10/8/17
One of the common problems in worship is that it becomes routine (like anything we do an a regular basis.) In our church calendar, we’re coming to the end of what we call Ordinary Time (there’s actually no such thing); we’re soon to begin a new church year. It’s a good time to step back and remind ourselves that, even though it’s just us, the people right here, for an hour on Sunday morning, what we do here resonates with a much larger world, over a much greater span of time.
A week ago yesterday, I spent the morning with about fifty other clergy at the cathedral in Hartford, attending a symposium on liturgy. It was led by the Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy, who is presently the Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan. He was formerly on the faculty at General Theological Seminary, where I studied for a year, and I took several classes from him. Pat Malloy is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, not simply because of his encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, but because what he teaches is alive for him, and he wants it to be that way for his students: it’s not just a body of facts that he hands over.
Does anyone know what the word “liturgy” means? The definition in my big fat Webster’s is “a rite.., observance, or procedure, prescribed for worship in the Christian church, in accordance with authorized or standard form.” And that’s certainly the way most people in church, clergy included, understand the word : that it refers to what we do physically, the actions we perform and the words we say, here in church, which are set and agreed upon by the government of the church, and by tradition.
This is one correct understanding of the word, and it’s important. Not that we do it “correctly”; but because we want to pay our best attention to how we worship God, to do it in such a way as to do proper honor to God, as best we can, with reverence, and love, and awe. That’s why the work of our liturgical ministers is so important: the Altar Guild, who, so faithfully, every week, provide us with pristine linens and vessels with which to perform the sacraments; the lectors, who convey to us the Word of God; the ushers, who bring the elements and the offering to the altar; all of you, as you say the prayers, give the responses, pass the peace: in the way we do things in the Episcopal Church, through our Book of Common Prayer, you all take part in the making of the liturgy, with your own particular offices, just as much as I do. The Greek root of the word “liturgy” literally means “the work of the people”; and that includes all of us. We do this work together, afresh, every week.
In this, we begin to see a larger meaning of the word “liturgy”; it’s not just a script, which is prescribed by the church hierarchy and which we repeat every Sunday, and if we say these words and perform these physical actions, that’s how we are Christians: that’s Christian liturgy. Well, we know that’s not all there is to it, that’s really not it, at all. If we don’t bring our real lives into these words and actions that we do here on Sundays, what’s the point? If we don’t come to the service new, we’re not really doing “the work of the people”.
When I started here at St. John’s in October of 2012, in the back of the church I put a stack of cards on which was printed a method for preparing for worship; and it had four different suggestions for the work you might do, how you might direct your attention, in today’s service, (I stole the whole thing from another church.) (1) Whom did you bring with you on your heart today? Why? What’s going on with that person? Imagine God at work in that person’s life; ask God to show you what role you might play. (2) Are you anxious about something? What is it? Offer it up to God; remember that Christ invites us to bring him our burdens – whatever they are. (3) What do you need to confess today? Use our prayer of confession to acknowledge what has hold of you, what won’t let you go; and to receive God’s forgiveness. (4) For what, for whom, are you thankful today? Dwell in your thankfulness; and give thanks to God.
Again, these are all just suggestions of how to be specific about the work you want to do here today. And the point of it is this: the liturgy – the work of the people – is not about letting God into our lives for an hour on Sunday morning; but rather opening our eyes to the truth that God is already active in our lives, and in the world around us, all the time.
And here we come to the larger reality in which we Christians do liturgy, the work of the people: that is, our life as the body of Christ. In our liturgy, we act this out. In the Prayers of the People, when we “pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church and the world”, we’re praying as Christ prays. When we pass the peace, we’re not just hugging our friends: we’re loving as Christ loves, unconditionally, in every direction. We do this especially as we welcome the stranger, the one we don’t know; we demonstrate to that person that God loves him or her the same way God loves each of us. Most especially, of course, we do it in the Eucharist, as we become one with the Body and Blood of Christ.
Of course we do all this imperfectly – howlingly so – but there’s at least a tiny little spark at the heart of what we do that is perfect: and that is the little bit of Christ that lives in all of us. It’s what brought us here today. It’s that little bit that makes us the body of Christ.
So what does that mean?
You’re probably familiar with the phrase, What would Jesus do? There was a time when it had a vogue – it was on T-shirts, and bumper stickers, and even got boiled down to the acronym WWJD, celebrating the assumption that most people would recognize it.
Well, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking, What would Jesus do, except for the fact that for most people it usually doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, for many people, the question is kind of a joke. And for those for whom it’s not, when we ask, What would Jesus do, sometimes we come up with an answer; and if it’s a good answer, if it’s anything like what Jesus might actually do, we’d probably see that it’s way too hard for us to even think about trying, and we’d just let it go to the graveyard of good ideas.
The question we should be asking is not, What would Jesus do; but rather, What is Jesus doing? If we take seriously the idea that we are the Body of Christ, then the question becomes, what are we doing? What should I be doing, that Jesus is already doing, somewhere? And is calling me to join in? I’ll give you an example.
It’s been one week since the shootings in Las Vegas. And as our initial shock, horror, disgust, despair – whatever we were feeling – as all that has subsided, I hope that our principal response would be to think as the Body of Christ, and ask: What is Jesus doing here, and what am I being called to do, to be part of that work?
There’s an organization within the Episcopal Church called Bishops United Against Gun Violence – founded by our two bishops after Sandy Hook – that issued a statement last week, which talked about our responsibility, as Christians, “to engage in the debates that shape how Americans live and die, especially when they die due to violence or neglect.” It continued with a very general statement about legislation, with which reasonable people can have varying opinions. But it concluded with words that I think, speak to us all as the Body of Christ: “[A] comprehensive solution to gun violence, whether [that violence] comes in the form of mass shootings, street violence, domestic violence, or suicide, will not simply be a matter of changing laws, but changing lives. Our country is feasting on anger that fuels rage, alienation and loneliness….[W]e nurse grudges and resentments rather than cultivating the respect, concern and affection that each of us owes to the other.”
As we do the liturgy in here: as we live outside these walls as the Body of Christ (flawed and foolish though we be): we follow the way God created us to walk in; we witness to the community of love and peace and joy in which God intends us to live. To everything that goes wrong in this gone-wrong world, from a stubbed toe to the senseless massacre of innocent people, our response as the Body of Christ has to begin there. This is the work of the people – which we do every week – that God has given us to do. Thanks be to God.
One of the common problems in worship is that it becomes routine (like anything we do an a regular basis.) In our church calendar, we’re coming to the end of what we call Ordinary Time (there’s actually no such thing); we’re soon to begin a new church year. It’s a good time to step back and remind ourselves that, even though it’s just us, the people right here, for an hour on Sunday morning, what we do here resonates with a much larger world, over a much greater span of time.
A week ago yesterday, I spent the morning with about fifty other clergy at the cathedral in Hartford, attending a symposium on liturgy. It was led by the Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy, who is presently the Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan. He was formerly on the faculty at General Theological Seminary, where I studied for a year, and I took several classes from him. Pat Malloy is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, not simply because of his encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, but because what he teaches is alive for him, and he wants it to be that way for his students: it’s not just a body of facts that he hands over.
Does anyone know what the word “liturgy” means? The definition in my big fat Webster’s is “a rite.., observance, or procedure, prescribed for worship in the Christian church, in accordance with authorized or standard form.” And that’s certainly the way most people in church, clergy included, understand the word : that it refers to what we do physically, the actions we perform and the words we say, here in church, which are set and agreed upon by the government of the church, and by tradition.
This is one correct understanding of the word, and it’s important. Not that we do it “correctly”; but because we want to pay our best attention to how we worship God, to do it in such a way as to do proper honor to God, as best we can, with reverence, and love, and awe. That’s why the work of our liturgical ministers is so important: the Altar Guild, who, so faithfully, every week, provide us with pristine linens and vessels with which to perform the sacraments; the lectors, who convey to us the Word of God; the ushers, who bring the elements and the offering to the altar; all of you, as you say the prayers, give the responses, pass the peace: in the way we do things in the Episcopal Church, through our Book of Common Prayer, you all take part in the making of the liturgy, with your own particular offices, just as much as I do. The Greek root of the word “liturgy” literally means “the work of the people”; and that includes all of us. We do this work together, afresh, every week.
In this, we begin to see a larger meaning of the word “liturgy”; it’s not just a script, which is prescribed by the church hierarchy and which we repeat every Sunday, and if we say these words and perform these physical actions, that’s how we are Christians: that’s Christian liturgy. Well, we know that’s not all there is to it, that’s really not it, at all. If we don’t bring our real lives into these words and actions that we do here on Sundays, what’s the point? If we don’t come to the service new, we’re not really doing “the work of the people”.
When I started here at St. John’s in October of 2012, in the back of the church I put a stack of cards on which was printed a method for preparing for worship; and it had four different suggestions for the work you might do, how you might direct your attention, in today’s service, (I stole the whole thing from another church.) (1) Whom did you bring with you on your heart today? Why? What’s going on with that person? Imagine God at work in that person’s life; ask God to show you what role you might play. (2) Are you anxious about something? What is it? Offer it up to God; remember that Christ invites us to bring him our burdens – whatever they are. (3) What do you need to confess today? Use our prayer of confession to acknowledge what has hold of you, what won’t let you go; and to receive God’s forgiveness. (4) For what, for whom, are you thankful today? Dwell in your thankfulness; and give thanks to God.
Again, these are all just suggestions of how to be specific about the work you want to do here today. And the point of it is this: the liturgy – the work of the people – is not about letting God into our lives for an hour on Sunday morning; but rather opening our eyes to the truth that God is already active in our lives, and in the world around us, all the time.
And here we come to the larger reality in which we Christians do liturgy, the work of the people: that is, our life as the body of Christ. In our liturgy, we act this out. In the Prayers of the People, when we “pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church and the world”, we’re praying as Christ prays. When we pass the peace, we’re not just hugging our friends: we’re loving as Christ loves, unconditionally, in every direction. We do this especially as we welcome the stranger, the one we don’t know; we demonstrate to that person that God loves him or her the same way God loves each of us. Most especially, of course, we do it in the Eucharist, as we become one with the Body and Blood of Christ.
Of course we do all this imperfectly – howlingly so – but there’s at least a tiny little spark at the heart of what we do that is perfect: and that is the little bit of Christ that lives in all of us. It’s what brought us here today. It’s that little bit that makes us the body of Christ.
So what does that mean?
You’re probably familiar with the phrase, What would Jesus do? There was a time when it had a vogue – it was on T-shirts, and bumper stickers, and even got boiled down to the acronym WWJD, celebrating the assumption that most people would recognize it.
Well, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking, What would Jesus do, except for the fact that for most people it usually doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, for many people, the question is kind of a joke. And for those for whom it’s not, when we ask, What would Jesus do, sometimes we come up with an answer; and if it’s a good answer, if it’s anything like what Jesus might actually do, we’d probably see that it’s way too hard for us to even think about trying, and we’d just let it go to the graveyard of good ideas.
The question we should be asking is not, What would Jesus do; but rather, What is Jesus doing? If we take seriously the idea that we are the Body of Christ, then the question becomes, what are we doing? What should I be doing, that Jesus is already doing, somewhere? And is calling me to join in? I’ll give you an example.
It’s been one week since the shootings in Las Vegas. And as our initial shock, horror, disgust, despair – whatever we were feeling – as all that has subsided, I hope that our principal response would be to think as the Body of Christ, and ask: What is Jesus doing here, and what am I being called to do, to be part of that work?
There’s an organization within the Episcopal Church called Bishops United Against Gun Violence – founded by our two bishops after Sandy Hook – that issued a statement last week, which talked about our responsibility, as Christians, “to engage in the debates that shape how Americans live and die, especially when they die due to violence or neglect.” It continued with a very general statement about legislation, with which reasonable people can have varying opinions. But it concluded with words that I think, speak to us all as the Body of Christ: “[A] comprehensive solution to gun violence, whether [that violence] comes in the form of mass shootings, street violence, domestic violence, or suicide, will not simply be a matter of changing laws, but changing lives. Our country is feasting on anger that fuels rage, alienation and loneliness….[W]e nurse grudges and resentments rather than cultivating the respect, concern and affection that each of us owes to the other.”
As we do the liturgy in here: as we live outside these walls as the Body of Christ (flawed and foolish though we be): we follow the way God created us to walk in; we witness to the community of love and peace and joy in which God intends us to live. To everything that goes wrong in this gone-wrong world, from a stubbed toe to the senseless massacre of innocent people, our response as the Body of Christ has to begin there. This is the work of the people – which we do every week – that God has given us to do. Thanks be to God.
