Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hath shined the light of knowledge upon the world; for thereby they that worshipped the stars were instructed by a star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory be to Thee.
Worship is our work and liturgy our guide.
This is a hard saying as for many of us “church” seems dull, full of long periods of time when our characters do not seem to level up, we fail to earn airline miles, no coins are dropped on our heads due to our gaming timing, no plot twist is revealed in our episode binge, and no social media is shared. As far it goes, liturgy, the work of worship, seems designed to not amuse.
There will be, in a decent church, world class art, an esoteric mix of smells (frankincense? burning bees wax? Deacon Bulwer-Lyton’s Brute aftershave?), and music. Yet if novelty is what we crave, then church is disappointing. Each year Christmas comes and we get twelve whole days which is eleven more than consumerism says we need.
We go to church, we focus on Someone other than ourselves, and that Someone bids us do what is good for us in the long term, eternity in mind, not what is good for us today. This is, to consumers trained to spend, salivating at the commercial so to meet their felt needs, very frustrating. Worship gives us what we need and steadfastly ignores our mistaken short term goals.
We become bored.
Boredom is good in children, who should be allowed the tedium that births creativity, but boredom is a terminal illness in grownups. A child allowed boredom must go beyond self, marketing. My parents steadfastly refused to entertain me. A great privilege of my childhood was no television, no radio, and summer afternoons (after chores) where my amusement was my job. I recall being bored, but since boredom was, by definition, no fun at all, I did all I could to get out of that dreadful state.
My brother, cousin, and I learned to amuse ourselves. This creativity has made it impossible for me to be bored as a grownup. If there is nothing to do, rare blessing, then my parents created a habit of creativity. The one sabbatical I took led me to blogging (then new) and social media. There is so much to try.
The Church, in her great wisdom, gives us sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and ideas that are all worth a lifetime of experience. None of us can exhaust the liturgy of the East or the West. There are countless joys to be found. Of course, the easy goodness, truths, and beauties are exhausted in a few services. We are then left the hard work, the liturgical work, of worship.
We turn to God and use the liturgy to worship God in a manner fit for the Omnipotence. This is challenging as the fit worship of a fifty-six year old should be different, deeper, more delightful than the worship of an eight year old. The fifty-six year old faces the same liturgical cycle as a chance to learn more, experience more, do more in praise to God.
God does not change. He sits unmovable, awesome, perfectly beautiful. We grow and change. As a result our worship of God must be unchanging (in one way) and ever changing (in another). We worship the Incarnate as the shepherds did on the first Christmas, but with the experience and depth of two thousand years!
The work of worship is not for God’s sake: God does not need anything. Instead, the work of worship is for our sakes and so we deepen our duty, understand our prayers better, and find higher beauty.
The old must be made new, the new connected to the ancient realities.
Glory to God in the highest! The unchanging worshiped by the changeable is liturgy: the same, applied differently. Last year we said what we say this year, but this year we say it as only a 2020 denizen can:
Christ is born!
Glorify Him!
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