After watching this video Father Orthoduck found himself thinking two things. One, Father Orthoduck is very very glad that he is Orthodox. Two, may I suggest that this is a situation in which even the most die-hard Evangelical may wish to use lots of incense?
He lost me at the shoe removal. I don’t have any idea how I lasted that long.
Oh my goodness… Imagine the smell in that room! “You spin me right round Jesus, right round, like a record Jesus, right round!” What does that even mean?! That’s so weird.
“Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life”???
Lord have mercy.
It is a sad commentary on “modern” christianity that they can justify in their minds taking a 1980’s rock song by a band called “Dead or Alive” and using it to sing praise. Makes you wonder if their faith is dead or alive? These souls need prayer.
“Writing Christian music is easy. All you do is take 20-year-old pop songs and substitute “Jesus” for “Oooooo Baby!”
— South Park
While I don’t much like revamped disco for worship, classism is annoying. I’m guessing they’ve bathed more than Jesus ever did – or most of the world for that matter, considering how many body products the USA consumes just so we don’t smell the way God made us. So get over your un-smelly selves.
My computer doesn’t come with a smell-o-meter, but it is able to pick up the “scent” of Christians that are in love with the culture.
The church ought be counter-cultural, and not give ourselves over to a culture that does not care one wit for the church, or the things of God.
Ok, I think that even my most diehard Evangelical colleagues at the Christian university where I teach will agree that we need AT LEAST twenty fully-charged thuribles going, frankinsence, every scent imaginable. No, make that forty! Forty thuribles, plus that great big one they use at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella swinging on the rafters.
Taking a cue from what Huw said (rhyme unintentional, honest, Huw!) I think one of the practical uses of incense was in fact to make a place a little more pleasant-smelling, because people in the ancient world would not have been all that clean and bathed, at least most of them.
Robert:
There was/is a Jewish tradition of smelling spices at the end of Shabbat because the spices smell better than people do. I’m sure that’s where Christian incense starts (in the older, standing burners rather than the new-fangled swinging things popular nowadays). As I tried to indicate before, I’m guessing that everyone in Jesus time would have been less-well bathed than most of us. We modern Americans, lead around by advertising companies by a hoop through our noses, have a nearly-gnostic repulsion for the natural things our body does.
But that’s only part of the issue of looking at a bunch of kids on a video and guessing they must be smelly.
I’m thinking Jesus – and those who claim to follow him – would be there to teach the right way whilst partying with the publicans, drunkards and prostitutes; rather than here to make fun of the “unclean”.
I think the reference was more to their sweaty socks swinging in the air, than their persons. I don’t think anyone was thinking they themselves were stinky non-bathers; as a matter of fact, they look perfectly clean to me. Again, it’s their sweaty, stinky socks waving in the air that was the issue. But you do raise a good point, Huw. I perhaps (and maybe the kids shown in the video) bathe a little too regularly for my own good. I know that in most monasteries on Mt. Athos, there is no bathing allowed to novices for six months, and even after that, it is not with too much frequency. Monks are a lot less gnostic about human body odor, I suppose. This was especially true in the Middle Ages, when a monk or a Mendicant would sleep in his habit and change it maybe once a year, if that.
One more thing-these kids look like a lot of the students I teach, and they all bathe (for the most part). 🙂
But let us not forget the file under which this post is made: humor. After all, whenever Fr. Orthoduck posts anything, I know I’m in for a good laugh, and then maybe learn something along the way. Let’s not take this too seriously.
Too true, it was under the humor label, not the serious commentary.
Our host(s) may have used “humor” but I didn’t hear much of it in the comments, hence my reply…
My reply was meant to be humorous, but perhaps didn’t succeed in the endeavor, for which I apologize.
I can take body odor very well, but sweaty socks-well, that’s another matter entirely. And a bunch of sweaty socks waving in the air…well, rev up dem’ forty thuribles, I say! And while we’re at it, see if the Metropolitan Bishop of Compostella will allow us to borrow that huge one he has swingin’ on the rafters! 🙂 (Hope humor is coming through ok)
While our pastor doesn’t use incense, I am glad that I belong to a confessional Lutheran (LC-MS) church. No announcements in the Divine Service (before, during, or after).