One of the most challenging aspects of teaching high school religion in a relatively expensive private high school is that the students are often disconnected from the rituals of life in biblical times. Many students learn best by doing, so as often as possible, I will have the students reenact biblical scenes. In my first year of teaching, while learning about the last supper in my 10^th grade class, I though we should have a ritual washing of the feet. Right before class I filled up a large bowl with warm water and grabbed some small towels. I thought the girls would be excited about doing an interactive lesson. I could not be more wrong. I had to spend most of my energy convincing the students that it would be OK; there is nothing really that weird about washing someone else’s feet.

Bernard Cooke and Gary Macy note in their book, “Humans comprise such a diverse group that it is hard to state with certainty that all cultures share certain experiences” (25). This is certainly true when comparing typical 21^st century teenagers with the 1^st century apostles. While in the context of 1^st century Palestine Jesus washing the feet of the apostles was a sign of humility, to my students, it was just weird.

About a year later, some teachers (including myself) along with eight students took an immersion strip to Guyana, South America. We happened to be visiting a small Amerindian village with summer with some Ursuline sisters at the same time they were getting a visit from their Mother General. Much to my surprise, when the visitor came, the Ursuline sisters washed her feet.

After witnessing the washing of the feet in Guyana, I realized the culture of the Amerindians was much more similar to that of 1^st century Palestine. Amerindians never wear socks, some wear sandals while others wore no shoes at all. Nothing in the village is paved, so their feet are always dirty. They spend a great deal of time washing feet; it is not weird to them. Since we in the U.S. do not experience feet that are perpetually dirty, the washing of the feet ceremony has little significance to us. Now I am in search of a new way to convey to my students that the washing of the feet was a sign of humility and service that they will understand. Any ideas?

Cooke, Bernard J., and Gary Macy. Christian Symbol and Ritual: An Introduction. Oxford: New York, 2005. Print.

Church and Sacrament

March 18, 2015

The readings this week were interesting and challenging, bringing a deeper insight into the meaning of liturgy than I had had before.

There were several points I was interested in commenting on, but I will stay with the one which first caught my attention, the treatment of  “lex orandi, lex credendi” over the centuries.  Although Prosper of Aquitaine (Maxwell E. Johnson, ed., 50-51) may have been the first to bring this term into the theological vocabulary, the reasoning behind it goes back at least to St. Athanasius in the fourth century, who, in his argument against the Arian heresy,  referred to the divinity of Christ implied in the baptismal liturgy (44). 

            Pope Pius IX (58-60) referred to this principle in pronouncing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.  He said it was a truth “generally accepted and put into practice by the faithful” (59), although most of the passage spoke of its backing by bishops rather than by the laity.

            A century later, Alexander Schmemann also referred to lex orandi as the basis for the third task of liturgical theology: “to present the separate data of liturgical experience as a connected whole, as … the ‘rule of prayer’ dwelling within the Church and determining her ‘rule of faith’” (66).  He points out that “the early Church firmly confessed the principle lex orandi lex est credendi” (66).

Geoffrey Wainwright, a British Methodist (date?), seems to have been the first to open this phrase up to new developments, pointing out that, as structured, it can mean either that the rule of prayer is the rule for belief or vice versa (69).  He formulated the difference this way:

“Both Catholicism and Protestantism consider that there is properly a complementary and harmonious relation between worship and doctrine to express the Christian truth.  They tend to differ on the question of which of the two, doctrine or worship, should set the pace, and they differ profoundly on the question of whether either or both – the Church’s worship or its doctrine – may fall into error” (69).

            Edward Kilmartin, S.J. introduces a more nuanced contextual understanding of our subject.  He says that “the law of prayer is the law of belief and vice-versa” (73).  The law of prayer is specifically a “pre-reflective perception of the faith,” while the law of belief “requires the employment of theoretical discourse” (74).  He points out that however orthodox a prayer form might be, with time, changes in language and culture may give this form meanings which it did not originally have, so it would need to be changed, not because it was not correct when formulated, but in order to have it be correctly understood today (74). 

            David Fagerberg defines liturgical theology as “the theological work of the liturgical assembly, not the work done by an academic upon liturgical matter” (94).  Moreover, he says that liturgical theology is “normative for liturgical renewal because such efforts should arise out of the tradition of the Church and not our individual preferences” (84).  My first thought on reading this was that it was too bad that this principle was not applied to the most recent English translation of the Roman Missal, in which translators made the English be as close to the Latin construction and vocabulary as possible.  This frequently made sentences impossibly long, complex, and grammatically incorrect.   I think this was not the intention of the Fathers of Vatican II.

            Fagerberg does not accept either that theology should be approached through liturgy or vice versa.  Two defining attributes of liturgical theology are:  “it is theologia prima and it is found in the structure of the rite, in its lex orandi…. It recognizes that the law of prayer establishes the Church’s law of belief” (84). 

            Nathan Mitchell takes a different point of view.  As far as he is concerned,  lex orandi,lex credendi is meaningless.  It is circular, each term depending on the other.  Instead, he says that “liturgy is God’s work for us, not our work for God.  Only God can show us how to worship God” (97).  “Christian liturgy begins as ritual practice but ends as ethical performance” (98).  This was a difficult reading, but I understood it to be saying that we can prepare the liturgy all we want, but we are not in control of the way it turns out.  It is God’s gift to us.  The meaning of the liturgy can only be seen in how our lives are changed by it.  Do we care for the needs of our neighbors?  This is the lex agendi that Mitchell refers to.  Can we respond to the “subversive element of indeterminacy” that it introduces?  The liturgy is a language of the body, of gestures, singing, walking, tasting. 

Mitchell ends this passage in a way that brings it together for me: 

Liturgy embodies emptiness, powerlessness – that “absence” in human life where God’s word and ours are surrendered into mutual presence that creates communion without suffering confinement.  Worship is inescapably embodied and iconic; it makes us – we don’t make it.  Why?  Because liturgy is the moment when God’s own Word places itself at the mercy of the body, at the mercy of human flesh.  In liturgy, God’s Word surrenders to world, to history and to bodies” (101).

What relation does this survey of the use of a small Latin phrase make in my life?  I guess it explains to me why I have such a hard time accepting the dogmas about Our Lady:  the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption (especially the latter).    

In terms of my ministry, I think that it is true that the way the group of women with whom I have been working in the prison have been praying together for the past several months has had an effect on their beliefs.  This has not been an official liturgy, but it has been wonderful to see.

Significance of the Liturgy and Sacraments

Mass – or liturgy – can sometimes be a real chore to commit to every week. I am saying this as a Catholic who makes every effort to go to mass and continually grow in my faith in Christ and in others. It’s tough to wake up each Sunday morning – or commit to an evening when I am busy – to make it to mass. However, we do it because each week we are called to hear the Word of God and join together in communion with other Christians. Taft writes near the beginning that “liturgy is the salvific relationship between God and us” because of the sacredness of the liturgy, starting from when Christ consecrated His body and blood at the Last Supper (Taft 195). While he prefaces that what he said was incredibly bold, he writes later that the early Church’s liturgical gatherings of hearing the Word and breaking bread were incredibly special moments with Our Father and Savior (Taft 197). It is through Christ giving of Himself that we have been saved. And it is through His Eucharist that we receive a visible and physical gift of Himself each week to help us, to nourish us. Mitchell writes that it is because Christ gave of His whole Self on the Cross, because the Word and Spirit were sent to us, because He evangelized to us first, that we now have a Sacramental form of Christ (Mitchell 354). I think about each Sacrament in this case – most of these Sacraments require a Liturgy (i.e. Matrimony, Holy Orders, Confirmation) in which they are given. Again, this starts with Christ when He gave of Himself to save us. Now we can be saved each week at Mass, and in prayer, and in service.

In order to understand anything, or explain, it is part of my nature as a teacher to categorize or divide each part of my notes to simplify for my students. It is no different than what many writers – including Mitchell with his ten rules do – in order categorize how to better understand Christ and the Church. This blog would be too long if I went through each rule so I’ll focus on a few. I love Mitchell’s first Rule about how Christ - the main content, our Salvation – is present in each Sacrament. He also does not define a Sacrament merely within the ones we know, but also states that it could be other scared practices such as washing and anointing. These are used in Baptism, in which now we are part of Christ’s body once we are baptized (Mitchell 355-356). As I read Rule #5, I realized that this Body we learn about, that we are part of, is also the system, which contains the Seven Sacraments. No one Sacrament is by itself. He uses the example of Baptism and Eucharist: when we are baptized, we are not only being cleansed of our Original Sin, but we are reborn as members of Christ’s family. In the Eucharist, Christ died, and then rose again, and His body and blood live as the consecrated bread and wine we consume at the liturgies (Mitchell 358). Finally Rule #7 states that the Word and Sacraments must be together. This starts when God gives the Word, and then sends the Word into flesh as Jesus Christ; the Sacraments are only the “highest human and ecclesial expression of the word spoken in Church” (Mitchell 360-361).  This is essential because through the Sacraments we can be on our way to attaining everlasting Grace as given by Jesus Christ. All of this starts starts with the Liturgy – it is at the Liturgy we receive the Sacraments. It is at the Liturgy that we have the opportunity to be saved, reborn, as Disciples and Members of the Body of Christ.

Word, Table, and Bath

Mainly Table

I have to be completely honest, as a member of the Disciples of Christ Church (DOC) I never really thought about liturgical theology.  Maybe that’s because of the simplicity of our worship service.  Another possibility may be that since we as a denomination are about as young as this country is (170 + years old) that we haven’t had enough time to mature in our theological discourse, or it may be that it has to do with the fact that as Disciple’s we are a community of believers that have a hard time finding consensus on anything. 

There are plenty of jokes that Disciples have and most of them revolve around our open-mindedness on most things theological.  One joke goes; A Baptist and a Disciple of Christ were standing before the pearly gates.  Jesus himself met them: "I have one question that you must answer: Who do you say that I am?" The Baptist answered, "The Bible says . . ." Jesus interrupted, "I didn't ask about the Bible, I asked you!  You cannot enter at this time!"  The DOC then said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!" Jesus said, "Yes, that is correct!  The DOC went on to continue, “But on the other hand.”   Another joke goes; A new couple had attended a Disciple’s of Christ worship service for the first time.  After the service the couple met with the pastor and asked her if the church believed in the Trinity and the pastor responded, “Well, of course we do.”  Then after hesitating for a moment she said, “Well, that depends.”

“That depends,” is a big punch line in most of our jokes about ourselves, but it’s true.  However, there are three things liturgical in nature that we do agree on in the DOC church and that is the Word, the Table, and the Bath.  However, central to our liturgical thought is the Lord’s Supper.

I loved what Nicholas Cabasilas wrote, “As far as the ceremonies performed in the [E]ucharist liturgy are concerned, they all have some connection with the scheme of the work of redemption” (Johnson 53).  As a Lutheran (ELCA) Youth Minister for seven years I found myself utterly confused by Martin Luther’s disdain for the Roman canon of the Mass, in which he wrote that, “they go ahead and every day offer him up more than a hundred thousand times throughout the world” (Johnson 56).  I can’t think of a more beautiful thing than the Eucharist being played out over and over throughout the world, even if my theology of the Lord’s Supper may not be in keeping with Catholic dogma, the idea of the church universal celebrating the Lord’s Supper as often as possible connects us with the Christ event in its entirety and joins us to “God’s revelation in the saving action of his incarnate Son and the redemption and healing of the church” (Johnson 61).

For Disciple’s, the Lord’s Supper is central to our liturgy.  It is by which we surround everything else, the Word, Baptism, and the communion of believers as friends and family in Christ.  There is an elder in our church who often says, “I would go hungry if I weren’t a Disciple of Christ, for it feeds me, sustains me until I am drawn back week after week to be fed by Christ’s redemptive power.  Without the Lord’s Supper I would be weak, I would be less human, I would be less forgiving, I would be less of a man.”