Vox populi | neanderthal worship

No kissing allowed

Temptation is only inches from my typing fingers. To boost my ego, and elicit great response I am tempted to write about rank, or uniform, but I’ll stick to music. This Sunday at the training college we’re having an In-Sunday, a day for us to get out of the field, regroup, and come together as a training college community to worship. As a man, I am all excited about the choice of music for this Sunday, music befitting Grey Cup Sunday. We’re singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, with swords, and killing, and grape stomping and fateful lightning from a terrible swift sword. You know, the kind of music we used to sing before “metrosexual” became in vogue.

Don’t think me base. I love Jesus as much as the next guy, and I can tell you that, it’s just I don’t get all crazy excited when I’m invited to sing about it over and over, with a variety of nuances, and expressions of intimacy. Take this song, by Heather Clark…

Kiss with me with the kisses of Your mouth
Kiss with me with the kisses of Your mouth
Your love is better than wine
Your love is better than wine
Pleasing is the fragrance
The fragrance of Your perfume
Your name is like a perfume poured out
No wonder the maidens love You
Take me away with You
Let’s hurry
Take me away with You
Let the King bring me into His chamber

Okay, I think this works as a song from my wife to me on our honeymoon, or perhaps runs in the same vein as Paradise Beneath the Dashboard Lights by Meatloaf, but singing this on a Sunday Morning?See, in my song, it’s not perfume, it’s musk or old spice. If there was drinking references it would be beer, but more likely Coca Cola. The line about maidens loving you? That stays, but we’d be taking off in a pick up truck, not whisking away to any chamber.

I love Jesus, but I don’t want him kissing me on the lips. I don’t need that kind of intimacy. I am a man, a guy’s guy. Some people will read this and say, “Rick, you have intimacy issues”. Now, let me ponder that for a moment…Of course I do. I’m a man. I grew up in a time when we punched each other to exhibit comradery (see, I can’t even say affection. Not in relation to my male friends). I’m not homophobic either. I’m just a guy.

This Sunday two football teams will don hard outershell plastic, and launch their bodies at each other, placing life and limb on the line for an oversized piece of steel. Men fighting for steel. It’s poetic. And some will wonder why the churches cannot rouse interest among the masses, and the world has such a tight grip on people? Just one thought, but it might just be we like the thought of our Jesus knocking helmets with us instead of wearing perfume for us. We want to march with our Jesus, trample with him, clash swords, and fight sin and degradation. If you want to dance with your Jesus, well all power to you, but don’t rain on my parade if I don’t.

Vox populi appears every Friday on theRubicon. Find past Vox populi posts and a bio of Rick Zelinsky here.

9 Comments to Vox populi | neanderthal worship

1. Right on Rick…one of my issues with a lot of the new music and choruses is as I call it the sappiness of it.

   If we are truly fighting Satan and Sin, degradation and social injustice we need to sound like we can with militancy in our music.

   Sometimes i wonder when we singing the sappier songs if anyone has the srength to ” throw out the lifeline” as the old song suggests.

   And yes as many of us watch the Blue Bombers crush the Roughriders this Sunday afternoon in the ultimate Banjo Bowl we will be thinking of strength and action not:

   “Kiss with me with the kisses of Your mouth
   Kiss with me with the kisses of Your mouth
   Your love is better than wine
   Your love is better than wine
   Pleasing is the fragrance
   The fragrance of Your perfume
   Your name is like a perfume poured out
   No wonder the maidens love You
   Take me away with You
   Let’s hurry
   Take me away with You
   Let the King bring me into His chamber”

   See you soon again.
John Stephenson on November 23rd, 2007

2. John,
   I can always count on you to rally round the banner with me.

   Rick
admin on November 23rd, 2007

3. “We want to march with our Jesus, trample with him, clash swords…”

   Sounds a lot like Peter before the Lord dealt with Him on the shore, ever so tenderly, asking Him, “Peter, do you love me?”
Concerned on November 23rd, 2007

4. You’re right that the “intimacy” angle gets overplayed sometimes in the church today. We’re all about Jesus being our best friend (or boyfriend?) but we lose sight of his transcendence, power, and majesty.

   I think there is a place for songs like the one you mention, not the least because the song is scriptural. But Song of Songs (if we accept the tradition of reading it allegorically), needs to be read not as an individual love song to the Lord, but as a love song between the Church and Christ. The idea of the people of God as God’s ‘wife’ is common in Scripture, so I can see how it is valid for us to reflect that in our worship, but I don’t think there’s much warrant for individualizing it, and making it the central theme of our worship. It is also a problem when it is consistently taken out of the context of the gospel story, which involves both God’s judgement and his love. If the ‘intimate love song’ is the only song we are singing, we have really watered down the gospel, and domesticated God. We are, of course, the bride of Christ, but he is also our Lord, our Master, our Judge, etc. Our worship should reflect this.

   I think the opposite would also be true; if all we do is beat the drum and sing ‘war songs’ we are going off track.

   Maybe the question is not whether our worship is ‘intimate’ or ‘powerful’, but whether it reflects the whole breadth of the scriptural witness. If so, I think we’ll need some of both, and always with reference to the cross.
James Pedlar on November 23rd, 2007

5. I agree with James Pedlar. Every think should be reasonably and on it’s place. But I think the matter is that last 50-60 years the devil has very strongly worked for destruction of institute of family. Many hearts have been broken and wounded. People have surrounded themselves with walls of alienation from the God and from each other. Worship songs of “intimacy” just reflected deep God’s healing work of the broken hearts. I can testify it in my own life. On the other hand, these songs should not become just a tradition i.e. when we mechanically repeat something when it is not so urgent.
Sergey Zhuravlov on November 24th, 2007

6. “…the whole breadth of Scriptural witness…”

   Well written, James. Rick, can I just add that, if a song doesn’t resonate with your particular spiritual location at the moment, it doesn’t make it less true. Or meaningful for someone else’s spirit.
Concerned on November 24th, 2007

7. Concerned…It isn’t about where I’m at. I love Jesus. I love my dad. I love some of my male friends, but intimacy doesn’t translate, for this male at least, into dancing and kissing them (other than my dad). My point is that somehow intimacy got hijacked into some type of soporiphic sentiment. When the sentiment fails to resonate with some, my contention being men, there is a tendancy to look at them as less than spiritual.

   So rather than warehousing our worship experience into the contemporary vein it seems to have evolved, I suggest there may be other ways to find expression of worship. In the case of my initial reference to the Heather Clarke song? Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me?” His next response is “Feed my sheep” not “Well then, plant one on me.”
Rick on November 24th, 2007

8. As far as I can remember I have never heard a single sermon preached using Song of Songs. Could this be something to do with the Church’s historic abhorrence of sex and sexuality? Could this also be why we struggle with those songs that speak of intimacy with quasi-sexual references?

   Having said that I would agree with James! Song of Songs is often seen as an allegory for God’s love for his people, and in this way a modern worship song that is written from a congregational rather than individual viewpoint, ie we instead of I, would not be wrong. In a world that is obsessed with the individual, our worship has come to reflect that as well.

   Rick, I think that you’ve hit on an important part of the issue in your last comment. There are a lot of modern songs that talk about what God has done for us, and that seek intimacy with Jesus, yet few that are actual songs of response. We need more songs that say, this is what Jesus has done for me, so this is what I will do in response/have done in response.
Graeme Smith on November 25th, 2007

9. Graeme

   I remember at Youth Councils in Manitoiba in 1974 that the guest speaker Brigadier Archie McCourqadale used Song of Songs as his text for the weekend. It was different but good.

   I think Rick was making a good point about a lot of the modern worship choruses which center on the intimacy of God with us without any concept of what our response should be.

   Our response to His love is not to plant one (as Rick reminds us) but to fight the battle with Satan for the lost.

   The compassion and love we should have is summed up well in Orsborne’s words:

   Except I am moved with compassion
   How dwelleth thy Spirit in me ?
   In word and in deed
   Burning love is my need,
   I know I can find this in thee.

   Those words do more for me then the modern choruses which emphasize what we get rather than we we give.
John Stephenson on November 25th, 2007

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