ND Wrap Up

My oral final went well, I think, and I went to vespers at the basilica one last time. I’ll miss that place. The main thing I have learned or rather the main thing that has challenged me during this class has been the idea that the liturgy (worship) is the self-expression, the self-revelation, of the church—the point at which the church is most fully the church. The implication of this idea is quite simple: no liturgy, no church. Back in the early centuries of the church this idea made sense (and I see value in allowing it to inform our experience of church today). Back then, liturgy lasted 5 to 8 hours and was comprised of a series of interlocking services that proceeded throughout a city from morning until evening. (Christians were not expected to be present for the whole day, and few were.) One one can imagine such an all-day, urban event as giving the church an opportunity to be the church, even liberating her to be such. Thus it made sense to say the liturgy constituted the church.

But things are different now. Worship, as most people experience it today, is isolated to a 45-minute service on Sunday morning in a building that most people drive to for at least ten minutes. It is isolated in time, duration, and location. We go; we do our thing; we leave. If this is the church’s self-revelation, God help us. Worship today is less liberation into our true identity than it is an obligation to meet some sort of internal church-attendance quota.

To my mind, the answer is not a reversion to the way it was. Rather, liturgy must spill over into the rest of life. The church must be constituted by worship, yes, but more importantly by lived-out faith.