Interesting how a senior pastor being away can reveal the reality of your Church’s liturgy.  We Evangelicals don’t like liturgy ever since Martin Luther said it was all about the individual( that’s not at all what he said. modern all-I-need-is-my-Bible thinking would have been a joke to him).  And we have been making every attempt to distance ourselves from them ever since.   But the reality is the every church has a liturgy.  We have liturgies for our family, our friendships and even our day.  We get up, brush our teeth, shower eat breakfast, whatever.  The question is not between liturgy or no liturgy but between good and bad liturgy.  Pretending you don’t have a liturgy is bad liturgy by definition.  It is ensuring that you have not thought out how to use your liturgy to glorify God.

Something’s missing.

It’s typical of rebellion that it throws out the content and unknowingly keeps the trappings as if they were not constructs, as if they were neutral.  We see it in our rebellious university system, which was once strictly based on a long tradition of classical education put under the Lordship of Jesus.  Today we cram all those core classes into the curriculum, but we don’t really know why.  People always complain about having to learn math, or science or English when that is not their degree.  But we threw out the content and filled it with fluff and we can’t talk about why, because that is too Christian.

The same is true of our Winter Celebrations in the schools which are blatantly devoid of any mention of Christmas, but don’t really offer anything more in it’s place.  I was struck by the moment of silence at our City Commission meetings, where the prayer used to be.  It’s like the emperor has no clothes moment.  Hello? the meeting has no content and it certainly does not have the blessing of God.  Who are the Deists again?  Benjamin Franklin called for prayer, famously at the Constitutional convention when the delegates found themselves in a tough spot, as well as before every meeting.

I think we have a similar practice at Grace, when we have a moment of silence, or a moment to quite our hearts before worship. Don’t think about what you did this week.  Go ahead try it.  Of course you can think of nothing else.  Negative thoughts don’t work to well, it’s like that story of the demon who was cast out but never replaced. This is where the other denominations, the ones who admit their liturgy, put in confession.  We aren’t really into that much anymore.  I guess we don’t like to beforgiven.  Confession is important,  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Glad to see Pastor Jeremy leading by example.  What is this clearing your mind stuff? Are we on a mountain in Tibet?  We don’t need to clear our mind we need to clear our accounts sheet, we need to keep short accounts.  When we sin, God and whomever we sinned against hold our debt, until we make it right.  But hey American’s don’t pay their monetary debts why should they pay these?

So, back to the order of liturgy,  of course there is the possibility that you arrange your liturgy based on the personal preferences of one person or another, traditional hymns or modern praise songs.  Even that is better than arranging it based on what is not-Catholic.  But there is another option, that you all work together to build a liturgy that glorifies God the best way you know how.  And to press for further and further knowledge and understanding as in this and all areas of our Christianity.  There is also a vast wealth left to us by previous Christians.  But again, in an attempt distance ourselves from he Catholics, we cut off all the riches that previous generation can give to us.

The Father of English Hymnoty, Issac Watts was in love with the Psalms, but he thought it was regrettable that they didn’t explicitly refer to Jesus. So, he sought to rewrite the Psalms to do just that.  This is progress, this is using human creativity and your mind to glorify a precise God.  But then a huge wave of Enlightenment swept in and started throwing out tradition for the sake of throwing it out. Emphasis became on personal salvation, getting butts in the seats and dramatic conversions, the emphasis became man.  Individual men began doing everything to make himself feel good, to express himself. He used to dress out of respect for his community, now he dresses to feel good and express himself.  He started tattooing and cutting himself to distinguish his individuality and then demanding that people accept him.  He started writing music the same way.  He threw out the Psalms and even the Hymns, and pretty soon he couldn’t write hymns anymore.  His children had heard of hymns but their music was even more simple. It amounted to little more than sappy love ditties with Jesus inserted instead of their beau, sung to 4 guitar chords repeated over and over.  They didn’t write music  they discovered it.

So yeah, It is certainly not about us.  But it is also not just ‘about God’.  It is about conforming ourselves to the objective standard, to God’s standard.  We were placed on this earth for a reason, we have real tasks that we can accomplish, we are the body of Christ.   But if the church is a self-serving, simplistic, mess what good can it be to the world?  It is time we started taking liturgy seriously.