Carl complained to me once that his pastor, “only preaches about the lethargy.” That startled me. Were the sermons really about drowsiness? No, Carl had a tendency for the oddly apt malapropism. The pastor’s preaching was largely about liturgy. But “lethargy” was a regular part of the experience.
I believe liturgy is important – but I understand Carl’s frustration: liturgy’s not good as a constant topic of preaching. Liturgy isn’t so much something to talk about or to explain, as something to do. Still, now and then, it’s good to talk about it.
“We don’t do liturgy in our church,” says another friend.”Yes you do,” I say.
“We don’t have any ritual,” friends sometimes say. Yes, you do.
Let’s take ritual first: it’s about following a pattern in worship. Sometimes the pattern is newer, sometimes more time-tested, even over centuries, but it’s a pattern either way.
One of my non-ritual friends’ patterns of ritual divides the Sunday service into two main parts, which he calls “the worship” and “the teaching.” The first part of his service is song – lots of song – and prayer – passionate prayer. The second part is the scripture and preaching, usually with a powerpoint outline for folks to follow and copy to notes, and with an offering and altar call at the end. That’s the pattern.
Another friend is a reader in a Russian Orthodox church. For him, the ritual is more elaborate, involving hymns that have been sung for hundreds of years, prayers that have been prayed every week for a thousand years, scriptures of the day and a sermon, then the sacrament of the Eucharist according to a procedure that’s been followed for fifteen hundred years. I can’t begin to describe the intricacies.
And Epworth LeSourd? Our ritual is somewhere between.
All three of our churches’ rituals are forms into which our communities can pour our hearts and engage our minds in genuine, authentic worship, worship that is transformational. All three congregations have ritual. Ritual is the form. What makes the difference is what we put into the form.
And liturgy: Sometimes, we use the word “liturgy” to mean the same thing as ritual: the form the church uses for worship, the pattern into which the people can pour their hearts and minds. If we don’t pour our selves into it – the people of the congregation, not just the people up front – then it’s just a show with performers and an audience, and it’s not liturgy, and it’s hollow worship. Liturgy means the “work of the people.” Liturgy is what we the people do when we gather in worship. And whether that’s fancy or plain, loud or silent, classical or rocking out, it’s the work of the people of God in which the Holy Spirit comes to work with amazing grace.
John Wesley once said that the Methodists were a body of people “having the form and seeking the power of godliness.” The form is whatever framework has proven useful through the ages, or has proven useful in our lives. The power comes, when we pour ourselves into the form, trusting the Spirit’s transforming work in the work of the people.
well written, thank you