Why Worship?

Worship is one of those words which we tend to use a lot in Church but not necessarily think about too much. We think about how to worship, where and when to worship, who to worship with. We are quite good with the “doing” of worship but underneath all of that there is a “being” of worship which we are often more at a loss to talk about.

What do you think of when someone uses the word worship, what do you mean by it?

We will get to the doing of worship in a minute when we begin to look at the words and actions which shape our church community response to the God who loves us and wants us to talk with Him. But first lets have a quick think about the being of worship, where we are starting from and how worship is in some senses all that we are and do and not just what happens in an hour or two in Church at specific times of the week.

The following well known hymn might begin to offer us a clue as to what being worship might mean.

When you read these words what do you think and where do they take you? They remind me of the passage in Isaiah 6 where Isaiah has a vision of God sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. Isaiah is stunned by this but he is also afraid, next to God's amazing light he feels shadowy and as if he may not survive this encounter. God reassures Isaiah that he is called to do a job for God and that God really has invited him here.

This hymn of often sung at Epiphany when we remember the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. They brought gifts, real solid items of gold, frankincense and myrrh – but their whole visit and their whole journey was worship. They had turned themselves over to the leading of the star, a message from God, and were willing to go wherever it may lead them.

This is at the core of “being” worship – that we turn ourselves over to God. The second verse of the hymn says this – God will take all the cares and worries which fill us and hold them close to Himself and through this process of us turning around and following, of handing over and standing in the presence of, God will turn our footsteps, time and again, towards Himself.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!Bow down before him, his glory proclaim;

with gold of obedience, and incense of lowliness,kneel and adore him: the Lord is his Name!

Low at his feet lay thy burden of carefulness,high on his heart he will bear it for thee,

and comfort thy sorrows, and answer thy prayerfulness,guiding thy steps as may best for thee be.

Being worship might involve physical travel, it might involve sitting absolutely still. It can involve work and families and everything that we do because in everything we are people who God loves and who seek to respond to that love. Our doing worship comes from this place of loving God and being loved by God. Our doing worship can take all sorts of forms, those moments when we turn ourselves deliberately and consciously towards God's presence. This course will concern itself with those and more especially when we come together as a community in corporate acts of worship. So, in the next section, we turn to our corporate words, our Liturgy.

Before you move on to the next section read through the words of the hymn again, perhaps this time read all the verses (see below).

Take a moment to reflect. Is there anything which you notice? Is there anything you feel you would like to ask God or tell God? Is there anything you would like to ask someone else about?

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!Bow down before him, his glory proclaim;with gold of obedience, and incense of lowliness,kneel and adore him: the Lord is his Name!

Low at his feet lay thy burden of carefulness,high on his heart he will bear it for thee,and comfort thy sorrows, and answer thy prayerfulness,guiding thy steps as may best for thee be.

Fear not to enter his courts in the slendernessof the poor wealth thou wouldst reckon as thine;for truth in its beauty, and love in its tenderness,these are the offerings to lay on his shrine.

These, though we bring them in trembling and fearfulness,he will accept for the Name that is dear;mornings of joy give for evenings of tearfulness,trust for our trembling and hope for our fear.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!bow down before him, his glory proclaim;with gold of obedience, and incense of lowliness,kneel and adore him: the Lord is his Name!

John Samuel Bewley Monsell, 1863

Liturgy

Our liturgy, at least in the Episcopal Church, has been an important part of our corporate identity for many centuries. The purpose of our words of worship is first and foremost, of course, to praise God. But liturgy has always performed a secondary and important function in the Anglican Church and that is not only to talk to God but also to say what we believe about God.

Despite many weighty tome about doctrine and rules and regulations the core of our Christian belief is expressed in the words which we say every week. This is why it is important that we pay attention to what we are saying. If we do not have a clue what the words mean then it can be difficult to avoid simply repeating them with no meaning.

This prayer is often called the Prayer of Humble Access – it is used at the

beginning of a Communion Service. What can you draw from it about what

we are saying to God and what we believe about God?

Think of a house. When you walk in the door - and you do walk in a door - you want somewhere to hang your coat and put your shoes. You want a kettle for a cup of tea and chair to sit and drink it in. You may want a lamp to read your book or a television to watch. Houses have structure which enable our living - in our modern world it can seem like the places where we live define our lives instead of our lives defining the places where we live - but that aside, you get the point - a house is really only a framework in which we live, a space where our lives can take place and,hopefully,be enjoyed.

This is true for liturgy - it is a space to be inhabited. Good liturgy will open the door to an encounter with God, it will be a place where we recognise who we are and encounter those around us. Good liturgy will give us a comfortable base from which to explore and a place to relax into God's arms and be held.

How do you react to this picture of liturgy, what would you challenge in it?

Almighty God,to whom all hearts are open,all desires known,and from whom no secrets are hidden:cleanse the thoughts of our heartsby the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,that we may perfectly love you,and worthily magnify your holy name;through Christ our Lord. Amen

There is a third and more esoteric function of Liturgy and that is a framework from which to explore God. When we start on a liturgical worship journey is can be hard to concentrate, hard to follow, hard to make sense of. As we become more accustomed to the words and actions they will become more meaningful to us but can also act as a jumping off point for a sort of Godly inattention. We might find that God speaks to us powerfully in a moment which is unexpected and that we spend a while with that conversation, only to return to the solid words at a later point.

So Liturgy works and different levels and has different meanings. We might carry words from our liturgy with us for the whole of our lives, but as we grow and change the way we relate to our words of worship and what they mean to us does not always remain constant.

Are there words which come to mind from any of our liturgies or when you are in the service notice whether there are words which comfort or jar you. Make a note of them.

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was

betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper,

saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Cor 11:23-26 NRSV

Where do our words come from?

A lot of the words in our liturgies come from the Bible. We shall look at this in a later session. This should not be a surprise really, we have already noticed that out liturgies tell us a lot about how we think about and relate to God, so it makes sense that a lot of their words comes from God's Word, the Bible.

But there is more to the story. Many of the words which we now use can trace their origin back thousands of years. Christianity came from Jewish roots and there is considerable similarity between some of the ancient Jewish liturgies and the Christian ones which emerged. Of course, Christian liturgy sees Jesus as Son of God and Saviour of the World and the words are changed or added to to reflect this.

The very early days of Christianity are often hidden in the mists of time. We simply do not have things written down. This makes sense because most ordinary people would have been used to committing things to memory. Much history and daily ritual would never have been written down. We know from the Bible that the Lord's supper was definitely celebrated early on. In 1 Corinthians Paul gives a detail account of Jesus' giving this to his Disciples. The words he uses in his letter, written in the First Century, are still used day by day in Churches across the world.

Over the ages.

Any picture of the development of liturgy in a format as short as this will only be a sketch. Therefore, instead of trying to give a sequential year by year account we will focus on three key areas which have greatly influenced the liturgy which the Episcopal Church today has inherited.

First we will look at the St. Benedict, then at Thomas Cranmer and the Book of Common prayer and finally at the modern liturgical revision.

St. Benedict

Benedict was from Italy and lived from 480-547 AD. He was responsible for founding twelve monasteries but his real lasting legacy was his rule for monastic living. Within his rule he had a strict schema for daily worship in his monasteries. Starting before sunrise monks would pray at regular intervals throughout the day. This was not new but Benedict consolidated good practice into a written handbook which, helpfully from our point of view, also contained instructions on how to fit the Bible, and especially the Psalms, into these daily services.

Benedict's instrutions would make most people's heads spin as he managed to get the whole Psalter – 150 psalms – into one weeks worth of worship. There are variations to reflect the different seasons but Benedict's conviction was that it was in the recitation of the Psalms that his monks would find order and be able to reflect on God's word to them.

Although England lost many of its monasteries during the sixteenth century, and certainly, religious orders were dispersed, Benedict's set of daily offices has had a prfound effect on Anglican liturgy up until this day. The Book of Common prayer which was the common language of the Church of England for most of 400 years scales down Benedict's offices to two, Matins and Evensong, but still provides a scheme for reading through all the Psalms in a month, day by day.

Common WorshipThe mainstay of both traditional and modern offices then is the Bible. In the modern lectionary the whole Bible is read through in two years. This rhythm of worship can definitely be traced back to Benedict. The Episcopal Prayer book has a series of short services which can be used during the day as well as the longer Morning and Evening Prayer – again Benedict's influence in devising worship which links daily life and worshipping using the scriptures is very real.

T

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the

“Gold Standard” for the Episcopal Church in the USA and replaced the previous 1928 book.

Thomas Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer in its several revisions – which culminated in the 1662 book with which many are familiar – was the mainstay of English liturgical life for over four hundered years. It longevity, and the fact that it is still licensed today, bear witness to both the theological and literary genius of its chief author, Thomas Cranmer.

The Book of Common Prayer was first published in 1549, seven years before Cranmers death. Most will be familiar with the history of the Tudors and the Stewarts in its most basic form. Henry VIII ceded from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 and this act, despite a brief return to Rome during the reign of Mary, was completed by the Act of Supremacy in 1558. The new prayer book was for a church of the new age, reflecting both Catholic inheritance and protestant teaching. It is a testament to its achievement that although it had several editions it was only reformed and not rejected except under the puritans. The Restoration of a monarch brought with it a new, and more permanent edition of the prayer book.

Whilst the revisions of the prayer book are fascinating, especially in regard to the choregraphy, and therefore theology, of the Eucharist an in depth analysis is not our remit here. Cranmer took the old monastic offices and compressed them into Matins and Evensong. Gone was the Latin, indecipherable to the average congregant (and in all honesty to many clergy) and in its place (at the time) modern English of the most poetic beauty.

Part of the reason liturgical reform took so long was that the BCP worked. It combined a solid grounding in the Bible with memorable words and phrases and some solid theology. The BCP's basic stance on life is that we are creatures of God who fall away and God, in His mercy, never fails to restore us. Whilst much of the language is harsh about our sinfulness and creatureliness it is always tempered by forgiveness and grace.

Cranmer's lasting legacy were the Collects which he refined and composed for the book. Collects are what they say they are, prayers with collect together both people and thoughts appropriate to the day. – tightly woven words which have led people to the mystery of Christ generation after generation.

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent;

Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we,worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,

may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect for Ash Wednesday, 1662 Book of Common Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer 1979

The story of liturgy in the Episcopal Church in the USA really starts with the birth of a new nation state as America won independence from England. Up until that point the Church of England was also the Church of America, that is where there were Anglicans the clergy swore allegiance to the king (or queen) and the common language of worship was the English Book of Common Prayer.

The Episcopal Church was not formally seperated from the Church of England until 1789 and published its Prayer Book in 1790. This contained a recognisable core of the English BCP but was also very much influenced by the 1764 Scottish Prayer Book. Further revisions occurred in 1892, 1928 and 1979 leaving the Episcopal Church with recognisable Anglican liturgy.

When revising liturgy a delicate balance has always to be struck between the inheritance of the past, our core beliefs (the place where these differ can be hard to discern) and the needs of the Church of today.The Episcopal Church in the USA has not followed other provinces into further revision choosing instead to rely on a series of supplemental books called Enriching our Worship. These do not replace the BCP and are used in accordance with local rules and regulations. These books provide for a wide range of liturgical expression and open the door to liturgies from around the world whilst preserving a structure for worship.

Even though the BCP is only just over 30 years old it sometimes shows its age as language has developed very quickly since 1979. The key question for Episcopalians is how to retain that resonance which the traditional words offer. How to use words which seem to take God seriously and also how to reach out to new, and often unchurched, generations of believers.

Do any words or phrases in the Book of Common prayer stand out to you – either because you love them or because they make little sense to you.

Liturgy is our common voice to and about God and although it can seem tiresome to squabble over words they can be important. Our common action of service to Christ needs to be at the heart of all we do and say, but spending some time thinking about the why and how will hopefully lead us to a deeper appreciation of both out words and what they might mean to us.

Response

Do you have any questions or observations from this chapter?

Have a go at writing a Collect.

The form of a Collect is thus

Saying something we know about God:eg.O God all good thoughts come from you

Asking God for something:eg. In your mercy grant that we will only want what you want

Put in into context by asking through Jesus:eg. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen

It is a useful exercise because instead of ploughing into asking God for things (which we usually do) we are asked to pause for a moment on God's glory and in God's time and then what we ask for is a reflection of the pause rather than being a shopping list of requests.

You can elaborate a bit of course, but don't run on beyond a couple of sub-clauses in each sentence of you will lose your rhythm. Have fun!(If you are short on ideas perhaps you could start by writing a Collect for your family, or for our Church or for your friends and go from there).

Would it matter if different Episcopal Churches used different words. What difference does it make? Does it mean we now have a different sort of theology about what Church is? Do you prefer uniformity or variety, and why?