Seeking Communion with God in Worship
Prayer
Review
Welcome to everyone here in the flesh and with us online. I am thankful for everyone’s participation and responses, and I am most inspired by the God-pleasing conversation and faith-forward reflection this Lenten Season. Last Sunday in Church, followed by a wonderful zoom session with 8 St. Hagop Church all-stars, we began the conversation on the importance of church culture; the customs, attitudes & practices-spoken and unspoken-which form the ethos of our church. Church culture can be found behind that statement ‘this is how we do things around here.’ We saw last time how important it is to reflect on our church culture, because it is a much more powerful force than anything we program, say or plan. Our mission and values are much more caught than taught, and they are caught by our church culture. And because much of our church culture is assumed and based on values that are under the surface, it is of the utmost importance to bring those hidden things into the light of God, so that together we can see our blessings and strengths as well as our brokenness and opportunities for growth.
We Seek Communion With God in Worship
This Sunday we are moving into what I have called the five signs of healthy church culture. These aren’t exhaustive and there are a million ways to present them. Yet these signs are five characteristics that, our Scriptures, the life of Christ and our church tradition all say are pillars of a well lived Christian life.
Today we will be talking about perhaps the most important aspect of healthy church culture in any Armenian Church, and surely any Orthodox Church; worship. Worship for us is no less than an ongoing encounter and communion with God. Other churches have less expectations placed on worship. For many Protestants, church is simply a place to gather and study God’s word. You could say that in these churches the arrow of worship is mostly from the people to God; you find expression of praise, long sermons like Ted talks, an informal coffee shop feel, and a general belief that worship is mainly symbolic remembrance of aspects of Christ life.
But for Orthodox it is something different. For us the arrow of worship is first from God to the people. Worship is where God becomes especially present to us. Our communion, baptism, church calendar are not symbolic memories of God, they are sacraments that bring God’s invisible presence into reality throughout the year. The arrow is supposed to go back to God in our response to him, of course, and we will get to that. But worship is something uniquely of God in our church, and if you don’t get it, you are in trouble. If you don’t get worship in Protestant churches, it is only a few minutes-you can listen to the 45 minute sermon. You can go to morning Bible study. You can send your kids to wed night youth group, etc. In our church, if you don’t get worship, you don’t have too much else.
So how are we doing in our culture of worship? Your answers to our Lenten survey reflection are helpful. We got 45 answers and counting. Almost 80% of people gave our worship culture an 8,9 or 10. The problem of course with all surveys like this is that it is skewed to the people who are actually engaged in church and for whom church is basically working well for. All the ones who aren’t engaged probably didn’t answer, and surely many are still unknown to us. But the survey still is helpful in many ways. For one it showed empirically that we have some for whom our transcendent, ancient, formal, ethnic worship is helpful in knowing and growing in God, and some for whom it was less helpful and even felt like a barrier.
We are not going to take up the issue of major liturgical language reform, only because it is discussion that has been had a lot, and doesn’t really get us anywhere. For the foreseeable future, it is the law of the land. Instead, we are going to look at a problem that I think is bigger than language, that one respondent summarized very well; ‘worship feels sacred but not personal.’
So rather than a debate on replacing our transcendent, ancient, formal, ethnic worship, let’s instead reflect on how we might make the transcendent more personal, and bring the ancient into the present day. Let’s reflect on how we can make the formal more familiar, and the ethnic less tribal and more inclusive.
Imaginative Exercise-Profound Worship Experiences
I think it may help us now to use our imagination and try to think of the best worship experiences that you have ever been a part of, where you felt God’s presence and deep bond with those you worshipped with. Think about that, for a bit. (If time solicit responses, if not share mine) I will have to share my best experiences for you and my guess is that yours and mine might have several things in common.
A couple of my best experiences were as a seminarian when we were snowed in at St. Nersess seminary. We couldn’t go to worship in one of the nearby parishes we were assigned to so we had worship in our intimate little chapel. Why was it so special? Because it was just Bp. (then Fr.) Daniel, 4 seminarians and 2 teachers. Everyone had to do a little bit of everything, and each of our input was essential. We knew each other and had deep bonds. No one was showing off or wanting to be heard. We all had studied liturgy enough to not just see it as an artifact or performance, but a movement to God in the present, today.
Another worship experience might be instructive for our topic today. Katoghike Church in Yerevan had a very inspiring church culture for me. Somehow, this tiny church, half-destroyed by the Soviets, was adopted by a small group of people in the late 1990s who became a tight-knit worshipping family. We still worshipped using our high, sacred rite, but much of the distances and formalities were erased. The distance between people was erased by the fact that there was literally no room. You were sandwiched between two grandmas with tears in their eyes in prayer. There was little distance between the choir and the altar, they were just guys in front and you could sing too. No one in that church was there to perpetuate their Armenian identity, everyone was securely Armenian. The only reason to be there was to worship the living God.
So what did my best worship experiences (and perhaps yours) have in common? It works best when you become uniquely bonded to the people you are worshipping with. It works best when all are actively engaged in that worship, everyone is there for one reason and knows what they are doing. It works best, in my opinion, when you have both important aspects of worship together, the down arrow from God to us and the up arrow from us to God. Where the transcendent, mysterious, sacred Armenian rite is the call, but there is an equally intense response of worshippers which is intimate, informal, and belies closeness to God and each other.
As we worship so we believe (so we live)
This dynamic of the two arrows of worship, the call and response, the transcendent and the intimate are actually spelled out in our worship. I have told you before if you want a ‘life-hack’ understanding of worship, skipping the need for seminary, just remember ‘lex orendi, lex credendi’ (the law of what is prayed [is] the law of what is believed). That is, for our church, what we pray, sing and do in liturgy helps form us in what we believe. What we pray sing and do, if we understand and commit to it, forms over the years as a Christian in a similar way that reading the Bible does.
We could take many examples of that right now, but there is one that pretty perfectly illustrates what I have outlined here as the ideal culture of worship that we are aiming at, a perfect mix of the ancient and transcendent that is also intimate and familiar.
Krisdos ee mej
Turn to page 27 in your pew books
Let’s read the translation out loud. And at the end of the service we will ask Louise to lead us through singing together. It is all right here, the story of God, the point of worship and the point of our Christian lives.
Christ in our midst has been revealed. He Who Is, God is here seated
Let’s take second phrase first. He Who is, God, is here seated. It is very easy to run over the meaning of this line. It is not He who is God is here seated. It is He Who Is……(the tetrgrammaton, pure being I am who am)….whom we call God is here. This is the sum of the transcendent, ancient, mysterious, sacred element of worship. This is the God who chose to reside in the inner sanctum, the holy of holies that only the high priest could enter once a year, anyone else would be stuck down.
But in the fullness of God’s plan, Christ in our midst has been revealed. This totally other, transcendent, God came to earth came to humanity to be in fellowship with us, both in history and now in holy communion, because anything of God is once and for always, his coming to us happened once and for always.
And because of his great love for us, we are bonded forever in him and with each other as church. This Church has become one soul, the kiss is given for a full bond. And love is spread over us all. God isnow not only with us in Jesus’ body and blood, his self-giving gift, he actually is within us, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of his love which he left in his place, which animates this church, and each of our lives.
OK, so there you have it. A perfect worship culture begins by bowing before a totally transcendent, other, sacred God, but does not stop there. It realizes that the job isn’t finished until everyone here, receives that God on high, and offers themselves back to God in worship and to each other in the Spirit of Christ’s love. I think we are stronger at the first part in our church culture, but will achieve great blessings if we keep working on the second part!
To finish off, I want to offer three very practical ways that we might continue to strengthen our culture which seeks communion with God and each other in Worship
- Let’s work to be Holy Translators
Every single person is translating our worship into another language. No one speaks Ancient Armenian, and few people in the world understand it like a first or even second language. So if you aren’t translating our worship, then you may just be performing or perhaps worshipping our heritage which will not be a blessing for anyone. So we all translate, be it into English, Modern Western Armenian, Modern Eastern Armenian, Russian, etc. So let’s become better and more intentional translators.
As we worship, try and say to yourself, in your chosen language, a few words of what you are saying and praying, and more if you can. When Krisdos I Mej comes up, sing the Armenian, but in between, pray softly out loud or in your head in English, ‘God you are greater than anyone can fathom or understand,’ ‘but you have come to be with me and love me as I am.’ Challenge yourself, to not only take in God’s transcendent presence, but to actively respond to it with words form your heart. (Also let me show you a little secret of how English translation is facilitated in your pew books-sing Krisdos ee mej in English. Learn this to help you easily go back and forth between sacred and familiar.
- Let’s Work to Be Holy Navigators
If you experience God in worship, know and grow with him, it is your joyful duty to try and share that with other people. We have to educate ourselves and elevate this part of our culture so that we can really help people navigate and come to know and grow in our worship.
The first starts with plain welcome and friendliness, which many of you mentioned is key to healthy worship. You are welcome here, you are not foreign. We don’t care how you are dressed or how you look.
Then, we have to make sure they know what our prime directive is here. Here is our pew book, we are worshipping God in our ancient way, join us. Start with the basic sure. Someone told me recently, that a person who has been to our church 10 times, didn’t actually know that the pew book had translation, he just saw the first Armenian part! Start with the basic, but let’s not stop. The first part of our service is dedicated to God’s word, that’s why you’ll see the Gospel parade, that’s why you’ll hear the readings. The second part is dedicated to God’s presence in Holy Communion.
This of course is parallel to what we have done a few times with instructed liturgy. We will run that sometimes to help us all retool. But ideally, several people in this church, if not everyone, could do a basic ‘elevator speech’ instructed liturgy for a new comer, for our neighbor, for our child who doesn’t get any of this.
We have changed our culture for the better to have a greeter ministry. We are still trying to realize this important service. But I can’t wait until our greeters also become navigators, helping people to encounter, know and grow with God through worship.
- Let’s Work to Be Holy Enablers
Worship is not for some people, it is for everyone. Out of some necessity and all good intentions, we have in my opinion over professionalized and over formalized our worship. The priest leads worship, preaches and says all the prayers, we are spectators. No those are everyone’s prayers! Others can preach, (we try to give chance and need to more), and maybe we need chances to have people lead worship in smaller groups.
We think that it is the choir and altar servers job to sing and chant, and only the best performing ones at that. No, we want you to sing too! But I can’t sing the solo as good as him or I stumble over the Armenia. Well this isn’t Armenian Idol, this is God’s church. This isn’t a performance, it is a prayer. Many churches I have been to, including sister Coptic ones, have much less of a separation between altar servers and people. Half the church are deacons, they chant the psalms, some on altar, some below it. They chanted in English which helps, but more participation and engagement is the key.
One of our Armenian churches has explored having no separate choir, but the whole church is the choir. We still need gifted leaders, but with the end goal of engaging as many others as possible. Maybe, there is one song a month or year that Louise teaches to the whole church and the whole church is encouraged to sing. This doesn’t replace choir, it just shares, engages, spreads more.
Conclusion
Ok so we got through our first and biggest sign of a healthy Armenian church culture, that would be a church that Seeks Communion With God in Worship. We will continue this conversation online on Wednesday. We had a great discussion last week with great people; I am sure it will continue this week, join us like Wednesday at 7:30pm.
Next Sunday’s topic is a fitting continuation to this Sunday’s. If we are encountering God and receiving his love during worship, then it is a natural response to offer love, hospitality and forgiveness, to all those we encounter in this church and in our lives.
Let’s conclude by singing Krisdos Ee Mej together, something I hope you will keep in your head and heart as a model and goal of worship and life that we rededicate ourselves to each week.
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