Relocating To Elfland

Strange as it may sound, I think some priority reading for today’s Protestant should be something like William Maxwell’s An Outline of Christian Worship: Its Development and Forms, or Bard Thompson’s Liturgies of the Western Church. We are ridiculously ignorant of how our forebears worshiped, and why. This is part, no doubt, of our broader malady in modern Protestantism: we have a fuzzy idea that we exist because something big happened around 1517, but little grasp of the issues that sparked the Reformation, almost no idea how the magisterial Reformers differed in responding to these issues, even less idea how they differed from the radicals of the time, no conception of anything worth learning from the pre-Reformation Christians (lost as they were in the Dark Ages) – and we tend to draw a straight line from 1517 to the Second Great Awakening, where just about everything we recognize as genuine Christianity got started.

Liturgy is the church’s worshipful reenactment of the drama of redemption. It is the way in which the church, at a particular time and place, ascends Mount Zion and joins in the worship of the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:18–29). Arguably, therefore, the historical liturgies of the church are some of our best sources of insight into our fathers’ understanding of redemption, and sites at which we may crosscheck our own understanding against their wisdom. (Might it follow that our ignorance of their liturgies is an implicit statement of “chronological snobbery”?)

I am personally passionate about historically informed liturgical worship because I grew up in a church in which anyone, during the “praise and worship” portion of the service, could start any song that came to his or her mind (as one of the musicians, I well remember fumbling to find the key – sometimes it was necessary to stop everything and start over, in a singable signature), or speak forth anything the Holy Spirit ostensibly inspired. The chaos was quite remarkable. When I first experienced Reformed liturgical worship, the order alone won me over.

Since then, however, I have discovered that liturgy has to do with a lot more than order. Liturgy expresses a whole understanding of how we approach the Lord our God; it is an expression of a particular covenant theology (or lack thereof); it tells the story of God’s people in a particular way. I have sat through liturgical worship that is simply dreadful, either because it is haphazard (something that cannot be said of any of the great ancient liturgies), or because it is perfunctory, or because it is theologically anemic (an anemic theology always produces an anemic liturgy). This is why I increasingly insist on liturgy being historically informed. I like old liturgies for the same reason I like old theology – they are, to put it bluntly, of better vintage.

But there is more. If we Protestants could ever, ever begin to take biblical ecumenicity seriously (note the adjective, please; no, I’m not a fan of the World Council of Churches, etc.), we might consider whether a common liturgy is not the best tool in our belt. Common liturgy promotes a practical catholicity in the church, a sense of meaningful communion both with our ancient fathers (assuming we reference them occasionally) and with our brethren throughout the world. At present, we have difficulty establishing common liturgy even within denominational lines, let alone on a more worldwide scale, but I refuse to despair.

At the local level, over against much of what passes for “praise and worship” today, liturgy has the advantage of being genuinely participational. You don’t get to stand with your hands in the air, listening to a band and trying to follow along; you get to be the choir. You don’t spectate; you listen attentively so as to respond in the corporate Kyrie eleison or Sursum corda. You shout “amen” after the declaration of pardon. You eat and drink at the Lord’s Table after hearing His Word. You lift your hands to receive His benediction. It really keeps you awake.

Something else emerges in a congregation that worships this way. We and our children become accustomed to a common liturgical language. We suddenly find we have memorized the creed. We begin to anticipate (hungrily) the words, “Grace to you and peace.” In private seasons of repentance, there springs unbidden to mind, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.” We begin to hear our children singing our psalms and hymns in their beds at night (yes, it happens in my household). And not least in the glory of this: we are saying and singing the same words our fathers have said and sung since the earliest centuries of the church. Not that we don’t keep adding to the repertoire of the New Song – we do – but there is a deep continuity with the ancient forms, going all the way back to the songs of Moses, of David, and of the Lamb.

Okay, this can all degenerate into formalistic ritualism. I grant it. But I’ve got to say: I’ve heard the Aaronic blessing hundreds of times in worship, and I want to keep hearing it until the day I die. It never gets old. And if it ever does, the problem is with me, not with the church’s use of it for four thousand years. If good liturgy gets tired, it’s because we’re tired of God and the gospel. Shame on us, then. Kyrie eleison.