Quote
"A liturgical Church has an advantage over one where worship is relatively spontaneous, in that people powered by religious emotion simply do run out of steam. Where there is a Liturgy, you show up each week and merge into that stream, and allow the prayers to shape you. But where the test of successful worship is now much you felt moved, there's always performance anxiety; even the audience has to perform.
"I had been a Christian about ten years when I noticed to my dismay that my spiritual feelings were changing; the experience was growing quieter, less exciting. I feared that I was losing my faith, or that I might hear the Lord's words to the church at Ephesus, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2.4). Then I came to sense that my faith had undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside and was glowing there like a little oil lamp; if I was swept away with emotionally noisy worship, it might tip and sputter. Silence and attentiveness were now key.
"I think this happens naturally in a believer's relationship with God, just as it does between two people who are in love. At first, being in love is all so strange, and the beloved is so other and exciting, that every movement is a thrill. But gradually over long years the couple grows together and grows alike. They no longer find each other a thrilling unknown but drink deeply of a treasured known that will always extend to mystery. At the beginning, the heart pounds just to see the beloved’s handwriting on a n envelope; at the end, two sit side by side before a fire and don't need to speak at all....When years shape us to be like [God], his presence is less electric and strange; yet as we draw nearer, deeper faith yields deeper awe."
"I had been a Christian about ten years when I noticed to my dismay that my spiritual feelings were changing; the experience was growing quieter, less exciting. I feared that I was losing my faith, or that I might hear the Lord's words to the church at Ephesus, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2.4). Then I came to sense that my faith had undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside and was glowing there like a little oil lamp; if I was swept away with emotionally noisy worship, it might tip and sputter. Silence and attentiveness were now key.
"I think this happens naturally in a believer's relationship with God, just as it does between two people who are in love. At first, being in love is all so strange, and the beloved is so other and exciting, that every movement is a thrill. But gradually over long years the couple grows together and grows alike. They no longer find each other a thrilling unknown but drink deeply of a treasured known that will always extend to mystery. At the beginning, the heart pounds just to see the beloved’s handwriting on a n envelope; at the end, two sit side by side before a fire and don't need to speak at all....When years shape us to be like [God], his presence is less electric and strange; yet as we draw nearer, deeper faith yields deeper awe."
~Frederica Mathews-Green
At the Corner of East and Now
posted by Josh at 7:23 PM
4 Comments:
Excellent. A very true, it would seem to me. Liturgical worship connects us with so much... ourselves, the Church of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and with God's "stream" (great word choice on her part) of the forever-continuing Gospel story. A real worship.
Vain repition and heartless worship can exist in any form. Even in doctrinally sound congregations.
And I would say the same for true worship. Liturgical or not. But Greene's point, and I think it's a good one, seems to be that there is a worship environment (i.e., Liturgical) which seems to foster the in-spirit-and-truth-ness of a real experience (yes, I used the word) that is both authentically worshipful and doctrinally sound.
I appreciate where you're coming from and the way you are communicating. I haven't given much detail in my comments that has left me open to your generalizations about what I do or do not believe about liturgy, worship, etc. I would simply say this: I think that FMG's sentiment is useful. I think that the Eastern Orthodox Church is a part of Christ's larger body and has contributed much to our faith and practice - directly or indirectly. It is a beautiful tradition that is imperfect. I don't presume to say any more for my own tradition. We are all striving to follow Christ, and we are all doing it imperfectly. But within her tradition, she has found something that shapes her worship. I pray for her sake and for mine that our worship is increasingly shaped by Christ Himself more than by any particular liturgy, of course.
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