How Worship Gives Us a Timeline to Live By
“Tell all his wonderful acts” is more than a simple textual refrain in David's canticle; it is the fundamental practice of liturgy. This article follows a timeline or worship.
Friday Morning Plenary Sample Session, Calvin Symposium on Worship and the Arts, January 10, 2003
“Tell all his wonderful acts” is more than a simple textual refrain in David's canticle (1 Chron. 16:9b); it is the fundamental practice of liturgy.
- Deborah's canticle in Judges 5 is a bard-like tale of divine action in the history of Israel. It reads to modern readers more like a story than a prayer or hymn of praise.
- The sermon in the Joshua 24 covenant renewal ceremony (vv. 2-13) provides a detailed description of past covenant fidelity as the ground or basis for a future-oriented covenant promise. Half of the “sermon” is a history lesson!
- The extended covenant renewal prayer in Nehemiah 9 (vv. 9-31) traces the whole sweep of divine action from creation to Red Sea deliverance to the up-and-down history of Israel's life in the Promised Land.
Each of these three examples (one a song, one a sermon, one a prayer) provides a highly stylized account of vast segments of God's history with Israel. Each of these liturgical actions places the worshiper before a great redemptive time line extending back through God's dealings with the people and ahead into an unknown but covenantal future, in which God's past faithfulness is the basis for future hope.
In like manner, Christian worship should:
- Anchor our memory in God's work in history, centered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- Anchor our anticipation in the future coming of Christ and the kingdom of shalom he will usher in.
Indeed, any deist can praise God for timeless attributes, but it takes a Trinitarian Christian to praise God for God's concrete actions in history.
Worship re-orients us each week to the timeline of God's actions in redemptive history. One criterion to apply to worship in any congregation, regardless of the liturgical style it embraces, is that of historical remembrance and proclamation:
- Does worship proclaim the whole sweep of divine activity past, present, and future?
- Does worship induct participants into a worldview or cosmology in which God is at work faithfully in continuity with past divine action?
- Does worship convey a sense of hope for the future grounded in God's faithful action in the past?
Nicholas Wolterstorff on Liturgy and Memorializing
“A striking feature of the Christian liturgy is that it is focused not just on God's nature but on God's actions; and more specifically, on actions which took place in historical time” (in “The Remembrance of Things (Not) Past: Philosophical Reflections on Christian Liturgy,” in Christian Philosophy, ed. Thomas P. Flint [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990], 128). Wolterstorff suggests that the absence of commemoration/memorializing in Christian liturgy likely signals the influence of “immediately experiential, or abstractly theological or ethical, approaches to God” (“Remembrance,” 142). He points out that Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant believed both that God could not act in history and that traditional liturgy would fade away because it was so bound up with remembrance of God acting in history.
Timothy Brown on Preaching and Memory
“With grace offerings of hymn and prayer, chalice and loaf, scroll and blessing, we remind the people of God who they are, whose they are, and what great things have happened in their wilderness past, so that they might have confidence and hope in a promised land future. Sermons without memories, and the preachers who preach them, are like ships without rudders” (in “A Blueprint for Pulpit and Table,” Perspectives, May 2002).
Lisa DeBoer on Art that Engages Physicality, Space and Time
Bishop Bernward’s Doors, Hildesheim, Germany, 1015 A.D., Bronze, 16.5 feet high—The doors narrate scenes of the fall through Cain and Abel on the left, and scenes from Christ’s passion and resurrection on the right. You pass through them to enter the sanctuary.
Niccolo dell’ Arca, Lamentation, Bologna Cathedral, c. 1475, painted terracotta near life-sized with movable figures. These figures, and others like them made from the late-medieval era through the Baroque, were used during Holy Week to dramatize the passion stories.
Rubens, Descent from the Cross, Antwerp Cathedral, c. 1615, oil painting—4.2 x 3.1 meters (center panel)—Rubens' altarpieces sought to make clear and affectively powerful statements about the central meaning of the eucharist. In this image, the body of Christ is being lowered from the cross, right above the altar. As the priest elevated the elements, they would be viewed directly in front of the image of Christ’s body. On either side are images of the Visitation and the Presentation in the Temple, two narratives that emphasize the recognition of Christ as savior of the world.
Dennis Dewey on Telling the Story (with Mark 1:1-15)
“Biblical storytelling is a spiritual discipline that involves deep internalization of the narrative text. Many people are drawn to it out of a desire to ‘jazz up the Bible.' Because their experience of Scripture has been dull, deadly, dusty—somehow they feel they need to help it survive. I'd like to suggest that if we approach it that way, we cast ourselves into the role of Dr. Frankenstein and what we create is a monster. The perspective from which we must start is that Scripture is wonderful and alive. As a storyteller, I don't make it come alive. My task is to find the life, to take it into myself so that we breathe together, the story and I” (in “Where Did You Get That Script,” Reformed Worship 65, Sept. 2002, p. 28).
Robert Batastini on Hymns that Proclaim the Story
“A well-conceived hymn plays the same role as that of the homily/sermon, albeit more concise. It strives to break open the word of God, helping to apply it to the present, and helping to formulate the assembly's response. It has been said that in worship we proclaim the word of God, we preach the word of God, and in our hymnody, we sing the word of God” (in the preface to Hymns for the Gospels, GIA Publications, 2001).
- “Mark How the Lamb of God's Self-Offering,” Hymns for the Gospels 141, based on Mark 1:1-15
- “Silence, Frenzied, Unclean Spirits,” Hymns for the Gospels 152, based on Mark 1:21-28
Judy Britts on Children's Music That Puts Us in the Story
“As choir directors, our primary tool for teaching children about worship is the music that we sing. The music we choose can be a teaching tool for children to understand worship—and at the same time, how it can help them lead the congregation in worship.” (in Reformed Worship, December 2002, p. 36).
· “Grant, O God, Your Blessing,” from A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship (Choristers Guild), p. 116, also available as part of “Seven Songs for the Church Year,” Choristers Guild catalog no. CGA693.
· See also “Hail and Hosanna,” Al Fedak and James Brumm (Choristers Guild, catalog no. CGA605). This refrain is also used in Sing! A New Creation 146, along with Psalm 118—perfect for Palm/Passion Sunday.
Todd Johnson on Memory (Anamnesis) in Lord's Supper Prayers
In Christian liturgy, the act of remembrance by a recital of God's specific deeds is nowhere clearer than in the emerging eucharistic prayers of the second and third century. In Justin Martyr's (150 A.D.) description of early eucharist, we are told that “the president…sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his ability.” In all probability, the desired charism was that of the ability to recite adequately the full range God's deeds in history. Soon, in formalized and prescribed liturgical texts, the prayer of thanksgiving at eucharist consisted largely of an extended anamnesis of God's deeds. The most famous of all these prayers, the so-called prayer of Hippolytus (c. 215 A.D.), reads as follows:
“The Lord be with you,”
and all shall say: “and with your spirit.”
“Up with your hearts.”
“We have them with the Lord.”
“Let us give thanks to the Lord.”
“It is fitting and right.”
And then he shall continue in this way:
"We render thanks to you, O God, through your beloved child Jesus whom in the last times you sent to us a saviour and redeemer and angel of your will who is your inseparable Word, through whom you made all things, and in whom you were well pleased. You sent him from heaven into the Virgin's womb; and conceived in the womb, he was made flesh and was manifested as your Son, being born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin. Fulfilling your will and gaining for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands when he should suffer, that he might release from suffering those who have believed in you.
And when he was betrayed to voluntary suffering that he might destroy death, and break the bonds of the devil and tread down hell, and shine upon the righteous, and fix a term, and manifest the resurrection, he took bread and gave thanks to you, saying “Take, eat; this is my body, which shall be broken for you.” Likewise also the cup, saying, “This is my blood, which is shed for you; when you do this, you make my remembrance.”
Remembering therefore his death and resurrection, we offer to you the bread and the cup, giving you thanks because you have held us worthy to stand before you and minister to you. And we ask that you could send your Holy Spirit upon the offering of your holy Church; that, gathering it into one, you would grant to all who partake of the holy things to partake for the fullness of the Holy Spirit for the strengthening of faith in truth, that we may praise and glorify you through your child Jesus Christ, through whom be glory and honor to you with the holy Spirit, in your holy Church, both now and to the ages of ages. Amen.
—Geoffrey J. Cuming, Apostolic Tradition: A Text for Students (Bramcote, Notts: Grove Books, 1976), 10-11.
The longest portion of the prayer, following the opening greeting and preceding the words of institution, is nothing more than a history lesson, a creed-like recital of God's work in Christ. This prayer has become the foundation for a good deal of modern liturgical reform. (See sample Lord's Supper prayer in Sing! A New Creation 250)
John Witvliet on Practical Applications
- Songwriting in narrative forms (to complement more experiential and cyclic forms)
- Preaching that traces God's timeline
- Visual arts that tell the story
- Scripture reading practices that assume that the reading of scripture is one of the most important parts of worship
- Worship evaluation questions (esp. for Christian Year celebrations of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost)
Does every celebration of a biblical event
- tell the story honestly and imaginatively?
without the historical narrative, Christianity becomes simply an abstraction- open up the meaning of the story to help us understand and imagine God more faithfully?
without the theological interpretation, Christianity simply sounds like any other story. But the Christian story/history has a purpose—to help us understand and worship God, to help us see that God's redemptive history is our history- give us a new vision for living the Christian life faithfully and in ways that anticipate the coming kingdom?
Christianity is more than a way of thinking; it is a way of lifeOver time, do we tell the whole story—both past and future—in a balanced way?
- Prayer that praises God for specific accounts in history, and grounds our petitions in those past actions
For comfortable North American worshipers and worship leaders today, the great temptation is to slip into expressions of petition, thanksgiving, and proclamation that are nearly exclusively focused on the present moment. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of lives and churches that are content with the status quo. Our songs, prayers, and sermons emphasize God's immediate goodness and even the vitality of our intimate experience of God. But for us to live into the riches of fully biblical worship, our prayer, praise, and proclamation should be carried out as if we stand before a cosmic time line of God's actions, fully aware of divine faithfulness from the creation of the world to its full recreation in Christ. It is this vast and specific awareness that grounds our hope when days are difficult and that leads us beyond the immediate concerns of our little egocentric worlds.
Finally, Christian worship that tells the story and orients us to God's timeline is powerfully missional. The power of the gospel does not lie in our own creativity or rhetoric or imagination, but rests with God's own power as the One who acts in history and the One who calls us to faith. One of the most significant missional acts a church can offer to a generation of seekers and doubters is a compelling immersion in a “time line to live by” that is shaped by the gospel, rather than by the values of North American (or any other) culture.