What Do You Mean by Liturgy?

When I say I love Christian liturgy - and that I think it is important for the life of the church - I am often misunderstood. People think I mean that I like to read words aloud that are printed in a worship bulletin. That’s not quite right.  What I mean is that I like the prayers, songs and other acts of worship that have deep roots and broad usage in the church. In other words, I value the liturgy we have inherited from our Christian forebears.

One of the benefits of a set liturgy is that you memorize large parts of it through repeated usage. Eventually, you don’t need to read the words from the bulletin or the hymn book. You know them. They are a part of you. They rise up within you as you recite them.

I really don’t really like to recite words composed on Tuesday for use on Sunday, to be thrown into the recycle bin on Monday. Of course, some contemporary liturgies are even worse if you actually reuse them. Few of them are weighty enough to endure for hundreds of years or to unite the church across the generations. Their novelty wears out very fast. They have the lasting appeal of a 1970's kitchen in an HGTV remodel.

I think there are a number of reasons contemporary Christians want to write something new for worship again and again: to make the church appear fresh and relevant; to express one's own individualism and creative spirit; to use liturgy to communicate new ideas; to change the direction of the church; to ease discomfort with the language of previous generations. None of these reasons, in my opinion, are sufficient to discard the historic liturgical language of the church. The received liturgy is the shared possession of the people of God throughout the ages. It is the root by which God nourishes the Christian community.

When worship planners try to restate, paraphrase or correct something in the received liturgy of the church, I want to ask, “What was wrong with the original?” My mind begins to analyze the new text. What are they leaving out? What are they changing? What of the received faith has been lost in translation? That doesn't mean we don't ever change it, but it's not a trivial matter.

In the late 1700's, John Wesley was still using the Book of Common Prayer that had been last revised in 1662. The basic form endured until the 1970s when the "ecumenical consensus" made some important revisions. And as much as I appreciate the liturgical renewal of the 20th century, the absence of some of the earlier texts from worship is a real loss.

With an ever-new and changing liturgy, the words are always imposed on me from the outside. They never have the chance to take root so that they come forth from within me.

At one church I attended, the words of the “affirmation” weren't even available to be read until they were projected page-by-page on the screen. I was expected to recite them cold. My son calls these "ambush liturgies." And whenever I feel I am being ambushed in church, I immediately become resistant to this act of compelled speech. What are they wanting me to say? Do I agree with that? What do you mean, “We”? That’s not what I think or feel at all. The words feel dishonest and I feel manipulated.

I accept a certain incongruence between the text and my experiences in the shared texts we've inherited. I experience that incongruence differently than I do in newly composed texts.  In the texts the church uses every week, I see a great cloud of witness surrounding me, encouraging me, telling me that life in God is more than I am experiencing right now. When I recite the words we've inherited, I am affirming my faith and hope in spite of my current circumstances. The dissonance I experience is a sign of something more significant, more enduring that our present troubles. I just don't get that in the liturgy surprise of the week.

As a means of communication, the one-time liturgy is horrible. The Christian liturgy is not primarily a means of sharing new and interesting ideas, but a means of participation in the body of Christ. Trying to speak and digest new information at the same time is a nearly impossible task. The clever, inventive worship planner has skipped a step. Instead of presenting an idea, letting me process it and then claim ownership of it, the author wants to put words in my mouth before I can even think about what I'm saying.  The idea the author is trying to convey never becomes a part of me.

If, dear preacher, you have something to tell me, just tell me and then convince me of it. Don’t think the public recitation of your words will make them any more believable.

And then there are the mislabeled liturgies. Affirmations of faith that don’t affirm the historic Christian faith in all its fullness. Confessions of sin that don’t confess personal sin. Absolutions that don’t absolve. Prayers targeted more at the speaker-listener than at God. Ascriptions of glory and praise that avoid Biblical language for God or describe him in sub-Christian ways.

I grew up with a basic evangelical form of worship: an opening prayer, a hymn, a longer prayer, the Lord's Prayer, another hymn, the collection of the offering, a choral anthem, one scripture reading, a sermon, an invitation hymn and a benediction. Added to that structure were the Doxology (Old 100th) and - later - the Gloria Patri. In college I started attending a progressive church with newly written "responsive readings" for every worship service and at first I thought that was a wonderful innovation. Eventually, however, I became familiar with the more traditional (or catholic) forms of worship found in the Book of Common Prayer, the Methodist books of worship, the Lutheran green and red books and the order of the Mass. By comparison, contemporary responsive readings seemed to grow more shallow and more preachy.

Quite frankly, I would now rather attend an old-fashioned preaching service with familiar orthodox hymns, the Lord’s Prayer and maybe the common doxology than a “liturgical” service with trite, throw-away readings. After all, hymns are liturgy, too.

Still better, let me also bow before the cross, kneel at the altar, chant the Psalms, welcome the gospel with historic acclamations, confess the ecumenical creeds and join in the apostolic liturgy of the table. Let me make the sign of the cross at the invocation of the Holy Trinity. Let me sing the Magnificat, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Sursum Corda, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. Give me the Great Litany, with the assembly singing “Lord, have mercy.” Give me a trinitarian collect as the Prayer of the Day. Give me the Prayers of the People, with the congregation responding, “Hear our prayer.”

Let me do and say things in worship that Christians have done and said for centuries, not for the last few weeks. That’s the kind of liturgy I value. That's the kind of liturgy that sustains the church and imparts the faith over the generations.