2/8/23

Back in 1995, a fellow seminarian told me his father had gone to high school with the actor James Dean in nearby Fairmount, Indiana. He said that every year on the last weekend in September, the anniversary of Dean’s death, Fairmount held a “James Dean Festival” and people would come from all over the world to attend an annual  memorial service in his home church, Back Creek Friends Church. Of course, I had to go.  The organist played the same songs she played at his funeral in 1955 (one was “Love Me Tender”), his ancient drama teacher told stories about him, a classmate reminisced (admitting he didn’t know what the  fuss was about), and someone from New York read from Dean’s favorite book, The Little Prince, applying it to Dean’s life. Afterwards, we processed up the hill to the cemetery, stood around the grave while a motorcyclist rode up on his Harley, dropped off a bank of flowers, then rode off into the sunset while we all sang, “Back Home in Indiana.” 

It was one of the weirdest afternoons I’ve ever spent. And they’ve done this every year for 46 years. 

Last Wednesday was Groundhog’s Day, and early that morning I stumbled on the live broadcast from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Thousands (yes, thousands) of people were gathered to watch poor Punxsutawney Phil dragged out of his burrow, placed on a fake tree stump and given the choice between two scrolls. One predicted six more weeks of winter; the other predicted an early spring. Phil nudged one of the scrolls with his nose and the declaration was proclaimed: “Six more weeks of winter!” And they do this every year.

And I could go on, writing about the Polar Bear Club whose members jump into freezing lakes every January 1; or the Black Friday shoppers who, every year,  trample each other over stuff they think they need the day after being thankful for what they already have; or the families who dress in either orange and blue or crimson and white to watch a football game that will ruin Thanksgiving weekend for about half of them! 

We have all sorts of traditions and traditions are very important (if you don’t believe me, forget your spouse’s birthday or your anniversary). Tradition shows we value an event in our lives and want to honor it year after year. Traditions connect people from different generations, giving us a sense of identity and belonging. Think about your own family traditions around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Try messing with them and see how your kids react!  

 Sometimes our form of worship is called “traditional” (but that’s usually by those who want to chuck it). I don’t find the term “traditional worship” particularly helpful . . . every form of worship becomes traditional. True, we do draw from a very rich tradition of worship practices because we find value in them, but we’re never traditional just for the sake of tradition. Our mantra is not and hopefully never will be, “We’ve never done it that way before” – that’s a sure sign of impending death! 

And it’s been fashionable in the last few decades to toss aside many well-established worship traditions. “Traditional” is viewed as backward, out-of-touch, irrelevant and ineffective. But what is tradition replaced with? New traditions. Even the most “non-traditional” worship service will become traditional – it’ll just be a different tradition. Get rid of the choir and organ tradition, and you’ll end up with a worship team and band tradition. It’s all “traditional.” 

So, maybe “traditional” isn’t a good word for what we do. The term, “liturgical,” comes closer. It comes from a Greek word meaning “the work of the people,” referring to a volunteer civic work performed by a citizen. It came to mean the form of worship used by a congregation – the “form” of worship. 

I grew up in a church that completely rejected  liturgical worship. It was too formal. It was too “Catholic.” “Formal worship” was the same thing every week, instead of being led by the Holy Spirit like ours obviously was. That the Holy Spirit apparently led us to open every service with a song, then a prayer, then another song, then an offering, then a “prayer song,” then the morning prayer, then a “special,” then a sermon, and finally an altar call – and it was that same liturgy (dang it, I meant “order”)  week after week . . . well, the irony was lost on us. 

We had replaced one liturgy with another liturgy (but for heaven’s sake, don’t call it that!).

That new “informal” formality actually came from the Revivalist/Camp Meeting tradition of the mid-1800’s. And the problem was the new liturgy (dang it, I meant “order”) was an empty husk compared to the liturgy we rejected. There was really no thought behind our liturgy. There was no journey from opening to closing. There were the “preliminaries” (as a church musician, I hated that term, but a lot of pastors thought that way) that had to be gotten out of the way – the appetizers before the main course, which was, of course, the sermon. Communion? Once a month at best; once a year, at worst. 

In tossing aside historical liturgical worship, we completely cut ourselves off from some 1900 years of our Christian heritage. Rootless and rudderless, we re-invented the worship wheel every week, and it got pretty lame. In fact, it became so lame, another generation threw that tradition out for something new. 

But when we speak of “tradition” in worship, we’re not talking about “old stuff we like.” The tradition we speak of is the long, beautiful story of creation, fall, redemption and ultimate resurrection. When we gather for worship, we’re not just expressing ourselves to God as much as we’re retelling God’s story and finding our place in it. Liturgy is the form that encourages and makes possible everyone’s participation.

So, it’s more than mere “tradition” or “formality.” Week after week, season after season, year after year, we participate in the drama of our salvation history. We gather together, hear and proclaim the Word, give thanks and share at the Lord’s table, and we are sent into the world as renewed people of the Kingdom. Each time we repeat the process, we retell how God has called us out of a lost world, and we celebrate God for his love and grace. And this repetition shapes us, refocuses us, and reorients us after a week of living in our crazy world. 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry