Why Worship Liturgically?
R.
Dennis Campbell
Liturgy
was once the only form of Christian public worship. Yet liturgy seems odd to
many people today. It has been replaced by user/seeker friendly
practices, and many wonder why anyone would want to worship liturgically.
We in the Anglican Orthodox Church believe worship is not about what we
want. It is not about our taste in music, sermons, architecture,
clothing, or style of worship. Worship is about God. It is
something the Church does for God, not something the Church does for us.
It is all about honouring God as God, not about making us feel good.
Liturgy takes the emphasis off the worshipers and returns it to God.
Liturgy removes the temptation to focus on a song, a performance, the
personality of the minister, our own tastes, and even our own feelings. Liturgy
places all of these things in the background as it gathers the people into one
common service of worshiping God. Of course the only compelling reason
for any mode or form of worship is that is either allowed or required by God in
the Bible. We of the Anglican Orthodox Church believe liturgical worship
is Biblical worship.
Jesus
worshiped liturgically. Everyone acknowledges that the Temple services were
very formal and very liturgical; few know that the synagogue services were
equally so. Patterned after the Temple, the synagogue followed a
beautiful liturgy of written prayers, formal Scripture readings, and liturgical
hymns. Alfred Edersheim described worship in the synagogue during the
time of Christ saying: “There, on Sabbath and feast days they met to read, from
the same Lectionary, the same Scripture lessons which their brethren read
throughout the world, and to say, in the words of the same liturgy, their
common prayers” (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, p. 77).
That "same liturgy" is still used in many synagogues and is found in
the Jewish book of prayers, the Siddur. The internet has numerous sites
describing it, and many synagogues welcome visitors, so their liturgy is well
known. Jesus was diligent about worshiping in the synagogue and Temple
(Lk. 2:41-49, Lk. 4:16, Jn. 18:20). So, Jesus worshiped liturgically.
But
didn't Jesus change all that in His New Testament Church? Didn't He
"free" us from the bondage of ritual and liturgy? Wasn't the
worship of the early Church spontaneous, fluid, and experiential? In a
word, no. Jesus did not break with the liturgical form of worship; He
continued it. He actually gave at least two liturgies which are still
followed today. The first is the Lord's Supper. The second is baptism.
In both we still follow the form and the words given to us by Christ. The
Lord' Prayer is a liturgical prayer said from memory or read in the Church from
the days of Christ until now. Most of its petitions are quotations from
the Siddur (Evan Daniel, The Prayer Book; its History, Language, and
Contents, p. 2).
The
Apostles worshiped liturgically. The Apostles and early Christians were Jews
and they continued to worship in the liturgical form they had known all their
lives. At first, they continued to worship in the Tempe and
synagogue. Thus, Peter and John went to the Temple because it was the
hour of Prayer (Acts 3:1). The Church continued in "the
prayers," as it says in the Greek New Testament, meaning the formal,
liturgical prayers of the Temple and synagogue (Acts 2:42). The early
Church met for these services daily, along with other Jews (Acts 2:46).
When Jewish Christians met apart from the Temple and synagogue they took the
liturgical form of worship with them and, essentially, formed a Christian
synagogue (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vii, pp. 329- 536). This is
important because it shows that while the Apostles were writing the Scriptures
and founding the Church, they were worshiping liturgically.
The
liturgical form of worship did not change when Gentiles were brought into the
Church. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, was a Jew who had worshiped
according to the Siddur since childhood. He was greatly influenced by the
Church at Antioch, which was composed of Jewish Christians (Acts11:19-20).
There Paul learned to worship as a Christian. The Church of Antioch
consisted of Jewish Christians who had been instructed by the Apostles through
Barnabas (Acts 11:19-27); it worshiped liturgically. When Paul
established churches in Asia and Europe, he taught them to worship as he had
been taught in Antioch, liturgically. When the Church of Corinth departed from
the liturgy and patterned its services after the chaotic pagan festivals of the
Greco-Roman culture, Paul chastised it (I Cor. 14:23-33). The
Corinthians' impure worship flowed from an impure faith, so the church's
doctrine and living were as corrupt as its worship. Consequently, the
church was in chaos. First and Second Corinthians were written to
encourage repentance and restore order, that all things, including the worship,
may be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40).
Liturgical
worship continued almost unchallenged for much of the first two centuries of
the Church. Gradually, however, doctrinal errors crept into the Church,
and it was inevitable that they found their way into the worship as well.
The history of this decline is well documented and need not be discussed
here. Let it simply be noted that the Reformers did not reject
liturgy. Rather than reject it, they expelled the accumulated doctrinal
and practical errors and returned liturgy to its Apostolic and Biblical
purity. Martin Luther is known for this in Germany, but Thomas Cranmer
and John Calvin did the same in England and Switzerland. Thomas Cranmer
also translated the liturgy from Latin into English, making it possible for
English speaking people to become worshipers again instead of merely
spectators. His work is preserved in the Book of Common Prayer.
John Calvin's Geneva Liturgy is well known.
Whence,
then, came the view, which dominates the contemporary Church, that worship must
be spontaneous, people oriented, and devoid of liturgy? During the
Reformation several groups separated from the Reformers on the assumption that
they had not gone far enough in their efforts to reform the Church. Some
of these groups remained within the fold of the orthodox Christian faith.
Others left orthodoxy and made up their own religions, combining portions of
biblical truth with unbiblical ideas. These groups usually gathered around
charismatic personalities who were unfamiliar with the cultural and historical
circumstances in which the Biblical writers lived, and to which they addressed
their Books. Assuming they could understand the Bible without such
knowledge, they read their own ideas into the Scriptures and opened the door to
cults and false doctrine. Needless to say, liturgy was one of the first
things they rejected, replacing it with their own ideas of what worship should
be. The focus of worship was turned from God to the congregation. Rather
than Christ and the Bible, they turned to Europe's pagan past and made it the
model of worship. Human experience and feelings became the standard by
which the services were judged. This led to a growing emphasis on
pleasing the people, and the use of showmanship and entertainment to accomplish
it. This view of worship gradually infiltrated the Church, and is the
dominant view today.
It
is clear that liturgy has been the dominant mode of worship during most of the
Church's history. This brings up an interesting question. Knowing
that our Lord spent forty days with the Apostles after His resurrection, and
that much of that time was necessarily spent teaching them the meaning of
Scripture and the organization and worship of the New Testament Church,
why did He allow them to continue to worship liturgically? Knowing that
His Church would penetrate into all cultures, races, and eras, why did He not
instruct the Apostles to adapt worship to the cultures and tastes of the peoples
who would become His Church? Why did the Apostle Paul chastise the
Corinthians for accommodating their worship to the tastes and practices of
their own culture? Perhaps it is because the way we worship God is not a
matter of personal taste. Perhaps it is not something left to our own
whims and feelings. Perhaps it is too important to be left to the tastes
and cultures of the pagan peoples in which the Church finds herself; more
important than to be left to the ideas and tastes of even the most Godly Christian
minds. Perhaps the worship of God is a task so important and so enormous
that its form and pattern must be given to us by God Himself. We have
seen in the Bible that liturgy is the way Jesus worshiped, the way the Apostles
worshiped, and the way the New Testament Church worshiped. We believe
this demonstrates conclusively that liturgical worship is Biblical worship.
This is why the Anglican Orthodox Church worships liturgically.
tDennis Campbell
Bishop, Anglican Orthodox Church Diocese of Virginia
Rector,
Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
Powhatan,
Virginia
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