Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. (Psalm 23) The great King David tells us that this rod causes a consolation, not a wound. Indeed, it is by this rod and staff that the divine table is prepared and all these other details as well: oil for the head, a cup of unmixed wine (for sober intoxication), the mercy of God that follows us so well, a long dwelling in the house of the Lord. These are the blessings implied by that sweet striking…. hence, that striking must be a good thing since it produces such an abundance of grace…. the divine rod, or staff, that brings comfort and cures by striking is the Spirit…. This shows us that the wounding of the bride, by which her veil is stripped off, is a grace. In this way the soul’s beauty is unveiled and not hidden under the mantle of darkness. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Song of Songs)
Psalm 23 is associated with the Eucharist because not only does King David describe the table that the Lord prepares and the cup of blessing but because King David is said to have composed this psalm when he was hiding from King Saul, who was intent on murdering him. Hiding in the dry Judean wilderness, and on the brink of death without food or drink, he was miraculously saved by God, who nourished him with a taste of the World to Come. David gratefully burst out in song, describing the magnitude of his trust in God.
According to the traditional Jewish interpretation of the psalm, David alludes to how God provided for the Jews’ every need throughout their 40-year sojourn in the desert, and to how they will sing when God brings them back to the Promised Land; David sings, not just for himself, but for every Jew.
As Christians, we understand how King David sings for each of us as well, as we taste the food of the World to Come: the Bread of heaven and the Cup of salvation. We often read Psalm 23 either in thanksgiving after the Eucharist or in preparation before the celebration of the Eucharist.
St. Gregory of Nyssa points out that the rod and staff mentioned in the psalm are the sufferings of the faithful by which God strikes us in order to help us become more spiritually beautiful. Just as David was struck by affliction–running for his life and hiding in the desert as he and his followers nearly starved to death–we are also struck by various afflictions that are certainly hard to see as “good” as we experience them but which we can see later to have enabled us to experience the presence of God afresh. More deeply. More profoundly.
In some liturgical practices, these sufferings that lead us to experience God anew are summarized in the striking of the chest at the beginning of the Eucharist and again just before approaching Holy Communion. (St. Jerome remarked that the reason we strike our chest, rather than any other body part, is because the heart is the seat of all desires and it’s our desire to do our own will that causes suffering by dividing us most from the will of God.)
The shepherd’s staff–the Spirit of God–both wounds and heals. The wounds come, whether we want them or not. It is our choice to see them as the opportunity for healing.
(Stephen – Im going to post this also through Juan on the FB page in which you linked this as I would expect some vibrant conversation.)
Stephen,
Thank you for your commitment to write. On things that matter.
So the central question: is physical abuse a proper metaphor for spiritual enlightenment?
Here, I find a challenge – a double-edged sword (another violent metaphor).
You write: “Sufferings of the faithful by which God strikes us in order to help us become more spiritually beautiful . . . and . . . The shepherd’s staff–the Spirit of God–both wounds and heals. The wounds come, whether we want them or not. It is our choice to see them as the opportunity for healing.” It is a double-edged in the worth and value of finding growth within struggle, hope within hardship, magnificent defeats, and so on. The paradox is embraceable and intuitively true, even beyond the vast history and liturgical appropriations, as you eloquently note. But such language is double-edged in the reality of finding an abusive god, purposefully hurting, as anything other than repellant, e.g. Yes, I let my daughter put her hand on the hot stove to get third degree burns because she needed to learn something. I would rightfully be reported to child services and rightfully be arrested. Do I over-state? Humm. . .
Yet, regardless of the St. Gregory pedigree, and indeed, the millennia of world religious tradition across the board, I find the use of the god-as-abuser metaphor unsustainable.
Are you of a like mind to Aquinas who speculated on the beatific existence of the saints being elevated by the vision of sinners in perpetual torment? This is horrific. Is it possible for a flawed human such as myself to possess higher moral virtue than the god who created me?
Long before Sir Ian McKellen started ripping out Lev.18.22 from Gideon’s Bibles https://dallasvoice.com/sir-ian-mckellen-is-still-ripping-up-the-bible/
I’ve done the same to Hymnal 1982 #574. Happily, Hymn 575 on the back side is the same text in different meter. So we’ve got two versions of physical abuse as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment:
1. Before thy throne, O God, we kneel:
give us a conscience quick to feel,
a ready mind to understand
the meaning of thy chastening hand;
whate’er the pain and shame may be,
bring us, O Father, nearer thee.
2. Search out our hearts and make us true;
help us to give to all their due.
From love of pleasure, lust of gold,
from sins which make the heart grow cold,
wean us and train us with thy rod;
teach us to know our faults, O God.
(OK, I don’t rip them out so much as avoid them).
I ask some prevenient charity from any respondents to avoid the critique of this being overly PC. Any pastor who has sat with victims of abuse, and has a moment of empathy within them, cannot but choke upon the words of this hymn. Whenever any psalm or sacred text comes up, using a god-as-abuser metaphor, as they do frequently, it becomes distraction, if not contradiction, from the core ethos of orthodox Christian theology. I make no claim that such metaphor is not historically and universally contaminant. That doesn’t make it immune to suspicion and reform. As we have come to see too often and too late, bad theology kills. The theology of god-as-abuser, whether in text, hymn, or liturgy, is unsustainable. We simply have to spend more effort doing the work to amend for the excess.
Perhaps the acceptance of god-as-abuser imagery is mainly through denial or ignorance. We simply make a mental swap to diminish the reality of the words. We do what you and thousands of years of spiritual writers have done, we value the central and clean point of learning from our mistakes, and look away from the rawness of the metaphor itself. We’re not fundamentalists, we say to ourselves, so why not? Perhaps the answer is that the words create worlds. I, for one, do not wish to live and die and rise to immortality in any world where I must be subjected to divine abuse in order to understand divine truth.
Philip: The “rod and staff” should never be understood as a justification or excuse for abuse or injustice. NEVER! The sufferings we must bear are the natural consequences of our actions and the “natural sufferings” of the world — the results of earthquakes, pandemics, hurricanes, etc. But we can choose to approach these as opportunities for healing rather than opportunities to rail and rant against God.
Everything viewed in the light of God’s grace may be seen as redemptive, even the worst of our afflictions and even those that may lead to death. This was the case with my addiction to alcohol. I suffered terribly and caused others to suffer. But now I understand it to be a great gift giving me knowledge of myself and others that I would never have had otherwise. But we must be very, very careful not to prescribe my gift and my remedy as suitable for anyone else.
Carlton: Yes–precisely! The medicine we are each given for our own personal healing is specific to each one of us. What’s appropriate for one person is not to be applied willy-nilly to everyone. There is no “one size fits all” approach. Thank you for writing!