Faith Works 2-5-22

Faith Works 2-5-22
Jeff Gill

Cross currents and communion in church
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Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Christian historian, was asked to address the problems and opportunities churches faced with ancient liturgies, modern tastes for innovation, and debates over how to honor both the old and the new.

His response still echoes in the ears of many worship leaders and spiritual teachers decades later: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

My dad liked to point out that the measure of a community was how it cares for the most vulnerable, the least powerful. So the Bible teaches that our social priorities should emphasize the support of widows and orphans, strangers and sojourners. His observation, though, was that we really need to be mindful of how we tend to the dead.

Tombstones can't defend themselves. Cemeteries have a somewhat limited constituency. But a community that cares gently and reverently for such memorials and locations is probably one that understands how to make provision for the more lively groups of underserved people.

And when it comes to tradition, G.K. Chesterton was onto the same thing when he said "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."

Pelikan's observation is a reminder that it's just as unhealthy to give the deceased an absolute veto. How to reflect on tradition today is tricky in all sorts of situations. What would Dorothy Day say about some political development? How would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King take a stand about a current event? You can't just unplug them from their context and drop them as if living into today; when that's done rhetorically, it's usually to serve the speaker's purposes, which might well not be those of their historical figure's intentions.

In worship, though, we can trace some odd and interesting patterns through history that give us hints, if not clear direction on how to do our services "the right way." Among Protestants, I can point out five or six different distinct eras over just the last few centuries where one generation innovated in terms of music and preaching, in the next few decades it became a norm, and then a rising generation comes along to look at the last innovations as dated and uninspiring while their elders defend that now beleaguered model as "tradition." Lather, rinse, repeat. Congregational singing versus professional choirs, or open air preaching with popular songs adapted, jostling alongside of Psalmody which gives way to Watts's hymnbook, organs displacing ad hoc instrumentals, electronic amplification and backing instrumentals on cassette tape, Singspiration and "Gaither music" to praise bands to . . . whatever is next.

I did not grow up in a liturgical tradition, but in a tradition that had many givens which were a de facto liturgy. Total improvisation and spontaneity were considered a mode for different churches, not for us. Now many of the churches I've guest preached at in the last two decades have had effectively no order of worship or set prayers, just an outline of "music, prayer, offering, more prayer, preaching, last song." I miss sometimes a style I've never really known, some ancient elements and parts of worship that connect us to generations before, which can offer continuity with those yet to come.

One of my phrases about what worship is for, when I'm in a space where that question can be discussed, is that at heart I think regular worship is made up of equal parts "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals."

If you've not had the opportunity either as a male partner or female directly involved party to attend birthing classes, they spend a fair amount of time teaching you how to breathe. Yes, even the man. Practice now, because you don't want to try to learn this later. Things will happen fast! But you are preparing with expectation for new life to join the family.

Funeral rehearsals are less something anyone has gotten to do, I suspect, but in a sense we are doing it every time we think about eternity, after us, the time to come. Preparing ourselves and those around us for the hard reality of what happens after life goes on, without us.

Birthing classes and funeral rehearsals. Every faith community is doing this in their gatherings, and it's where you really need the perspectives of both the old and the young present and participating. How do we make meaning out of our journey in the light of God, and honor each other along the way?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still not sure what the best way to worship is, but he's got a strong bias towards communion at the heart of it. Tell him where you find the heart of worship without quoting Matt Redman at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.