Saturday, May 18, 2013

The Road to Redemption – Worship 9


 

As we complete our series on worship I want to end with a description of our worship service. In order to fully embrace worship as we celebrate it each week it is helpful to experience it as a conversation with God. God initiates the conversation and we respond.

Announcements and Time of Greeting: We begin with reminders that we are a community of faith created by Christ. This time also allows us a chance to greet newcomers to our family in the name of Christ. By so doing we demonstrate our belief that we are Everybody's Church.

Choral Introit: This musical offering allows us to center our hearts and minds upon the purpose for which we have gathered; entering into an encounter with the living God.

Call to Worship: The call to worship is God inviting us into a conversation. Notice that the "One" plays the part of God calling to us and then we respond in kind.

Opening Hymn: This is our first response to God's invitation to worship. Most opening hymns are hymns of praise which are offered to God for all that God has done for us and for the world.

Time with the Younger Church: Jesus loved and blessed children. We follow his example and help children hear God speaking to them during this time in our service.

Baptism or Communion - Baptism and Communion are the two sacraments of our church. They are visible signs of promises God has made to us. Baptism represents the promise that all are welcomed into God's family. Communion reminds us of God's promise to always be renewing our lives through the continuing presence of Jesus Christ in the church.

Call to Confession: God calls us to confess where our lives, both corporately and individually, have not been lived in a Christ-like manner. In this way we open ourselves to loving others more fully.

Prayer of Confession: We respond to God's call by confessing where we have fallen short of God's expectations for us. We always do this though, knowing that God has promised to forgive.

Assurance of Pardon: God responds with a declaration of forgiveness, reminding us that we have been forgiven and have become new people, capable of living in new ways.

Sung Response: We sing to God and give thanks for our having been forgiven and reconciled.

Unison Prayer for Illumination: We ask that God will open our minds and hearts so that the ancient story of God's people will have meaning for us today.

Scripture Readings: God now speaks to us through God's ancient story; from both the First and Second Testaments.

Sermon: The sermon is a conversation between God's word, our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit. We strive to bring the ancient story into our modern world in such a way that our lives are transformed through the encounter.

Hymn: God's gift of the scriptures is always Good News. Our response to that Good News is to praise God in song.

Tithes and Offerings: We continue our response to God's gracious Word by the giving of gifts to support God's community.

Offertory: The offertory is a continuation of our songs of thanksgiving.

Prayers of the People: This is the time in our gathering when we speak to and listen for God with one heart and one mind. We pray the Lord's Prayer as a way of binding us together with both God and with believers of all time and all places.

Closing Hymn: The final hymn is intended to allow us to praise God one more time in such a way that we are reminded of our call to love God and neighbor.

Benediction: The benediction is the moment when the pastor pronounces God's blessings upon God's people. This blessing empowers us to go and serve.

Postlude: This is a moment when we are offered the opportunity to reflect on what God has done for us so that we might go and serve as those blessed by God

The Road to Redemption – Worship 8

    Over the past several weeks we have seen how Jewish/Christian worship evolved over the centuries. I use the term evolve intentionally because there were few dramatic changes which took place from the time of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness until the Reformation; a period of almost 2,500 years. Though the entire Jewish sacrificial system ended in 70 CE with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, Christians had already begun to transition away from the Temple for a couple of decades. The destruction merely ended one phase of worship for both Christian and Jews and moved them into house churches for Christians and synagogues for Jews.

    Again, as we have noted, the church once freed from both the Temple and synagogue began to create its own liturgies and traditions. Eventually these became rather standard liturgies (parts and orders of worship) for each of the main branches of Christendom. The focus of these liturgies became the Eucharist or the Mass. The Mass was important because it allowed persons to "witness" the sacrificial death of Jesus on a regular basis. In times when few people could read, symbols (icons, statues, the Mass) became more and more important in passing on the faith traditions of the Church. While the Mass remained and remains the center of worship for much of the world-wide church (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopalian) its importance faltered during the Reformation.

    The Reformation (beginning in 1517) was a product of several factors; religious (corruption of the Roman church and ill-trained priests), political (a desire for freedom from autocratic rulers loyal to the Roman church) and technological (the advent of the printing press and rise of literacy). The result of this movement was that Christians in Western Europe broke away from the Roman church and formed multiple denominations. These denominations, including those who would ultimately be known as Presbyterians, moved the focus of worship away from the Mass and toward the scriptures. Rather than the mass (or communion) being at the center of worship, the proclamation of the Word (preaching) became the most important element in the service.

    Though many of the churches formed during the Reformation (Lutheran and Episcopalian) retained weekly communion, most of the Reformed churches (Presbyterians among them) refused to continue this tradition. The belief was that there was still too much superstition involved with the practice and that worshippers encountered God more fully in scripture than they did in communion. Opposition to regular communion became so extreme that some churches only practiced it once a year. The church in which I grew up had communion only once a quarter. What is interesting about this is that John Calvin (our theological forbearer) believed that worship was incomplete without communion.

    The Reformed churches also moved toward simplicity within the worship service and in the architecture of the worship space. There was no longer a place for incense, bells, large scale musical pieces, elaborate worship clothing or even stained glass windows. Processionals consisted of the Bible and the pastor; music was mainly Psalms sung to simple tunes; ministers wore plain black gowns; and clear windows replaced the stained glass (so one could see God's creation). Even though the focus of worship changed, the central elements remained the same (prayer, scripture, preaching, offering, and singing).

    The most significant change to these Reformed practices has come in the last 40 years with the rise of "contemporary" worship. In some places this style of worship has reduced worship to only two elements; singing and preaching. Elements such as prayer and even a cross in the sanctuary have been removed from worship in order that the unchurched are made to feel welcome. In the end what this says is that worship will continue to evolve over time as cultures and people change.

The Road to Redemption – Worship 7

In our last article we looked at the emergence of early Christian worship from the Jewish synagogue service. This basic Jewish service was pray, chant, read and expound on scripture, and pray again. The early church adopted this pattern but added the Eucharist (Lord's Supper) to the mix as the centerpiece of the service. For the first three hundred years of the life of the church there was little oversight given to the liturgy (order of worship used by various congregations). However as the church began to become more and more structured with a clerical hierarchy, the liturgy began to be more and more structured as well.

The first great push for standardization came around the years 375-380 CE. During that time the Apostolic Constitutions were collected and disseminated. This collection of writings (The Apostolic Constitutions) contained writings on doctrine, discipline, and worship. These Constitutions were to assist clergy in everything from correct teaching to correct worship. Legend had it that they were either the work of the original Apostles or of Clement of Rome. The church rejected their claim to be Apostolic (meaning they could not be inserted in the Bible) and later realized they were not from Clement either. Nonetheless they were pivotal in assisting the church in bringing some liturgical order out of the chaos of every congregation doing whatever they desired. Their fingerprints show up in virtually every western (Roman) and Eastern (Orthodox) rite today.

Even so, over time as the rites spread to a variety of nations they acquired several distinct forms. The main branches of liturgical styles were Alexandrine, Syriac, Byzantine, Armenian and Latin. Each of these rites gave birth to other traditions. The Syriac tradition birthed the Chaldean, Malabar, Syriac, Malankar and Maronite rites. The Byzantine birthed Greek and Slavic variants. Alexandrine birthed Coptic and Ethiopic rites. The Latin tradition gave the world Roman, Ambrosian, Celtic, Gallican and Mozarabic rites. All of this is to say that within the emerging church, while there were certain basic liturgical elements (see below) there was no one way to order worship. Liturgy was still ultimately shaped by the local culture, language and clergy.

The common liturgical elements within these rites will sound familiar to us today: invocation, confession, absolution, hymns, litanies, Kyrie/Gloria, collect, liturgical readings, Alleluia, scripture readings, Creeds, Prayers, Lord's Prayer, offering, communion (which includes a liturgical conversation between the priest and the peoples, the Eucharistic prayer, the words of institution, prayer and distribution), passing of the peace, Agnus Dei and benediction. Over the centuries other elements were added to the worship practices of the church. These include the church year (a three year cycle of scripture readings which retell the cycle of Christ's life from birth to ascension), vestments for the clergy (this includes robes, stoles and hats), veneration of the saints (through holy days, statues or icons), prayer books (filled with portions of the liturgy to be read/sung by the congregation) and architecture specific to the various rites (Roman and Orthodox church buildings are very different because of the different needs of the rites).

Two of the great changes in the Roman rite (used by the Roman Catholic Church) were the transition from Latin to the local vernacular as the language of worship and the increased use of laity in the service itself. These were both byproducts of Vatican II, initiated by John XXIII (1881-1963) when he desired that some "fresh air" be brought into the church. As far as I am aware few if any of the other major traditions have moved away from their original languages (Greek, Russian, etc.) in worship or have included laity in the service in the ways now in use in the Roman church.

This history then sets the stage for the transformation of worship not only in the Reformation but in our world today.