What is liturgy?

I went to a conservative non-denominational high school that was a loose association of families (mostly from the same church) who home schooled their children but wanted them to have certain types of classes available. I won't explain the long story of why I was in this setting (maybe another time) but I remember a really funny conversation I had with a classmate the Wednesday after Easter. My family was attending a Lutheran church at the time, and as you know from my recent post on the subject, Holy Week is a Big. Freaking. Deal. for Lutherans. So we were understandably tired the day after Easter and skipped school, and so my classmate was inquiring about that. After I had explained about the week-long church marathon, my classmate looked at me and asked quizzically, "Why would go go to church that many times? Are you Catholic or something?" I was really offended! Not because there's anything wrong with being Catholic but because as kind of the original protestants which made their non-denominational worship a thing at all, I felt like people should recognize that there are protestant traditions that are deeply ritualistic but which also profess a different doctrine than Catholicism. I didn't want to be lumped in with another denomination whose theological commitments were different than mine! I felt so very misunderstood.

Aside from demonstrating what a dork I was even in high school, I'm telling you this because that was the first moment when I realized that liturgy is not well understood by a lot of people. What is the point of all those calls and responses and all that jazz? To non-liturgical traditions, it can feel stuffy or formal. To non-Christians it's just strange. It's a shame that it looks that way, though, because to those of us who know what it's all about, the rituals of worship are deep and beautiful expressions of our Christian identity. And so, as usual, my goal here is to explain a little bit about it.

Now, when I say liturgical, I don't necessarily mean a denomination that is formal with incense and robes and organs and such. Liturgy can be formal or informal, but it is basically the form of the worship service, or the things you do and say in it. For some, the parts are set and everything is the same each week (or depending on the season), and for some the parts can be moved around and change slightly from week to week. A Lutheran worship service will vary quite a bit in the order but generally has the following things: greeting, confession & forgiveness, prayers, readings, sermon, confession of faith (creed), holy communion, and benediction. There will be hymns interspersed throughout. Again, this can be formal with organ and lots of bowing and robes to super informal with t-shirts and rock bands. Liturgy refers to the things you do and say as part of the worship service, not how you do and say them.

So what's the point? These things can look silly, especially everybody reading the same text in a monotone, and if you do them week after week you can slip into not thinking about it. Why not keep it simple and have music, a scripture reading and sermon, and maybe some prayers? The answer is that liturgy gives shape to the service. It tells a particular story, and we go through these motions to remind us of what ties us together as a people, and what the important parts of our faith are. Skip Sundberg is a professor at Luther Seminary, and he contends that a worship service is itself an act of confession and absolution. Through the liturgy we acknowledge that we are broken creatures, and then we have forgiveness declared to us again and again, through the reading of the gospel, through prayers, and especially through communion. The real beauty is that regardless of what exactly you believe (and there is a lot of variety), you have an awareness of being called to a community.

The importance of the community can't be underestimated, and for me this really answers the question of why you go to church at all. It's not because God will be mad at you if you sleep in (trust me, I sleep in sometimes and I do this church stuff for a living!), but because being part of a community ties you with other people who can have faith when you are too weak, hurting, or scared to do so. I remember being a teenager and questioning the whole Jesus thing, and at that time I couldn't bring myself to say the creed. I just couldn't do it. But people stood all around me declaring it, and it was okay for me to not have faith then, because somebody else had faith for me. Going through these motions as a community can also help you to recognize your sin and humble yourself when you're too prideful, because you're saying the words and that practice transforms you even if you're not aware of it. And most importantly, through these rites and rituals we declare to one another, profess publicly before one another, and hold for one another the truth of the gospel that despite our sin, we are forgiven, and despite our brokenness, we are healed. We worship together and do so in particular ways because we are all tied together by Jesus who came for the world, and gives a formful expression to the things we believe, so that our faith can feel tangible even when God feels distant, and so that we remember who we are and to whom we belong.

There's no right way to worship, and liturgies come in all shapes and sizes from a jazz service to the highest high church you can imagine. But for those of us who love this style of worship, there is something deeply moving about standing next to people you may not know at all, but knowing that we, as Mother Theresa said, "belong to each other" and that their confession is mine and my forgiveness is theirs, because we are all Christ's.