Holy Conversation

Spirituality For Worship

Jonathan Linman

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780800621308
• eBook ISBN: 9781451411676
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Part One

SPIRITUALITY, WORSHIP, AND LECTIO DIVINA

The first part of this book is an exploration of the general terms spirituality and worship toward understanding spirituality for worship. Meditations on the day of Pentecost recorded in the book of Acts serve to carry this segment of our holy conversation. It is compelling how much light the biblical narrative sheds on understandings of spirituality and Christian practices such as worship that will lay the foundations for the further explorations of this book. In short, a major gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is speech—Peter’s tongue is released in proclamation of Jesus as resurrected from the dead. This gift of speech in proclamation sets the stage for understanding liturgical participation in large measure as holy conversation, a divine-human dialogical encounter.

What is it to be a good holy conversationalist? I will also take up that question, exploring the dynamics of conversation as an offering of our whole selves to the task of profound communication that can result ultimately in our transformation by the Spirit as new creations in Christ. Lectio divina, or sacred reading, and its movements—preparation, reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation, and incarnation of the Word in mission—serve to guide liturgical holy conversation on a trajectory that leads to intimate communion with Christ. Each movement represents a qualitatively different way of being present to each other and to God in liturgy, each being a mode of holy conversation. What is revealed in the application of lectio divina to the pattern for liturgical worship on the Lord’s Day is a new way of engaging and being engaged by the language of liturgy for our growth in faith, hope, and love—and courage to be witnesses to God’s reign evident in the Word which is Christ.

Chapter 1

UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUALITY FOR WORSHIP

Karl Rahner, a prominent twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologian, summed up well the spirit of our age when he suggested that “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he or she will not exist at all.”¹ Rahner’s observation suggests a recognition of people’s yearnings for direct experience of God, aspirations that go hand in hand with the current interest in spirituality. Walk through bookstores, browse through book catalogs, witness popular discourse, both sacred and secular, and you will see evidence of the explosion of interest in spirituality. Spirituality has largely replaced religion as the category of choice to speak of themes of transcendence or religiosity, as captured by the popular phrase “I am spiritual, but I am not religious.” Furthermore, given the explosive growth of Pentecostal Christianity through the twentieth century and throughout the world, one might conclude that ours is the era of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. But what on earth is spirituality, and what is the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives? There are perhaps as many definitions and viewpoints as people and schools of thought employing the term and invoking the Spirit.

There is also great current interest in worship, indicated, for example, by exponential growth in the publication of worship books, hymnals, and various resources supporting liturgical life in a number of Christian traditions. But what exactly is worship? In a similar vein to the use of the term spirituality, there are perhaps as many approaches to understanding and defining worship as there are worship styles and traditions. The explorations that follow offer insights that will enrich understandings of both terms, spirituality and worship. These insights will also serve to link the two categories, because I believe that current societal fascination with these two phenomena is likewise intimately related. Interest in spirituality gives birth to interest in worship and vice versa.

Exploring the connection between spirituality and worship enriches and reinforces the understanding and experience of each. Linking spirituality with corporate worship keeps the notion of spirituality grounded, tethered to worshiping communities. Otherwise, spirituality might be reduced to individualistic practice and idiosyncratic experience. Likewise, linking spirituality and worship serves to deepen our understanding and experience of worship, keeping worship lively, vital, passionate, and attentive to the Spirit’s transformative power working in our assemblies.

I will not attempt to explore here comprehensive views of either spirituality or worship. To do so would go far beyond the scope and needs of this work. Rather, I wish to take up understandings of spirituality for worship, focusing particularly on aspects of spiritual experience that will help us engage the language of liturgy for deeper spiritual experience, for more transformative encounters with and experiences of the Spirit in worship.

SPIRITUALITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

The word that may be translated “spirituality” does not as such appear in the Bible. However, the word translated “spiritual” (pneumatikos) does appear, for example, in the Pauline letters. In such Pauline passages, the referent concerning that which is spiritual is specifically the Holy Spirit, and life in and according to that Spirit. For example, in Paul’s discourse in the first chapters of 1 Corinthians, he explores the wisdom of God that contrasts with the wisdom of the world, and employs the category spiritual to speak of that which in fact comes from God through the Spirit: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:12–13).

In this way, the word spiritual as used here does not refer to innate human capacity as much as it makes clear reference to the Holy Spirit as a focus for understanding what is spiritual. In other words, the content of the word spiritual is the Holy Spirit. This is a crucial feature of a specifically Christian understanding of spirituality. “Spiritual” comes to be connected with “spirituality,” and all of this has to do with the Holy Spirit.

An early appearance of the word translated “spirituality” (from the Latin, spiritualitas) occurred in the fifth century in Epistle 7 of Pseudo-Jerome, which reads, “So act as to advance in spirituality.” Pseudo-Jerome uses this term in a Pauline sense with reference to life in and according to the Holy Spirit of God.² This fragment from an ancient letter reveals significant aspects of an understanding of Christian spirituality. One such aspect is that Christian spirituality involves activity, practice, deeds, behavior—“so act” as the text from Pseudo-Jerome suggests. Additionally, Christian spirituality has to do with processes of change, growth, progress, maturation—“so act as to advance in spirituality.” Such activity and growth happen via the guidance and in the power of the Holy Spirit in terms of the Pauline theology that informed Pseudo-Jerome.

SPIRITUALITY AND THE DAY OF PENTECOST

Any attempt to understand further Christian spirituality naturally involves considerations of the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, the very power of God, descended upon the apostles gathered in Jerusalem: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:1–4).

This brief passage from Acts throws a window wide open for revealing numerous aspects of Christian spirituality that are pertinent to understanding its relationship to worship. First of all, spirituality, the power of God known in the Spirit, joins heaven and earth, things human with things divine—the rush of wind comes from heaven, the realm of God, after all. Spirituality and worship involve human encounter with the divine.

Next, the sound, the wind, the Spirit “filled the entire house.” That is to say, the Spirit did not find a particular or secluded niche in which to roost. The Spirit of God infuses all of our surroundings and gets into everything where it would go. Spirituality, then, involves the whole of human life. It cannot be reduced to practices and experiences that are compartmentalized or segmented away from our ordinary routines and from what we commonly experience. Spirituality does not require a separate or distinct form of consciousness. Rather, it is part and parcel of our everyday sensate experience. Likewise, Christian worship that is spiritually oriented focuses on what we commonly do in assembly as we gather to hear the Word, share the meal, and be sent into the world to do God’s work. Worship can be quite routine, even as it can also result in extraordinary experiences, as suggested by the events of the day of Pentecost itself.

Even so, and this may seem paradoxical in light of the Spirit’s sharing in ordinary things, the Spirit interrupts business as usual and comes from without. The sound of the violent wind was sudden. The Spirit descended upon and filled the apostles. It did not well up within them. Christian spirituality, informed by reflections on the day of Pentecost, has to do with God coming to us extra nos—from outside of ourselves, even as the Spirit works through ordinary means and also dwells within us. Worship is an occasion when God breaks into our lives to address us and to bring about change.

“[The apostles] were all together in one place.” The apostles had assembled. Pentecost was a communal event. Likewise, Christian spirituality has primarily a communal orientation in assembly, though popular understandings of spirituality can reduce it to individual and interior experiences. Moreover, reinforcing the communal dimension of the experience of the Spirit, when the Spirit comes, other people begin to arrive as well. “At this sound the crowd gathered” (Acts 2:6). So it is that we assemble for worship as the Spirit gathers us, and others also find their way to our assemblies to see what is going on.

Even though the context is communal, the experience of the Spirit is individual and particular. “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” Christian spirituality touches our unique identities as children of God. As the apostle Paul writes, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.… Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:1, 4–7). We worship God in community, but according to the particular gifts given to us by the Spirit.

“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” The coming of the Spirit, symbolized by tongues as of fire, unleashes tongues, glossa in the Greek, meaning the tongue as physical organ, but also language and speech. The Spirit’s power gives birth to discourse, to proclamation, the telling of stories made intelligible and understandable by the same Spirit. In short, the Spirit makes possible effective communication. Prior to the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ followers remained in Jerusalem and were silent, speechless at least in terms of their public witness. God’s sending of the Holy Spirit released the apostles’ own tongues to give forth the public proclamation of the gospel. Visitors attracted by this commotion heard and understood in their own native tongues speech about “God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11b). Peter was moved in the power of the Spirit to give an address that drew this conclusion: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Spirituality, Worship, and Lectio Divina
• Part Two: Meditations on the Mass
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index