Worship: Ontological; Interpersonal; Aesthetic

There are instructional or didactic elements in worship. For example, the recitation of a creed in Morning Prayer or in the Eucharist is partly instructional. Yet worship is not fundamentally or principally didactic in nature and purpose. Worship is ontological, interpersonal, and aesthetic. Worship expresses and shapes our being as creatures in the image of God, our relationships with God and our neighbor, and our sense of the sublime and desirable. Worship involves and informs our whole being, individual and corporate, in truth, beauty, and goodness; in faith, hope, and love. The forms and substance of worship, the rites and ceremonies, ought to reflect and enact this multi-dimensional endeavor.

The Grammar of the Soul

The grammar of worship in the Book of Common Prayer, if put to use regularly, has power to invoke and voice the grammar of the soul in the praying community.

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Rain over night, overcast at dawn
This morning in early June
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Laden with warm, humid air

Struggle from night's sheets
I try to wake, try to pray

Just beyond the window, a
Carolina wren descants life
Lifts notes full and strong
As if in natural psalm

Moved as the Trees

Late in February, this day begins at 5:00 a.m. with a liturgy for morning prayer from the Northumbria Community. A single light at lowest setting defines the room sufficiently. Outside, well before twilight and dawn, darkness reduces details to forms and hints of things.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Today, rather than pushing ahead with the next words in the liturgy, I pause and close my eyes after reading this invocation. A gust of wind animates the bare limbs of the poplars and beeches near the house, that they toss and sound the unseen, the unheard. I become mindful of presence, wholly other yet intimate, and I am moved as the trees.

Visiting the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Karen and I spent several hours early on Saturday exploring the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, inside and outside, in northeast Washington. It is a magnificent edifice. The works of sacred art in the Great Upper Church and in the lower Crypt Church instantiate a panoply of theological ideas, human experiences, colors, and forms in great beauty. It was a splendid visit. We look forward to returning to the basilica to absorb more of that which cannot be fully, humanly absorbed.

Self, Finitude, and Change

"Because for us personality is synthetic, composite, successive, and finite, we are related [to others] always in some sense 'over against,' in a fragmentary way, and to be with others always involves for us a kind of death, the limit of our being."

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. In Part 2: The Beauty of the Infinite, ii. Divine Fellowship.

Hart points to our finitude, to the limit of our being, in describing our personality especially as "successive." This obviously correlates with the issue of continuity and discontinuity in personality, in self, over time. I do not pretend a profound or even adequate understanding of or rumination on this matter. Nevertheless, one way to entertain the issue is to think of the dynamic of liturgy (word and sacrament), particularly as liturgy involves death and resurrection. Clearly, liturgy involves Jesus' incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Put another way, liturgy engages us in creation, fall, and redemption. These mean life, death, and new life for us, in Jesus' life, death, and new life. Liturgy then "always involves for us a kind of death, the limit of our being." Yet as Hart goes on to state in his own context, God transforms our death into life, our limits into the charity of self-giving. Transpose that to the dynamic of liturgy. Liturgy acts and enacts God's transformation. This means in liturgy we die and rise. Liturgy is thus both superset and subset of God's transformation of our life. In Jesus we must die and rise, not once only in conversion, but daily in transformation. One of the chief purposes of liturgy then, through word and sacrament, is to deconstruct and reconstruct us week in and week out, to the very end of life. We miss, even thwart, God's transformation when we reinforce a static self by merely attending liturgy, by merely persisting and insisting, unchanged, in life. That kind of continuity of the self over time is finally death. Rather, we must be a different person leaving the liturgy than we were entering the liturgy. We must be a different person ending the day than we were beginning the day. In sum, we must submit to God's transformation, to death and life, to death and life in Jesus, for only thus will we come to that end which is true continuity of personality, of self, given us by God in love.

All a Kind of Praise

A brisk but glorious morning, with bright sunshine, trees greening, redbuds and dogwoods blossoming. I spent a good hour and a half early today slowly traversing a gravel country road in Fauquier County, Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge, with a farm and a lovely creek nearby, and a bald eagle flying over head at one point. All a kind of praise.

Sunday into Monday: Taking Worship into the Week

“Work is not redemptive – God’s work – but it is or it can be devoted.” So writes Donald Hall in his book Life Work. I take this to mean that our work, however dutifully and diligently we apply ourselves, does not redeem. It does not redeem ourselves or others. God does. God redeems us and others. That’s his business, his work.

Yet our work can be devoted. I don’t think Hall urges us to be workaholics. I don’t think he presses an argument for work as life. Rather, he refers to how we might go about our work; indeed, how we might go about life. The implicit encouragement is to engage work in specific and life in general devotedly rather than blithely. This suggests a way of undertaking our work, our life, wherein we labor lovingly – toward God, toward neighbor, toward the world around us. Thus, not work as life, but life as work. As craft.

Liturgy assists us here. The word “liturgy” stems from the Greek “leitourgia,” referring to a “public work.” When Greek citizens undertook a project of public service, they performed “leitourgia.” The translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek used this word for the public service in the temple. Early Christians carried forward this religious sense. When they gathered to worship God, they performed “leitourgia.” The aim, at best, is to serve God devotedly not blithely. “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” (Psalm 29:2, ESV.)

Incorporating Greek and Judeo-Christian notions then, when we undertake work and life devotedly, lovingly, toward God and neighbor and world, we perform public service, liturgy, worship – the craft of holiness – Sunday into Monday.

Why Do We Read the Bible?

Every week, during worship, we read a passage or passages from the Bible. Many of the churches with a more formal liturgy use several passages every Sunday. One lesson comes from the Old Testament; one from the epistles in the New Testament; and one from the gospels. A psalm or portion of a psalm is also read. Week in and week out, three lessons and a psalm. That is a lot of material from a very old book. Nothing in the Bible was written more recently than about 1,900 years ago, and much of it was written hundreds of years before that. What other book of comparable age do any of us read regularly, if at all?

Week in and week out, three lessons and a Psalm. Why? Why do we continue to read so much of this ancient book so regularly? It can seem so alien and baffling. Names of people and places, religious and cultural customs, historical events, political systems – these can seem so outlandish to us, sometimes incomprehensible or repugnant. How much of it do we understand and find meaningful when we hear it read in worship on Sunday mornings, even if a preacher preaches directly and extensively on it right after we hear it? Why not read something more contemporary, something more accessible and obviously relevant, if we are going to read anything regularly in worship? Surely we could each come up with at least one or two favored books, from a variety of styles and subjects, almost certainly written considerably more recently than the newest of the New Testament.

There are a number of possible answers why we read the Bible. Some might say we read the Bible just because it is old, a treasured artifact. Some, just because it is traditional to read it. Let me offer another reason, more vital and convincing, derived from Colossians 2: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith….”

If we are going to live in Jesus, if we are going to root and grow in Jesus, if we are going to establish ourselves in faith in him – we must know his life, his mind, his heart. The primary, definitive source for knowing the life, mind, and heart of Jesus is the Bible. The Bible is God’s gracious, authoritative gift for informing us about Jesus. Where else would we get to know the life, mind, and heart of Jesus? We read the Bible so much, then, to gain information about Jesus – not to mention the Father, the Holy Spirit, and much more!

At the same time, we read the Bible for so much more than information. We read it for transformation. We read it because God speaks to us in and through the Bible not so much to re-educate us as to re-create us, to renovate us in life, mind, and heart. In the beginning, God spoke, and creation came into being. In Jesus, God spoke to re-create us, to give us new being. The chief, definitive, authoritative way God speaks to us now is in and through the Bible. The primary purpose of God’s speaking to us in and through the Bible is to transform our life, mind, and heart into the likeness of Jesus. The power that God gives and that we receive for this is the power of the Holy Spirit, shaping us in and through the living Word incarnate (Jesus) and written (the Bible).

The question then is whether we read the Bible. To be sure we read and hear the Bible when we come to worship. This is good, very good. At the same time, we need to read it more. We need to read it on our own frequently, regularly, even daily, outside of church, outside of Sunday worship. We need to ground ourselves in the Bible if we are to grow in likeness to Jesus. Let each of us commit, then, to read the Bible – truly, deeply, regularly – that we may live in Jesus, that we may be rooted and built up in Jesus, that we may be established in the faith, according to Jesus.

Not Obedience but Devotion

Not obedience but devotion. Obedience certainly ought to be woven into our response to and relationship with God. Yet God calls us not to obedience but to devotion. God comes to us in Christ to secure not our obedience but our devotion. Obedience involves only a part of ourselves. Devotion involves the whole self. Devotion bespeaks the relation of being to Being, of person to Person. Devotion constitutes our truest, fullest, highest response to God.

Sun on Rose

Above the wood altar
translucent glass illuminates
the dim sanctuary.
Where flower spreads
between wood and window
earth and sky unite
in suppliant petal;
colors press, adhere,
heighten, become color anew –
green and red, white of light,
life and death, and life again.
Sun on rose takes flesh –
perfect execution of beauty.

During the Early Eucharist

The Eucharistic prayers are now over. We enter into the climax of the liturgy. We enter that strange time within our ordinary time. We are not obliged to intrude with human speech. Indeed, we are obliged not to intrude. Now is the waiting in thought and prayer, the slow movement forward, the kneeling to receive, and the return to waiting. Thus we participate in the substance of life. People wait while others move forward, receive, and return. There is a quietly expectant mood, amidst sounds of feet, clothes, and murmured words. These are the only words, what priest and layperson say when administering bread and wine. And these are not our words, but God’s words to us and for us. The prior busy speech we have offered is now muted, for we focus on these words, these elements. Priest and laity, amidst the details, the colors, the movement, the waiting, are now here for nothing else but these words and these elements. Christ’s plain and majestic chant of sorrow and joy, of death and life, comes to us in the breaking of bread, the pouring of wine. And we receive quietly, exultantly.