So in my, well it’s starting to feel like my journey of rethinking faith (I’m sure about Jesus and the Bible and very little else in Christendom right now), this baptist raised turned charismatic girl had the chance to spend the past 5ish months (from Advent to Easter) attending a liturgical church. I’d been exposed to liturgy before but that was in my tradition is boring days. Being a bit older and I hope wiser, and having been encouraged to think of tradition as “the democracy of the dead” that “refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about”; well, I thought I’d give the whole liturgy thing another fair try. Overall, I’m very glad for the experience. I wanted to try to capture some of the things I particularly appreciated and found valuable about this tradition.
There seems to be a different ethos in the liturgical thought. The best words I can find to explain it is that it is more about entering in and experiencing God’s story than it is about explaining it. Every week is a snippet of the story and our confession, forgiveness, and scriptures relate cohesively to that story. People aren’t being taught but led (or deterred in the case of things you want to avoid) by example. So less time is spent telling people to be loving (for example), and more reflecting on examples of love in action both in scripture and in modern life. Even though I’m highly analytical, I’m finding that one inspirational story or example to aspire to imitate is worth more than 1,000 principles to follow.
Perhaps because of the idea of God’s story, I found the liturgical church to seem more God focused. I guess evangelical churches often seem to be focused on what God can do for me or what God wants me to do, but me always seems to be a big part of the picture. After all, it’s all about the personal relationship with God. Except, God’s a bit bigger than that. I liked the feeling of having the space to experience the story and see myself in other’s shoes (Abraham waiting for God’s promise and trying to keep the faith for example) with the assurance that God would do now as he did then, but without the pressure of direct teaching about what I should or shouldn’t do (and no one making you feel bad about a moment of doubt because hey Abraham doubted too). Along with that I think the calendar and different seasons help keep the focus on God because the scriptures are already chosen for the week. It may not be what natural human inclination wants to talk about, but it forces us into contemplating aspects of God we wouldn’t naturally decide to contemplate.
And maybe along with the idea of living in the midst of God’s story comes the idea of God being part of all of our lives. This may be part of living where I do and the church having a very high concentration of educators and people running charity organizations, but the idea of vocation and our daily work being part of our service to God seemed much stronger in this tradition than in my tradition as well. The idea of when you are at your job, your job is not just to do your job but also to bring God to those around you, is one I need to get ahold of and incorporate more in my own life.
So those are some of my takeaways from spending time in another tradition. What about the rest of you? What do you really like about your own tradition? What do you find valuable in the traditions (or innovations) of other branches of Christianity?
