The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature by Laura Hobgood Whitney Bauman

Author:Laura Hobgood,Whitney Bauman [Bauman, Laura Hobgood and Whitney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350046832
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2018-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

OILED UP

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Psalm 23, 5. NRSV

While baptism and Eucharist seem to be particularly adaptable for the ritual expression of both material and spiritual elementarity, it seems that most Protestants have a less developed or explicit relation to anointing, unless it comes to the anointing of the sick and dying. The use of olive oil for the anointing in Pentecostal circles comes somewhat closer in terms of the function that interests me here. That is, anointing also has the function of empowering the believer concretely for a ministry or action, as well as the actual function of healing.30 The focus here is primarily on the anointing for power, for an office, as the conferral of power, of social “greasing” of the wheels of a society or group, if you will, but also towards what kinds of anointing with power are sustainably healing. As Christians we believe in and we follow Christ. We use the term “Christ,” but how often do we remember it means the Anointed one, the Messiah, Mashiah? The “greased one?” Early commentators remarked on the oddity of the name “Christianos” which they took rather literally to mean the “oily ones.”

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