uses the term eros in a more extended sense than simply the erotic in his dialogue The Symposium, using it to signify the passionate desire to know, the eros that compels us up the ladder of being and knowing. The Symposium means literally a drinking party but one in which we decide not to drink but to think, an idea that perhaps has some connection to the disciplines of Lent.
“Welcome deare feast of Lent,” the poet George Herbert begins in a poem called, Lent. “Who loves not thee,” he says, “He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie, /But is compos’d of passion.” Passion but not the Passion of Christ. Passion here is juxtaposed with temperance and authority. Lent would bid us discipline our bodily appetites – our passions or desires for sensual pleasures. Temperance is the virtue of self-control, the self-control of our appetites for food, drink, or sex. “Authoritie” here refers to the Scriptures, to the Church, and, ultimately, to the authority of all authorities, God, the author of all things. There is the paradox that our strong desire, our passion for God, means the disciplining of our passions; our spiritual passion or desire vying with our bodily passions. The point of Lent is about setting our loves, our desires, our eros, in order. Ultimately, in the Christian understanding of things that brings us to the Passion of Christ.
His Passion signifies his being acted upon; passion meaning suffering. Buddhism, too, recognizes the problem of suffering which arises from our attachments and desires, all of which belong to our attachment to ourselves. All desire is suffering. Get rid of desire, you get rid of suffering but it means getting free of the idea of you. There is no you is the radical insight of Buddhism. This contrasts with the Christian idea of redemptive suffering. The Passion of Christ is what we have to contemplate in order not to be free of passion but to set our loves in order. Christ’s Passion is about his suffering the consequences of the disorders of our passions; in short, our sins. Herbert’s poem calls us to the disciplines of Lent as the way of “starving sinne” and in ways that have to do with compassion towards others, “banqueting the poore, /And among those his soul,” as he puts it.
Knowing our spiritual poverty, the limitations of our humanity, is an important lesson. It is part and parcel of learning about ourselves. As Herbert says, “It’s true, we cannot reach Christ’s forti’th day;” Christ’s fasting in the wilderness is more than what we can truly and fully imitate, precisely because we are “compos’d of passion,” already compromised in ourselves about ourselves. “Yet,” as he says, “to go part of that religious way,/ Is better than to rest,” to give up as it were. There are the twin dangers of complacency, on the one hand, and self-righteous pride, on the other hand; the one about catering to our weaknesses, the other about presuming too much upon ourselves, forgetting that “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves” as the Collect for The Second Sunday in Lent so rightly and convincingly puts it.
The paradox of Lent is that we strive to do what we know we cannot do ourselves but must try to do. Not only can we not reach Christ’s fortieth day, more importantly, “we cannot reach our Saviour’s puritie.” “Yet,” as he says again, “are we bid, Be holy ev’n as he.” “In both,” he says, “let’s do our best,” doing our best to keep the feast of Lent as the poem names it and doing our best to be holy even as he is holy. What does this mean? It signals the nature of the Lenten pilgrimage of Love.
“We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says, as we hear on Quinquagesima Sunday. We go up, not I, not you, not just Christ, but we go up. The journey is to God and with God. Herbert notes that “who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,/ Is much more sure to meet with him, then one/ That travelleth by-wayes.” The by-ways of our passions are “the devices and desires of our own hearts” as the General Confession of Sin puts it. What is wanted is our journeying with Christ so as to learn about ourselves more surely and about the love of God who seeks our good even through our evil.
Knowing that we are “compos’d of passion” and loving not “temperance or Authoritie” is one of the lessons of Lent. How are such lessons to be learned? One of the disciplines of Lent to which the Church bids us is “reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” The Scriptures are like a mirror in which to see ourselves and like a window through which to see God’s love. Nowhere perhaps do we see this more wonderfully in the Old Testament than in the story of David.
The preacher, John Donne, has a number of sermons on some of the penitential psalms. There are seven psalms known as the penitential psalms: Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143. Donne preached about twenty-one sermons on the penitential psalms: six sermons on Psalm 6; eight on Psalm 32; six on Psalm 38, and one on Psalm 51. The Psalms are also called the Psalms of David, leaving aside whether or not he wrote any of them, and Donne draws upon that tradition of association in interpreting the psalm verses that provide the texts for his sermons. Psalm 51 is the great penitential psalm of Lent and Donne draws explicitly upon the story of David in his sermon on Psalm 51.7.
The story of David is a compelling narrative. David is a kind of everyman. As Donne puts it, “David’s history concerne[s] and embrace[s] all. For his Person includes all states, between a shepherd and a King.” David is the little guy who takes down the big guy, the giant Philistine, Goliath, who has defied the God of Israel. A shepherd who has defended his flock from lion and bear and a warrior, too, at least with a sling-shot! He is as well a musician, playing the lyre that is able to soothe the troubled mind of King Saul. More importantly, there is the theological theme that runs throughout the story of David. Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart. In the story of David we are allowed to see the heart that God sees. The story of David shows us how the Scriptures function as a mirror and a window, not only for David but for us. Just so is he a kind of everyman.
And, perhaps, most significantly, as a sinner. As Donne remarks, “his sinne includes all sinne, between first Omissions, and complications of Habits of sin upon sin.” David, in Donne’s view, allows us to discover all “the slippery ways into sin” but also all “the penitential ways out of sin.”
David is the King of Israel who unites the tribes of Israel and makes Jerusalem the center or capital of the people of God. What is his story? “It happened late one afternoon,” the narrative in Second Samuel tells us in splendid lapidary prose, smooth and hard as a stone, understated and yet more powerful for being so. What happened? David, out walking on the flat roof-top of his palace, espies the beautiful Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, bathing on her roof-top. You have to be careful where you place your hot-tubs. He sees and lusts, he covets and desires; to cut to the chase, he has sex with her and she conceives. Now there’s a problem! Sex in the city was never so riveting. Now what?
He recalls Uriah back from the battle with the Ammonites. He feasts and fêtes him and sends him down to his own house, anticipating that he will sleep with his wife and so the child will be able to passed off as Uriah’s. But Uriah is faithful to the warrior code and will not go in to his wife but sleeps on the doorstep as if he were in the field with his fellow warriors. Drats! Foiled! What is David to do? He conspires to have Uriah killed by sent into the place of fiercest fighting and then abandoned. As the text puts it in a wonderful economy of language, “Uriah the Hittite was slain also.”
But just consider. David has coveted Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. He has committed adultery. He has conspired to commit murder. Wow! But left at this we have only the slippery slopes of sin. The real interest of the narrative is how David comes to be convicted of his sins and by extension how we become convicted of sin and convinced of love.
The answer is through the parable of Nathan the prophet whom God sends to David. He tells a story. A rich man has many sheep; a poor man has but one little ewe lamb which he loves dearly. A visitor comes to the rich man who feels obliged to offer the rites of hospitality but instead of taking one of his own sheep, he takes the poor man’s lamb. David is outraged at the obvious injustice and wrong of it all, to which Nathan famously says, “You are the man!”
David gets it and repents. “I have sinned against the Lord.” He recognizes that he has betrayed God and his commandments. He has the strength of character to repent. Do we?
If we are defined simply by our actions we are all condemned. The greater mercy is our being convicted and repenting. In so doing we open ourselves out to the true worth and dignity of our humanity. It is found in the truth of God without which there can be no ethical awakening of our conscience. David gets this. Do we? If you do, you da’ man!
A mirror and a window. We learn through the witness of the Scriptures about how we are “compos’d of passion” and resist the disciplines of “temperance” and the other virtues and resist even more the “authoritie” of God and his Church. But we learn even more the compassion of God who awakens us to our sins so that we can repent and be healed. David’s story is not just about “the slippery ways into sin” but, more importantly, “the penitential ways out of sin.” “Against thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight,” as Psalm 51 so profoundly states, a psalm which is attributed to David’s having been convicted and having confessed his sin.
Donne makes the point very clearly.
At last Nathan came; David did not send for him, but God sent him; But yet David laid hold upon Gods purpose in him. And he confesses to God, he confesses to the Prophet, he confesses to the whole Church; for, before he pleads for mercy in the body of the Psalme, in the title of the Psalme, which is as Canonicall Scripture, as the Psalme itselfe, hee confesses himselfe plainly, A Psalme of David, when the Prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Donne has in mind the titles to the Psalms in the King James Version of the Bible. The Prayer Book uses the older Coverdale version of the Psalter and retains the Latin titles of the Psalms from their opening lines. Yet Psalm 51 is the great penitential psalm of Lent and belongs to our penitential adoration of God in the awareness of his mercy and truth towards us. The association with David’s story gives it greater poignancy and meaning.
In the story of David a mirror is held up for us to see ourselves and a window is opened for us to see the love of God who sees and knows us better than we do ourselves and whose love seeks our good. Such is the nature of penitential adoration. “Welcome deare feast of Lent,” indeed.
Fr. David Curry
Lenten Feria
March 3rd, 2015
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