Many people have a vested interest in keeping their religion at the level of "vain repetition." If Christ the Word can be kept at arms length, just far enough away from the soul, then He need not be inconvenient and so very indisposing. Or upsetting. Or impoverishing.
Or converting. Conversion can get really expensive, and I think only the poor can afford it.
So "vain repetition" is the way to go if you want to be sociologically categorized as a Christian, but you may not really want to be one. Being a Christian is all about foisting on yourself the category of "sinner" and begging for mercy and being allowed to go back home to the First Cause.
It is all about rapping your brain with the stick of dogma: "One in Three and Three in One ... Two Natures, One Person ... Tradition reaching toward Parousia ... One Spirit, Many Tongues of Fire."
It is all about fighting your passions, because your passions are the reasons for repeated sin, distracted prayer and the curse of boredom. If you've confessed eating meat on Friday more than once, then you've got to relent and agree that you're a glutton. If you are moody and you complain, then you are possessed by pride and despondency (I think, by your leave, that the main unspoken problem in the Orthodox Church is that too many of our men are locked into this pattern, and have not grown up enough to control their emotions, and to know the difference between thought and opinion). If you are histrionic, and stand up in townhall meetings and do that weep-and-yell-pubescent-hissy-fit routine because this works for you, then you are under the domination of pride and avarice. If you've turned off Google's "safe search" button at the top of your screen, then lust is your lord.
Being a Christian means that you won't put up with that for long.
Most people don't want be a Christian like that. They are not interested in dangerous Communion: the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ -- not welch's in tiny eyewash glasses -- is perilous to those who "do not discern the Body of Christ." They are not interested in faithfulness to Tradition. They are not interested in Mystery, because Mystery is messy and violates all mission statements, career track planning, Outlook extrapolations, and every other way we say "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain" (James 4.13).
They are not interesting in saying "Lord have mercy" forty times, or for a lifetime.
So if you and I are not interested, then we really ought to consider the well-established way of hypocrisy, because that is the real name for "vain repetition." That is the name for the refusal of deification and mystery ... for the constant rendering of dogma into cliche ... for the sentimentalization of Christianity into idiotic slogans, Teufelsdröckh political banners and the Monty Python monks who follow them, batting their shrunken heads.
I think hypocrisy is an honest option for those who want to look like a Christian, but don't want the trouble of being one. The problem with "vain repetition" is not with "repetition," but with the vanity of it. Even lowbrow spontaneous prayers at Aglow meetings can be vainly repetitious, as they commonly avoid the irksome issues of Trinity and Sacrament. Even a full round of Jesus Prayers on a hundred-knotted prayer rope is not vain if "Lord" and "mercy" and "sinner" are words that are meant and not simply mouthed.
You better keep Jesus at arm's length, else He will bother you. He won't let you alone.
But then, keeping Him at arm's length will make you stumble. If you don't take Him as your cornerstone, He will surely be your scandal stone. You will ever trip on Jesus -- or, rather, He will trip you up -- if He is anywhere other than at your heart.
This is true of churches as well as persons. Jesus is tripping up His historical house these days: some there are who are puffing away like powder, scattered into the cracks and corners of the agora. Some there are who have forgotten about fasting and vigil, and have grown too enamored with protestant corporationism and secret strategy dossiers. Some there are who are cynical, pridefully despondent. Some there are who want to denature the Gospel and Orthodoxy into something more academically precious or politically precocious. Some there are who have experimented with hippy communes and fundamentalism, liberation groups and twelve-step programs, and Orthodoxy is just another costume in a whole long line of experimental identities for the alleviation of postmodern boredom and penitentio-phobia.
Some there are who won't repent and bend the neck to what's actually behind the iconostasis.
Some there are who try to grasp and contain Jesus, like the chief priests and elders after those revolutionary remarks about cornerstones and business plans, but they were prevented by the crowds: you know, those pesky "poor in spirit." They don't know better. They are too busy gleaning out of desperation. They are not rich enought to be smart, or smart enough to be rich (I forget which).
Jesus will ever bear the Cross, but He will never tolerate grasping and apprehending. He will not be part of someone's strategy or statement of objectives. He will fall, like a lintel stone in an earthquake, and crush to powder every systematic theology. He will scandalize every ecclesiology that has no Theology, and there is a lot of that going on nowadays.
Jesus Christ is Righteousness and the Sabbath. He is also History, as its sole crux and meaning. He is passing by. If you want vain repetition and a mask, let Him go, for He is dangerous and will not let you be.
But let Him go, and you will stumble and fade, for when He goes, history will pass you by.
Ouch, Father.
Harsh, bitter medicine indeed.
Thank you.
Posted by: jacobus | August 14, 2009 at 05:35 PM
In his homilies on the Lord's Prayer, I believe St. Gregory of Nyssa describes "babbling like pagans" as praying that God will share in and gratify one's passions (e.g., for veneance on one's enemies) rather than quenching them. Put another way, it is asking God for what pagans desire rather than asking Him to help one develop Christian desires.
Posted by: Reid | September 02, 2009 at 02:45 PM