Behold What You Are

Becoming the Body of Christ

Lisa G. Fischbeck

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781640653245
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Rituales cristianos y práctica

Behold What You Are is written to open the possibilities of liturgy and liturgical awareness, in the church and of the church, Sunday by Sunday, season by season.

In a world increasingly and sharply divided, the image of the body of Christ can provide an alternate and life-giving narrative. We don't just gather to worship God; we gather to worship God together, even when that gathering is online. And we go forth together to be the body of Christ, that the world might be repaired and restored to God. This body is not finite and exclusive; it is porous and open to all.

Our traditions are a wonderful springboard for refreshed liturgical expressions in settings within and beyond our church buildings. These expressions can connect with people who would not otherwise enter a beautiful but somewhat austere structure. With some thoughtful reflection and intentionality, the public expression and formation of the body of Christ through liturgy can become more vital for all.

1	Liturgy as Public Expression and Formation of the Body of Christ

When I was a child, my father worked in the research labs of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It was the 1960s. My father relished his part in the technological revolution that was changing our society and our world. Innovations in communications—lasers, televisions, printers—were all part of his daily life and dreams. His excitement was contagious.

On our road trip vacations, my father encouraged us to search for the RCA logo wherever we went, and he led us in singing John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes” any time we passed an RCA building or store. My father’s strategy kept us alert and engaged along the way. When we passed through a developed area, I kept my eyes searching for that logo. When I spotted one I shouted, and the car burst into song.

That simple family tradition planted the seeds of my appreciation for ritual and liturgy, and it influenced my life as a priest. Yearning, expression, formation, and belonging were all there. The practice enfolded me in my family—this is something that we do. The ritual also gave me a sense of being part of something larger than my family or even the town where I grew up. RCA was everywhere.

Through familiar and beloved rituals, with or without our knowing, human beings express what we believe and are formed by what we do. As a college student in the 1970s, I experienced the unexpected victory of my school’s football team in an intense rivalry. The fans stormed onto the field, crowding around the winning goal post, climbing, pulling, and tugging until the goal post came loose. They lifted it up and passed it around the crowd, with arms stretching to touch it or to help move it along. The goal post moved through the fans and was carried around the stadium, then out into the main campus. After parading the goal post through the quadrangle, the exuberant fans deposited it on the steps of the university chapel and cheered. Every person who witnessed the procession of the goal post that day felt the joy of victory. All who touched the goal post tangibly participated in that joy.

Consciously or not, in ways large and small, our actions express and form our values and priorities—what we believe about ourselves, our communities, our world, and our place in it. Our credit card statements, social media activity, emails, reading and shopping habits all reveal our beliefs. Weight loss programs, sports teams, and political campaigns help us express and form our identities in the secular world. Summer camps for children include rituals such as singing camp songs and setting candle boats out into a lake. Colleges and universities offer orientation programs for incoming freshmen to promote community through the intimacy of small group experiential education. Life in the military builds upon a sense of community as a matter of life and death.

Citizens are familiar with the rituals of government. Each year, the president of the United States delivers the State of the Union address. Every branch of government is present. The Supreme Court justices wear their black robes, elected members of Congress sit according to their political affiliation, and the vice president and the Speaker of the House sit near the president. Each year, at the appointed hour, the sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives announces the arrival of the president, and the president walks in to applause and cheers, shaking hands left and right while moving closer to the podium. Some of this protocol is written, some is tradition. The event is scripted. Whether we agree with the president’s address or not, the ritual and liturgy of the annual event remind us of who we are as Americans and how our government is structured. The State of the Union address helps to shape and form us as American citizens who witness and participate in it.

Every day, communities gather at secular cathedrals large and small—soccer fields, racetracks, sports arenas, the gym, shopping malls, the office—where common values are reinforced through shared rituals and practices. On Sunday mornings at the local food cooperative, food and drink are fresh and healthy, and the open and expansive seating area is crowded with local residents who come to eat well, see their friends, visit with like-minded people, and listen to live music.

Ten miles from the Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a twenty-first-century shopping mall looms as a secular cathedral,¹ with vast space, commercial iconography, ritual foods, and rhetoric that beckon and form the worshipper. The success of shopping malls and their online equivalents depends on a baseline understanding of anthropology and psychology, as well as sophisticated marketing research that reveals trends and desires. Savvy secular marketers form faith and shape believers.

Parades, rallies, marches, annual festivals, and celebrations also form community. For example, at the annual “Procession of the Species” in Olympia, Washington, thousands of residents come together to celebrate and learn about native and threatened animal species. The residents create costumes and musical instruments for a parade described as “a ritualistic celebration of the natural environment, building solidarity, responsibility, and community, . . . a personal yet public experience.”²

From labor marches to gay pride parades, from royal enthronements to waves in football stadiums, human beings realize the power of collective movement. Cave drawings, ancient mosaics, and tapestries all reveal the importance of processions and parades in the lives of our ancestors. Parades were woven into the social fabric of American life, with saint’s day parades in ethnic Roman Catholic neighborhoods and rodeo and circus parades on the western frontier. For years, ticker tape parades in New York have welcomed and feted soldiers, astronauts, and soccer stars, providing a means for those gathered along the route to express their joy, admiration, and pride. And every four years in Washington, DC, inauguration parades celebrate the nation and a new presidential term. At the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC, pink hats and chants unified and energized a collective of creative individual expressions. As the hours passed and the numbers exceeded all expectations, those gathered realized that they were not alone. The sea of pink hats was a force to be reckoned with.

These examples reflect the human impulse to create expressive actions, rituals, customs, and traditions, and our openness to be formed by them. This book is born of a passion for greater awareness, intentionality, and thoughtful creativity in the church’s rituals and liturgies, that worship may become even more expressive and formative for the people of God.

Questions for Reflection

1. Can you think of a particular public/secular event or practice that has been meaningful to you?

2. What faith or belief does that “liturgy” express?

3. How does it form the belief and identity of those who participate in it?

Church Liturgy: As We Pray, So We Believe

As early as the fifth century, the Church proclaimed lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of praying is the law of believing, or as more commonly stated, “As we pray, so we believe.” What Christians believe is expressed by what we do and say in worship. What we say and do in worship forms what we believe and what we become.

Members of the Episcopal Church have a love of the liturgy, or at least an appreciation of it. The sacraments, particular movements and postures, and the theological nuance of the prayers carry great meaning for those who have been formed by decades of weekly practice. The familiar and resonant words of the canticles, and the Prayer of Humble Access from Rite I still echo in their souls: “But Thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. . . .”

However, there are many in our churches who have not yet found meaning in the liturgy’s rhythms. They recognize the pattern of songs, the readings, the Peace, and the Eucharist. They see the clergy enter the church at the beginning of the service and leave at the end. They may sense the arc of the liturgical year, though some in the congregation only know Pentecost as “the day we wear red.” Without regular attendance week in and week out, even faithful members may miss the education and formation that evolves as the seasons move from the anticipation of Advent to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

Visitors and newcomers to an Episcopal church may have grown up in a liturgical sacramental setting but may not have thought about it since they were confirmed or married. They may have no church background at all, may think the liturgy is intriguing, but are not ready to participate in an adult confirmation class. How we present and enact our rituals, then, is a crucial matter of hospitality.

Individuals gain some formation simply by being present for the church’s worship, yes. But there is so much more to be gleaned, expressed, and understood in order to experience a more vital liturgical experience. Since ritual and liturgy express and form the faith of those who participate in it, those who plan and execute the liturgy have an obligation to consider carefully both spoken and written words of hospitality and explanation.

Ritual and Liturgy

A vital step toward hospitality and meaningful participation in liturgical practice is understanding the distinction between ritual and liturgy. Rituals depend on familiarity with the actions that are performed over and over again, often in the same place, and even in the same pew. Rituals may be private or public, individual or collective, done alone or in a group. When the world around us seems unsteady or chaotic, we turn to ritual as an anchor.

At its best, ritual connects us with time-transcending truths and comforts us. Ritual shared with others connects those who share it into a certain unity of being. Ritual elements of our liturgy include the Sanctus—Holy, Holy, Holy—and the words of institution—“On the night he was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, ‘Take, eat: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me. . . .’” These are words spoken by Christians who have gathered since the beginnings of the church some two thousand years ago. The lifting of the elements at the conclusion of the prayer is an iconic image that even those who have never been in a church would recognize as ancient and sacred.

I propose that liturgy, however, is always a public work, and is always done by a congregation of people. Liturgy does not depend on familiarity, although it is certainly enhanced by understanding. Liturgy can be designed uniquely for a particular place and occasion. Liturgy often includes ritual and is grounded by it. Ritual within the liturgy provides a stability and consistency that we yearn for and need. Liturgical acts or words often become ritual over time. The aptly named “comfortable words” now found in Rite I of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP, 332) are a prime example. Generations of Episcopalians could recite them: “Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him. Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you” (Matthew 11:28). The words became ritual because they speak a truth we all long to hear: Jesus publicly invites and welcomes us and our burdens.

Words and actions, predetermined and consistent from Sunday to Sunday, season to season, year to year, can become a bedrock, a reliable routine. In a world that is changing at an accelerated rate, many religious people find comfort in knowing that when they begin the liturgy on any given Sunday morning, they know what to expect. This is why any change in our liturgy is often met with conflict and adversity. Change can be a fearful thing.

Ritual transcends time and location and is the same whenever and wherever it is practiced. Liturgy contextualizes the ritual and varies through time and place. The liturgy in Advent is similar yet different from the liturgy in Eastertide. The liturgy in a cinder-block chapel in Haiti is similar yet different from the liturgy in a grand cathedral in midtown Manhattan. Liturgy is an expression of the people gathered, and the people gathered will be formed by the liturgy—the oft-repeated rituals, as well as the prayers, music, and movement of a particular occasion and location in which they come together.

In settings grand or simple, a liturgy can be life-giving, soaring, or soothing. It can express the beauty of holiness and heal the wounded soul. Regardless of the setting, a liturgy can also be hollow, dry, disconnected, and painfully exclusive, especially to the uninitiated. A liturgy may reflect the mystery of God, but it need not be mysterious itself. This is why we need to regularly reexamine the works, words, and actions of our liturgy.

It is said that in the original Greek, liturgy was a public work done on behalf of the people. It had a certain connotation of noblesse oblige, the rich providing for the needs of the public. Today, the idea lives on in the concept of a public works department, providing water and other services for the common good. In the first millennium of the church, the word was adopted with an understanding that the service and worship of the church was also for the public good. The liturgy came to mean all the worship services of the church, and more pointedly, the Mass, the eucharistic rite. The liturgy was understood as the movement, ritual, and words of that rite. With the liturgical renewal movement in the second half of the twentieth century, liturgy was defined as “the work of the people.” It was the work of the congregation, as well as a public work. The current online glossary of the Episcopal Church defines liturgy as “the church’s public worship of God.” It “expresses the church’s identity and mission, including the church’s calling to invite others and to serve with concern for the needs of the world.”³

In my own teaching and practice of liturgy, I have incorporated elements of all of these meanings, defining liturgy as a public work, performed by the people gathered, through which we express what we believe and are formed in what we become. If liturgy is a public work, then the public should know that it is happening and that it is happening for them. This means among other things, that liturgy is about hospitality, and that those who perform the liturgy remain ever mindful of the “strangers” who might be present. If liturgy is the work of the people, then liturgy is best crafted in a way that engages the people gathered as fully as possible. If liturgy expresses what we believe and forms what we become, then those who craft the liturgy and many who participate in it are able to articulate what each action expresses about our faith and how it forms us in our faith.

Scripted reminders, either aloud or in print, give welcoming formation to the visitor and the curious, describe why we are about to do what we are about to do, and encourage the formation of the regular participants. Subtle changes in the Sunday liturgy can alert us to the meaning behind the ritual, revealing things that have been understood previously only by the initiated or the trained, and engaging those gathered in being and becoming the Body of Christ.

Becoming the Body of Christ

Christian liturgy is an expression of Christian faith given to us in scriptu...