Section #21

COMMON TRADITIONS -- LITURGY

Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages." ~ Opening acclamation in the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

In the last section we talked about ways to use the Christian calendar as a means of spiritual formation. In this section we're going to look at how the liturgy forms and moves us closer to maturity in Christ.

The word "liturgy" comes from the Greek leitourgia, where it referred to "public service." In contrast to our private or personal devotions, liturgy is the public act of serving God. It is what we do together to honor the Lord.

Specifically, we are talking about what is often called a "worship service" in many Protestant churches. This is the service that is typically held on Sunday mornings in most places. (However, there is no reason that it has to be on Sunday mornings. In some places it is held in the afternoon or the evening. Sometimes it happens on Saturday evenings, in anticipation of Sunday.)

The reason that Christians have worshiped on Sunday is that it is the day that Jesus was raised from the dead. So, in the Christian calendar each Sunday is a mini-Easter, a celebration of the Resurrection and new life. It is a time set aside to acknowledge the graciousness of God and to honor him for his greatness.

Robert Schaper, one of my own teachers, put it this way, "In a very real sense worship is our Spirit-led reaction to what we believe God has said and done."(1)

Thus, the liturgy is primarily a service for God. It is not really about us -- but about him.

However, there is a certain paradox, a delightful truth, in all of this. Somehow in the process of focusing on God and worshiping him, we are changed. We are ourselves transformed by that experience. Even though it is not about us we end up benefiting. And as such the actions of the liturgy become an experience and pattern that we draw upon for our own spiritual growth.

The idea is that we need to strive to live lives in conformity to the liturgy. Liturgy is always going to be somewhat foreign to our lives and our native cultures because our lives and cultures are focused on us. But the liturgy is focused on God.

All churches have liturgy -- although not all churches use the word liturgy to describe what they do in worship. Thus we are referring to the actions and words that are a part of worship.

Now, not all churches have identical worship patterns or practices. Some churches have very complex patterns and some are very simple in the way they structure worship. Ideally we will be worshiping somewhere in the middle between extremely simple and extremely complex. Regardless of whether we are simple or complex, though, the way we all do things is not uniform from church to church. Even among congregations of similar mind on this issue there is variation. And uniformity is not really necessary.

There are, however, certain identifiable patterns that are fairly common in the churches throughout the world. These are rooted in common traditions that the churches have over time come to see as rich and helpful. So, I will talk about these common patterns. Again, I recognize that your local church will probably do things at least a little differently. And that is okay. The goal today is to begin to discuss how the liturgy shapes our lives.

Do you remember the previous section when we talked about using the Lord's Prayer to shape our own prayers? Well, the idea here is very similar -- except we're talking about using worship as a pattern to shape the entirety of life.

Churches vary in how they do things but typically,the liturgy has four components:

1. Acts of Entrance

2. Service of the Word

3. Service of the Table

4. The Sending

The following components are often found among the Acts of Entrance:

• Prelude -- music and time to focus on why we've gathered
• Entrance hymn or songs -- time to proclaim God's greatness
• Greeting -- time to acknowledge that our worship is corporate
• Call to worship -- time of focus more on why we're gathered
• Invocation -- invoking or calling on the name of God, acknowledging his presence in prayer
• An act of praise -- Songs or psalms further acknowledging God grace and greatness
• Confession and forgiveness -- When we truly consider the greatness of God we become aware of our own sin and failure, which we acknowledge together.

As you begin your days throughout the week how might you incorporate some or all of these aspects of the liturgy into your life? Do you begin your day with a song? Do you call on the name of the Lord asking him to be present during the day? Do you confess your sins and seek forgiveness -- starting the day with a clean slate?

The Service of the Word usually includes the following:

• Old Testament reading
• A response -- perhaps a communal psalm or singing of the Gloria Patri
• Epistle reading
• A response -- perhaps the singing of "Alleluia" or a hymn
• Gospel reading
• Sermon/Homily -- response to the scripture readings
• Communal affirmation of faith -- response to the sermon, often a creed
• Prayers of the People -- the church prays together for the needs of the people and the world
• Passing the Peace -- acknowledging and sharing the peace of Christ with a greeting

How might you incorporate some of these elements into your day? Do you read the Bible, pray, say the Apostle's Creed or the Jesus Creed? How are you passing Christ's peace to all you meet?

The Service of the Table usually includes:

• The offering -- People bring their tithes and offerings for the Lord while the offering from God at the table is prepared
• Invitation to the table
• The Great Thanksgiving -- Prayer and litany which recites biblical history, putting the table in perspective of the big biblical picture
• Words of Institution
• Prayer of consecration and the Lord's Prayer
• Breaking of the Bread
• Acclamation of praise to the Lamb
• Sharing of the Bread and Cup
• Prayer of thanks for the gifts we have received

Each day is filled with opportunities to offer gifts to the Lord. What do those opportunities look like in your life? As you eat your daily meals do you offer thanks for all the gifts? Can you remember the "Bread of Life" as you are eating your daily bread? Do you use the Lord's Prayer to pray for all that is happening in your life?

The Sending usually includes:

• The benediction -- God's blessing
• A final song or hymn -- focused on sending people out for mission
• Words of challenge and dismissal

You've been sent out with a blessing from God. How are you sharing that blessing today? How are you living out and sharing the Word you have received? Do you see your life as a mission trip?

Hopefully, this brief outline has sparked your imagination and you will start to consider the liturgy as a pattern of living to take with you everyday during the week. However, the liturgy is more than a mere pattern. The liturgy itself, the act of worship, becomes a manifestation of the living reality of our faith. Something happens there that charges our faith batteries. When we have been together as God's people, gathered in his presence, focusing on him, we experience the kingdom of God in a new and refreshing way. Thus we can return to the world to live out that kingdom.

The big discussion in Hebrews 1-10 is about worship and how Christ is the highest high priest. The discussion in chapter 10 culminates in an exhortation to not neglect the gathering of the believers. To be faithful to Christ we must also be faithful to the meeting of his people.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. ~ Hebrews 10:19-25 (NLT)

In other words, something so significant and transforming happens in our collective worship that we dare not neglect the gathering of believers. As we encounter Christ the high priest together we end up encouraging one another and motivating each other to live out his life in the world.

The following is from an essay called the "Formative Power of Public Worship" by Gordon T. Smith. You may have to read through it several times to grasp what he is saying. You will be asked to summarize this essay in the assignment for this section.

The public act of Christian worship (the liturgy) is the single most formative event in the life of the Christian community. Men and women are transformed into the image of Christ through the means of grace; and nothing is so significant in this perspective as the regular, consistent participation in corporate worship. It is for this reason that worship has always been seen as the central life of the Christian community. Other components or dimensions of our common life together flow out of this event.

Yet Christians often underestimate or fail to appreciate the formative power of the liturgy. St. Paul stresses that in worship all things are to be done for edification (1 Cor. 14:26). Many thus conclude that worship can only be justified if it produces immediate results. Some are looking for visible, tangible signs of change in people’s lives; and the liturgy seems to produce little if any change. From all appearances, the worshiper leaves the church on Sunday much the same person they were when they entered. Worship is readily seen to be a ritual of little inherent significance and value.

This conclusion leads to different responses. Some give up on worship. That is, they decide that since worship does not produce the desired result, worship is of no consequence. And so they downgrade the liturgy and make it but another event in the life of the community, one that is expendable if other more attractive or more useful events can be found. Or they begin to call just about everything that the church does worship. Christians may come together, may sing a few religious songs, may take an offering, and they have a talk from the pastor. But in effect, this is nothing more than a religious gathering.

On the other hand, there are those who affirm worship, but argue that the routine, the ritual or consistent order of worship, is not in itself helpful. They conclude that we need to supplement the liturgy or make something happen to justify worship—for it is inferred that the act of worship alone is meaningless. Some try to make it an educational event, stressing the importance of learning. Others add an altar call, thinking that if worshipers are called to a specific act of the will, the event as a whole is somehow more useful. The irony, when this happens, is that they then tend to overstate the potential of worship for spiritual transformation. When the worship event becomes educational or focused on an altar call, it is often expected to bring about radical or immediate change because learning took place or because someone genuinely responded to the preached Word with a decision or prayer. But the reality is that the human predicament is profound and complex and is not resolved in a single dramatic or even decisive moment. On the other hand, the persistent and continued celebration of the liturgy has the capacity, over time, to effect real change that results in spiritual transformation.

A potential harm occurs when worship leaders in a sense force the hand of God by seeking to make the worship event educational or by supplementing it with a call to action. The value or significance of worship as a transforming event is often undermined because its true nature and goal is bypassed.

The liturgy is formative. The consistent practice of a simple order of worship that is designed to enable the people of God to bring blessing to God and to hear God’s voice does encourage the Christian believer to experience the transforming grace of God. It is edifying. But its formative influence is subtle, quiet, and, as often as not, imperceptible. To appreciate the transforming power of public worship, we must resolve to consistently and simply worship in spirit and truth with commitment to bless God and to allow God to speak. Only then is worship formative. Only then is the common act of public worship an event that enables Christian believers to know the grace of the living God.

The Liturgy as a Transforming Event

The act the public worship brings transforming grace to the believer in a variety of ways.

First, the liturgy as a whole is redemptive in that worship itself is the purpose for which humanity has been created. In worship, we fulfill our identity, purpose, and fundamental orientation. The liturgy, then, forms the individual Christian believer by providing a structure, setting, and context for fulfilling the end for which the Christian was created.

Second, the different components within worship are individually formative. The Christian believer is called to worship and provided a forum for meeting and hearing God in the company of fellow men and women. The structure may not serve every believer equally well, but a good worship event incorporates the tradition and wisdom of a community such that any willing worshiper can respond within the framework provided and find God. There is no suggestion that every aspect within worship is equally formative or of equal importance to each participant. Some will find some aspects of worship more significant on some occasions than others. We overload worship with our own expectations of immediate significance and consequence when we begin to think that every aspect of worship should be meaningful or fulfilling to each person present. Some will be on the fringe, observing. Others will be fully engaged. Few, if any, will be fully and equally engaged in every aspect of the worship.

But when engaged, the believer will find the structure, encouragement, and the means by which to respond to God, meet God, hear God, give offerings to God, and know the benediction of God. The gift of the church to its members is simply that of providing a regular, consistent, and accessible occasion by which God can be found.

One of the formative aspects of the liturgy is that it brings a discipline to the life of the individual believer. Through the regular celebration of the liturgy, the community as a whole makes disciples of one another through the discipline of corporate worship.

Third, the event the public worship restores hope. Each gathering of God’s people represents another victory, another proclamation, verbal and nonverbal, that despite the headlines in the daily newspapers and despite the discouragement each Christian faces in the world—either in making a home, in fulfilling an occupation, or in the frustration of failure, unemployment, or death—Christ Jesus remains on the throne of the universe, still forgiving sins, still speaking truth, still filling his people with his Spirit, and still granting his benediction upon all who called on his name. Worship, then, can and must be an event that brings encouragement and hope—thus empowering the individual to effectively be in the world and fulfill a vocation.

Fourth, public worship focuses the lives of believers on the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus—in effect fulfilling the exhortation of St. Paul that having received Christ Jesus as Lord, they be rooted and built up in Christ (Col. 2:6-7). Through worship, Christians call one another back to the central articles of faith. We call one another to remembrance that the death and the Resurrection might be central to our thinking, enabling us to live in its light. But more, worship actually roots us in the Christ event such that our lives are informed and actually transformed by the events. The cross and the Resurrection become immediate to our lives.

Finally, the event of worship humbles Christians. We’re humbled in that the liturgy draws us into a grand and sacred heritage. We stand with every other believer in history; and we worship in communion with all other believers, affirming one gospel, worshiping the same Triune God, and submitting to the same preached Word. Each time we are in some respect enabled to see that we do not stand alone as spiritual hermits.

But this humbling is actually more immediate. For each time we gather for worship, we’re led in worship by another human. It is but a mere human who preaches the Word of Christ; and it is but another mortal that administers Holy Communion. We are forced again and again into the reality that God’s grace is mediated through frail instruments, reminding us of our own failure and weakness.

The central and most significant events of worship are the Word and the sacrament. All Christians recognize the formative power of the Word; and those Christians within more liturgical traditions appreciate that the grace of God is mediated through the Lord’s Supper. The preached Word may not appear to have immediate effect. Christians, like all other people, are bombarded daily with words, words, and more words. Whether it is the verbal barrage of the radio, the television, or just the intense verbal context in which we live and work, words dominate our lives. With such an onslaught, words lose their meaning and power.

The recognition of the power of the preached Word lies in an appreciation of the potential of God’s Word—God’s creative and redemptive Word. Through God’s Word, God brings all things into existence; through this same Word, all things are redeemed. And the preached Word, the consistent exposition of Scripture, is this Word. It transforms; it has inherent power. When found within the context of worship, it needs no supplement. It fulfills its purpose. God is at work when God speaks.

We may actually undermine the transforming work of the Word when we elicit a response prematurely. The preaching of the Word definitely includes the call for response, conversion, and obedience. But we are not transformed by our actions of response. The Word redeems; the preached Word transforms. But this word effects radical change slowly, subtly, and, as often as not, imperceptibly—perhaps over the course of a lifetime, even a generation. The preacher is called to faithfully preach the Word. As people hear, listen, and obey, they are transformed not by their actions in response but by the Word itself.

The sacrament of Holy Communion, when it accompanies and complements the Word, is the means by which Christ is present among his people, bringing them to an awareness of the forgiveness of their sins, to his nourishment, and to his empowering grace. Christ graces his people through word and deed.

The basic assumption that lies behind the celebration of public worship is that not one of us is capable of sustaining his or her own spiritual life. We only grow up in Christ Jesus as we are integrated within a Christian community and only as, within that community, we participate in the fundamental act of worship. The liturgy is the gift of the community to each of its members—a gift that is the most fundamental reference point for the Christian experience of being in and following Jesus Christ. We need each other; more to the point, we need to worship together, for only then will we, together, grow up in our faith and know the transforming grace of Christ. And when we do, we find that public worship is the most formative event in the life of the people of God.

Having stressed the importance and potential of worship, I must also emphasize that worship is formative when it does not stand alone. Men and women who are formed through the event of worship are those who have incorporated other individual and corporate disciplines of the spiritual life into their experience, such as solitude and personal prayer, study and the devotional use of Scripture, and service in the world. Though worship is the central feature of the life of the church, the liturgy itself is the center, though not the whole, of the life of the Christian believer.

The Task of Those Who Care for and Lead Worship

What makes the worship event formative? How can a worship leader most effectively allow the celebration of praise itself to be the occasion in which God graces and transforms the people of God?

(1) The worship event is most helpful when the order of worship no longer is the focus of attention. C.S. Lewis once noted that if the liturgy is regularly changed, then the worshiper is observing the order of worship rather than worshiping. There should be enough consistency in the order of the worship event so that the worshipers do not need to think in terms of “what’s next this morning?” but can instead, freely give themselves to worship.

(2) The worship leader must of necessity always recognize that a true servant is a shepherd or midwife, not an emcee. Effective worship leadership enables men and women to address their praise to God through the structure of worship itself. There is no need to imitate the emcee of the television variety show. Also there are few things that violate the quality of the liturgy as worship leaders who cajole worshipers into a level of engagement or participation for which the worshiper is not ready. That is, sometimes the leader calls for an emotional reaction or a physical expression that the worshiper is not prepared to welcome. The genius of good worship leadership is that the worshipers are able to participate on various levels, including the physical.

(3) Effective leadership and worship is characterized by as few peripheral, nonessential words, actions, and forms as possible. Worship leaders provide a disservice to their people if they are constantly interrupting worship with brief exhortations, casual comments of no direct bearing on the worship. The worship leader is most effective, also, when the temptation to explain, introduce, and clarify is resisted. Each hymn does not need a verbal introduction; each event in the worship does not need to be explained again. We can assume two things: a basic intelligence in the worshipers and that each worshiper desires to meet God.

(4) Worship is formative when the order or structure worship takes account of two factors: the need for consistency, order, and tradition—for each worshiper stands in an historical community—and the need for cultural relevancy. The worship event links the Christian with a tradition or spiritual heritage. This brings strength and depth to the worship event. But worship must be contemporary, for we do not worship in an historical or cultural vacuum. The language, forms, and symbols of both song and prayer, of entering and leaving worship, and of giving our offerings must all have meaning and significance for the worshipers within their cultural, historical, and social setting. The worship will be in the vernacular (in the broadest sense of the term).

Perhaps nothing else so threatens to drive the worship agenda and tempt the worship leader as the persistent demand for worship to be entertaining, informative, fun, and novel. We have this idea that people will return and their ministries will grow if we have something exciting for them to return to. But the most fundamental need of the people of God is a worship event that is consistent, is orderly, and through predictable forms enables them to meet God and hear God’s word. Never for a moment is this a justification for boring worship. It is merely intended as a release from the pressure to make people feel good. We can affirm that the deepest needs of God’s people are found not through good feelings or entertainment but through the consistent act of worship wherein the great hymns of the faith are sung, sins are confessed, the faith is affirmed, the Word is preached, the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, the offerings are collected, and the benediction given.

If the Word is preached in a manner that is concise and clear and the Lord’s Supper administered in a way in which the worshiper can understand and easily participate, then God is indeed met. That very encounter with God is, by definition, formative. As such, the most significant and life-transforming event that happens every week is the quiet, consistent act of Christians worshiping the living God. It is not mentioned in the headlines of the daily newspaper, but it is the most crucial event in the life of any town or city. For in a quiet, unobtrusive way, God is bringing about a revolution.(2)

SECTION #21 NOTES

(1) Robert N. Schaper, In His Presence (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984) p. 14.

(2) Gordon T. Smith, "The Formative Power of Public Worship" in The Complete Library of Christian Worship, Volume 7, The Ministries of Christian Worship, Robert E. Webber, editor (Nashville, TN: Star Song Publishing Group) pp. 330-334.

SECTION #21 ASSIGNMENT

(1) Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of Dr. Smith's essay "The Formative Power of Public Worship." (10 points possible)

(2) What are two points made by Smith with which you strongly agree? Why? Explain your thinking in 2-3 paragraphs. (10 points possible)

(3) Identify something in the essay that you do NOT understand and in 2-3 paragraphs explain why you think it is confusing. Responses which say that you do not understand the meaning of a word are not acceptable. If you do not understand the meaning of a word (and there are probably several words in there that are new to you) please look it up. (10 points possible)

(4) BONUS: Create an outline which shows everything which happens in a worship gathering of your church. Make brief notes explaining why your church does things the way it does. (10 points possible)

Again, email your answers to me at bboydston@piu.edu. Write your answers in the email itself -- or if you use a word processor, copy and paste the answers into the email. Make sure that your name, the name which you used to register for this class, appears at the top of the work.

I will respond to you as soon as possible. Do not wait for a response from me before you start working on your next assignment.