It’s an interesting question and one I was asked recently by an individual who thought that liturgical worship was unbiblical.He was surprised to discover that we liturgical Christians take our cues from the Bible. It comes from the worship mandated by God in the Old Testament in what is called the Deuteronomic Liturgy. It describes how God wanted the temple set up and how we are to worship Him.
One of my grievances with contemporary worship is that the focus easily falls on the self/individual instead of on God. Not only is the corporate character of worship lost, but the goal and purpose of worship is lost. Many contemporary praise and worship songs focus more on one’s feelings, hopes, desires, etc. than on God. It’s been my observation that what is called contemporary worship is most conducive for the people rather than what is most glorifying to God.
The contemporary service literally rises or falls on the individual and his or her sermon. It becomes a 45 minute lecture complete with graphs, charts and handouts. But this is not the model of worship Scripture gives us. What I see happening is that the contemporary pastor has forgotten that worship is not the same as teaching. We need to return to authentic forms of worship, we need to re-learn how to worship again.
Liturgy is the form and content of the worship of the early, ancient church. It includes the Psalms, creeds, hymns, and verses used by the earliest Christians. It exists and has connected us as God’s people throughout time.
In the liturgy we recite the Kyrie, “Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy,” which has its origins in the Hebrew Hosannah. It was later used by the ancient Greek Christians and was standardized by the fourth century. The Gloria in Excelsis was derived from the angelic hymn used to announce the birth of Jesus. All of the major components of the liturgy, including the Eucharistic prayer, find their origins in Jewish, Biblical, or very early Christian worship.
Liturgy also invites participants to worship God holistically with body, mind, and spirit. It’s an invitation to worship more fully. Our intellects may be engaged by a sermon or teaching, but in contemporary worship our bodies usually are not. Participants should not be mere spectators. In a liturgical worship environment, one’s body and senses are fully engaged. Your body participates along with your mind and spirit through the physical acts of kneeling, rising, and coming forward to the altar. The senses are engaged through visual means in art, candles, symbol, and through the hearing and singing of music, as well as through taste and touch in Communion. All of these invite us to lift up our hearts, minds, and bodies to God in praise, adoration, and worship.
A part of worshipping God holistically with our bodies is something we all hear at the liturgy to “offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord” (Romans 12:1).
Our faith is an incarnation faith. (Incarnation is the embodiment of the spiritual in a material form.) Christianity is focused on a person: Jesus Christ who is God Incarnate. It’s God’s way of speaking through people and the prophets, God communicating to us through the scriptures, and through Jesus Christ himself, the ultimate incarnation. Liturgy allows us to take this incarnation experience and utilize it fully. We are called to be open to God’s touch and message and can expect to see it in the beauty of creation, and in the rhythm of worship; in water, bread, wine, or in the radiance of a candle flame - a God who graciously comes to us in these ordinary, earthly ways - just as God came to us in God the Son.
Be Liturgical,
Bishop Ian
