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| Why Some Presbyterians Don't Like Liturgy | | Date Created: Aug 13, 2005, 09:40 PM |
[Note: some of the following can be found in a different form here and there in my book The Lord's Service, but not all of it. I gave this lecture at the first Pre-GA Conference on Reformed Liturgy in 2000. If you haven't read it, I'd love to hear your comments. -JM]
The title of this paper is at once both grotesquely overambitious as well as sheepishly understated. It is overambitious in the sense that it suggests that I might provide some kind of definitive reason or list of reasons for the a- or even anti-liturgical character of much of conservative Presbyterian worship and that I have some fool-proof method of converting those who have been swayed by these reasons. I do not pretend to be able to perform either of these miracles. Despite the provocative title, in this short paper I have something more modest in view. I will attempt to isolate out of many possible historical, social, cultural, philosophical, theological, and practical factors a few that seem (to me) to present a strategic challenge to those of us who are working to restore, or better, re-form and implement a Reformed catholic liturgy in our churches. The title is also timidly understated in that the attitude among many conservative Presbyterians toward liturgy may be much more hostile than the words "don't like" suggest. Many in our churches, truth be told, are downright afraid of liturgy. They fear it. Some may do so out of ignorance, inexperience, or both. They may never have been given any instruction in the biblical and theological rationale for a liturgical service or may simply have never experienced what we are advocating. Others fear it for quasi-historical reasons. There are, of course, good reasons to fear liturgy, if by liturgy one means simply adopting present-day Roman, Eastern Orthodox, or Anglican liturgical services or even repristinating any one past traditional liturgy in the Reformation tradition.
I suppose it is necessary that I stop and provide a brief explanation of what I mean by liturgy, particularly the kind of liturgy that I am (or "we" are) advocating. Well, I mean something like what we just did in morning prayer – a service that embodies in both its form and content, its order and elements, the covenantal or sacrificial approach to God, or better, God's covenantal, sacrificial way of drawing people into his gracious, life-giving presence. Furthermore, a biblical liturgy is one where God draws his people, as a corporate body, not merely as individuals, into his presence and serves them by Word and Sacrament , through the instrumentality of his ordained ministers. That does not mean that the ordained ministry has to perform every act of leadership in the service (there may be a place for lay leadership in reading and prayer), but I do think that the minister ought to be front and center when God speaks and acts for the congregation at certain crucial moments in the liturgy (e.g., at the introit, absolution, baptism, sermon, the Lord's Supper, and benediction) If the ordained ministry does not perform these liturgical functions, then what is the point of ordination? Moreover, the liturgy is corporate in the sense that God's people as a whole , in their spoken and sung responses, participate as a body in every point in the service. A liturgical service will therefore structure the response of the people so that they may participate with one mouth and heart. There is a time and place for individual expressions of piety and worship in the life of the church, but the Sunday morning liturgy is not that time or place. The last dimension of liturgical worship I should call attention to in this very short description is that any liturgy that purports to be biblical will involve not only the whole body of Christ, but also the bodies of the congregation.
Read the rest of the essay here. |
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