Worm Theology

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…

WORM THEOLOGY

John Kiltinen is a Renaissance man, if the Renaissance is mathematical and Finnish. John is a Northern MI U math professor, retard, which is how we pronounce “retired” in the UP, or at least that’s what we tell him, and a translator of Finnish hymns, and the driving force behind the brand new Finnish/American opera, “Rockland.”

John suggests that a good Holy Week topic would be self-flagellation, since “feel good” religion started when Luther did away with the practice, which is not wrapping one’s self in the flag and elatedly [flag-elation] screeching that your flag is better than theirs, as Sean Hannity seems to think, but its opposite, the proclamation that you know you are no more than a worm, and that thus God’s grace [acceptance] is always a gift, never earned.

To remind themselves that we are just worms, Christians used to beat the hell out of themselves, especially during Holy Week, with ropes or chains or small tree limbs. Mrs. Kiltinen points out that the Finns, reluctant to abandon such a practice entirely, for obvious reasons, at least to Finns, still practice a minor-league form of it in the sauna. Thank God I’m a Celt. Our idea of proper worship is self-flagon-elation, which is to drink another flagon and dance elatedly.

Worm theology probably dates from a favorite Holy Week hymn, Isaac Watts’ Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed, which contains the line, “Did he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”

Worms have always had a place in Christian Theology. There was, of course, Luther’s famous Diet of Worms, which may account for his constipation and certain parts of his theology. [1] Without worms there could be no wormwood to accompany gall in bitterness and despair. [Lamentations 3:19] That, of course, gave the junior demon in C.S. Lewis’ "The Screwtape Letters" his name of “Wormwood.”

And we know that our bodies are destined to be worm food, as we learned in that hymn from childhood, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.” It’s hard to work that into a feel-good theology.

There is, however, a different sort of worm theology. Remember the story of Jonah? He didn’t want to go to Nineveh, to be a prophet, to forth-tell the truth [2] to the people there, that if they did not repent and change their ways, they were doomed. That sort of truth-telling gets a prophet into all sorts of trouble with people of high self-esteem, who feel good about themselves, who think they are good enough already, and Jonah was sure he wouldn’t get his own reality show and the celebrity and popularity that went with it that way.

So he went up on a mountain overlooking Nineveh and sat in the shade of a huge gourd vine so he could watch everybody go to hell in comfort. But God wasn’t about to give up on Nineveh because of a balky prophet. “But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.” [Jonah 4:7.] Without his shade, Jonah had to get on with the job, and quite to his surprise, when the folks of Nineveh were confronted with the truth, they believed and changed their ways and were saved. The real prophet in this story is the worm, who accepted God’s appointment and got rid of the comforting shade so that the truth could be seen.

Yes, I’m just a worm, but that means that God has a job for even me. “Did he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” You bet. Amen.

JRMcF

Thanks to the Kiltinens, who may feel that even though they are Finns, reading this may be adequate self-flagellation.

1] Yes, to all you historical theology addicts, I do know that Luther did not eat worms, but that a “Diet” was actually an imperial conclave and that Luther was called to such a diet in the town of Worms to answer charges that his theology was heretical.

2] Real prophets don’t foretell the truth, they forth-tell it.

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

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