|
Worship Class 2 Notes
Preparation for Worship
In my pride and self-absorption, I tend to think the whole world revolves around me, or it ought to! Therefore, when I come
to worship, I have two preliminary tasks: one is to bring myself fully as I am and the next is to get outside of myself into
the worshiping community and the presence of God. Those two tasks have to be done in that order.
I'm a mess. You probably are too. That's okay. God loves us now, as we are, not later when we get ourselves straightened
out. So the issue is, how do I bring myself to corporate prayer?
I have to offer a disclaimer: the advice I am going to give to you in this class today is often impossible for you to accomplish
if you attend this class preparing for this class, offers me a chance to re-think what I do here. Because, what I want to
tell you is that you can't just run in at 10:59 and grab a pew at the first chord of the entrance hymn. You need to come
early enough to prepare.
So, let's start with your preparation as you arrive at St. Paul's. As you approach the entrance to the church building, do
so deliberately. Consciously recognize that the Church is assembling. The Greek word we translate "Church"
is "Ecclesia," meaning "called out." You are being called out of the world and into God's temple.
Soon we will go into the place where we worship God. The doors will be shut, and we will leave the world in order to bring
the world into God's presence. We will constitute the Body of Christ and share the feast of the Kingdom. You have an important
role to play.
Feel your sense of separation from the world and your entrance into the temple of God, the place where God dwells. If there
is an usher, greet that person warmly. This is our family reunion, and ushers are here to serve you and the Church to the
glory of God. As you enter, note the architecture. The worship space centers upon the altar as the meeting place of God
with the Church.
Now begins your inner process of centering your personal architecture on the altar of your soul, your meeting place with God.
Also, notice the people as you enter. We are assembling the Body of Christ. We are all members of Christ's Body. This is
an organic union. We enter the church through Christ who once described himself as "the door of the sheepfold."
It is good to sit near someone. You won't distract them from praying. You will support their prayer and they will support
yours. Look graciously at the people as you enter. Notice the position the font. We keep holy water in our font, so that
you can touch the water and cross yourself as a ritual reminder of your baptism. After all, it is through your baptism that
you were brought into membership in the Church. It is through baptism that you receive your identity as a child of God.
It is through Baptism that you are given the glorious privilege to worship God through the Holy Eucharist. That's worth remembering
as you enter. It's worth remembering as you go up for communion.
Some people like to mark their forehead with the holy water of the font by tracing a small cross with their thumb. This is
the way you were "marked as Christ's own forever" at your baptism. I like to think of it as similar to a rancher's cattle
brand. Christ brands me as his possession. I belong to Christ. The mark of Christ's ownership is indelible. There is nothing
I can do which will obliterate it. It is the mark of belonging that gives me entrance. "We are his people and the sheep
of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving; to into his courts with praise." It is good to do some ritual act of
remembering your baptism as you enter the Church.
Ritual Acts
Let me suggest two practical reasons why ritual acts are good and appropriate.
First, ritual acts help us remember. In the younger grades teachers will pin a note to their students' clothes so they will
remember to give the note to their parents. Do you recall the old saying, "tie a string around your finger so you won't forget"?
Many ritual acts remind us of significant aspects of our faith. I sign the cross on my forehead --; I remember who and whose
I am. I make the sign of the cross, "In the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit." I remember that my life is a dance with
the living God, Holy Trinity.
Second, our manual acts help to carry us into worship. Behavioral psychologists will teach their patients to preform certain
behaviors in the faith that a person's attitude and belief will follow that person's actions. For example, if a depressed
man with a low self image will get up and shower, shave and dress in a coat and tie instead of remaining in his pajamas, he
will begin to feel better and respect himself more, even though the depressing circumstances of his life haven't changed a
bit that morning. Church educator John Westerhoff says, "Our bodily actions influence our emotions and ways of thinking.
We kiss our children not only because we love them, but also in order to love them."
Gwen Kennedy Neville & John Westerhoff, III, Learning Through Liturgy
If you enter the church reverently, acknowledge the altar with a careful bow, gratefully see your fellow worshipers, enter
your pew gracefully, and slowly kneel to pray, carefully making the sign of the cross, your whole self will follow your body
and begin to become oriented to worship. Your body can begin your preparation even before your mind or emotions are focused.
Several years ago when I first wrote this piece my body gave me a message about preparation.
I was in a cast from my toes to my knee. It was a tennis injury that was largely the result of a failure to warm up properly.
Preparation for worship is a little like a good tennis warm up. During a tennis warm up the idea is to warm muscles gradually,
stretching and loosening so you can respond to the ball with a natural motion. At my age the stretching exercises are especially
important. Before tennis players begin to play, they have to concentrate on things other than tennis. Then tennis players
hit the ball back and forth to re-establish eye-hand coordination and to work the kinks out of their strokes. It's different
from when the game begins. During warm-up you are not trying to win; it doesn't matter if the ball is in or out; you don't
try to hit the ball hard at first. You're trying to get your body and mind in sync to play tennis. It's a time of transition.
The time before liturgy is like that. You may have to concentrate on things other than prayer in order to pray. You have
to stretch and warm up your "liturgy muscles" in order to enter common prayer.
There is a perfect prayer for this time of preparation. If you've been an Episcopalian long, you already know it by heart.
It is called the "Collect for Purity," and it is conveniently located in the Prayer Book on the first page of the Eucharist.
It is one of my favorite prayers. A parishioner once said to me, "I don't even know how to begin to pray." I said, "Oh,
yes you do. Every Episcopalian does. You already have a perfect prayer to begin with, and you probably know it by heart.
Now, just let the words be yours. Really pray this prayer.
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. (B.C.P., p. 355.)
The Collect for Purity invites us to present ourselves to God just as we are (task #1) and then to join the worshiping community
to love and praise God (task #2).
Another way of thinking of preparation to worship is as accomplishing two assemblies: to assemble myself as a praying person
and to become a part of the assembly of the people of God.
To Assemble Myself
How am I right now? God knows. "Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are
hid."
Ugh! I automatically recoil from being so exposed. I hide so much of myself. I hide my nastier side from others. I even
hide it from myself. That's called denial. But God knows me fully, and the quicker I can come to an acceptance of that reality,
the quicker I can let go of my denials and "worship in spirit and in truth," rather than in hypocrisy and denial.
The first part of preparation for worship is the opening process, the assembling of the whole self in God's presence. We
have to admit, "I am not ready to worship you, Lord." Accept that reality.
Then we have to pay attention to whatever needs arise from within us. As these needs arise from the mind and body and emotions,
we have to give them some attention, and then gently put them aside. Entering an inner quiet, we place ourselves in God's
hands to be led into common prayer.
This is tough stuff. The things we need to do to prepare to worship are not things that we learn naturally from our culture.
They are counter-cultural. Where else other than church are you called to come to a profound quiet, deal gently but realistically
with your inner distractions and strong emotions, concentrate fully for more than an hour, listen deeply and attentively,
and respond in prayer? Do you remember what I said last week: The Eucharist is the most complex activity and the most demanding
action that could be asked of any human being.
You are a whole person, but parts of you will lay claim to the whole. It is important to recognize the parts of you that
need attention, but not give total power to the parts.
Our language betrays us. Suppose you are a student, and you received an F in math. The natural way to say what happened
is, "I failed math," or worse, I failed." That's incorrect. There is a part of your brain that handles mathematical chores.
That part failed. The rest of you is fine. An imprecise language creeps over into our self-image. The words "I failed"
imply a failure of the whole self, the "I", that seems devastating. The reality is that only a small part of the "I" has
failed, the math part. Don't let the math part dominate the whole.
Often when I begin to pray, I get the signal, "I feel tired." Now it may be that only my body is tired. I can tell my body
to relax. I'll be using other parts to pray. Sometimes it is my will that's tired. I'm just feeling lazy. I need my intellect
to convince my will of the importance of prayer. It's easy to be terrorized by your "parts."
When we prepare to pray, different parts of us will demand attention. The parts will try to dominate the whole. The secret
is to give an appropriate amount of attention to each part, and then gently set it aside in order to pray. You are assembling
the parts in the presence of God.
Will (2) (3) Emotions
▼
(1) Intellect
When you prepare for worship – kneeling / sitting many thoughts and distractions crowd your mind. These are the things
that have been inside of you wanting some attention while you've been too busy to notice. When you stop being busy as you
begin to pray, it's like turning down the volume of a very loud radio to discover there are all kinds of other sounds around
you which were previously drowned out. Memories, fantasies, daydreams, images and myriad thoughts awake in your mind. Each
wants the attention of your intellect.
You first task is to give deliberate attention to this swarm of thoughts and then lay each aside gently in order to pray.
St. John of Damascus said that prayer is "lifting the mind up to God."
When you lay each thought aside, do so by consciously offering it to God, "from whom no secrets are hid." You are assembling
all of you to offer to God.
Each distraction is like a child pulling at its mother's skirt. If the mother ignores the child, it will only get louder
and more persistent. If the mother gives the child her full attention, she can usually solve the need very quickly with a
gentle word. A moment of attention and then an offering of the thought to God will usually begin to clear your mind.
Once the mind and intellect has begun to become quieted, the temptation is to rise immediately and get busy waiting on the
service to begin. That begins the battle for the will.
We are in the process of assembling and emptying, and the will resists once we get close to empty by demanding we do something.
Now is the time to stay within the tension by a deliberate act of the will. Stay with your prayer and continue to recall
yourself to the task of attention to your insides.
What am I bringing with me to worship? By an act of will give attention to whatever surfaces. The distractions of the mind
usually arrive quickly and can be fairly quickly attended to. Then there is often a tense moment of temptation to abandon
prayer. If we exercise enough discipline of will to stay, finally feelings begin to well up.
It takes our emotions a little more time than our thoughts. But feelings are there inside us and they bubble up. Your feelings
are important. They are not to be judged or controlled. Feelings just are. Like the thoughts that clamor for attention,
your emotions will tug at you also. Give your feelings an appropriate amount of attention, gently accepting them, and then
quietly offering each to God to whom "all hearts are open, all desires known." Deliberately dwell with your emotions and
then let them go in order to pray. They will usually just "lie down."
Sometimes a thought or a feeling really grabs you. It is so powerful that it demands your full attention right now. You
can tell that this thought or emotion is important. Attend to the thought or emotion and respectfully ask it to let you be
free now for the important work of worship. Make a promise that you will come back to the thought or to the emotion later
when you can give it your full attention. (That is a promise you must keep.) Then gently place it to the side in order to
be free to pray the Liturgy.
Do you see the process we have just completed? We have brought our entire selves before God who knows us. We have offered
ourselves to God in a three step exercise: (1) mind, (2) will, (3) emotions. We gave each part the attention it needs, and
then gently let go in order to pray.
|
