Working at Worship

Writing on the original meaning and use of the word liturgy Nicholas Wolterstorff considers how “leitourgia never did mean action of the people. It meant action for the benefit of the people.” According to Wolterstorff the liturgy was actually considered “a type of public service.” (Wolterstorff, Major Themes in Reform Tradition, p. 274) Precisely because the liturgy is meant to benefit Christians Janet Walton heralds art as being one of the forms that should be utilized towards this public service. In her book Art and Worship Walton recognizes how the content of worship functions as a way of shaping God’s people. Liturgy, therefore, is not just a program to follow. Instead, Walton encourages churches to introduce “forms that will connect the revelation of God with the most poignant needs of the people who constitute the church.” (Walton, Art and Worship, p.56)

Indeed, Tim Keller relates how reason may tells us about truth, but we “really cannot grasp what it means without art.” Keller goes on to say how “the sensual expression of truth allows you to hear the truth, see the truth, to taste it, touch it, and smell it.”  (Keller, It Was Good, Making Art to the Glory of God, p.121-122) Yet the random insertion of art into worship many times reads as novelty, not revelation. Perhaps this penchant for novelty in worship can be bypassed if congregations begin to embody a theology of the arts. Part of this theology must take into consideration the corporate nature of art. Churches must ask what will inspire creative and regenerative corporate worship that will move beyond the doors of the church into the hearts of its people in order to shape their everyday lives.

By grace art bridges God to men and gathers people to one another. One must also consider the humanizing element of art which allows us to bring everyday experiences into worship. This makes worship and art more relevant, dynamic and contextual. Conversely, art in worship can certainly reverberate into our daily life. A theology of the arts recognizes the symbiotic relationship between theology and art. Thomas Franklin O’Meara speaks of the importance of this relationship when he relates how “Theology is the discernment of the presence of the ‘More’ amid sin and grace. Like art, when theology is only a symbolism, it is empty—devoid of prophetic, existential, and spontaneously transcendent dimensions, and ready to be passed over quickly.” (O’Meara, Art, Creativity and the Sacred, p. 215)

Quite frankly art is not the primary theological form we must consider when we talk about corporate worship. Consequently, we should ponder Marva Dawn’s assertion regarding art and worship by focusing on “the biblical picture of the Body of Christ [a]s the preeminent image for guiding this aspect of theological formulations. This metaphor primarily reminds us that Christ is the Head; he must remain the focus, and his self-giving presence determines everything that we do.” (Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, p.130) Art, therefore, is the medium that springs forth from discourse regarding how the incarnation, resurrection and ascension define elements of our corporate worship.

Richard Rohr wisely reminds us how God likes us despite our rituals. “God doesn’t need them, but we need them to tenderly express our childlike devotion and desire—and to get in touch with that desire.” Ultimately, true worship is God’s gift for his people.

Let’s work at worshiping our Triune God with all of our being.

--Maria 

Remember

Many view artists as misunderstood loners writing with wadded balls of paper around their feet or as painters wearing paint-smattered smocks, wild hair, frantically muttering to themselves. Nicholas Wolterstorff gives us a more inclusive view “Art—so often thought of as a way of getting out of the world—is man’s way of acting in the world. Artistically man acts.” (Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p.5)

According to Margaret Kornfeld these actions can assist in knowing God. Our “God is a God who wants to be remembered and has created our bodies—with complex neurochemical systems—so that memory is possible.”(Kornfeld, Cultivating Wholeness, p.86) Writing to pastoral caretakers Kornfeld reminds them that “Our bodies remember through our senses.” Art performed for and by a community, say like a liturgy, aids memory, gives direction, breaks down walls of hostility.

Natalie Angier on assignment for the New York Times Science section participated in a symposium on the evolutionary value of art. She notes how looking at the breadth of history the action of art has been a “profoundly communal affair of harvest dances, religious pageants, quilting bees.” Furthermore, she recalls how “passionate town rivalries… gave us the spires of Chartres, Reims and Amiens.” Moreover, it is through shared art experiences people are united together and are “persuaded to treat one another as kin.”

Angier goes on to describe how the lofty origins of art start from the “intimate interplay between mother and child.” The “visual, gestural, and vocal cues that arise spontaneously and unconsciously between mothers and infants” are aesthetic “operations of ritualizations.” (“The Dance of Evolution,” NYTimes) In other words, the human capacity to create art and liturgies are utilized by mothers everywhere, through all time. It’s interesting to note how Angier writing from an evolutionary framework establishes art as a relational operation. “Artistically man acts” because he is responding to its creator.

If the secular world can recognize the aesthetics as a fundamental catalyst for community and relationality why haven’t Protestants fully utilize this particular category of being? Shouldn’t Christians use all possible means to aid our memory of who we are in Christ? Perhaps, then, more embodied activities need to be enacted in our corporate worship. The artist Robert Adams speaks of memory from another perspective: “The thing the artist is trying to give you is a reminder of those rare times when you did see the world so that everything seemed to fit—so that things had consequence. The majority of evidence is for chaos, let’s face it. Most of the time things don’t seem consequential. But the value of art is that it helps us recall transforming times that are of such a quality that they last.”*

Worship allows us to respond to God’s work in our lives. Through a community’s set of symbols and actions they recall how life makes sense despite its perceived chaos. Good Christian liturgies happen to display theology; thus teach theology alongside the sermon, maybe even deepens it.

Artists, please help Christians remember.

--Maria

*PBS art:21 series

The Practice of Pilgrimage

Amid many recent faith and art conversations, including James K.A. Smith’s Gospel & Culture lecture, one point keeps coming up: talk is good, information invaluable, but transformation also happens through the doing. There is a need in our technological society for Christians to form new practices and disciplines that direct us to the triune God, which in turn allows us to be the physical church in his material world.

Also of late is my back to back attendance of a couple of art and faith conferences. These events have set me thinking how there is an emotional, spiritual, and even physical need for these gatherings and how these short digressions from our noisy lives parallel the Christian practice of pilgrimage. In fact, I’d like to argue that the Christian conference or the neo-pilgrimage is a discipline, a doing, where like-minded people gather to experience and enact a spiritual journey fortified by mutual encouragement. Using Jamie Smith’s term relating to driving desires, there is a liturgy that these specific-themed, extended time, corporate gatherings, offer. (After all, our desires direct us to choose the conference according to its distinct content.)

Yes, the discipline of pulling away for solitary prayer and reflection is necessary, but just as invaluable is the practice of setting time aside to travel a long or short distance with a group of God’s beloved. Hands down, face to face time beats Facebook entries. Cell phones give way to meaningful conversations. Sharing similar concerns brings about impromptu prayers. Here, lecturers and friends can offer up “a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” for the benefit of God’s people amid a culture that continually pushes relationships into a virtual world.

We need each other to reignite our specific mission in the world. Our journey—we surprisingly find at these gatherings—is not so solitary, after all. In deed, the Center for Faith & Work looks to gather on November 4th and 5th, those who understand the doing is just as important as the knowing. We hope you will join us this fall on our neo-pilgrimage as we examine God’s call towards cultural involvement and human flourishing.

--Maria