Tag Archives: synergy

Synergy of Hands and Words

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  • A Coptic icon of the Annunciation, showing the angel Gabriel presenting a lily as he announces the Incarnation to the Mother of God.
  • The elevation of the Host in a contemporary celebration of the Solemn Mass by Dominican religious.

Working together with God, then, we also entreat you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: “In a favorable time I listened to you; on the day of salvation I helped you” (Isaiah 49:8). Behold, now it is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor. 6:1-2)

Synergountes de kai parakaloumen …. Synergy. Working together. Cooperation. We only experience “salvation” by working together with God. Any day we work together with him is the day of salvation.

Working together = cooperation with = synergy (fancy theological jargon)

Synergy = salvation

The classic, most clear example of synergy is the cooperation of the Mother of God with the request to bear the Word-made-flesh: “Be it unto me according to your word,” she answered the angel Gabriel. She cooperated with the request of God and the world was saved. If she had said “No,” we can only hope that God had a Plan B but there is no guarantee of that.

The Mother of God cooperated with God and the world was saved. We each personally make that salvation OURS when we approach the Holy Communion to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, harmonizing and uniting our Self with him. During the theological debates of what is the minimum necessary for an authentic celebration of the Eucharist, some said the Words of Institution (“This is my Body… Blood”) were the minimum necessary. Others said the invocation of the Holy Spirit (“Send down Your most holy Spirit to make this bread the Body of your Son ….”) was the minimum necessary.

What both sides presumed but never stated was that the priest also lent his hand to Christ to make the sign of the Cross over the Holy Gifts of bread and wine. The physical gesture was just as important–just as necessary–as the words theologians argued about. The priest’s hand had to cooperate/synergize with the words that he was saying and with the gestures that the Church expected him to make.

The priest’s gesture is as necessary as the priest’s words. That’s true for all of us. What we DO is just as important as what we say. “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20)

Wormwood

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Monastic fresco on Mt. Athos illustrating chapter 8 of the Apocalypse: the angels at the heavenly altar cast judgement/ hail onto the earth and sea.

The first angel blew his trumpet; there came hail… cast upon the earth…. The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from the sky…. The name of the star was Wormwood. (Apocalypse 8:7, 10-11)

The angels begin to blow their seven trumpets and unleash a series of destructive judgements: hail with fire, a flaming mountain thrown into the sea, a falling star. Repeatedly, a third of everything is destroyed: a third of the earth is burnt up, a third of the trees are burnt up, a third of the sea is turned to blood, a third of the sea creatures die, a third of the sun-moon-stars are wiped out, a third of the ships are destroyed (see illustration above). This repetition of the destruction of one-third of everything suggests to many Early Church readers that one-third of the angels rebelled against God and became the demons of hell.

The destructive plagues released by the trumpet blasts mimic the plagues that God sent to destroy Egypt in the book of Exodus. In both cases, creation is undone and refashioned. Many of the prophets in the Old Testament describe similar plague-judgements that God will unleash at the End of Days: the sun and moon and stars will go dark, the sea will be consumed by fire, darkness will envelop the earth. Jeremiah describes a mountain that will be reduced to a burning, smoldering ruin and 1 Enoch describes 7 stars that are like 7 fiery mountains. These are not the acts of a vindictive God; these are the descriptions of what happens when creation rises up in rebellion and goes-against-the-stream that is cooperation (synergy) with God.

One of the most interesting images of judgement-destruction is the star called Wormwood. This name, which in Slavonic is Chernobyl, was often mentioned by evangelical Christians when the Chernobyl nuclear accident happened. It was popular to muse in the United States if the nuclear accident was the great portent of the End described in the Apocalypse; timelines for the coming judgement were eagerly discussed.

Wormwood is a plant with a bitter taste and is a metaphor for divine judgement (Jeremiah, Lamentations, Amos, Proverbs). This plague is the reverse of the miracle at Mara in the desert: there, poison water was made fresh but the star Wormwood makes fresh water poison. “Wormwood” is the perversion of justice in Amos: the blazing star that falls from the sky in the Apocalypse can be viewed as the downfall of the Devil himself, the father of lies and deception (John 8:44).

“Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14)

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Saint Peter (c. 1468) by Marco Zoppo, depicting Peter holding the Keys of Heaven and a book representing the gospel, bound together with his epistles.

“Turn from evil and do good: seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14) This verse can be paired with Psalm 37:28: “Turn from evil and do good, and dwell in the land forever.” God promises his people that if they turn from evil, i.e. repent (literally, “change direction”) and seek to do good, embracing peace, then they will dwell in the Promised Land forever. Embrace the relationship with God and dwell in his land of plenty; refuse to repent and experience exile and expulsion from the Promised Land just as Adam and Eve experienced expulsion from Paradise.

“Seeking peace” and “doing good” are poetic equivalents in these two verses. If we seek peace with our neighbors, especially those who disagree with us, and try to live in harmony with all creation then we will be doing good. Seeking peace necessarily involves seeking the welfare of our neighbors: feeding, visiting, caring for those in need. We express this liturgically by sharing the Kiss of Peace at the Eucharist; we express this at other times by serving at a soup kitchen or helping someone vote or giving a lonely–difficult?–person a phone call.

A few verses later in Psalm 37, we also read: “The righteous shall possess the land and dwell in it forever.” The righteous are those who repent, the ones who turn from evil. The righteous are not the people who never make mistakes; the righteous are the people who admit they have “missed the mark” and change direction in order to try again.

The apostle Peter refers to this verse from Psalm 34 in his first epistle:

“He who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking guile: let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (1 Peter 3:11)

The apostle quotes these lines as he concludes urging his readers to have compassion and brotherly love for one another. There is no other way into the Promised Land, the Kingdom of God. Having entered the Kingdom, there is no other way to remain there but to keep changing direction and realigning ourselves with the peace, compassion, and harmony that is Divine life.