{"id":1109,"date":"2019-12-18T13:26:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:26:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:26:11","slug":"the-offering-of-incense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/12\/18\/the-offering-of-incense\/","title":{"rendered":"The Offering of Incense"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The offering of incense in Orthodox Christian worship is likely the most misunderstood element of that worship.\u00a0 Worship, in general, outside of the Orthodox Church in other Christian traditions is widely considered to be a matter of preference.\u00a0 If not merely taste, worship ‘styles’ are seen to resonate differently with different people and this resonance is taken to be spiritual experience rather than nostalgic or aesthetic experience.\u00a0 Many communities profess to offer the same worship in a variety of styles on a given day, implying that the connection between the details of worship and its content or experience is loose and variable.\u00a0 In this way, ritual is reduced to language.\u00a0 It is a vehicle for communicating certain content to an audience and that vehicle can, therefore, be translated in various ways for various audiences.\u00a0 Liturgical worship, then, is conceived of as simply one more taste, one more language in which some audiences prefer to receive communications.\u00a0 Even with this watered-down understanding of worship, however, the offering of incense stands at the center as the censer is the source of both the proverbial “smells” and the proverbial “bells.”<\/p>\n

Ritual is one of several ways in which human persons interact with reality.\u00a0 Others include language, music, and art.\u00a0 The preceding is an example of how ritual can be reduced to language but this can happen in other ways as well.\u00a0 The liturgical task is often, even in Orthodox circles, reduced to simply a task of translation.\u00a0 This can take the form of attempting to get the words ‘right’ or to make sure that they properly communicate a particular interpretation of the originally composed texts.\u00a0 In either case, however, ritual is reduced to text and communications.\u00a0 Certainly, liturgy can be reduced to music as well in an Orthodox context.\u00a0 An emphasis on excellence in liturgical music is laudable, but when pursued at the expense of all else can reduce worship to a concert with congregants as an audience.\u00a0 The reduction of ritual to art is no less possible.\u00a0 This approach treats elements of the liturgy as symbolic, speaking of what each element represents.\u00a0 This approach, however, severs ritual from reality making it a performance.\u00a0 While it is historically true that drama and storytelling evolved out of ritual, their power is grounded in the ritual elements still contained therein.\u00a0 This is why the explanation of the symbolism of art never carries with it the same power as the art itself.\u00a0 One of the central affirmations of the Seventh Ecumenical Council is that the Eucharist, the center of the Divine Liturgy, is not an icon.<\/p>\n

Ritual, in contrast, does something.\u00a0 It is, therefore, best understood by asking what a liturgical service or element does<\/em>.\u00a0 The mysteries of the Church do things.\u00a0 Baptism does something to the baptized.\u00a0 The blessing of water does something to the water.\u00a0 The consecration of the Eucharist does something to the elements.\u00a0 Matrimony does something to the man and woman married.\u00a0 To understand the offering of incense, then, is to ask what the offering of incense, what censing in the services of the Church, does.\u00a0 This is its own question.\u00a0 It is a mode of inquiry that is not only different from but opposed to others.\u00a0 It does not ask what incense ‘represents’.\u00a0 It does not ask what a censing ‘communicates’ on an intellectual level to an audience watching it take place.\u00a0 These questions are not just irrelevant to what is happening ritually, pursuing the question along those lines will lead one away from the reality of ritual to a mere symbol or intellectual abstraction.\u00a0 Either of these makes the offering of the incense itself irrelevant as the posited separate ‘reality’ could be symbolized or communicated to a different audience in a completely different way while losing nothing of substance.<\/p>\n

Worship, properly understood, is made up of sacrificial ritual.\u00a0 Though it has been largely forgotten, the offering of incense is a sacrifice.\u00a0 It has been, in the history of religion, the predominant mode of sacrificial offering.\u00a0 The core of Israelite worship was the offering of incense with prayers at dawn and at twilight (Ex 30:7-9).\u00a0 This was done within the context of the trimming and lighting of the lamps in the tabernacle and then the temple.\u00a0 The incense was offered on its own sacrificial altar, built according to specific instructions, and placed before the curtain, embroidered with images of the Cherubim and the heavenly host, which separated off the most holy place (v. 1-6).\u00a0 This altar, like the altar of burnt offering and the ark of the covenant itself, was cleansed with blood to maintain its purity on the Day of Atonement (v. 10).\u00a0 Just as there were detailed instructions in the Torah regarding the offerings of meat, grain, cakes, and drink, so too there are detailed instructions regarding the composition of the incense to be offered on this altar (v. 34-38).\u00a0 The violation of these commandments, just as those regarding other sacrifices, carry with them the highest sanction.<\/p>\n

That incense is being offered as a sacrifice is the content of the prayer by which incense is blessed.\u00a0 “Incense we offer thee, O Christ our God, as an odor of spiritual fragrance.\u00a0 Receive it upon thy heavenly altar and send down in return upon us the gift of thine Holy Spirit.”\u00a0 Our incense offering is directed toward Christ’s heavenly altar just as the offering of the Eucharist is in the Proskomedia prayers.\u00a0 Our offering is in connection to the descent of the Holy Spirit just as is the offering of the Eucharist.\u00a0 The fragrance of the incense rising before God is spoken of in the same language as the aroma of sacrificial burnt offerings in the Scriptures (cf. Gen 8:21; Lev 1:9, 13; 2:2; 23:18).\u00a0 The Eucharist is the pinnacle and center of Christian worship and therefore the central sacrificial act of the Church.\u00a0 The offering of incense, however, serves the same function within the services of Vespers and Orthros as those services are continued from Aaron’s service of them in the tabernacle which the Eucharist serves within the Divine Liturgy.\u00a0 It is the sacrificial hub around which the prayers offered both formally and by individuals revolve.\u00a0 The prayers of the people and the saints are offered along with the sacrificial offering and accompany it in every sense.<\/p>\n

Like other sacrifices described in the Torah, the offering of incense contains elements of propitiation and expiation<\/a>.\u00a0 The propitiatory element has already been discussed.\u00a0 To propitiate simply means to please and consists of the sacrificial worship, the offering of incense, ascending as a pleasing aroma.\u00a0 Within Orthodox worship, the offering of incense takes the particular form of a censing rather than the offering of incense primarily from a stationary altar.\u00a0 This is because of the expiatory function which this sacrificial offering accomplishes.\u00a0 The use of censers as ritual implements in the tabernacle and temple was an extension of the altar of incense in a quite literal way.\u00a0 Coals and incense from the altar were placed within the censer in order to give them mobility.\u00a0 On the Day of Atonement, the high priest brought fire and incense from the altar in a censer back into the most holy place to produce the cloud of incense which would shield Yahweh, at his appearance, from the high priest that the latter might live (Lev 16:12).\u00a0 In the Apocalypse of St. John, censers are used by angelic beings to bring offerings from the visible world to the presence of God (Rev 8:3).\u00a0 They also use censers to bring the fire of the heavenly altar to the earth (8:5).<\/p>\n

What is censed with the incense of God’s altar is cleansed and purified.\u00a0 This is so ingrained so deeply at a conceptual level that it is reflected in ancient linguistics.\u00a0 The Greek verb ‘kathairo’, the origin of the English word ‘catharsis’, means ‘to cleanse’ or ‘to purify’.\u00a0 It is was derived directly from Akkadian in the archaic period along with a number of other words connected to sacrificial ritual.\u00a0 The Akkadian ‘qataru’ from which it is derived means ‘to offer incense’, as do the related cognates ‘qatar’ in Hebrew and ‘qtr<\/em>‘ in Ugaritic.\u00a0 In Mesopotamian and Western Semitic religion, the smoke of sacrificial incense was seen to fumigate objects, people, and spaces from corruption and evil.\u00a0 This understanding was also held in Israelite and Second Temple religion and received by Christianity.\u00a0 As modern materialists, we tend to view matter as neutral, but for our fathers, people, objects, and spaces were never neutral.\u00a0 In preparation for the arrival of Christ in the midst of the community, just as in the preparation for his appearance in the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement in the tabernacle and temple, sacred space to be used for worship, the implements of worship, and the worshippers themselves must be cleansed and purified from the residuum of sin and common use to which they have been put in the intervening time between worship.<\/p>\n

Numbers 16 describes powerfully the ritual function of the offering of incense.\u00a0 A large group of Levites, led by Korah and his sons, opposed Moses and Aaron and sought to usurp the high priesthood from Aaron and his family.\u00a0 These 250 rebels were supported by a large number of their fellow Israelites, seemingly a large majority.\u00a0 This was a rebellion not against Moses and Aaron but against Yahweh who had chosen Aaron and his family for this service.\u00a0 Particular forms of priestly service are given, not seized.\u00a0 In response to this, Yahweh commands Moses and Aaron to gather along with the 250 rebels at the tent of meeting with lit censers in hand to offer worship to him, thus reinforcing the nature of the priesthood (v. 6, 17-18).\u00a0 Once they are gathered, the ground opens up and the leaders of the rebellion are swallowed up by Sheol, sharing the fate of the spiritual rebels against Yahweh (v. 32-33).\u00a0 They were consumed by the fire of Yahweh’s presence (v. 35).\u00a0 Their censers are gathered up by Eleazar and melted down into a covering for the altar which will serve as a symbol of Yahweh’s granting of the priesthood to Aaron (v. 37-40).<\/p>\n

While their supporters fled in terror at this judgment, in less than a day they begin to grumble against Moses and Aaron again and accuse them of murder.\u00a0 The consequence of their continuing to join in this rebellion is a plague that breaks out on the camp.\u00a0 Moses and Aaron, however, intercede for them.\u00a0 Aaron takes fire and incense from the altar in the tabernacle in his censer and goes into the camp, taking his stand on the border between the living and the dead and stopping the plague through the cleansing effect of the offering of incense and his intercessions (v. 45-48).\u00a0 Sin is rebellion.\u00a0 Sin is a deadly plague which kills and destroys.\u00a0 Sacrificial worship purifies and cleanses from sin and heals its destructive and deadly effects on persons, on communities, and on creation itself.\u00a0 These teachings lie at the core of the Torah.\u00a0 These teachings are enacted through the offering of incense to Christ with prayers as a purifying, cleansing, and restorative act.\u00a0 It is the marrow of worship, not a preference or an accouterment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The offering of incense in Orthodox Christian worship is likely the most misunderstood element of that worship.\u00a0 Worship, in general, outside of the Orthodox Church in other Christian traditions is widely considered to be a matter of preference.\u00a0 If not merely taste, worship ‘styles’ are seen to resonate differently with different people and this resonance is taken to be spiritual experience rather than nostalgic or aesthetic experience.\u00a0 Many communities profess to offer the same worship in a variety of styles on a given day, implying that the connection between the details of worship and its content or experience is loose and variable.\u00a0 In this way, ritual is reduced to language.\u00a0 It is a vehicle for communicating certain content to an\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"The Offering of Incense - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/12\/18\/the-offering-of-incense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Offering of Incense - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The offering of incense in Orthodox Christian worship is likely the most misunderstood element of that worship.\u00a0 Worship, in general, outside of the Orthodox Church in other Christian traditions is widely considered to be a matter of preference.\u00a0 If not merely taste, worship ‘styles’ are seen to resonate differently with different people and this resonance is taken to be spiritual experience rather than nostalgic or aesthetic experience.\u00a0 Many communities profess to offer the same worship in a variety of styles on a given day, implying that the connection between the details of worship and its content or experience is loose and variable.\u00a0 In this way, ritual is reduced to language.\u00a0 It is a vehicle for communicating certain content to an\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/12\/18\/the-offering-of-incense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-18T19:26:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2019\/12\/\u0411\u0435\u0437\u044b\u043c\u044f\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0439.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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