Worship shapes believing

For Episcopalians, being at worship brings us alive.  It is also for us an experience of delight and refreshment.  It is a very revealing side of who we are.  We all watch interviews with sport stars, and a few of them are really good with words.  Mohammed Ali was masterful at this.  Many of them, however, exhausted after a game, can sound silly: “We wanted to get the ball down the field” and “Making hits is the only way to score.”   To see the true genius of athletes, watch them in action!

Episcopalians and their Anglican siblings around the world also seem to show their best sides in action.  Solid books like Praying Shapes Believing by Leonel Mitchell, What is Anglicanism? by Urban T Holmes, and Stephen Neill’s Anglicanism all make the same point.  To understand people of the Anglican tradition, two things are even more important than what we say: how we worship and how we solve problems.  In fact, for much of our history, how we worship is precisely how we have worked on our problems.  It is also how we learn better to relate to each other and to take responsibility for the world around us.

Worship is not for us the same as private prayer, although praying people come to worship better charged with awareness and the hope of renewal.   Neither is it something we do on the spur of the moment.  We worship within the patterns of sound, movement and the arts that connect us with all the members of our living community here, and with all the faithful worshipers who go before us.  Those same patterns are open to the fresh interpretations of our era and our spiritual fingerprints, but without severing the thread that ties us to the gestures, words and vision of Jesus and his long line of followers.  Too many words, an overly individualist emphasis, too little silent listening, can dull our senses, can lose our sense of being carried forward in a great movement to meet God, to open our minds and change the world.  Tampering too much can give us the crushing burden of believing it depends only on us, or even on me.

When people talk today about priorities and “bottom lines,” it often seems they are trying to reduce complex issues to one issue or one answer.  Life is complex, and responding to life requires a many-faceted approach.  The worship patterns of the Book of Common Prayer, and the biblical tradition it illuminates, express all that we hold dear.  It reminds us of how the many different values we cherish are connected with one another.

This mention of connections reminds me of a particular experience which moved me deeply, and which remains with me.  One dark Easter Vigil night, after falling, vested in a previously white alb, into a hollow near the outdoor fire pit, I gather what is left of my dignity and light the Easter Fire from a flint I strike on a steel rod.  As the tinder catches fire, the deacon scoops up the flame and lights the Easter Candle, four feet tall and surrounded by wax butterflies the children have stamped out themselves.  Two teenaged acolytes lean in to light their incense from the same flames.  In a few moments, everyone holds a taper glowing with the shared fire, and the deacon sings out, “Christ our Light.”  We look around.  Have you ever noticed how beautiful ordinary people are by candlelight?  How each seems a mirror of the other?  Here are two vestry members, no longer arguing about budgets but passing on the light to one another.  Watch these children feeling the importance of being entrusted with the same light as their parents and grandparents,  and youth taking the lead to guide their elders through the little parish cemetery toward the church.  “Christ our Light,” prompts the deacon again, and we are grateful to remember what is central to us.  “Thanks be to God,” we sing, not needing anyone to tell us how this moment is defining us for the year ahead.  The church is glowing with the lights of people ahead of us when the last of the peaceful crowd comes in, some singing, and some just humming along.  The deacon is now up front, facing us, as she sings the final “Christ our Light,” and by now we believe her.  Easter is filling us as convincingly as the tiny lights are filling the church with warmth and presence.  During the next hour, time will drop away and be replaced with our story, the biblical story, but my story too.  From being made out of love, to nearly drowning in life, only to be rescued and given a meaning and the gift of belonging, we all share the same story.  “This is the night,” the deacon is now singing.  A young man, new to our church, knows it is his night.  In a few moments he will be baptized and put on a white robe, cleaner than mine, but also more meaningful.  Everyone will know he is the one who knows Easter best this night, and we will embrace him.  We want him to know he belongs, and we want to catch what he is experiencing in a new and growing way.  By the time we share the bread and wine of the Easter Feast, we are a community, and we are hungry for what Easter invites us to be.

What is this new Christian doing here tonight?  What are all of us together doing?  We are making Church, we are being Church, and we are learning what it means to be the Body of Christ, the People of God.  Our worship is shaping our believing, but also our being and our doing.  For Episcopalians, Worship is the crucible that energizes and guides our understanding, and our ability to respond to the challenges of living out the gospel through the Church and in the world.