Liturgy: A Work of the People (pt. 3)

What role does the history and tradition play when developing our liturgy?

Last time we took a look at the primary goal of our liturgy as well as some important underlying Biblical principles.   With the understanding that our services should be both God-centered and edifying for the believers who walk through our doors.  It is now time to look at how do we structure our Sunday gatherings?  As I mentioned in the first article, the Bible simply does not give us complete details on how we are to shape an entire corporate gathering.   So as Tim Keller stated, “we must ‘fill in the blanks’ that the Bible leaves open…we will have to draw on tradition; on the needs, capacities, and cultural sensibilities of our people; and on our own personal preferences. ” While everything we do at a Sunday gathering should be grounded in Scripture, we should also be willing to look across this spectrum of history and tradition towards all the saints who have gone before us.  Rather than trying to be innovative or hip, we can humbly look toward those who professed and lived under Christ’s lordship from years passed.

Before moving on, I need to clarify that to say the church is rooted in history is different than saying that the church only looks backwards in history for its credible methods.  “Liturgical” and “Traditional” are not synonyms.  Liturgy incorporates traditional elements, but cannot be defined or explained simply by referring to traditional aspects of corporate worship. We also must be careful to recognize that the church exists along a continuum of history of which its current setting and cultural context is a part.  We therefore need to learn from the historical applications of worship and incorporate them into our current context and setting.

When we look at our history, we need to start with the history conveyed in the Bible. Liturgical worship is deeply rooted throughout the history of the church, which extends all the way back to Adam in the garden. The prophets of the Old Testament demonstrate the significance of liturgical action as a barometer of corporate spiritual health.  Every time there is a revival or sign of spiritual health in Israel out come the liturgical events (sacrifice, circumcision, passover, etc.) On the contrary, nearly every time there is spiritual, political or moral decline, liturgical activities suffer.  (Report of the Christian Reformed Church’s Liturgical Committee) While many of the practices in the days of the Former Prophets do not exist today, we have continued to celebrate the covenant-renewal.  The covenant is a central biblical image for describing the relationship that God has established with his people.  Israel was God’s holy people; they were set apart from every other nation.  “The whole life of the nation was worship, set apart to God.” (Frame) Therefore the Law of Moses contained precise rules for prayer and sacrifice; it exhorted Israel to obey God’s word and sing praises to him.

Looking at New Testament worship, we see two things: 1. God now encompasses both Jews and Gentiles in one body to give him worship.  (1 Peter 2:9) 2. Various elements of Old Testament worship point to Jesus. (Heb. 10) Precise rules for liturgy are not found in the New Testament. While we have freedom of the Spirit, we are also commanded to do things in “decency and order.” “The tension between freedom and order is never relieved, but rather left to become a matrix of creative flexibility and common order, whose end was to be the edification of the church. People who, in the early days, worshipped as Christians also worshipped as Hebrews. They had no sense of being the less Jew for being the more Christian. Hence, it is not surprising to see Christian liturgy structured by the synagogue, as that structure was given new content and life by the reality of Christ. So the liturgy of the Christian church was both old and new; the old was taken up and infused from beginning to end with a new Spirit and a new life. The people of God have existed since this time and have carried on through to today.” (Report of the Christian Reformed Church’s Liturgical Committee)

Liturgy is not some new fad. This thing has been going on for thousands of years. The traditions of worship have been passed down by faithful men and women for generations. Our hope is to remain rooted in many of these important traditions, while thoughtfully structuring our services for our particular context.  Next week we’ll look specifically at some of the liturgical traditions of the Church over the past thousand years.  We will explain what they were and why they were important in their particular setting.