The earliest rule I remember about church was my Mom telling me when I was 4 or 5, sitting in the balcony at the back of Trinity, Alpena and she pointed to the Lord’s Prayer and said to me that this is the one thing she expected me to memorize. The rest of the service, I can do other stuff, but at this point, I need to stop playing or reading and I have to pray with everyone else by heart.

As I got older, I’d read comic books. Then stop at the Lord’s Prayer and then go downstairs and receive communion.

The only other rule our family had was that I had to be in church each week. I didn’t have to pay attention or read along. I had to be there. That mattered.

'Even if we aren't fully engaged, our presence is effective.' Share on X

How I came to see our liturgy was as a receiver, as a member of the audience to a choir concert with sing-alongs and speeches. I felt a little engaged in the liturgy, mostly in that we had a lot of speaking parts, so I learned to be prepared to say my responses.

Like other Episcopalians, I got used to shouting “And also with you!” at the right moment.

And yet I’ve always understood the importance of presence and gathering. Even if we aren’t fully engaged, our presence is effective.

A teacher once told me a story about her church. They put in a soft space in the front for the kids to gather during church. It had books and beanbag chairs and toys. The older kids policed the younger ones. They knew this was a privilege given to them and they didn’t want to see it taken away.

As she was describing it, she told us of her son, who was one of those bigger kids. She watched as he read and whispered and had his back to the pulpit and the altar for the whole service. At dinner, when she asked him what his favorite part of church was that day, he told her about the part of the sermon that made him think, that he still had questions about. She thought she would trick him into paying better attention, but he already was! He was present.

Work

We church leaders like to remind our people on a regular basis that liturgy means “work of the people.” The traditional understanding of our worship practice, what we call liturgy, is work. And more importantly, it is the work of the gathered people.

People certainly have a hard time getting organized without systems and leaders. We want to know who is going to be there to read the lessons, sing, bring the elements, and pray. And we certainly want to know who is going to preside or MC the whole thing. That is only natural.

One of the challenges we have is maintaining that sense of worship: that it is our work and not the work of those in fancy robes or the otherwise designated authorities. It seems as if our need for leadership often slips into a relationship of a leader with followers rather than first leader among leaders.

I have had dozens of conversations with parishioners who try to argue with me when I call them leaders.

We tipped the scales too heavily in that way during the Medieval period. It is hard to say that liturgy is the work of the people when the people weren’t able to sing or understand their worship, couldn’t really follow along, and couldn’t even see the action, much of it behind a barrier. These changes didn’t deprive people of their ability to share in worship, but deprived their ownership and active participation in leading worship as a gathered community.

We, in the centuries since, have been removing these changes, most prominently in the Reformation period, but also in the 20th Century. Perfect examples of this change are Vatican II and the Liturgical Renewal movements. More recently, Emergence Christianity has sought, as Liturgical Renewal before it, to go further back; to restore elements of worship normative to the ancient church, introducing more experiential and collaborative elements to liturgy.

The Event

In his philosophy of religion, John Caputo (from Derrida) describes GOD, and also Jesus, as the Event. So when we speak of GOD, we speak of the inbreaking, the work, the events of GOD, and perhaps, who GOD is revealed to be in these moments. For it is not so much about the existence of GOD, but the insistence of GOD, the BE-ing (and doing) of GOD.

So perhaps the truly greatest part of the Event is found in the inbreaking of Jesus. This part of the Event is seminal and disruptive. In this way, we can see in the Event this disruptive moment of great change and opportunity, for here comes GOD intervening in the world. Truly being in the world in the incarnation, the coming of Jesus. But for us, we may experience the Event in those times in which our way and our will is disrupted.

For Christians, every gathering which involves prayer is a participation in the Event or an opportunity to be in the Event. What is prayer but the literal invitation for GOD to interrupt our world and set it right. Or in our more personal ways, to heal our loved ones, bring safety to our neighbors, or for the Wolverines to win on Saturday. These are personal invitations, text messages to GOD to break in and create a new manifestation of the Event.

And we adhere to the understanding that GOD creates such events whenever two or three are gathered. So we get together in Christ and Jesus is with us in another inbreaking.

This is the Event as I have come to understand it. And it matches the essential character of our liturgy. This means that our work, this communal worship for which we are all directly responsible, is effective. It brings the Event. We ask for the love, the presence of GOD and GOD fulfills the promise to be here, to receive and share love.

This cannot come through incantation or through magic hands. We see in Exodus, Pharaoh’s sorcerers trying to keep up with the power of GOD, using their incantations and magic spells and they can’t. For GOD broke into the world, sometimes through the staff given to Moses, but not exclusively, for GOD is responsible for the Event, not the staff or Moses’s magic hands.

GOD is the Event. We aren’t invited to be witnesses to the Event, observing from decks and balconies in the back, but participating in it, praying and loving and sharing and working to the glory of GOD. All of us, in a gathered chorus of saints and friends and disciples in great hope and expectation.

Ask Yourself

Do we trust in our presence, our service, our participation? Do we empower and engage our part in making liturgy? What would it be to believe that I am necessary for our liturgy?

How might liturgy best reflect the gathering of leaders for the work we have gathered to make? What thoughts / actions / expectations / relationships / customs / rules gets in our way?

When making decisions about liturgy we often reference our experience of liturgy. Do we so engage in the work and eventness of the liturgy? Is our experience beyond taste and feel and opinion and reflect the effervescent faith bubbling inside of us? Do we engage the what-ness and the matter of doing something profoundly crazy as asking GOD to be with us, or do we merely focus on the function of our work (the words we say and who gets to say them / the actions we do and who gets to do them)?

Can I even imagine worship as such an event? That we are leaders, all joining in one audacious moment, then scattering, still participating, and enfleshing the Event?

Do we dare take some of that power out into the world?

 

 

[This is Day 30 of How to start deconstructing church. The next in the series is “Exit”. To start from the beginning, read the introduction here.]