Imagine you are a member of your parish’s liturgical committee
preparing for the dedication of your new parish church. The local bishop will
preside over the function, but your parish priest has been asked to preach the
festive homily. He in turn- and so you see how democratizing the church does at
times lead to passing the buck!- has asked your committee to furnish the
contents of the sermon. What are you going to have him say? What scripture text
should he take as his point of departure? Mulling this over in your mind you
remember Psalm 24:
Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty
the Lord, mighty in battle!Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts
he is the King of glory! (Ps 24:7-10, RSV).
There are obviously many possibilities in this passage. The community that has prepared its new place of worship must now open wide the gates of its hearts! The town where the church has been built has quite a long history, which works well with the “ancient doors” phrase. To receive Jesus in the new church, the people should enlarge their past religious attitudes: their gates should lift their heads, their doors grow higher. The person who will now take his residence among them is none other than Jesus Christ, the lord of glory. He is the mighty because he is equal to the Father. He is the strong because he won the victory through his resurrection. The text, you think, would serve well to illustrate the meaning of the dedication event.
Now all this sounds very promising, but suppose it suddenly strikes you that the message you are finding in the psalm is more your own imagination than the message inspired by God. Maybe you mentioned your train of thought to your parish priest and he seemed hesitant.
“Joe,” he says, “I am afraid the text cannot really be used for our homily.”
“Why not?” you want to know.
“It is not the original meaning of the passage. It is only the accommodated sense.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” you exclaim.
“The accommodated sense is only an artificial meaning which we give to a text because of external resemblances. It was not what the original author had in mind.”
“So? But then the text would be useless.”
“Yes, it would. When we are using the accommodated sense we are not teaching what God wants to say.”
“How do you know what God wants to say?”
“Through the literal meaning of the text; that is, by finding out what the original author had in mind.”
“OK, granted. But what did the original author have in mind?”
“Well, this particular psalm is an enthronization song. It’s all about the ark of the covenant being carried into the Temple.”
“But if it’s about the ark entering the Temple, why can’t we apply it to Christ entering the new church?”
You sound convincing and convinced, but the damage has been done. A doubt has been sown in your mind. What is the exact difference between a too liberal use of the text (the accommodated sense) and a legitimate application of its inspired message (the applied sense)? It is this practical question we will be considering in this chapter. How can we be true to God’s word and yet apply it daringly to present-day situations? It is a skill we learn more from seeing good and bad examples than from absorbing definitions.
Let us for a moment step back into the world of fancy-which can so often teach us much about reality! Let’s say Pete, your parish priest, had some reasons of his own for advising you the way he did. He had come across Psalm 24 before, in a manner he would not easily forget.
It had been Pete’s second year in the major seminary. Every day some students came to the seminary by bus in order to follow the lectures. In the beginning they came by public transport, but the municipal service proved to be rather unreliable and the students often arrived late. This led the seminary authorities to buy a secondhand bus. The bus was solemnly driven into the seminary compound late one evening during recreation. With the whole seminary population cheering and looking on, the rector positioned himself behind the steering wheel and started manoeuvering the vehicle into the garage. Halfway in it got stuck; the top was firmly jammed against the upper lintel of the doors. It could not go either backward or forward. To avoid further damage, the rector decided to leave the bus in this awkward state until the following day. Both staff and students had a heyday joking and commenting on the incident.
The next morning at lauds, it happened to be Pete’s turn to intone the psalms. It was the custom at the time for the prayer leader to insert his own reflections at appropriate places. When Pete saw that Psalm 24 was coming up, he could not resist the temptation of saying: “This psalm seems very apt today.’‘Lift up your heads; O gates! Be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in.’ Let us pray that our bus may be very useful to the seminary for many years to come.”
There had been smiles and sniggers throughout the chapel. That same morning our “hero” received a public dressing-down from the professor of Sacred Scripture.
“To begin with, we don’t crack jokes in church! Second, referring to this psalm was completely out of place. The psalm speaks of God entering his Temple as the king of glory. Applying the psalm’s words to the bus and to the doors of the garage was wrong because you gave them a totally different meaning. The external words may have fit the situation, but the real meaning of the text is miles away. You used the accommodated sense. It is not a real sense of scripture and should be avoided.”
“Many preachers use the accomodated sense,” Pete had ventured to say. The reply was a long, drawn-out lecture on the evils of the accommodated sense.
“Whenever you use scripture, whether you preach or teach or give conferences, the lecturer concluded, always stick to the literal sense.” The students felt that a sense of humor was equally important, but all the same, the lecture had its effect.
Let us stop here to reflect. Joking apart (and jokes do have their place in life!), applying “Lift up your heads, O gates!” to the garage doors was, indeed, incorrect. One could never claim that the psalm was referring to this situation, even less that God was saying something to us about it through the psalm. This kind of accommodated sense is so far off the mark that its emptiness can easily be recognized. But what about the following example?
This is a fragment from the apocryphal Gospel according to Nicodemus that is undoubtedly based on preaching in the early church. Christ had promised that he would conquer the “gates of hell.” The creed states that after his death he “descended into hell.” Psalm 24: 7-10 is reconstructed as a description of what happened when Christ entered:
A voice, powerful as thunder, resounded: “O gates, lift high your heads; grow higher, ancient doors. The king of glory will enter!”
When Hell heard this, he said to Satan: “Go outside and offer as much resistance as you can.” Satan complied and went outside. Then Hell said to his assisting demons: “Close the ancient doors, lock them, secure them with iron bars. Draw up in battle formation and be ready. For if he manages to enter, then woe to us, he will defeat us utterly!”
When the ancestors captured in Hell heard this they began to mock and jeer, saying “O you insatiable, devouring glutton. Open up, let him enter the king of glory! O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Again the voice resounded, shouting: “O gates, lift high your heads!” When Hell heard the voice the second time he answered as if he were ignorant, “Who is this king of glory?”
The angels of his Majesty replied: “The Lord, the mighty, the valiant; the Lord, the valiant in war!” And while they were speaking these words, the ancient gates were broken down, the iron bars smashed. All the dead who had been imprisoned were freed from their chains. And then the King of Glory entered, like a son of man in appearance and all the darkness of Hell was bathed in light (Gospel acc. to Nicodemus 22: 1-3).
Employing Psalm 24 to visualize Christ’s “descent into hell” does make interesting reading. But it is using the text in an accommodated sense. No one could maintain that it is a natural extension of the original meaning.
Talking about this original meaning, let us consider it somewhat more carefully. What did Psalm 24:7-10 express? It intended to highlight the significance of the moment when the ark of the covenant was carried into the Temple precinct. God was believed to be present on top of the ark in a special way. When the ark entered the gates, God took renewed possession of his holy place. It reminded the Israelites of God pervading the Tabernacle in the desert: “Then the cloud covered the Tent and the dazzling light of the LORD'S presence filled it” (Ex 40:34). It recalled the solemn opening of the Temple under Solomon:
Then the priests carried the Covenant Box into the Temple and put it in the Most Holy Place....As the priests were leaving the Temple, it was suddenly filled with a cloud shining with the dazzling light of the LORD’S presence (l Kgs 8:6,10-11).
It is natural for the church to apply this text to Christ’s triumphant entry into heaven at his exaltation. That is why Psalm 24:7-10 is featured on Holy Saturday, during Easter week and in a Sunday liturgy. “The gates of heaven were opened up to Christ because he was lifted up in the flesh,” St. Irenaeus said. It was also applied understandably to the incarnation, to Christ entering the womb of our Lady. It was sung for that reason on feasts of Mary. In both of these cases we cannot speak of a “fuller sense” of the kind to be explained in the next chapter because Psalm 24: 7-10 is not explicitly applied to Christ in the New Testament. But both are examples of a true applied literal sense. Both are genuine extensions of God entering and occupying his holy place.
What about using Psalm 24:7-10 at a church dedication? From the foregoing paragraphs it is clear that this use of the text is entirely justified. Dedicating a church and establishing in it the sacramental presence of Christ form an exact contemporary equivalent of the ark of the covenant sanctifying the Temple. It is for our own days what the psalm wanted to celebrate: God filling his holy place with his presence. So your intuition was right. Of course, you would have to be careful in your elaboration of the details. By taking these too literally-“the ancient doors,” for example-you might imply meanings not intended in the original passage. Or, you might undersell the text.
Granted that Psalm 24:7-10 may legitimately be applied to the consecration of a new church, how does one proceed further? A frequent mistake is to use the text as an ornament, a quotation that merely embellishes what we want to say anyway. To put it crudely: There are certain ideas we already have regarding an event like a church consecration, so that the content of our reflection is fixed from the start. We only turn to scripture for texts that may give it more style. We have already built the house; the scripture quotations are paintings we hang on the walls. But if scripture is the word of God, should it not do more? Should it not be the foundation on which the house itself is constructed, the concrete pillars on which it stands firm?
So if we select Psalm 24:7-10 to give us guidance on this occasion, we should read the passage carefully and allow its message to sink in. We should listen to the words, search their deepest meaning, pray over them. We should try to feel what the original author felt so that we imbue the emotional value no less than the intellectual contents. To understand the passage more fully, we turn to other texts which throw light on the same theme. In other words: Before determining the end result of our meditation, we allow the scriptural text - or more accurately, God through the text - to have his full say. Normally this requires time. If we have to preach, we do well to leave some space between the initial study of the text and the finalization of the homily. This time span is for mulling things over, for allowing vague impressions and deep stirrings to yell into a concrete message.
Of course, we do not forget, even at the beginning stage, to consider the other end of the spectrum: the pastoral needs of the audience. God’s word will be addressed to a particular group of people. It will have to be relevant to this new context. We will, therefore, also reflect on the role a church building can play in a Christian community. We remember the special needs of the particular group for whom the church will serve as place of worship and apostolate. We will ask ourselves which aspects of the consecration event will be most important to them.
The two sources of reflection, the scriptural input and the pastoral concern, will influence each other. As the matter matures, points of contact will become clear. The outline of the message will suddenly emerge. It will then be a question of some further deepening and working out. The time has now come for putting the ideas into words. The homily can take its final shape.
As I said before, the precise outcome of this process of guided rumination is unpredictable. If we give it free rein, we will feel the thrill of new discovery and genuine creative work. We will also find out that the word of God is truly alive and has a lasting message of vital interest.
Let us, for the sake of getting the feel of what I mean and for the sheer fun of it, imagine we are back in your liturgical committee. You have had another talk with your parish priest and he agrees now that he initially overreacted. Psalm 24 can be used after all. The committee has assembled and all of you share your feelings and thoughts. We witness a sermon being shaped in the womb!
“Taking Psalm 24:7-10 as our point of departure, let us try to fathom what the passage is really saying.... ‘That the king of glory may come in....the mighty, the strong....’ Why would God, present on the ark, be called the king of glory? Glory refers to majesty. Could God’s majesty be seen as he entered the Temple, as it were, sitting on the ark?”
“Yes, the ark did inspire terror. It caused havoc among the Philistines. Uzzah was struck down on the spot when he reached out and touched the ark with his bare hand. Even the Levites aerving in the Temple were forbidden to look into the ark, on pain of death. People in the Old Testament were afraid of the ark, of God’s majesty....They always thought they would die in God’s presence. Isaiah was totally overwhelmed when he saw God’s glory. Does this still have validity for Christians?”
“In one way it doesn’t. God is a God of love. Perfect love drives out all fear. But in another way, we still need to be reminded of God’s majesty, of his greatness....Isn’t that also the purpose of the church building: to underline the need of making space for God in one’s life?...Are people really sufficiently aware of God’s majesty? Would their prayers in church and their participation in the liturgy not be far deeper if they were overwhelmed by a sense of God’s greatness? Has God become too familiar, so familiar in fact that he no longer fills us with awe and respect? What did Chesterton say: ‘Take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.’...Yes, we should somehow discover again that God is a tremendous reality and that our church is a symbol of that reality....”
“At the same time, we should not forget the other side of God. What people need most is to be inspired by God’s love. The church should be a home. So many people are lonely, have no home where they feel secure and cared for. That’s why they come to church. To be consoled by God....I wonder what scripture has to say about that? Oh yes, there are those beautiful passages expressing the same sentiment:
“How I love your Temple, LORD Almighty!
How I want to be there....
Even the sparrows have built a nest,
and the swallows have their own home;
they keep their young near your altars,
LORD Almighty, my king and my God” (Ps 84:1-3).
“The Temple is the mother of all nations. Psalm 23 says: ‘I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life; and your house will be my home as long as I live’ ” (v. 6).
“Yes, this also fits well with the New Testament idea that Jesus’ Body is our real Temple. A church is one expression of Jesus being with us. The whole community is part of that Body of Christ which is the new Temple. And in this new Temple there is place for everyone: there are no strangers.”
“Good gracious, we have a lot of material here. We will need to sift it, select what is most telling for this parish....Throughout we must hold on to the key idea that now, after the consecration of the church, the king of glory takes up his residence in our community....”
It will be noted that the mental ruminations that gestate and give birth to a homily have much in common with the imaginative elaborations that feature in scriptural reflection (see Chapter 9). Meditation and preaching are closely related. The fathers of the Church used to say to priests: “Whenever you preach, pass on to your people what you have seen in contemplation.” The best homilies are those that explicate what lives in the deep, spiritual experience of believers.