Why Liturgy/Worship Matters

When I was in high school, one of the greatest "theological" debates among youths was worship style; more specifically, between "contemporary" (meaning, songs written within the last 30 years) and "traditional" (meaning, songs written beyond those 30 years).  I did not hold strong opinions on either, although my preference leaned towards the "traditional" end.  I loved the depth of the hymns and enjoyed figuring out what they meant, although I confess a lot of the modern praise songs were very catchy and I enjoyed singing them on Sunday.  But I know people who were almost dogmatic about which side they're on.  I remember one time I led worship with someone who hated hymns and anything that sounded like a hymn. 

At the time, however, I was dismissive of the "worship wars" because I thought it was a pointless discussion.  And I still think it is, to a point.  Many of us think of worship as a kind of style, but it's not.  Let us take being "Chinese" as an example.  What makes a Chinese "Chinese"?  Well, skin color aside (even that's not a determinant), Chinese people do certain things that other ethnic groups don't.  We celebrate Chinese New Year, for example.  We also enjoy gathering together regardless of where we are in the world.  That's why airlines with service to Asia have blackout dates on weeks where school end, because many families fly across the Pacific to be home with relatives.  During those Chinese New Year dinners, my uncles and my dad would give my grandparents red packets of money as a sign of filial piety.  Although my mom, technically, is not obligated to continue that tradition (in Chinese tradition, women are technically not truly considered part of their husbands' families), my mom continued to do so in memory of my dad.   I believe in Taiwan, some release hot-air lanterns into the air with prayers inscribed on them in hopes that their prayers will become reality.

These celebrations serve a more important purpose - they reinforce the Chinese identity.  Of course, these actions alone do not guarantee Chinese identity.  If a group of Caucasians celebrated Chinese New Year and replicated everything to the "T", it does not mean they're Chinese.  In fact, such actions might even infuriate the Chinese, because it reeks of Eastern exoticism, as if it's 'cool' or "exotic" to celebrate Chinese New Year.  How these celebrations form us matter as much as the fact that we celebrate them.

For the Church, worship is that celebration that forms our identities.  The question that I must pose is,   What does worship inculcate in us?  What does it say about who we are as followers of Jesus Christ?  Worship is not something we do merely as a response to God's grace, even though it is.  Worship is something we do as a testimony to who we are. When we sing to God on Sunday, what songs we sing is a testimony to who we are.  For that reason, the fact that there are quite a few songs out there that talk about how we feel about God is very telling.  More specifically, it speaks to the rabid individualism that is all too current among American Christians.  Instead of God speaking to us and reforming us to reflect God, worship becomes a one-way "God, shut up, and let me tell you what I think about you, because that is all that matters."  Is there any surprise, then, that there are churches who are ineffably pro-Israel, unshakably premillennial, or teach their congregations to vote Republican (or Democrat) no matter what?  If worship becomes a means affirm what we like to think about God, worship inculcates an identity that focuses on the self, and imposes that on God.  In short, it creates a false image of God.  It's hard to fight that because who doesn't like a false image of God that is a reflection of our own tastes and preferences? 

All this to say that our Sunday worship needs to be a sacred time where God is made free to honestly speak to us, just as much as we are free to speak to God.  It is not a time to hear what we like to hear from God, or to say what we think God likes us to say about Him.  It is a time to hear what God says to us, whether we'd like it or not, and to say to God what we think of Him, whether it's good or bad.  The Psalms, for example, have a full range of that bi-relational conversation.  Some psalms have the psalmist praising God and lifting Him up.  But others have the psalmist asking, God, why did you do this?  God, why did this crap happen to me?  Are you not paying attention?  Hello?  Are you there?  We need to have the honesty that the psalmists have in our Sunday worship.  We must be free to be honest with God instead of coming to Him with everything seemingly together, because really, we all are never seemingly together.

This, of course, has implications for public witness.  When we are honest to a gracious God who showers us with love, we leave church a more human person.  We may enter church every morning as if the world is our oyster, everything's fine and great, and carpe diem.  But we leave church human, knowing where we are in relation to God.  We may enter church broken, but we leave church healed.  We may enter church as loners, but we leave church in community.  If we enter church one way and leave the same exact way, either we're quite perfect, or our worship is affirming that what we think of God is the only right way to think of God.  It is, in other words, a self-centered worship, a feel-good service.  It is not, and cannot be, transformative.

In an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Anthony and his wife Ottavia visit her maternal homeland of Sardinia.  My favorite scene was when he visited a group of Catholic nuns who specialized in making pane carasau, a Sicilian flatbread.  The nuns, before they mixed the ingredients, prayed over them first and then proceeded to mix and make the flatbreads.  Now, did the prayers make any physical difference to the flatbreads?  No, probably not.  But one thing it did was to put the flatbreads into perspective.  It was not simply just "food", but "sustenance".  It wasn't just "snacks", but an opportunity to meet others, to extend hospitality to others.  All the more reason for them to pray over it, and to make it with care.  All the more reason for them to share it, even with a heathen like Anthony Bourdain. 

The difference worship makes is that it places things in their rightful place; it orders life properly.  We no longer would use GPAs as a measure of self-importance.  Pastors won't need to evaluate themselves based on Ph.D.-laden theologians or pastors with huge and wealthy churches.  Singles won't see themselves as somehow deficient (conversely, the married won't see themselves as somehow more "fulfilled").  More importantly, everyone sees themselves as an important part of a Christian community.  We live in a world where the influence of the church is waning, and faux-Christianity is taking its place.  Given that datum, I do not think it is a waste of time for churches to think hard and be brutally honest about what kind of identity their worship is forming.