Wednesday, March 29, 2017

A Divine Liturgy for a Fallen World

Jonathan Aigner at Ponder Anew highlights this quote from Robert Johnston:
Unwilling to address life honestly, our worship floats above the fray in irrelevance. Rather than recognize that pain is an important part of contemporary life, we anesthetize our existence. We fail to allow into our worship the dark side.
As is his wont, Aigner turns his attention to the shortcomings of contemporary worship, its tendency towards emotional manipulation, rock star adoration, and entertainment.

Johnston's words, though, call to mind a quieter but equally dangerous tendency within the "creative" liturgy movement. As the Emergent movement continues to disintegrate, one stream has continued in its attempt to marry a humanistic Protestant liberalism to a watered-down liturgy. As a result, we end up with Confessions that don't confess anything, Kyries that sound more like bad pop music than a cry for divine help (I'm looking at you, ELW Setting 8), and a refusal to sing hymns that are too "dark" or "heavy."

The problem is the exact same thing we see in the contemporary movement: a steadfast refusal to admit the necessity of lament, a denial of sin and evil, and a peppy self-help theology that focuses on Brene Brown rather than Christ.

We need to make room in the liturgy for "heavy" songs because the world is heavy. We can clap our  hands and sing "This Little Light of Mine" until the cows come home, but what comfort does this bring to the young widower or to the single mother on food stamps?

I've said it before, and I will say it again: the Divine Liturgy must confront the reality of sin in our world. It must confront us with our sinful prejudice and our unholy greed. It must find the words to express the grief of young black man who has lost count of how many times he has been stopped and frisked. It must offer TRUE repentance and reconciliation.

The Divine Liturgy is a source of great hope -- but that hope only has meaning when it is brought out of the context of lament. The Mass is the Light of Christ shining in the world -- but that Light cannot ignore the Darkness of sin and Death.