The liturgies of the first Christians, the historic patterns of worship, inherited also from the synagogue and temple, are our best chance not to end up worshiping the dollar, or the idea of America, the angry (or the coddling) gods of human projection—even of well-meaning Christian projection—or ourselves.
When we submit to the anchors within the historic liturgies—readings from Scripture, the confession of sin, baptism, creeds, the cry and lament of "Lord have mercy," apostolic preaching and teaching, premeditated prayers for the world, the chanting or singing of psalms, the Eucharistic table set by God in the presence of our enemies—their great collective gift is connection with Jesus Christ: the true image of God, the true image of humanity, and the one by whom we can learn to love all things that exist.
And yet they are not capable of anything apart from the Spirit of God, as is often everywhere observable. It is my experience that when the liturgies are handled without humility and reverence, without passion, and without the authentic investment of the gathered worshipers as a community that seeks to love God and their neighbor in risky and costly ways, these sacred practices that are supposed to be a fruit-bearing tree of life can be or can become withered and lifeless.
These parts of worship—prayer, confession, teaching, baptism, lament, praise, Eucharistic fellowship—can LOOK very different from church to church but they cannot be absent. They are not distinctives of one church, like candles instead of spotlights, or organs instead of guitars, or "traditions of men," like vestments for clergy or name tags for members or holy water fonts, but essentials.
Their absence is a significant debilitating handicap for any group of persons striving to be the church, whether they meet in living rooms or around kitchen tables, in cathedrals of stained glass or drywall, in storefronts, or in schools, in an open field, beneath a shade tree, or underground.
And yet these practices are meaningless and a dance without music or choreography if those who practice them do not yield to the Spirit of God, do not live out self-sacrificial community, do not walk in the humility that attends these mysteries because, after all, they are boundless, gracious gifts of the divine and human Humility who called all things into existence from nothing and who keeps all things in life.
In the absence of what we might call 'those who bear crosses,' the historic liturgies are not entrances to the kingdom, as Schmemann wisely understood, but exercises in archaeology.
A sure sign that one has not embraced the historic liturgies with the humility of the God who became flesh to wash our feet and take our nails is the self-assurance and pride that you are worshipping God in spirit and in truth while all other Christian worshippers "just don't get it."
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