Posted on 05/06/2016 6:37:34 AM PDT by marshmallow
I was raised in a non-liturgically based Christian denomination and have since spent the vast majority of my adult life in a Pentecostal/Charismatic context. Suffice it to say, I was not well-versed in church liturgy. At least not in the traditional sense of the word.
However, my experience in more formal liturgically-based church gatherings have always caused me to be more thoughtfully engaged in the service. Not just intellectually, but in contemplative, reflective, and prayerful ways as well.
And, you know what I’ve learned? Liturgical cues give me the space to pause and ponder. Liturgical cues give me the space to reflect more deeply on the biblical passage being read, the creed being recited or the symbol being emphasized. And, this ‘pause’ has helped me to better appreciate the teaching emphasis in that moment.
I’ve also discovered that I have a greater tendency to remember the lessons long after the service has ended.
In my experience contemporary church service styles rarely yield the same results as those I've experienced in more formal liturgically-based settings. Why? For three reasons.
1. Most contemporary church gatherings rarely incorporate formal liturgical mechanisms into their order of service
For example, if there is any scripture reading at all, it almost always comes in the form of the pastor's text and little more. From my vantage point, we rarely create the space and time to just read the bible as a community, without commentary.
To allow the words and stories to enter our hearts and minds for pondering. To imagine ourselves within the stories, as characters in the unfolding drama.
To pause and listen to the scriptures being read as a community. To pause and allow the bible to speak to us and for us, as it forms us into a Jesus-looking community.
We need these liturgical............
(Excerpt) Read more at christianweek.org ...
Matthew 13:52.
There was a time, before I became a lay elder and music director in my current LCMS church, that I went to a liturgical church every Sunday in the AM, and a charismatic non-liturgical church every Sunday in the PM. I found God in the drama of the liturgy, and I found God in the power of the Spirit in the charismata, and having both made my relationship to God that much stronger. I have never met anyone else who had the same experience: they want one and despise the other, which to me is a great shame.
Thanks for your post, because it gives me Comfort to know that an LCMS member, like myself, needs to find a way to balance the current weight the LCMS places on “doctrinal purity” with the weight the Church “fathers”—including Paul—placed on the need for us as believers to “put off” our “old self” and “be made new in the attitude” of our minds...through the power of the Holy Spirit...(Eph. 4:23) “so that Christ may dwell in” our “hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17).
I like them both as well.
So you are not alone.
The author prescribes more play acting. It is as in some Catholic churches in the heyday of Vatican II derived contortions when we got church committees designing “creative” liturgies as in “how can we make it more relevant” and liturgy itself became a show, a performance. Praise God most of that is gone but Catholics have not shed the performance model of those days, not yet. The priest still faces the congregation and is still more in the model of an emcee than is meet.
**If we do, I believe we will reap the benefits of a people who will...
•become more biblically-informed and biblically-aware,
•embrace the beauty and value of symbol,
•begin to slow down and incorporate moments of peace, quiet, and thoughtful reflection into their lives,
•no longer be satisfied with being entertained, but seek for ways to actively contribute to the life of the body.
There is a better way.**
There is a liturgical way.**
The Catholic Church is a liturgical guide for all.
I think that corporate worship services can be a good keynote, but they don’t presume to satisfy every spiritual need. We have to carry the Lord into what we’re doing every hour of our “ordinary” day.
Just because a church wants to keep its doctrine true to the bible (which is exactly the right thing to do) doesn’t mean a life of faith has to be an utterly cerebral pursuit. The same God who made the brain made the guts too.
Except when it fails.
Amen to that.
And I really believe that, “by grace through faith”, the law which once terrified us because of the fear of God’s wrath now brings joy
through the Holy Spirit, Who has written it’s commandments on our hearts. Or as Paul puts it:
“You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink bur with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Cor. 3:6)
Amen to that.
And I really believe that, “by grace through faith”, the law which once terrified us because of the fear of God’s wrath now brings joy
through the Holy Spirit, Who has written it’s commandments on our hearts. Or as Paul puts it:
“You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink bur with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Cor. 3:6)
The Suicide of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy
Catholic Family News ^ | January, 2005 | Father Paul Kramer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1346700/posts
+1
When it comes to liturgy, no one holds a candle to the Orthodox. I say that not as a slight on the Catholic liturgy you follow, which differs very little from the Lutheran liturgy which I follow. But the Spirit of God is found in the Orthodox liturgy, I think, in depths that I have not experienced elsewhere, including the Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions. The paradox of the majesty and the approachability of God is there.
Evidently you have not attended a Tridentine Mass. It far surpasses the Orthodox.
From this morning’s post by “Brothers of John the Steadfast,” a Lutheran liturgical organization; I found it interesting, given the thread here:
“The history of ritual is largely a history of what humans do. But Luther insisted that in liturgy God does something. The Christian mass, he insisted, bucking a long history, activates God’s testament, his last will. … Martin Luther’s authority was Hebrews 9.17, ‘For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.’
“Who has ever heard that he who receives an inheritance has done a good work? He simply takes to himself a benefit. Likewise in the mass we give nothing to Christ, but only receive from him; unless they are willing to call this a good work, that a person sits still and permits himself to be benefited, given food and drink, clothed and healed, helped and redeemed. [Luther’s Works, vol. 35, p. 93]
“Oliver K. Olson, Reclaiming the Lutheran Liturgical Heritage, p. 13 (Minneapolis: ReClaim Resources 2007).”
Very interesting quotes from Luther. Thanks so much for giving me something to think about.
“Evidently you have not attended a Tridentine Mass. It far surpasses the Orthodox.”
In the late 900s, Prince Vladimir of Kiev sent out some of his boyars to view and report back on the religious ceremonies of the Bulgarians (Mohammedan), the Germans (Latins) and the Greeks at Constantinople. Here is their report:
“”When we journeyed among the Bulgars, we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a mosque, while they stand ungirt. The Bulgar bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good.
“Then we went among the Germans, and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there.
“Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.”
Same Divine Liturgy today as back in 900.
This is the same as what Abbot Suger said about his experience of Gothic cathedrals (he designed Saint-Denis) 200 years later.
The weakness of the Romanesque model was the lack of light in the sanctuary, which would have affected the sense of "glory" (to use Vladimir's term) in the rite. The massive, eventually stained-glass windows of the Gothic, however, allowed for by the combination of groin vaults and flying buttresses, would have caused a very different effect.
In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man, not so that he can see the world, but so that he can see Christ (John 35:38). It is my conviction that the function of our senses is twofold. Their rational function is so we can navigate the world (Salvation, you remember the discussion on the nature of reality we had a few days ago). Their necessary function, however, is so we can prepare ourselves for the full experience of God in Heaven by practicing the experience of God on Earth. We see color so that we csn practice seeing the multicolored majesty of God; we hear sounds so we can practice communing with the Spirit of God and the Word of God, in both words and music; we taste so we can practice tasting and seeing the goodness of the Lord; we smell so we can practice sensing prayers to and from the Spirit of God; we touch so we can practice the closeness and intimacy of theosis and koinonia.
Which takes us back to which liturgy in which setting best accomplishes this. In 900, it was probably the Orthodox, though in 1200 or 1300 it might well have been the Tridentine Mass in a Gothic cathedral, complete with Ars Antiqua music. Today, it might even be in a massive soccer stadium in Nigeria where the "liturgy" is nothing more than a 1,000,000 people singing the same praise chorus. The best is where God is, Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal.
There is a line in Chariots of Fire where Eric Liddell says that when he runs, he feels God's pleasure. In one hour, I will be going to my very small Lutheran congregation, to play the organ and read the first lesson. If I am blessed, I will at some point in the service feel His pleasure. I might get more out of a Nova mass, or a Tridentine mass, or an Orthodox eucharist, or Family Worship Center's praise and worship service, but for this morning, I am persuaded that I am where God wants me, and if He wants me elsewhere, He'll lead me there as well. Let us all worship Him today.
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