This is the fourth in a series of articles which
are attempting to communicate the "inner being" of the
Christian FaithandLife Community. The last three issues
of LETTER TO LAYMEN carried discussions of our program of common
study. Beginning in this issue a second major emphasis in the
life of the Community is to be scrutinized, namely our common
worship. Though this is second in order of consideration, it is
foremost in significance and concern. Common worship is the primary
and basic activity at the Christian FaithandLife Community
as indeed the gathering together of the Body of Christ to worship
God is the essential task of the church wherever it exists.
Reflection in this area necessarily makes us the
more keenly aware that the Faith and Life Community is a part
of the total church, if for no other reason than as a member of
the Common Body of Christ we are participating in the judgment
and renewal which God is working among all his people in our time
at the point of the meaning and nature of Christian worship. The
worship of the Church is only one of the areas of her life which
is under divine assault, but it is a major one and, it might be
said, a particularly painful one. Man seems to be more easily
driven to reexamine his intellectual life than to question
the substance of his worship. Nonetheless, the church today is
questioning and this is the beginning of renewal. Certain signs
are already appearing in the church at large and are reflected
in the thinking and practice at the Christian FaithandLife
Community,
Reason for Being
One indication of the recovery of the meaning of
common worship, and one that has become quite clear to us at the
Community, was suggested in the first paragraph above. Whatever
else the Body of Christ is, and whatever else its task may be,
it is first of all a body that gathers together to worship God
in Christ. Primarily for this reason the Church was called into
being to worship God.. Worship is her focal activity
without which all other endeavors lose their meaning and all other
missions become perverted. This is true, we believe, of all parts,
branches or institutions of the Church, be they colleges, seminaries,
social agencies, or whatever. Any work which the Church performs,
and she has many and varied missions in the world, which does
not flow out of the experience of common worship may be good from
one or another perspective, but it is not Christian. If and when
such common worship is not the foundational concern and the primary
practice of the FaithandLife Community, whatever else
it may become or be, boarding house, training center, social activity
or what not, it will not be and cannot be Christian or a part
of the true Church of Christ.
The Common Worship at the Christian FaithandLife
Community ought to and does inform and nourish the total program:
our common study, our life together, our concern for service in
the world. Outside of our common worship, our study together becomes
a matter of mental exercises or barren intellectualism rather
than a vital effort to understand the faith that is within us
and to bring all our knowing and living into captivity to Christ.
Without our common worship our life together becomes but one more
attempt to find security in the establishment of a mutual admiration
society rather than a common loyalty to Christ through which we
become responsible selves in the midst of life as it is. In the
absence of our common worship, our common witness in the world
becomes simply the promotion of the Church or the cultural status
quo or some humanitarian ideal rather than the manifestation of
God's love in all areas and orders of life.
Worship is Not…
Worship at the Community, as we interpret ourselves,
is then the essential basis for all our other activities, but
more, it is that without which we cannot even understand ourselves
Christianly. This brings us to the matter of the core of Christian
worship. Though at a later issue this will be discussed in more
detail something must be said here if the role of worship at the
Christian FaithandLife Community is to be grasped
at all. The Church today is not raising the problem of worship
in an abstract fashion but is concretely asking the question of
what we as the People of God are doing when we gather to worship.
In raising this issue the church has been made painfully aware
of much idolatry. We have come to see that in actuality we sometimes
gather together to glorify some psychological state of peace or
selfunity, and often our services are ordered to create
such states of being. At times we honor some cluster of social
ideals and thus shape our services to empower men to realize them.
Sometimes we worship some abstract metaphysical concept which
serves to delight the mind, or some cosmic force which can be
manipulated on behalf of our noble ends. All of these are false
objects of worship, The Church, when it is the Church, does not
come together to experience peace of mind nor to have its ideals
lifted nor its batteries recharged. It rather gathers to understand
itself anew before the Word of God in Christ and hence before
the God who gives that Word in Christ.
There is a Word ....
The total Christian service is a dramatic representation
of this Word without which mankind is without hope. For the Word
of God in Christ is, that precisely there where man has no word,
there is a Word. The Word of God in Christ is, that just there
where all of man's words to himself about the meaning of life
became vain and empty, there is a WORD. The Word of God in Christ
is, that just there where there is human darkness there is light,
just there where there is human loneliness man is not alone; just
there where there is human despair, there is hope. The Word of
God in Christ is that man as he is, in his anxiety and guiltiness,
as creature and sinner, is infinitely and groundlessly loved,
received, valued, accepted. This is the Good News by which the
church is continually nourished. It is the Gospel which she delivers
to the world. Whenever the Body of Christ gathers together as
a church it is to receive and to declare this Word of God in Christ.
Whatever worship may be in other religious communities, this is
the core and substance of Christian worship.
Queries often arise among Church folk, as well as
those outside the Faith, as to why the people of God come again
and again to worship or why an individual can't worship Christianly
by himself. Such questions are based on a faulty understanding
of ourselves before God and upon a misconception of the nature
of the Gospel. The man of faith is born of the Word in Christ;
he lives in God's love for him. But this is something which he
never possesses, or lays hold upon once and for all. The man of
faith is forever and continually dependent up on this Word being
spoken to him. Again and again and again he must hear it. Again
and again he must gather with others to hear it. Precisely because
he does not own it he cannot say it unto himself. He must HEAR
itand this means from another Only where two or three
are gathered together in His name, is Christ the living Word in
the midst. We go to church, or gather to worship in order to hear
the Word from another, and in order to speak the Word to another.
We hearken and declare. Our gathering is not based upon a mutuality
of feeling or a common search but upon the necessity of giving
and receiving the Word, This is what is meant by the priesthood
of all believers. Not that every man is his own priest, but that
every man is priest for the other in his declaring the living
Word. Or perhaps, to put it better, we all declare the Word to
the other one and all the others declare it unto us. We each do
our own hearing, and we cannot hear for another, but we can only
hear when the other speaks, and the other can only hear when we
speak. For just this reason worship is at the center of the Christian
FaithandLife Community, There is no faith in Christ
save in the midst of a worshipping body where the Word is uttered
and appropriated.
Worship and Witness
Finally, there is one further aspect of this matter
of locating the place and significance of common worship at the
Community. It needs only a word here for it will be discussed
at some length in another issue dealing with our common witness
in the world. We have spoken at some length of the gathered community.
But the church is also the scattered community. The Body of Christians
assembles for worship and reflection and fellowship but it also
disperses into the world. Neither one or the other but both constitute
the church. The two are inseparable: worship and witness. We gather
to worship and scatter to work. We withdraw to hear the Word and
return to the nonChristian world as witnesses
each in his own station, his own situation, his own task. At the
Christian FaithandLife Community, we meet in the morning
for worship as a gathered Community after which we scatter into
the world for our day's work. And since we are college students,
our world is in the first instance the University, and our work
is that of a university student; our study, our organizational
and social life, our tasks in the religious foundations, and all
else that goes with it. Here where God has placed us at this time
we are to creatively cultivate God's good earth, here we are to
creatively witness to God's great love in all that we do, here
we are to creatively live responsible lives for God's glory. Thus
our common ministry necessarily flows out of the hearing of God's
Word of acceptance from the Body of Christ. And because we are
ever and utterly dependent upon the Word of God's forgiveness,
we again return to worship. To live in Christ is to live in the
decisive awareness of God's love which enables one to decisively
live a life of service. To be a man of faith is to serve within
the world but where there is not a gathering in Christ's name,
there is no genuine going forth in this name. So our life at the
Christian Faith and Life Community is, like Christian living everywhere,
first of all a life of assembling to worship and scattering to
minister in the everyday occupations at hand.
This then points in part at least to the way in which
common worship has a part, the prior part in our ministry at the
Christian FaithandLife Community. It is that which
gives meaning to and directs all our other concerns; it is the
means, through the giving and receiving of the Word, of the perpetual
reoccurrence in our lives of the Gospel; it is the source
of the Christian outreach into the world. Without this at the
center we would not know who we are or understand what we must
do. It is our firm persuasion that within our common worship we
in no wise could fulfill our stated purpose of providing informed
articulate and committed lay leaders for the Church. Indeed the
members would not even have Christian selfunderstanding,
for all their possible knowledge, without this continuing experience
of worship together.
II. Our Common Worship, Continued
The discussion of Christian Worship in the last Letter
to Laymen attempted to clarify the role of common worship in the
total life of the Christian FaithandLife Community.
It pointed out that in our understanding of ourselves, worship
together is the primary activity of the Church which bestows significance
upon all her other responses. In the FaithandLife
Community, it is the foundation of our common study, inspiration
of our common life and motivation of our common ministry to the
world, Indeed for us and for the Church at large communal worship
makes the whole of our life an experience of worship.
But now, what about the inner nature of Christian
Worship ? Why do we worship one way and not another ? What is
the meaning of our forms of Worship ? Or, to put this question
more precisely, just what is the Body of Christ doing when she
gathers together to worship ?
Much attention is being given to this question in
all branches of the Church today simply because we are being made
aware of our ignorance here. Few if any of the students who come
to the Christian FaithandLife Community, (and we feel
that they represent a cross section of the Church), have anything
but the vaguest understanding of the Christian service of worship.
Because of this, the Community is vitally concerned that each
student grasp the internal meaning of Christian Worship. While
regularly engaging in worship together, he is given the opportunity
to understand what he is doing. Perhaps this is the most significant
endeavor of our work.
To return to the question: what is the Church doing
in her act of worship? This question needs some clarifying comments.
First, it is not an abstract but a very concrete question. The
meaning of worship in general is not the concern here. There are
all sorts of worship as there are many different gods to worship
and a multitude of selfunderstandings to be grasped in worship.
The question of the church, and simply because she is the Church,
is the meaning and nature of Christian Worship. Second, this is
not an objective question to be answered by the impartial mind
of the scientist in us; it is rather a confessional question which
calls for answers from the point of view of involvement. The question
is really this: what does the church understand herself to be
doing as she engages in Worship. In the third place this is one
of those questions, the answer to which everyone knows until the
question is asked. And when it is asked it necessarily discloses
deeper and intimately personal questions as to who our god is
and who we choose to be. This means that such inquiry is likely
to be painful, for it is likely to call for that selfknowledge
before the God in Christ and the Christ in God "to whom all
hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid, " which
demands repentance.
The Christian Community is that people who have been
laid hold upon by that God who is the God and Father of the Lord,
Jesus Christ and who through that encounter have come to understand
their lives in a certain way. When this community gathers to worship
she is dramatically enacting this selfunderstanding before
the God who gives this selfunderstanding. Worship for the
Body of Christ is an activity through which the believers become
who they are in declaring anew to one another the Word of God
in Christ. There are several implications here. One is that to
worship as a Christian is not to be a spectator watching a drama
performed by others such as the clergy and the choir. It is to
be involved as one of the actors The Community as a whole is involved.
Functions differ but the play is a unit and there are no star
roles. Today there is a recovery in the Church in the sense of
oneness in worship. again it is implied that he who goes to worship
in search of "religious feelings" to be experienced
or of "religious ideas" he can assent to has not yet
grasped the meaning of common worship of God. Christian Worship
is the response of the total man precisely because it involves
the core of the self. The question put to the worshipper is not
how do you feel or what do you know, but who do you choose to
be in the light of God's activity in Christ?
A third implication which has particular significance
for the comprehension of the inner meaning of Christian Worship
is that the God that is worshipped and the self understanding
given in worship determine the basic structure or form of worship.
If, for instance, the great god nation is worshipped and the worshippers
understand themselves essentially as children Or the nation, the
forms of worship will have a certain pattern. In Christian Worship
the God in Christ determines the inner structure or the dramatic
movement of the service. Regardless of how radically different
Christian liturgies may be on the periphery, at the core they
have a common denominator. In the area of thought, though the
Church has many theologies, there is one common witness to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ. So behind the great variations in worship,
forms a basic pattern. This means that in all Christian services
of worship, be they Methodist, Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, Roman
or Baptist there is a common structure. This means that whenever
and wherever the Church gathers to worship, in the east or in
the west, in the first century or in the twentieth, in Romanism
or in Protestantism, the dramatic act is at the heart one and
the same. As God is giving our age to be more concerned with what
the ongoing Christian Church believes than with what any particular
denomination believes, so He is opening our eyes to the unity
and not the diversity of our Worship. In this area as well as
in others we are by God's grace recovering our oneness in Christ
and beholding anew that we are all a part of a "great cloud
of witnesses. "
One of the most exciting and profitable aspects of
the life of Worship at the Faith-and- Life Community is the insight
which comes to the student through participating in the various
liturgies of the different church bodies.
How then are we to talk of the common structure behind
the varied structures of Christian Worship? First of all, the
order of service of the Body of Christ has within it a threefold
division. One part has to do with confession and pardon; a second
with praise and witness; the third part, with offering and dedication.
In neither nature nor order are these parts arbitrary, and whenever
one looks amid the endless variety of forms, these appear in one
shape or another and will continue to do so as long as men congregate
in the name of Christ. This is true because these three divisions,
like three acts in a great drama, tell the story of life of the
man who stands before the God in Christ. They present the selfunderstanding
of the people who are encountered by the Word of God. In the words
of one interpreter, here is the story of our life embodied in
the Christian drama of Worship.
"In the midst of my sinful attempts either to
go on about my own affairs apart from God to 'worship' God in
my own way, God suddenly confronts me with. . . the terrifying
announcement that I am a sinner and that I cannot worship God
in this condition. In the face of such a revelation, I can do
no other (if I am to respond Christianly) than fall on my knees
and confess myself to be indeed that which I have been shown to
be-a sinner before God and man. Without this acknowledgment, I
am only an impostor when I try to stand before God and worship.
But for those who confess their sin, he is faithful to forgive.
Such forgiveness enables me -- nay, commands me -- to rise and
praise God, to thank him for his innumerable benefits, and to
hear with understanding his demands upon me in the Word. But if
I confess such faith in such a God, it behooves me to cease my
anxious care about my future, about the dangers which I fear might
overwhelm me-and to offer all such concerns to him who cares for
us, and who has assured us today of his care in all the scripture
we have heard.
"Tomorrow, of course, I have forgotten that
I can trust him, and that he cares for me; I am again attempting
to live life on my own terms, attempting to find security in the
passingness of life, attempting to avoid the hands of the one
who gives both life and death, both Yes and No, both Cross and
Resurrection. And as one who is forgotten, I am suddenly confronted
by a Word which declares me to be a sinner, and calls me to repentance
and once more I am given his grace to enter another day - and
so on, day after day. This is the story of my life."
III. Our Common Worship - Continued
Last spring Letter to Laymen carried two articles
on common worship. These were part of a continuing endeavor to
interpret the focal areas of concern in the Christian Faith-and-Life
Community.
The first suggested that the primary function of
the church of Christ is its gathering together to worship. It
went on to indicate how the activity of worshipping together brings
self-understanding to a community and bestows significance upon
all its other activities.
The second article dealt with the concreteness of
worship. It is always a particular community, Christian, Hindu
or some other historical group which congregates to worship. Common
worship was then described as a dramatic act which rehearses the
self-understanding which the worshipping body possesses before
its God. Finally the implication was drawn that behind the infinite
variety in Christian worship forms, there is a common structure.
For whether we be Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian,
Roman, Quaker or whatever, the God before whom we know ourselves
is the ONE who is present in Christ.
Just what is this structure behind the structures
in Christian services? … this common core beyond the differences?
In brief it is the portrayal of life as it is known and lived
before the God in Christ.
This is a story with quite distinguishable movements
or themes, guilt and redemption, new life in the community of
Christ, responsible living before God in the world.
Actually the Christian service of worship is three
services in one. It is a service of (1) confession and pardon,
(2) praise and dependence and (3) dedication and offering. One
may conceive of it as the great drama of our salvation in three
acts with a prologue and epilogue. Note the accompanying diagram.
Christian worship begins with an ascription to God.
This is calling to mind which God this drama is enacted before,
or better, an acknowledgment that God is our God. Sometimes this
is done by the leader simply saying, 'In the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost. " Sometimes it is done more elaborately
by prayers and hymns and by what is termed a "call to worship.
" This activity is prologue.
The drama proper opens with the Service of Penitence
or the Office of Preparation as it is often called. When we stand
before that God who loves in Christ, we know ourselves to be sinful
people, and this is where the church begins. Act One has two scenes.
In the first the community is engaged in confession.
In some services an appointed member rises on behalf
of all to call the gathered ones to be who they are before this
God. This is a summons to leave the world of false worship, pretension
and selfsufficiency and to assume responsibility for their
sin against God, themselves and their fellow man.
In response to this call, the congregation bows or
kneels in general confession. Here the community is discovered
unto itself faithlessly afraid of life, filled with
guilt and anxiety, closed toward the future and cut off from fellow
beings. In this knowledge they humbly acknowledge their common
sin before Almighty God.
The dramatic element in this episode is intense and
sweeping. Dead men who pretend to be alive, here die together.
Faithless men who boast to God of their righteousness, together
face their lies. Blind men who imagine they can see, together
become blind.
The second scene -reconciliation - is an answer
to the first. The penitents crying out of the depths are now confronted
in one form or another with the Word in Jesus Christ. . . that
God receives men just as they are, forgives them of their sins
and raises them from bondage to the past to a new future. Such
a word is news to men who know they are dying. It is good
news, as the congregation together appropriates anew the love
and forgiveness of God.
In some services this declaration or pronouncement
is called absolution. In others, comforting words or words of
assurance. By whatever name, it is the remembering together God's
eternal forgiveness in Christ.
The leader or the whole congregation may at this
point offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the divine mercy by which
they that live now see that they live. Some worship orders call
for the assembly of believers to repeat the "Our Father.
" This they are now able to do simply because as a fellowship
of forgiven sinners they can receive themselves as sons of a common
Father.
This light of divine forgiveness penetrating the
darkness of man's sin completes the movement in act one. A people
dead and buried is now raised from the grave. The blind see, the
deaf hear, prisoners are released, sick men made whole and the
sting of death removed.
Some readers may observe here that they have attended
Christian services where no Act One as described here appeared
true. Some services do seem to begin with the second act of the
drama of our salvation.
But what actually happens is that Act One is performed
behind the scenes. In certain instances before the people gather,
the priest or pastor rehearses this part of the drama by holding
up before God the sins of the congregation and receiving on their
behalf the divine mercy, In other cases, the people are supposed
to prepare themselves in the quietness of their prayer closet
for the service by searching their hearts, repenting their sins
and appropriating God's grace.
The Office of Preparation, is the necessary beginning
of Christian worship. Where it is not present, worship may be
going on but it is not the Christian Community which is worshipping.
Act I, then, is the rehearsal of crucifixion and
resurrection. It moves from unacknowledged sin to confession and
from confession to forgiveness. Godly sorrow is transformed into
Easter joy. The congregation thus is prepared for the joyous mood
of praise and thanksgiving which permeates the second act.
Immediately they break forth in songs as they behold
once more that all things are made new. " Lift up your hearts,
" one may sing, while the rest respond, "We lift them
unto the Lord."
This is the beginning of the second act to be discussed
in the next issue.
IV. Our Common Worship, Continued
Common worship is the celebration of the relation
existing between the worshipped and the worshipper.
To have a god is to possess a selfunderstanding,
and to be a self is to have a god. Worship, then, is both, and
at the same time an honoring of our god and an enactment of our
self understanding.
Christian worship is the portrayal of those gathered
as the forgiven ones, the thankful ones, the dedicated ones This
is just who they must grasp themselves to be when God the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit becomes their God. To participate in this
drama of salvation is to glorify this God. Hence, the three necessary
parts of the Christian worship service: Penitence, Praise and
Presentation, (Note the accompanying diagram.)
Act I of this drama, the service of confession, was
described in the last issue of Letter to Laymen. In those scenes
the actors become guilty creatures and forgiven sinners through
the love of God in Christ.
This is preparatory for Act II which is the present
concern. Anthems, scripture lessons, hymns of praise and affirmations
of faith are the stuff out of which this act is created. It is
divided into two distinct scenes,
If the mood of Act I is basically godly sorrow, the
mood of Act II is joy in the Lord. The players here are those
who in the first act were delivered from bondage. Now, like the
ancient Israelites on the far shore of the Red Sea, they sing
and dance before the Lord. They are the ones who have been crucified
and raised again. Here, like the primitive Christians, they sing
their songs of Easter joy.
Act II opens in a burst of praise. This may take
the form of a congregational hymn or an anthem sung on behalf
of the people by the choir, Some services begin the act with a
prayer of adoration or a versicle of praise.
In the latter case, the leader may salute the congregation and call upon them to rise up and honor the Lord by uttering some Scriptural passage as "Praise ye the Lord." To which the congregation replies, "The Lord's name be praised." This mood of joy is sustained throughout the act as the players offer thanksgiving and praise.
Act II has been called both the Service of the Word
and the Service of Praise. (The reasons are obvious even to the
casual observer. ) The whole act can be and often is telescoped
into a simple reading from the Bible and a doxology.
In its usual and traditional elaboration, however,
this part of the order of worship divides into two separate, but
intimately related scenes. One centers in the Old Covenant and
the other in the new Covenant.
Even when a shortened form is used, both of these
are present by implication. For the Christian, the New Testament
implies the Old, and the Old, the New. In each episode the action
revolves around the Word of God and the praise of His people as
a response to that Word.
It is as though the whole act is a doxological (or
praisefilled) dance around the remembrance of the mighty
acts of God as they are recited from a Book. It must be emphasized
here that, although, the dancers are performing around
the Book, they are dancing before the reality to which
the Book points. Indeed, the Book has become Scripture to the
worshippers just because they have and do participate in the life
to which these records bear witness.
In some Christian services of worship there are four
different readings from the Bible. Two are from the Old Testament
a psalm and another lesson from the law or the prophets. Two are
from the New Testament the gospel lesson and the reading
from the Epistles.
Other forms have three law, epistle and
gospel. The number is finally immaterial. Generally there is at
least one from each Testament. The Old Testament lesson may consist
of a portion read by the leader or it may be a responsive reading
or a psalm recited in unison. The second lesson may be from the
gospel or any other part of the New Testament, It is these readings
which divide the act into two episodes.
The inner meaning of the two scenes is more difficult
to delineate.
As Act I is before the Son, so Act II is before the
Father. The first makes possible the second. God has here become
the God of the players, and they have become His people.
That Last Reality, which hitherto they feared as
their enemy . . . that One who appeared as the destroyer of all
their causes and meaning . . . that One who writes a great NO
over all their life, they are now able to receive as their Father.
Their hostility toward God, the Maker and Limiter of their life,
has been overcome in their repentance and their receiving unto
themselves God's forgiveness.
It must be emphasized that honor is not given here
to some idea or feeling which may be called God. Nor is it offered
to some superhuman being which relieves them from the responsibility
of historical existence. It is precisely from these false gods
that they have been delivered in Act I.
The true God which they now worship is that which
meets them in life as the One who brings all to be and all not
to be . . . the One who is present in every life situation
of joy or sorrow, of success or failure, of birth or death.
In brief, it is the God of the whole Bible whose
mighty deeds are recalled in Act II and in response to which the
people lift up their voices. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob and the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
this is the same God.
In one scene the actors see themselves as children
of God who creates and judges a people, who creates and limits
all things. The same actors in the next scene see themselves as
children of the God who was redemptively present in the life and
death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are dramatizing
their lives as created and limited men who are accepted in their
creaturely limitations.
The Creator is for them the Redeemer. The Son was
the Father in the beginning, and all things are made by him. In
scene one the Redeemer is hiddenly present, in scene two the Creator
is hiddenly present. Both together disclose the face of God,
At the edge of the desert of life, at the side of
the grave of death, these actors raise their hymns of grateful
praise to the Lord of Life and Death. A strange and glorious sight.
Act II closes with a mighty affirmation of faith.
Whether this be in the form of a proclamation by the whole cast
or a word of witness by one member on behalf of the whole cast
is not important, perhaps. The important matter is, be it creed
or sermon, that it is not an expression of assent to intellectual
concepts, but a poem through which the congregated declare that
they are, by His grace, the sons of the triune God.
At this point in the service a voice cries out, "Let
us pray. "
The worshippers now turn to the future tasks of responsibility
in and for the world. The concluding act in the Christian drama
of salvation, the Service of Dedication, is a great pageant of
offering.
There is a double action here which is nevertheless
a single movement, The players are presenting themselves unto
God all they are, all they value all they possess.
And the players are marching into life as it is for responsible
living. And these are one and the same activity.
In the beginning of the drama these folk were called
out from their idolatrous attachment to the world. Here at the
close, they are returning again to the world in obedience to God.
Having been delivered from bondage to the world, t hey are now
released for a free and open life in and for the world. This is
the basic movement of the third Act of Christian worship.
A call to confession opened the first act of the
play; a call to praise initiated Act II. The curtain rises on
part three with a call to prayer. Sometimes this is just a simple
statement by the leader "Let us pray. " In response,
the congregation offer up their prayers, and present their gifts.
The first scene begins with acts of petition and
supplication. There is much misunderstanding of this part of the
drama. The players are not engaged in magical manipulation of
cosmic powers to ward off the future or to obtain and preserve
the cherished objects of their desires. Rather they are dedicating
themselves body and soul to God. They are surrendering into His
hands their future and destiny. "Lord, Thou knowest the enemies
within and without and Thou dost know our internal and external
needs. Preserve us, if it be Thy will, from flood and strife,
from illness and hunger, from hatred and faulty reason, from pestilence
and death. If it be not Thy will, we are yet in Thy keeping."
This is really a ceremony of trust and confidence. The worshippers
have turned their daily cares over to the One whose forgiving
presence is everywhere and precisely there in the darkness of
the unknown tomorrow.
Having shed their anxieties for themselves through
their petitionary prayers, they are now released for prayers of
intercession. This is the second movement of this scene and one
that is intimately related to the first. With their own needs
in God's hands, they are free to turn their concern outward toward
their fellow creatures about them. In the prayers of intercession,
whether these are in the form of collects said by all, or litanies
read responsively, of pastoral prayers on behalf of the whole
congregation, or silent supplications spontaneously interrupted
by one or another of the members who lead the group in special
intercessions here as above the whole congregation is participating.
Even when all do not utter the prayers, the "amen" said
by all at the end of each is the sign of common appropriation
The Great Prayer, as this section has been called,
has a definite form which indicates the total goodness of the
world in relation to the Creator, Redeemer God, and the utter
responsibility of the Christian in and for this good world. As
in the petitionary prayers, the worshippers are here offering
up themselves to God by placing in His hands the world which has
now become their world and offering up themselves in presenting
to God their responsibility in and for the world. In brief, the
players having received themselves and the world as gifts from
God are offering them back again.
First of all, the players through their prayers bring,
one by one before the throne of God the various orders of nature
and culture. Prayers are made for the Church and then for the
home and the state, and the economic life, and the educational
institutions, and the international structures.
At the close of this procession of prayer, the worshippers
turn with particular concern for those living at the far edge
or forced out of these natural orders. Intercessions are now offered
for the poor and the hungry, the sick and those in prison, for
the outcast and those suffering under tyranny, for the ignorant
and unjustly treated, for those who have lost the kindly light
of reason and those who are on beds of death. In this action the
community is boldly involving itself in life as it is and daringly
entering into the existence of other creatures.
The second scene of this Act of Dedication is the
presentation of the offering. Here these worshippers again offer
up themselves in offering unto God their worldly possessions.
The scene usually begins by the leader reminding the whole community,
that all they have came from God and that they have just prayed
for those in need. In some services, the whole congregation responds
by arising and forming a procession which marches before the Altar
or Table of the Lord where each offers up his gifts. In other
services, elected stewards are sent among the congregation to
gather the gifts of the people to place before God. In either
case it is an offering that is made, not a collection which is
taken.
Whatever is given is but a token indicating that
all our goods are gifts to be used in responsible living in the
world. At the close of the procession a prayer of dedication is
made signifying that this action is intended for God's glory and
the service of the neighbor. At this point the players break forth
into a doxology or hymn of praise to God the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, which is a fitting finale to Act III and the whole drama
of salvation.
Act III is a dramatic enactment of life in the Holy
Spirit. It is a life of utter dependence upon God and utter responsibility
for the world; a life which expects grace in every future and
therefore is a life of openness to freely participate in life.
Such life in the Spirit is a gift to all who rejoice in the Lord
through the forgiveness of their sins. After the epilogue, which
may consist of a hymn which once again indicates and honors the
God we stand before, plus a benediction, the actors leave the
stage. They go out to live the lives they have dramatized of perpetual
repentance, thankful praise, and creative love.
One day tomorrow perhaps, they will
return to rehearse again the drama of their salvation that they
may remember anew who and Whose they are.
J.W. Mathews
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