You Can Say That Again

Repetition in liturgy has a bad reputation.

Yet that’s the way we learn. Saying responses week after week, the creed, familiar prayers and singing the hymns we love over and over are ways we fill our memories with basic theology. Someone once said that if the truth be known, we learn theology from the hymns we sing. I’d add, we are taught by the whole liturgy as well.

So, like it or not, there must be a certain amount of repetition in our worship. Some forms of dialogue regularly appear, for example, “The Lord be with you.”/”And also with you.” Verses of Scripture show up again and again as calls to worship or introductions to prayers. The Apostles’ Creed and other affirmations repeatedly express belief. Classic prayers are repeated from time to time and serve as models for personal prayer beyond corporate worship. Hymns and other music, of course, have a powerful cumulative impact on worshippers.

The problem is, however, that repetition can go stale very quickly and turn to mere rote. It’s easy for congregations to say the Lord’s Prayer just as they’ve said it for years without much thought—they put it on liturgical cruise-control and coast through it. This can happen with much of the liturgy. It can even happen with familiar hymns that are just “gotten through” without a lot of feeling.

Changing things constantly or bringing on everything new all the time doesn’t help. Liturgy can be flooded with “the latest and greatest,” to the end that there is little to file in the memory. There is not sufficient repetition to learn it.

I wonder when I go into a church and there is a hymnal with some 600-plus hymns, and next to it a supplemental book with another 300 songs, while on the pew is a notebook with another 50 or so congregational favorites. That approaches 1000 musical pieces available to the pew-sitter. The congregation will either focus on a relatively small number, or try to do them all and no one will really absorb any single song.

There was a time when church school children learned, even memorized parts of the liturgy in preparation for the times they worshipped with their parents. They were even taught hymns sung in the church service. I don’t think memorization and teaching of liturgy happens much any more.

So saying prayers and singing songs again and again is how we learn. Repetition plants things in our memories. Still, there is the danger of dullness, over-familiarity, routine, boredom.

One way to avoid the deadliness of rote is for the leaders, lay and clergy and musicians, to do the liturgy with feeling. I’ve heard many worship leaders, including clergy, read prayers with inflection patterns that numb the listeners’ brains. Even when leading a unison prayer, the leader should speak loudly enough with meaning so everyone else is prompted to say it with meaning as well.

When liturgy sticks in the memory of the worshipper, it can make a great difference. Here are to real-life examples.

I went to a nursing home the other day to see a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. She was not able to communicate much to me, but her daughter was there and we spoke at some length. The daughter told me that her mother was a life-long active church member, teaching Sunday school, working with deacons, and most of all singing in the church choirs. Singing gospel music and hymns of the Methodist tradition was her greatest joy. Her daughter told me that while her mother was unable to do anything to care for herself because of the Alzheimer’s, she could still sing the old songs, and she would sing every last verse. Alzheimer’s, devastating as it was for her, it could not overwhelm her songs. I thought immediately of the wonderful old hymn, “How Can I Keep From Singing?”

My other example has to do with a conversation I had with a man after church one morning many years ago. He’d asked to speak to me in private. “It’s about that Charge you give to the congregation every week,” he said. He was referring to:
Go out into the world in peace;
have courage;
hold on to what is good;
return no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak, and help the suffering;
honor all people;
love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Well,” he went on, “a few months ago one of my co-workers did something that undermined a project I was responsible for. And this past week I had a chance to get even with him, and I was poised to do so. But then I heard those words in my mind, ‘return no one evil for evil,’ and I held back.” With tears in his eyes, he said, “I couldn’t do it. Thanks for continually reminding me. It stuck with me.”

Repetition in liturgy allows us to reclaim some of the treasures of the past, the great prayers and hymns that have moved hearts and minds and lives in obedient service of Jesus Christ for generations, and can shape our lives, even our behavior still today.

What are the pieces of liturgy that you see worthy of repetition? What hymns deserve to be sung again and again?

It's About Time

I’ve always been intrigued by a brief congregational part inserted in the Eucharistic prayer, three lines, called the “acclamation of faith.”

The Book of Common Worship (1993) presents four alternative acclamations following separate introductory phrases:

1
Great is the mystery of faith:
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
2
Praise to you, Lord Jesus:
Dying you destroyed our death,
rising you restored our life.
Lord Jesus, come in glory.
3
According to his commandment:
We remember his death,
we proclaim his resurrection,
we await his coming in glory.
4
Christ is the bread of life:
When we eat this bread and drink this cup,
we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus,
until you come in glory.

The fascinating thing to me about all of these is that they cast the people’s acclamation of faith in temporal terms. The past is celebrated, the present is experienced and the future is anticipated.

It’s not that worshippers are expected to jump from one chronological time zone to another in the space of ten words or so. The past is not celebrated as past that is gone and remembered nostalgically. Nor is the future merely a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by wishful thinking to be longed for. Rather both past and future are brought front and center by the presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist.

The fullness of the present experience is in the recognition that our living Lord has redeemed the past, transforming the tragedy of the cross into a triumph to be shared with us in bread and wine, his body and blood.

Our present meal serves as appetizer for the heavenly banquet yet to come where Christ will preside just as he does before us now.

Both past and future are seen to be a present reality in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is our host at the Communion Table feeding us with his life, giving us to drink of his spirit. This past-present-future enfolding presents the Paschal mystery in all its fullness.

The rubrics for the acclamations of faith indicate that the people may “sing or say” one of them. Yet it is difficult to find melodies to use. So I composed one for the first acclamation, that we used for a number of years, as follows:









Do you use any or all of the acclamations in your church? Are they sung or spoken? If sung, where do you find the music?
_____________

Footnote:

I’m not sure of the history of these acclamations, since they are new to us Presbyterians as of the Book of Common Worship (1993). I believe they have been in use in the Roman Church for some time, at least since Vatican II.

In 2005, however, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Chicago voted to withdraw one memorial acclamation text (“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”) that was on the original list of about a dozen or so alternatives in a proposed study document of the new English translation of The Order of the Mass I.

The explanation of the withdrawal was:

Unlike the acclamations of the Ordo Missae, the acclamation “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” is more an assertion, a statement, rather than an expression of the gathered assembly of its incorporation into the Pascal Mystery. No pronoun is used to signify the people being incorporated into the Pascal Mystery. In the other memorial acclamations that incorporation is specified. For example: “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life ...” Therefore the committee voted to drop this one acclamation. (From adoremus.org.)

That’s an interesting, if very fine, point. Nevertheless, I would consider its use by the gathered community to be an action that in itself signifies “the people being incorporated into the Pascal Mystery.”

You Can't Have One (Without the Other)

The subject isn’t “Love and Marriage,” but “Word and Sacrament.”

That Word and Sacrament belong together in Christian worship should go without saying. For many people, in the pulpits as well as in the pews, however, it is anything but a forgone conclusion. Week after week the Word part of the service is present, but the Sacrament is absent.

For many planners and leaders of worship, elders and musicians as well as clergy, it is acceptable to cut the service short by omitting the Lord’s Supper. I suppose it does save a little time and a bit of fuss in cleaning up, if that’s what’s most important.

All of this in spite of the fact that biblical and historical precedent have witnessed to the norm of Christian worship as both proclamation of the Word in Scripture and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Those who skip Holy Communion on a Sunday are seriously out of step.

It really takes both, Word and Sacrament, for worship to be complete. Leave out one, and you have a fragment of worship.

This came home to me in a different way when a colleague of mine and I were asked at the last minute to co-preside at Communion at a presbytery meeting. On arrival at the meeting, we discovered that there was nothing else to the service—just Communion, starting with the Invitation to the Lord’s Table and ending with the Charge and Blessing. Most times there would be scripture and sermon before, but I assume that got crowded out of the agenda by other pressing business.

Having only Communion for worship is a liturgical short-cut that I suspect is used more widely than some of us would like to know. Small group gatherings, at retreats, church committee or board meetings, camp and conference events are all likely suspects.

I had experienced this before as a pew-sitter, but not as a presider. That day, I particularly realized that you can’t really have one, even if it is the Sacrament, without the other, and call it complete worship.

The Lord’s Supper without the foundation of the proclaimed Word is cut loose of its moorings. It can drift into sentimentality where participants share the meal as a sign that they are good friends. They might as well have sent out for pizza; that would have accomplished the same thing.

Or, the Lord’s Supper can become a nice symbolic activity pointing back to a biblical story of long ago. Without the Word of the Risen Christ proclaimed, the breaking of bread and sharing the cup become old stuff and not present reality.

Or, the Lord’s Supper, without the balance of the Word, can turn into naked ritual, something to be done because…, well, just because. It can even morph into a magical kind of thing—if we do all this as prescribed, we will receive some sort of personal benefits. Remember that “Hocus Pocus,” as a magical incantation, is derived from a spoof of the words "Hoc est enim corpus meum" in the Roman Catholic Latin mass.

At any rate, as I find worship with no Communion to be truncated, worship that is only Communion starts in the middle, and is equally inadequate.

Where have you had “Communion-only” worship? What did you think about it? How did you feel about it?

"Amen"

In my previous post I made the case (I hope) for the congregation to speak up and speak out their parts in worship. One of the smallest yet more frequent of their parts is the single word, “amen.” Four letters, two syllables, are to be spoken boldly by the people in the pews a number of times in a given worship service.

It tends to be treated as a throwaway, but it isn’t—or should not be. “Amen” has a long history and a rich heritage making it deserving of respectful and appreciative use in any time of worship, from the loftiest service in a lavish cathedral, to grace among family at the kitchen table. A Hebrew word, it’s been borrowed by Christians and Muslims and in constant use since ancient times.

By my Midwestern upbringing, I learned early on that “amen” was a useful liturgical expression. The boyhood saying I remember was, “If you believe it, say ‘Amen!’” Therefore if we did assent to any given comment—in church or outside—we’d give it a hearty “amen.”

That’s at least a beginning of its liturgical meaning. At the end of a prayer, we “sign on” by adding our verbal “amen.” If our “amen” is limp and low-volume, then the chances are we don’t really agree with the prayer.

Yet “amen” means more than simply “I agree.” The Hebrew root of the word translates variously as “firm” or “fixed” or “sure.” It speaks of something foundational, solid, unchanging, something that is true in an absolute sense. So when we say “amen,” we are affirming truth. This is much the same way Jesus used the word, which the English Bibles used to translate “verily.” As in the NRSV, Matthew 18.3, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” “Truly” translates the Greek word for “amen.” So saying our “amen” at the end of a prayer, for example, we agree that the prayer has truth in it, something that rings personally true.

“Amen” is also sometimes used in the sense of “so be it,” which also indicates agreement, but can carry the sense of trust, giving oneself up or over to another. The use of “amen” in worship, then, is a reminder that we yield our lives to God.

A rabbi friend of mine once told me that he could preach more than one sermon on that single small word. “‘Amen,’” he said, “is like a creed, a statement of faith. It’s an acronym in Hebrew for ‘God, trustworthy King.’” Its liturgical function for Jews is to say it to oneself silently before reciting the Shema (“Hear O Israel….”).

Every time we say “amen” in our worship, we bring a bundle of meaning to our affirmations of prayers both sung and said. Such a wondrous word deserves to be said firmly and faithfully.

Do people in your church speak up with their “amens”? If not, what’s holding them back? What might encourage them?
__________
Footnote:
In my youth I learned to say “ay-men.” When I came to live in the great Northeast, I discovered most people said “ah-men.” Singers almost always sang “ah-men.” I’ve been told that “ay-men” is more common among conservative Christians, while liberals tend to say “ah-men.” Really?

Assertive Worship

In the last two out-of-town worship services I attended I was brought up short by the assertiveness of the congregation.

When it came time for the responses back and forth between the leader and the people, the people were outspoken in the best sense of the word. They spoke firmly and gave the impression they knew what they were saying and it was really important enough to be heard.

The unison prayers were not mumbled through, but offered with confidence that they needed to be said and would be graciously heard by the Almighty. Even for the Lord’s Prayer, the people’s voices filled the hall as though it were a declaration of faith as much as a prayer.

When a prayer was vocalized by the leader, calling for a congregational “amen,” the response was said as though folks knew what it meant.

If the people spoke affirmatively, they sang equally as well. Hymns were sung out fully. If not everyone was exactly on pitch and some not even close, nevertheless the music was sung with considerable verve and zest. Some of the people around me even seemed to enjoy singing the hymns.

I must confess this really wowed me. I wasn’t used to such assertiveness by a congregation. Too often my experience, both as pew-sitter and worship leader, has been that folks just don’t get into worship like that. Most of the time they seem to mumble, or speak in hushed quiet tones. Unison prayers often have the sound of a gentle rumble. And if there is an “amen,” it’s barely above a whisper.

I wondered how this congregational assertiveness was accomplished in these two places, and yet was so foreign to most of the churches I usually attend. One reason, I’m sure, was that they were large churches with lots of people there—sheer numbers helped up the volume. But that didn’t really account for the assertiveness, the enthusiasm I heard and saw around me.

So I wondered if somehow the people in charge of worship, clergy and musicians and others, took the time to train the congregation. I could imagine the presiding clergyperson standing up at the beginning of the service and announcing: “This morning, friends, we’re going to learn how to say “amen” at the end of prayers…,” thence proceeding to give instructions about speaking forth firmly. It’s an idea worth pondering and perhaps trying from time to time, just to see if it makes any difference.

Maybe they sang hymns well because somebody got up in front of them and taught them how. It’s not an unreasonable possibility. Congregations take to new hymns reluctantly, but if they are educated a bit, they might come to enjoy singing again.

Even if no education or training formally took place in those churches where I was, there’s another thing that I’m sure did happen—the leaders led. They took part in the worship service as they expected everyone to take part—they were not just good examples, but they led the way.

When the worship leader speaks out the unison prayer, and does so with meaningful inflections, the people are encouraged to do the same. When the choir members (and clergy) sing the hymns with enthusiasm, it’s more likely that the people will do the same.

Common worship should be done at full enough voice so everyone knows they are worshipping with a community of people. Public worship (and what we do in church on Sunday mornings is, among other things, a public witness) needs to be said in such a way that everyone within hearing distance knows that in our prayers and our songs, our faith is asserted, affirmed, avowed, declared and professed.

How assertive is your congregation? What could be done to help worshippers worship more zealously?

Uplifting Prayer

Some things (and people) deserve honor and respect if for no other reason that they’ve been around for a long time. Durability counts.

In liturgical matters this is especially true. Anything that has survived repeated reformation, translation and up-dating warrants special attention. Why has this liturgical piece lasted so well?

We see durable liturgy, for example, in some of the “golden oldie” hymns. In spite of the fact that when new hymnals are produced every decade or two, and many hymns are weeded out, and other new ones are planted in their place, these older ones continue to blossom and flourish. A prime example is “Amazing Grace.”

I’d like to nominate another part of Christian worship, however, for the award of Long Lasting Liturgy: the Sursum Corda, (Latin for “upwards the hearts,” usually translated “Lift up your hearts”).

The Sursum Corda is included in the brief three-fold exchange between the presiding minister and congregation that precedes the Eucharistic prayer, the Great Thanksgiving. In the Book of Common Worship (1993), it reads:
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

The Sursum Corda dates back at least to the third century where it is found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome and has been in constant use ever since. It even survived the Protestant Reformation when all sorts of liturgy considered unbiblical was being relegated to the trash heap. When the dust of the Reformation settled, the Sursum Corda would be kept in one form or another by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Cranmer. Furthermore, it has been used by Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches through the centuries.

The Sursum Corda helps us see the spiritual dimension of the Lord’s Supper. While we think of the “real presence” of Christ in the sacrament, it’s not so much that he comes down to us, but that we “lift our hearts” to the Christ enthroned in heaven.

The Sursum Corda, therefore, summons us to a realm above and beyond squabbling about how, when and where Christ is present in the Supper. Lifted by the Holy Spirit, we are open to encountering the risen and ascended Christ in a spiritual rather than material, or worldly, way. The elements and the actions are “signs” or pointers toward that encounter, rather than its culmination.

The last two lines, the invitation by the presider to give thanks, and the congregational reply of assent have a particular relevance. The congregational response is the people’s permission to the presider to offer a prayer on their behalf, in which they gladly will join. It is as though their “amen” were given in advance, that they were agreeing with the prayer about to be verbalized and vocalized by the presiding minister.

Furthermore, these statements and responses speak of a commitment on part of the people to pay attention, for this relatively lengthy prayer at the Lord’s Table is their prayer, not something belonging to the presider.

Understanding this, it’s not surprising that the Sursum Corda has been around for so long. It’s a sure thing, too, that it will be lifting the sights of our prayers for generations to come as God’s people approach the Lord’s Table.

Do you use the Sursum Corda in your church?

I'm Confessing . . . Again

When the word “confession” comes up in a conversation about Christian worship, it usually is taken to mean confession of sin. Although it happens that some are wary of using that term, perhaps because it smacks of laying on a guilt trip. One good alternative I’ve seen is “Prayer for Reconciliation.” The common, and more straightforward term, however, is “Confession of Sin.”

There is also another kind of confession that takes place on Sunday morning—or at least it should. It goes by the name of “Confession of Faith.”

The Confession of Sin and the Confession of Faith appear at different places in the order of worship. Confession of Sin usually comes shortly before the reading of Scripture and proclamation of the Word in sermon. The Confession of Faith most often appears closely following the Scripture and sermon. The two confessions are like bookends surrounding and supporting the Liturgy of the Word, which leads one to deduce that there is some inherent relationship between them.

The Confession of Sin is the major part of the preparation for hearing the Word. Without confession, we would be inclined to approach the proclamation of the Word with our ears plugged up. The Reformers understood that public confession deflated spiritual cockiness and put worshippers in touch with their spiritual need. Facing up to the truth of sin within us, we desire healing for what is broken in our lives, reconciliation with God and those around us, and the new life that is offered in the Word who is Jesus Christ.

Following the proclamation of the Word in Scripture and sermon, the people stand and speak the Confession of Faith. This confession, however, travels under a variety of aliases. The Book of Common Worship (1993) refers to it as “Affirmation of Faith.” The rubrics, however, include a number of alternate terms:
Creed – specifically referring to the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds;
Affirmation – drawn from scripture;
Confession – as in Book of Confessions;
Declaration – excerpted from “A Declaration of Faith”;
Profession – by one being baptized;
Reaffirmation – when the congregation reaffirms the baptismal covenant.
Essentially they all mean the same thing applied in different settings. I choose to stay with the term Confession of Faith as a way of keeping it linked to Confession of Sin.

The Confession of Faith is really the flip side of the Confession of Sin. In confessing sin, we acknowledge not just our sins, those things we’ve done wrong, but our Sin, that is the brokenness of our relationship with God. God’s forgiveness is not completed in the Declaration of Forgiveness after the Prayer of Confession. It is only when we hear the Word and then believe our God that we are reconciled. Then we accept the healing of the breach by stating our belief and trust in God by standing to affirm, confess, declare, profess, or reaffirm our faith, or say a creed (credo=I believe).

The Confession of Faith and the Confession of Sin make up a matched set. They belong together in a service. Leave one out, and the omission leaves a huge theological gap in the people’s worship.

I’ve been in churches where there is no Confession of Sin, by any name. I always wonder why. Is it because the people (or pastors) recognize no need for reconciliation with God because that’s a given? I heard it directly from the mouth of a fundamentalist Christian expressed this way, “When you’re saved, you are forgiven for all your sins in advance.” No kidding. That’s not only lacking humility, it’s downright scary.

Leaving out the Confession of Faith may not be as scary, but it’s just as troublesome. When I started in ministry, the church I served had no Confession of Faith under any name or in any form. The resistance I encountered when introducing such an outrageous innovation could be described as hostile indifference. It took a process of close to two years to have anything akin to a Confession of Faith. (In the interests of full disclosure, they weren’t keen on the Confession of Sin either.) Why did they resist? Maybe they didn’t like having to state belief in someone else’s words, or so some told me. I think it went deeper than that.

The lack of a Confession of Faith results in a lack of commitment. Public declaration of what we believe, and Who we believe, is a standard to which we hold ourselves accountable. Just as confessing sin is a way in worship to acknowledge and reject sinfulness, confessing faith is a liturgical way of making a personal commitment to God.

Confessing faith during worship is also a way that we align ourselves with the church throughout history. The words may not be ones we would chose, but when we use historical affirmations like the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds we place ourselves in the tradition of the people of God. Similarly using portions of the faith statements from the Book of Confessions or other historical documents link us with believers in other times and places. In the end, a Confession of Faith is never a personal statement, but a proclamation of the church in which you and I join.

Do you use both a Confession of Sin and Confession of Faith in your congregation’s worship? What do you call them? If you omit one or both, what is your rationale?