Thursday, March 30, 2006
Reflections on Worship and the Christian Year
Scott Hoezee, director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary, recently presented these reflections on worship and the Christian year to a Seminary course on the Christian year, and agreed to share them here:
This afternoon the three of us speak to you from our varied experiences, a good deal of which ties in with when it was we received our formal education and when we entered the life and work of ministry in the church. In terms of myself, I graduated from CTS in 1990, which means I was here just at the time when the liturgical tectonic plates were starting to grind past one another in the CRC. That is to say, when I was here, the old way of teaching worship and liturgy was in its last days, soon to be replaced by the kind of curriculum that Dr. Witvliet and others brought to this Seminary and, by extension, to the wider Christian Reformed denomination beginning in the mid-1990s.
Over the last two years, I have been working on a history book about the CRCNA that is to be released in conjunction with the denomination’s sesquicentennial (or 150th birthday) next year in 2007. My assignment for that book was to give a little attention to the CRC’s first 100 years but to give primary focus to just the last 50 years from 1957-2007. To put it mildly, this last half-century has been one of tremendous change and upheaval, not least on the liturgical front.
As Dr. Witvliet has perhaps already highlighted, in 1957 (which was seven years before I was born, by the way) you could have wandered into most any Christian Reformed congregation anywhere and you would have encountered pretty much the same thing. The bulletin would have had a pretty typical cover with a photo or sketch of the church and the name of the pastor, the times of the Sunday services, and so forth. The inside of the bulletin would have been a mimeographed set of pages containing the announcements, notices of those who had died or who were sick, and the church calendar. On the back cover of these bulletins would have been the pre-printed Order of Service for both the morning and the evening services. That order never varied. It was the same order on December 15 as on March 10, the same on Easter as on Pentecost, the same in midsummer as in midwinter. The only thing that changed week-to-week was the specific hymns that were sung out of the red Psalter Hymnal, and those were posted on number boards that were on the front wall of the church.
In other words, there was no perceived need to take note of Epiphany or Advent, Lent or Eastertide. In the Reformed tradition, every Sunday was a “little Easter” and to the minds of some, paying too much attention to the seasons of the church year (much less to things like the color of clerical vestments and the like) was considered very Roman Catholic and, therefore, wrong!
By the mid-1980s when I began seminary, things were already changing, but not in terms of the curriculum here at CTS. My liturgical education (such as it was) was restricted to a theological walk-through of the standard Reformed order of worship. Each element was explained: we began with the sursum corda, the “Lift up your hearts to the Lord.” It proceeded through opening greeting, the service of confession (which meant the reading of the Ten Commandments), the pastoral prayer, the offering, the sermon, and the closing blessing. And that was pretty much it.
It was only after I got out of seminary that I began—on my own—to discover that there was a whole rich tradition of liturgy and the Church Year—a tradition that was actually getting taught to our children in the Worship Center program but that was not often getting reflected very well in what went on upstairs in the main sanctuary of the church! I found myself drawn to the rhythm of the seasons and intrigued with representing these seasons through liturgical colors and banners.
So in both of the congregations I served, we began to take note on every Sunday’s bulletin as to where we were in the Church Year. We became very intentional about the colors of paraments and the vestment stoles that I wore (and I did always wear a clergy robe for the morning services at my congregations). I tried to weave in some thoughts about the Christian Year into my children’s sermons, particularly when we changed liturgical colors at the start of a new season. For me, in terms of also the preaching life of the church, this structure seemed logical and useful in terms of helping us reflect in our worship the great drama/story of salvation as we read it from Scripture.
But not everyone was a fan. Some of my Elders just weren’t sure what to make of it. A couple of Elders, however, were VERY sure what to make of it: namely, it was just too doggone Roman Catholic. Paying attention to the seasons violated the Reformed idea that every Sunday is a celebration of Easter. So when I had conversations with these people, I did what any reasonably intelligent pastor in the CRC would do: I called John Witvliet for help!! I really did that now and again but mostly these criticisms that arose in Elders meetings became a teaching opportunity. We all know that a lot got tossed out of the church in the process of the Reformation in the 1500s. For the most part, people never reflected much as to whether something that LOOKED Roman Catholic really was anti-Reformed. It was just assumed. Upon reflection, we’ve come to realize in more recent decades that we threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater.
What could possibly be un-Reformed, for instance, about Advent or Lent? If ever there were a tradition that ought to appreciate the chance for serious repentance for sin, you’d think the Calvinist tradition would be it! True, when I instituted an Ash Wednesday service at Calvin Church here in town—and when we used, you know, REAL ASHES—some diehard Calvinists got a little crosseyed initially. Sure we believe in original sin, total depravity, and the need for daily mortification of our sinful selves, but real ashes were so untidy, so ostentatious, so . . . un-Reformed seeming!
Upon reflection, however, I was heartened to see how many people realized that there is nothing in the rhythm of the church seasons that violate anything you can read in the Reformed confessions or the works of John Calvin. Indeed, I was quite moved at our first Ash Wednesday service to see 70- and 80-year-old pillars of the church clearly receiving a real blessing by letting that cross-shaped smudge of ashes on their foreheads become part of their lifelong Calvinist/Reformed habit of being serious about our sin and our mortality and of our utter need for the one saving sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
So in the nearly 16 years that have passed since my graduation and ordination, I have been grateful to see my congregations move from wariness about all this church year stuff to ready acceptance of it. In the questions we got ahead of time today, one of you (Nicholas, I believe) asked about how to move a congregation from Point A to Point B, from a point of neglecting certain liturgical practices to the point of accepting them and instituting them. My experience on this is limited and Rev. Vanderwell or Dr. Brink can perhaps speak to this from a broader perspective.
But for me, I simply forged ahead with gradually introducing these different practices but I was always careful to accompany that with well-thought-out explanations as to the theological underpinnings of it all (paying special attention, of course, to the REFORMED theology that was getting expressed through even something that was rather new to the congregation). In other words, people need to know there is a reason, biblically and theologically, for doing these things. If they sense that you wear a purple stole during Advent and a red stole on Pentecost just because you like a dash of color to accent the sanctuary, they will reject this pretty quickly. But if you are able to explain all this new stuff in the vocabulary and language of the faith that is already available to them, you will win more converts. You still won’t get everybody, but your ability to demonstrate thoughtfulness and intentionality about such things will go a long ways toward defusing at least some criticism.
Let me give you one last example. About a half-dozen or so years ago, having spent quite a bit of time with Lutheran friends for whom this had long been part of their tradition, I began to conclude my benedictions by making the sign of the cross as I blessed people in the Triune Name. Talk about Catholic-looking! But I had checked this out in the Christian tradition, did a nice email exchange with Dr. Witvliet, and so was ready when the questions inevitably arose. Now, to be honest, I just started doing this. I didn’t ask anybody ahead of time. And to be even more honest (while stating also the obvious), I didn’t try something like this during my first year at the church (nor even during my second, third, or fourth year). I had built up enough credibility by the time I began this practice to sense that it would be OK.
Again, however, by being able to explain the ancient origins of this sign and the deep reverence the Church has traditionally felt toward the holy Name of our God in Trinity, I was able to get out from underneath the Roman Catholic issue and discovered that so very, very many people found that symbol to enrich their sense of blessing. Is that everyone at Calvin Church? Do I want you to go take a poll to see what percentage liked it and what ones grit their teeth every time? No! But I think the lesson I learned was that when dealing with people from what has long been a very non-liturgical tradition, change and the recovery of the tradition is possible when it is accompanied by a high degree of thoughtful articulation as to the deep theological and biblical roots of these various practices.
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