Worship Defines Our Belief
If we do much thinking about spiritual things, we develop ideas and intuitions about being and the Source of being, life, and the Author of life. Deep questions emerge in the heart of every person. Where did everything come from, and where is it going? How do I fit into it all? Perhaps there are lesser questions that come up more often, such as “Where did I put down my phone?” or “Can I put off going to the store one more day?” But deep down, many people entertain life’s big questions.
People of faith have addressed these questions with theological concepts. In the broad Christian tradition, we have agreed upon basic beliefs. The Nicene Creed puts forth the following central points of belief. Behind everything is God. This almighty One is the maker of the material order we see and all we cannot see. God the Creator joined our creaturely life-scene in the person of Jesus, who truly was born, suffered, and died. Jesus, by the mysterious power of God, also rose from the dead, and ascended, to inhabit a heavenly realm beyond the material order. God, the Holy Spirit, is the giver of life and is involved in the matters of human life. The Holy Spirit, for example, has spoken through Prophets and unites all baptized believers as the Body of Christ. Through the Spirit, we know God’s forgiveness and anticipate our resurrection from the dead and the life of the world to come.
There is no end to the words that might be added, given the implications of these few words. Life starts with God: all that is came about through the Creator, and all that exists finds its consummation in union with God in a new creation to come. It is not only the creeds that make statements about the big questions of being and the interplay of God in the lives of people. We could point to nearly any segment of our worship experience and see implications about ourselves and God. Some have said that in the Episcopal Church tradition, to get to what we believe, one must investigate what we do and say in worship.
It was an essay by Dr. Harvey H. Guthrie, sometime Dean of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass. that brought me to understand that Anglicans emphasize church-belonging in terms of pragmatic participation in worship. For other Christians, it is an outline of teachings that unites them. For still others, it is a subjective religious experience that defines them. We point not to an agreed-upon list of dogmas and doctrines in a confession of faith. We point not to spiritual experiences common to church members. We point to what we do together in worship. That is who we are, and what constitutes belonging. For us, belonging to the body means neither that we have signed a statement, nor that we have given evidence of an experience, ecstatic or any other. To summarize, ours is neither a confessional expression of Christian faith nor an experiential one but a pragmatic one. For us belonging means we have gathered with the purpose of worshiping God, and we do that together. We baptize together, we make Eucharist together. The pragmatic doing of worship constitutes belonging. To be there, worshiping, is to belong to the body.
Almost anywhere we point in the worship liturgy, we uncover elements of our belief. We could point, for example, to the Collects. These are short prayers with which we make requests of God. In so doing we indicate some ways we see God and things in life. I close with the one we will pray on this Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14):
Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
It never hurts to ask “What is this collect saying?” The prayer implies some key beliefs: A. We cannot exist without God, the source of all being; B. We do best when we live according to the divine will; C. God can be involved with us and influence us; C. God can provide us, if we wish, the spirit to think and do the things that line up with God’s will. Praying this prayer is wonderful given how it lifts our confidence that the Holy One wants the best for us and can move us toward the highest good. The Creator who brought us into existence enables us to condition our own thoughts toward making good, true. and beautiful choices. What rich theology and spirituality we find in every patch of our worship life together!