This Side of the Pulpit » Theology » It’s Not the Liturgy’s Fault

It’s Not the Liturgy’s Fault

July 6th, 2009 | 7 Comments

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It happened again Sunday. At the late service I felt bored during the liturgy. Yes, I remember back on that side of the nave it can happen frequently. But in the last (almost) nine years since I’ve been in the chancel it happens much less, at least for me.

But this Sunday again it struck me during the Kyrie, and went all the way through the Gloria in Excelsis. It felt rote. It was rote. It felt dull.

What one does at times like these is critical. Some pastors take this ennui and run with it, thinking they must liven things up, that they must make some big changes, mix in some new and some peppier sounds. Do jazz hands. Well, maybe not jazz hands, but something along those lines.

This is what we do in our lives when the same-old, same-old wears on us. It’s what 40ish men do the day before they hit the car lots or the bars when they should be at work or at home with their wives.

Whether it is to liturgy, prayer, or Bible study, your car or your wife, humans respond the same: ennui and a craving for something new. We are the problem, not the liturgy. It’s our human nature, so weak, so thin, so fickle. Our consumerist culture, powered by marketing, infects us. It tempts us to see our lives as a parade of good experiences. But it’s as old as the hills and as black as hell. Satan showed Eve how nice the fruit looked, how it appeared so delicious. “It’s New and Improved!,” he might have hissed.

As I stood before the altar I thought none of these things. All I felt was the ennui. I prayed, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It was all I could pray. All that needed to be prayed. It was the confession of my weakness, the diagnoses of my pain, as well as the balm of healing.

Such is the solution to the ills that plague us. Confession, repentance and faith in the love of Christ for us. It is the narrow way, to be sure. It is the hard way. It is the way less traveled. It does not usually lead to crowds and success. It does not lead to popularity and importance. It leads to a Cross where eternity is found.

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Written by Christopher Hall

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Filed under: Theology · Tags: consumerist worship, faith, liturgy, pastor's life, worship

7 Responses to "It’s Not the Liturgy’s Fault"

Peter Heckmann says:

July 6, 2009 at 6:59 pm

VP Hall, I’ve asked this question before in regard to the same topic. What are your presuppositions as to the liturgy? Why is it not necessarily the liturgy’s fault?

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Paul Becker says:

July 7, 2009 at 10:01 am

It’s not the liturgy’s job to make us feel warm and fuzzy, it’s our job to mean what the liturgy says in heart and mind, spirit and truth. By ourselves we are always insufficient for the task, but with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven (we never pray alone) all things are possible.

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Christopher Hall says:

July 14, 2009 at 1:29 pm

Good question, Pr. Heckmann. I was not aware that you’ve asked it before.

How do I know it’s not the liturgy’s fault? It is the same relationship one has with his spouse and temptations to “trade in a wife.” It is the same temptation that makes us get tired of our cars after a few years, or our clothes after six months, or everything else in life.

If everything in our life gets worn out and rote…and I mean everything…then it is us who are having issues, not the things in themselves. It’s one of the seven deadly sins: ennui or accedia, sometimes translated “sloth.”

But I can make the argument better: try Scripture. Do we not get tired of reading Scripture? If you gave yourself a diet of the Word of God exclusively would you not get bored of it? Wouldn’t you want to read something different? I don’t know about you, but I have limited capacity for reading more than two or three Psalms at a time.

So we can ask the question about that: is it God’s fault that we find reading Scripture too boring at times?

So what are my presuppositions as to the liturgy?

1. Liturgy is liturgy. Everybody has one. Call it outline or formula or boilerplate, we construct our lives based on routines and formulas.

2. It is God who is order and He created us to be orderly.

3. The Church did not “invent” a new form of worship but received that which the Apostles passed down from Jewish worship and from the Lord.

4. As good children we honor our fathers by honoring their traditions.

5. Lutheran Reformers did not abolish the mass, but removed the accretions of false doctrine from it.

6. We are Church and worship with all those of every time and every place, separated by distance, but not by time or death.

7.My ego and sense of self-importance must die if I am to follow Christ.

8. The liturgy does not cater to me, but gives me the words to pray to God.

There are probably more, but let this suffice for today

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1. Peter Heckmann says:
  
  July 16, 2009 at 8:18 am
  
  Thanks for your reply, sir, and noble eight-fold list! I am sensitive to what sometimes seems an idolatrous approach to the liturgy, that there can be no critique, rather than an appropriate understanding of it as a medium for communication. Where the word of God is transmitted certainly it is revered. Otherwise, I’ve found, form and setting for corporate worship in my Lutheran experience tend to obstruct and often do not resonate.
  
  Reply
Jay Hobson says:

July 28, 2009 at 9:00 am

Pastor Hall,

I greatly appreciate your list.
I had not even considered number 4. And previously, as I considered the scope of number 6, it was a little smaller than what you have now enlightened me to. Thank you.

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1. Christopher Hall says:
  
  July 28, 2009 at 10:10 am
  
  Thanks, though I have to give the caveat (again) that it is not complete–just kind of dashed off. If you have your own list, let me know
  
  Reply
Christopher Orr says:

August 6, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Lex orandi est lex credendi. If we can’t or won’t pray like the Church or old, then we don’t believe what they believe. If we can’t or won’t pray the prayers and hymns of the 4th, 5th and 6th century Church then we don’t believe as they did – even if we confess the dogmas and read the canon (no more no less) they were still ‘pure’ enough in faith to recognize.

Nestorius and others didn’t like the received lex orandi, so they attempted to change it. This is not the apostolic method.

I should note that the way most changes in traditional liturgy took place were through addition, rather than substitution. The “Only Begotten Son” of Justinian was added, the Trisagion was added, the Kyrie was added, the kontakia, canons, etc. were added. In parish practice, certain parts were then simply dropped from regular use – though often retained in monasteries, Cathedrals and episcopal (rather than presbyterial) services. It’s not that the prayers’ truth were denied or changed to be ‘more theologically correct’, they simply made a pastoral call that a 2 hour service was more beneficial to laity than a 4 hour service. In fact, and this would be ‘telling’ to a Protestant, the hymns written to be interspersed with Psalms often took precedence. For instance, the Psalms were more likely to be dropped than the hymnology written to accompany them (sometimes verses remain, but rarely the whole Psalm – and example of this in the Byzantine rite is the retention of the Canon’s irmoi and stichera though the biblical ode each of the nine parts of the canon refer back to are no longer used outside of (some) monasteries.

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