Liturgy

I belong to a liturgical church. Like the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, Anglicans get their services out of a book. Non-liturgical denominations don't seem to undersand how using a book to guide one's worship could possibly result in authenticity. Having experienced both forms of worship, I have to say that I do not think that either form of worhsip is more, or less, valid than the other.

But I am not writing a comparison of the two today. Instead, I am here to write about the beuaty & mystery that is wrapped up within the pages of liturgical works.

In the Introduction to McCausland's Order of Divine Service - The Christian Year 2006: Liturgical Year B, the Reverend Dr Richard G. Leggett (of the Vancouver School of Theology) likens the liturgy to a symphony. He divides the Eucharistic liturgy into five sections, and defines each as a movement of the symphony.

Quotes from the essay, The Eucharistic Symphony: Leitourgia in Five Movements:

Leitourgia and Christian Worship
I have come to believe that worship is more like calculus than algebra, especially if we understand that the meaning of leitourgia, the root word for our English term "liturgy," is more complex than we can imagine. Too often contemporary Christians have been satisfied with the frequently used, but inadequate, translation of leitourgia the work of the people." A far better translation of what was originally a secular Greek term is "a public work for the common good." When understood in a Christian context, leitourgia is "God's public work for our common good."
...
Leitourgia is not limited to acts of worship. Worship is an act of historical, theological, and pastoral calculus, our effort to express in word and silence, in action and rest, the mystery of God's saving work in the world. When worship is understood as calculus rather than algebra, then we may find ourselves more open to consider what insights differing forms and approaches to worship gives us about leitourgia. When we gather to celebrate the eucharist, for example, we perform a symphony that attempts to express in five movements God's public work for our common good.

The First Movement: Gathering
We can lose sight of the power of gathering together in one assembly. ... Yet, the most important thing we may do as Christians is to continue to gather together for worship throughout the world, to hear the Word proclaimed, to offer prayer for all of creation, to share in the bread and the wine, and to be sent forth strengthened and renewed.
To be the ekklçsia means to be the assembly of those who are called out for a special purpose. Originally used to describe the assembly of free men gathered to make decisions for the common good of the polis, ekklçsia now describes the Christian assembly, summoned by God to serve the common good of all creation. When we come together for worship, the dispersed people of God are given an opportunity to 'collect their wits' and to remember who we are and what we are to do.
When the presider greets us, it is not the friendly greeting of a server at a restaurant or a passer-by on the street. The greeting itself sets the context for the action into which we are about to enter. In the liturgical assembly we are encountering a mystçrion, not a mystery to be fathomed out, but a truth that becons us ever deeper into its truth. ... This is the God who wills that we enter into communion and learn what it means to be truly alive.
The importance of this fact is made evident by the opening prayer or "collect." ... The classic shape of a collect reveals this: (a) we address God, often using an attribute of God's character; (b) we remember what God has done or is doing; (c) we ask God to continue to do that which we have described; and (d) we give praise and thanks to the Three-Person God, the holy and life-giving Trinity. This prayer complete, we get on with the task before us, our participation in leitourgia.
...

The Second Movement: The Proclamation of the Word of God
...
When the reader proclaims the texts appointed for the day, it is tempting to forget that he or she is speaking God's Word to us. ...
To read the words of the scriptures is to release the power of the Word of God into our midst. The preacher stands before us, small in stature, a known quantity, a familiar figure. Within her or his grasp lies the power to free the Word from the texts that sometimes imprison it, so that the heart of someone sitting near to us may be "strangely warmed" and God's new creation may begin again to work its transormation of our loneliness, our despair, our fear.
... In choosing a lectionary approach, Anglicans make clear that the reading of the scriptures is too important to be left in the hands of an individual. The scriptures belong to the community, and it is the community's responsibility, using various agents and agencies, to determine the texts to be laid before us and broken open for our nurture and formation.
...

The Third Movement: The Prayers of the Faithful
...
I confess that I do not know if prayer changes the eternal purposes of God. I do know that prayer changes the one who prays. Prayer orients us to God's purposes and opens us to God's grace working through us. God responds to our new-found awareness of the needs and concerns of the world by offering us the means to use the gifts we have. We discover that new avenues and ways, which seemed obstructed, are re-opened. This is God's work, not ours, but we are the agents of God's purposes.
In other words, liturgy is for the people more than it is of the people. ... All Christians are called to be liturgists rather than lobbyists for personal projects.
Our confession of sin is a prayer that all that prevents this grace from working in us may be lifted from us, a prayer thar our spiritual arteries may be cleared of the clots, which prevent the blood of the Spirit from reaching our muscles. ...
We are lifted from our prayers into an embodied espression of those intercessions, petitions, and thanksgivings. We are bidden to exchange the peace with one another. From the earliest generations of the Christian people, it has been understood that Christian faith requires concrete expressions. To exchange the peace is (a) to acknowledge our fellowship in Christ, (b) to put our bodies where our mouths (or thoughts) are, and (c) to commit ourselves, one to another. Unless we choose liturgical perjury, then the exchange of the peace requires us to consider how we, in keeping with our stations in life and our personal abilities, will work for Christ's peace in our congregations, our homes, our communities, and our world.

The Fourth Movement: The Holy Communion
...
One of the central passages of the New Testament for the history of the Holy Communion is found in chapters 10 and 11 of 1 Corinthians. In these chapters Paul describes his understanding of the eucharist and gives instructions about how the eucharist is to be celebrated. ...
...
Perhaps the oldest and most constant part of the liturgy is the Lord's Prayer. For two thousand years, whenever and wherever we have gathered, we have joined in this prayer. Perhaps, however, the most difficult petition ever spoken is contained within it: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." We impose a risky condition on God's activity in our lives. For those who cannot forgive, forgiveness is unlikely. What we cannot give, we cannot truly receive.
Then we share a loaf and a cup. ...
The Great Thanksgiving and the Lord's Prayer constantly hold before us that this meal is intended to create and sustain a holy people for God. There can be no true reception of the body of Christ in the bread wine[sic] if we are not prepared to receive it in our children, our parents, our spouses, our neighbours, the stranger in our midst, and those whose views differ from our own. ...

The Fifth Movement: The Commissioning
In the Acts of the Apostles the account of Jesus' ascension is told in some detail. Among my favourite dimensions of the story occurs at the very end. After Jesus has ascended into heaven, the apostles and those with them stand around looking up into the sky. Two angels appear and, in so many words, say, "Why are you standing around gaping? Go home. You have a mission to perform and you will soon receive what you need to perform it."
...
The prayer after communion sets our action into its context. We are reminded that the eucharistic meal is not to be praised but to be used. This meal forms a missionary people and sends them out into a missionary field.
... As William Temple, sometime archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, said, "The church is the one human institution which exists primarily for its non-members."
Go home. Go to school. Go to work. Go on vacation. We have a mission to perform and we have received the gifts wee need to perform it. And should we find that mission difficult, and should we find our strength flagging, there is always another Sunday, either next week or the great Sunday of the promised reign of God. Go home. The assembly is over. Our mission continues. Thanks be to God!

pp. 7-14
McCausland's Order of Divine Service
The Christian Year 2006
David Brinton, editor; Richard Leggett, introduction; Mary Reynolds, hymn selection
© Copyright 2006 by Anglican Book Centre

A poetic description of the liturgy, to be sure.

I have not been studying liturgy long - not by any stretch of the imagination. While I am sure one could say that I have, in actual fact, been studying liturgy all my life (as I have been a member of the Anglican church since my baptism when I was an infant), it was not conscious study.

I have been blessed, in my current job, to find myself working under a rector who cares very much about the liturgy. She plans each service carefully, looking at everything from the movement of people through the space to how we introduce each section of the service (both on paper and in action and voice). I've been a part of this process a couple of times now, and I find it incredibly interesting.

I think I'm going to undertake a proper study of liturgy and how it impacts our worship. This post isn't really a part of that, it's just the introduction so that when the posts start coming you don't wonder where this sudden interest in liturgy came from.