A Defense of the Liturgy

 

              I know folk like Ross Douthat pooh-pooh naming the social good of the liturgy and the church as adopting the position of a quisling to culture, but I disagree. Focusing on the transcendent frame is very important, it is why I encouraged my congregation to have God conversations and why I added a 4^th D to my conception of ministry in the year of our Lord 2024. That said, noting how people’s physical lives are impoverished by a lack of practicing the liturgy, is worthwhile.

              If you’d like to read the broad strokes of my thoughts on the 7 Central Things of Worship, here is my most comprehensive thoughts. But, for this post, I’ll be focusing on the absence of the 7 central things.

Gathering:

              The recently released documentary, Join or Die is a popularization of Robert Putman’s famous book Bowling Alone. It documents the rise and fall of club/league culture, and points out that not gathering with other people is disastrous both for individuals and for whole societies. On the individual level not being an active member of at least one organization is as detrimental to one’s health as picking up a major vice, like smoking or overeating. For societies it is the difference between kleptocracy and democracy. So, gathering weekly with your fellow Christians doesn’t sound so bad when compared to the alternative, does it?

Baptism:

              The church in every age has a built in buffer against bigotry—Baptism. We can point to that famous phrase found in Galatians, “In Christ there is no…” and add whatever division the world has created in the present moment. In Christ there is no cis or trans, in Christ no black or white, in Christ no red or blue, in Christ no foreigner or native. We quite often fail to live up to that ideal, but it is always there as a prophetic wooing, “Come back to the font you whose ultimate Identity is in Christ Jesus.” In the face of Apartheid and segregation and the murder of Matthew Shepherd—look again, that’s a CHILD OF GOD! That’s the IMAGE OF GOD! You are a child of God, ACT LIKE IT! Imagine if you were regularly reminded of that reality! If your identity and the identity of your neighbor was grounded in grace! Imagine if our society was less bigoted, because a good portion of us had to make a mark of the cross upon our brow before brow beating the “other”.

Confession and Forgiveness:

              I regularly hear complaints about our country being too litigious, people being too sensitive, no one having a sense of shame, and that there is never a way to back down in a confrontation. What if there was an alternative to tit for tat confrontation, a way to wrestle with having fallen short other than a shame spiral or complete denial that you’ve ever done something wrong? What if we could soothe and ameliorate hurts instead of holding onto them or resenting the one we’ve wronged? What if there were ways of righting a wrong and receiving an apology and rectifying the wrong that didn’t involve going to court? Well, according to the Christian tradition, there is, confession and forgiveness. In fact, there is a concrete process for doing so, most earnestly described by Desmund Tutu—the fourfold path of forgiveness.

Word:

              Especially with the gaping wound of our partisan divide, it feels like we aren’t telling the same story. Our news is siloed, our lives are cut off from one another by garage doors and diverse area codes, our fables, myths, and metanarratives are told by politicians—mediated by storytellers with axes to grind. What if instead, once a week, we shared a common story? How might that transform the ugliness we've all embraced?

Thanksgiving

We are an anxious people, drawn into that dis-ease by a sense of lack, a sense of want, a sense of avarice even. Our souls are cultivated by an artificial sense of scarcity, advertisements that turn our attention to what we do not have. In that mentality of scarcity, we lose our sure footing, resilience and very selves—all this in one of the most well-off countries in the world! It doesn’t have to be that way, we can name everything as gift, and in so doing recognize that we have enough, that abundance is on offer.

Meal

              For some time there has been talk of a “generosity crisis”. While a few super rich people and corporations are currently propping up charities, millions and millions fewer people donate to charities and volunteer their time, than in previous generations. Some of that has to do with the average person being squeezed economically, some of it has to do with a lack of trust in institutions and the breakdown in community Robert Putman talks about, and some of it has to do with people being out of practice. Well, I’ve got news for you, every time a congregation receives the Lord’s Supper—Holy Communion—we are participating in “The economy of the City of God.” We receive the generous, priceless, gift of the body of Christ, and in turn are sent to be that very body in the world. Receiving grace, we offer grace, receiving the generosity of God, we are moved to be generous. And, funny enough, the statisticians and psychologist agree with this theological statement, the most generous folk, are religious folk!

Sending

              Piggypacking off that last point, in a world where consciously avoiding assisting our neighbor (just look at any of those hidden camera viral videos with people passing a stranger in need, or search your own heart when someone asks for assistance) and where we have grown to believe we are so time poor we hoard our hours and our minutes, isn’t it amazing that I have the audacity to use a phrase like: “sent to be that very body in the world.” That’s a dangerous thing, to understand leaving a church building as a call to go and entertain angels unaware, that’s downright countercultural! But that’s part of what goes on at a typical Sunday service. We are priming ourselves to serve and to be sent for the sake of our neighbors.

Conclusion

              So, what am I saying with all this? That liturgical worship, worship that encompasses the seven central things, is expansively good!

-It is good in a spiritual way that is maybe too ephemeral or transcendent or unquantifiable to justify the practice to anyone not already wooed by its mysteries.

-It is good in a nameable individual way as I’ve spelled out before: I’m better at being in community, I have an increased sense of self-worth, am better at getting over slights and making sense of life, and I am more content, generous, and gentle, because I worship.

-But also having a meaningful number of people practicing the seven central things is good in a way that benefits society at large. We flavor our neighborhoods and nations. Where there is loneliness, we offer community. Where there is bigotry, we offer identities rooted in baptism and loyal to the truth that all people are made in the image of God. Where there is enmity, we offer a path to reconciliation. Where there is a broken story, we offer narratives that can cross many boundaries. Where there is greed and scarcity, we offer abundance, resilience, and generosity. Where there are walls of separation and unmet needs, we offer assistance and neighborliness.

Truly, the liturgy is very good.

Ministry in the Trump Era, initial thoughts

                Here we are again. A week ago, Donald Trump was elected president. We did this once before. Many of us tried to forget those four years, and how bone achingly hard it was to minister faithfully. Well, it’s worth reflecting back a bit on those hard years.

Every word of yours will be blue or red

                One of the hardest things about the four years of Trump was how everything was viewed through an intense partisan lens. I remember the week the Sermon on the Mount came up in the lectionary. A colleague was called onto the carpet by her church council for “picking” such “anti-Trump” words.

At bible studies and council meetings you could see parishioners calculating out if your words supported Trump or the Resistance; anything that didn’t clearly have a red hat or a pink hat with ears on it, was suspect. You were assumed to be on the other “side” unless your words explicitly announced the shibboleth of the moment, whatever the moment was. In short, good was wholly defined by its relationship to Donald Trump and his framing of whatever issue was front and center in our national life that day or that week.

                This means we need to remember how to blend idioms, so people can actually hear the gospel. It means translating the message of scripture into two opposing vernaculars and then tearing the corners off each, so they still startle and save your people! It means preaching the good news about Jesus is going to challenge your people in ways that are going to make them uncomfortable, and sometimes they are going to hate you for it.

                As a corollary, there will also be a temptation to see every instance of discomfort and every time someone spews hatred at you, as proof of your faithfulness. We preachers aren’t that righteous. There will be times when we screw up or are indelicate or are responding to events with our own agenda, not faithfulness to the Gospel. Deep and meaningful discernment is required.

                And the lectionary is doing us no favors—or every favor, depending on how uncomfortable you are willing to get. We’re heading into the year of Luke! Luke, who insists on an ancient sort of gender equality when it comes to miracles—if a guy receive healing in a certain way inevitably a woman will receive the same. Luke, who is concerned about everyone having enough to such an extent that his John the Baptist sounds to some like John the Socialist, with his cloak re-distribution and emptying of the Tax Collector’s pockets. Luke, who begins Jesus’ ministry with the words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Christian Nationalism

                Along with partisan lenses, there was the drum beat of Christian Nationalism. People would continually confuse being an American citizen with being a Christian and vice versa. Using Lutheran language, people were consistently confusing the two hands of God—the authority of government and the authority of the church. Or to use more American language, there were gleeful urges to break down the wall between church and state.

                Sometimes this was fairly innocent stuff: “Why not more hymns that honor America, if baseball games can honor our country, why can’t worship do the same.”

                The answer being that worship is something different than a baseball game. We’re here to worship Jesus, not America. Many civic hymns aren’t written and embraced because they have good solid doctrine, but because they rouse people to fight, or feel especially good about a cause, or a country. For example, the Battle Hymn of the Republic affirms that God’s glory is clearly visible in the wrath filled death visited upon America during the Civil War. As Lutherans we affirm God is most fully visible only on the cross, and even then, it is a strange thing, an “alien work of God.”

                Other times it could get downright uncomfortable, insidious even. “In the prayers of intercession don’t pray for countries that aren’t America.” “We’re a Christian country, so shouldn’t non-Christians leave?” “The ELCA shouldn’t do refugee work or foreign mission, we should help our own first!” “Pastor, don’t you think Donald Trump is America’s King David, anointed to Make America Great?”

                The above may sound comical, but they are all things said to me last time around. So, as good Lutherans, we ought to be clear that the Church is never a political party at prayer, the City of Man isn’t the City of God, and there is no such thing as a Christian country, because Christians are always sojourners. Theocracy is not our goal, and the Kingdom of God comes about in instances that will look nothing like America’s political process. We only hope that we are given the grace to catch glimpses of it.

Exhaustion

                The pace of those 4 years was grueling. It felt like there was a whole year in there where a major world-shifting event that had to be referenced and unpacked in the sermon if the preacher was to be faithful, happened every Saturday afternoon. Along with that, the number of parishioners breaking down under the unrelenting weight of the news cycle and unending familial partisan fights, in need of pastoral care but also prickly as could be, was astonishing!

                In retrospect, some of those times we preachers tried to be faithful to the moment came off as shooting from the hip. For that matter, sometimes it was chasing relevance, not faithfulness. But, in the fog of those four years, it was hard to tell the difference. Even with the breathing room of the last four years, it’s still hard, at least for me, to discern the difference.

Don’t go looking for crosses, they’ll find you

                Maybe this is a “me” problem. For all my time in New Jersey and Belgium and England and Oregon and about a dozen other places, I’m at my core a Liberal from Wyoming, a “Red State Reject.” That means I tend to assume a defensive crouch and am tactically and strategically moderate. I don’t assume going for maximalist goals or grand denunciations work. I assume if I were to announce that everyone in the room has to side with me or my ideological opposite, I’m going to be pretty lonely—and doing so might endanger other people. At my core I value: listening, finding common ground, holding my own ideologies loosely, and taking bold action only when it will do the most good.

                This kind of stance was not well received in the Trump era. You see, at least once a month there was a drum beat on social media that, “If your preacher doesn’t preach this talking point, this Sunday you need to leave your church!” This was usually followed up by one-upmanship by preachers about how fiercely Trump was denounced and how many “Red Hats” walked out that Sunday. It felt at times like the misquote of the day was to, “Preach with Daily Kos in one hand and the Bible in the other.”

                And maybe some contexts called for that level of political engagement. But every time I tried to hop on that train, every time I tried to fully embody that meme, “If you wonder what you would have done in Nazi Germany, look at what you’re doing right now!” it felt performative, and like I was trying to center myself in a story that wasn’t actually mine. The raw energy of the era made every protest, every new book, every email, every action—be it wearing safety pins or now blue rubber bands—the most important thing.

In short, I felt like I was rushing off to find my cross so I could carry it. But, the same thing I tell parishioners who get excited about some harmful thing being their “cross to bear” and Luther told all those monks flagellating themselves as a good work, applies here, “If you’re acting faithfully in the world, the cross will find you.”

I found that to be true. Faithfully ministering during the Trump years caused me to lead my fairly moderate to conservative congregation to care about and advocate for Indonesian refugees, some of whom were eventually deported. The cross found me, not in safety pins or marches, but in the day in day out work of caring for souls well. Or to roughly translate that into a secular phrase, “Think globally, but act locally.”

A Word on Protest

With all the above said, there is something right about protest that I’d been told in college, and only have come to believe to be true after January 6^th. I was fairly active in protesting against the Iraq war. After that movement fizzled out, some folks thought I would show up to the protest about the next issue, and the next issue, and the next issue—there was literally a protest about something at least once a week at U of O. It was like people cared about the medium as much as the message, that protests were a good unto themselves, which always hit me wrong.

At the time, again call me Crouching Wyoming Hidden Liberal, I thought less was more—people would actually pay attention to protests, if they weren’t the background noise of the everyday. My more serious protester friends responded that the smaller inconsequential protests were practice for the big ones that matter.

When the Women’s March happened, I remembering making a big deal about how amazing it was that no one was arrested or hurt. Many conservatives forcefully pushed back at me. I tried to explain how there is a talent and genius to protesting well. My words were mocked. Then when the conservatives did their version of the Women’s March—January 6^th—hundreds of people were hurt, several died, and there are still ongoing arrests!

On one hand, I could say that was all by design, that the violence was all intentional, and therefore everyone who participated ought to be locked up, or at least fined. Or I could assume that the right has absolutely no idea how to protest, because they never practiced.

Now, if my kinder interpretation is correct, it also means college me was wrong. A healthy practice of protest ensures that the big ones are orderly, that points are made with words instead of with bear spray and brass knuckles.

 

Conclusion

-Trump is really good at pushing people into partisan corners, we’ll need to be ready to preach Gospel to an even more siloed church.

-People are going to confuse Church and State, we need to be clear about that separation and refuse to be co-opted.

-We need to think about pacing—we have been given timeless truths and we need to trust they’ll be relevant even during seismic shifts.

-We won’t need to hunt down the hard particular work, it’ll find us in the day to day of our baptismal vocations.