Ephrem’s Jesus
World Day of Prayer

March 7, 2003

The women of Lebanon have made their voices heard clearly. Their prayer is shared urgently by most people around this troubled world: peace among all people. For Lebanese women this is not one of those dreamy prayers; the violence and turmoil of their country over the last decades in particular make their prayer quite specific and very concrete.

The Arabic script on the cover of the worship booklet may seem incongruous in the tense climate of our world on this particular Friday. The Lebanese, nevertheless, have been Christians a lot longer than any of us. Modern-day Lebanon is in the centre of the cradle of Christianity in the Near East and thus of all Christianity. Pope Pius XII declared that as Christians “we are all spiritually Semites.” He was referring to the Jewish heritage of our faith, but in today’s world we should remember that Arabs are also Semites.

So what do Christian Semites believe and think? There are many varieties of Christians in Lebanon today, but the majority come from two communions: the Syrian Orthodox who date back to the 500’s and the Maronite Church, which is part of the Roman Catholic Church. Both churches use the traditional language of Syriac in their liturgies. Syriac is an Aramaic dialect and is the closest language to the one Jesus himself spoke. It is a fact of which the Syrian churches are immensely proud.

This being the case, they all know Ephrem, one of the greatest hymn writers of the Christian church. Ephrem (d. 373) lived in Edessa, not far from Lebanon in modern-day southeast Turkey. His main job was to conduct a choir of women who sang in the worship services, and to write the hundreds of hymns saturated with the Biblical stories and themes that they sang. That his choir was all female was remarkable and unusual back then.

For instance, he wrote a group of 28 hymns on the Nativity. The 18th hymn makes an eerily contemporary comparison between the birth of Jesus and the reign of Caesar Augustus who was seen by history to be the creator of the peaceful golden age of the Roman Empire.

“In the days of the king who enrolled people
for the poll tax, our Saviour descended
and enrolled people in the Book of Life.
He enrolled them, and they enrolled Him.
On high He enrolled us; on earth they enrolled
Him. Glory to His name!”

Ephrem then gives a verse to each year of Jesus’ life. These weren’t short hymns; I’ve heard a 10 verse hymn sung by a choir of the Assyrian Church of the East of Toronto in 20 minutes flat! In each year Ephrem plays on a paradoxical connection between the worldly thing and the actions of Jesus. The power and vastness of the creature is contrasted with an example of how Jesus emptied himself of his divinity among humans. Eastern Christians, the Lebanese, feel no compulsion as we often do to state the logical, final conclusive answer to life’s problems. The Lebanese know there is no final answer except in God’s mind. All we can do is notice how God confuses our overconfident way of doing things.

“In the sixteenth year let the grain of wheat
give thanks in a symbol to that Farmer (Jesus)
Who sowed His body in the barren earth
That had failed to produce anything.
It sprouted and gave new bread.”

“In the twenty-second year let armour and sword
give thanks. They were not sufficient to kill
the Enemy of our age. You have killed him,
but You attached the ear that Simon’s sword
had cut off. Blessed be your healing.”

“In the twenty-fourth year let wealth
give thanks to the Son. Treasures marveled
at the Lord of treasure, as He grew
among the poor. He made himself poor
that all might become rich.”

“In the year that is twenty-seventh
let eloquent lawyers give thanks to the Son.
They did not find a stratagem for our case.
When He conquered He was silent in the court,
Yet he acquitted us.”

“In the year that is thirtieth,
let the dead who were revived by His dying,
and the life that returned by His crucifixion,
and the height and the depth
that were pacified by Him
all give thanks with us!”

In the year that is the 2003rd, we pray for the Holy Spirit to arrest us in our pretensions to grandeur and power, and to enable us to share the peace that surpasses all our human understanding.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan