Liturgical Appropriateness: The Story of God

Liturgical Appropriateness: The Story of God

(This article is a transcript of a workshop given for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians)

One of the first things that I would like to draw attention to is the sound of this title. Appropriateness is never a fun word because it doesn’t offer any real reason as to why it is appropriate. We know to look at the readings and to plan our music accordingly. How that music fits in depends on the community you’ve been able to build, both within your ministry and in your congregation. I have always sought to give the people what they need, not what they want. We who are in directorship positions are because we have been trained, like priests, to move our flocks forward.

But I would like to add one more thing to our plate. What is the bigger goal of the liturgy and music? I don’t like metaphors so I don’t say things like “draw us closer to God” or anything similar. Rather I like to think of the depth of our faith. Depth means nuance. Nuance accounts for the many complications we will undoubtedly face in our lives. Where does evil come from? If God loves us, why does my aunt have cancer? And so on.

Thinking about this tells us how we might approach long term goals of what story we want our music to tell. Praise music is just that. Praise. No more. No less. But more than half of the Psalms talk about pain, doubt, and fear. Why can’t our worship look that way? We are unwavering believers and worshipers but that doesn’t mean we ignore our basic tenets and instincts when something in the world doesn’t make sense. The music we share must always explore these areas of inquiry within the worship service.

Our liturgy must tell a story. Author Zac Hicks identifies in his book, The Worship Pastor, the many roles of the worship pastor; according to Hicks, liturgy is a narrative and much like a story, there are some things we must answer about the narrative to understand the story better:

1. What is the story’s backdrop and context?

2. How is the story set? How does the narrative begin?

3. Who are the main characters of the story? Who are the heroes and villains?

4. What is the climax of the narrative, and how do the story’s elements contribute to getting there?

5. How does the story end?

6. What is the point of the story? What message is being preached by the author?

How do our churches answer these questions in the liturgy? How would God answer? Difficult to say but our goal is to make both sets of answers as close as possible in the liturgy. We can begin to put the liturgy in the context of the three G’s: Glory of God, Gravity of Sin, and the Grandeur of Grace. According to Hicks, the three G’s can help answer questions about the overall narrative of the liturgy.

The liturgy begins with a call to worship in the form of music. We are joyous and in awe of the Father. The glory of the Trinity is on full display: the Father speaking creation in being (Gen. 1:3), the spirit summons form from chaos (Gen. 1:2), and the Son becomes the Word of God (John 1:1–3). We bid the congregation to be overwhelmed by the all the things that make God great- his kindness, goodness, faithfulness, steadfastness, holiness, brilliance, etc.

Next we go into the gravity of sin. We must convey the reality of our sin. “Woe to me!…I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5). We must be made aware of our need for confession and admitting what it is that has taken precedence over the Gospel. That’s not it though.

We must also be made to lament the brokenness of the world. The utter catastrophe that is the human condition. I say world because priests and pastors too often talk to us in context of our daily problems and how Christian living can affect our behavior. The world has bigger problems than our individual problems and we must lament over it. The gospel message is dull and lifeless if we have not adequately “seen” our sin.

The final G, the Grandeur of Grace, is the part where we participate in the cosmic catharsis. Where we truly understanding “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Rev. 5:12). In the liturgy, this happens twice: first in the liturgy of the Word at reading of the Gospel, Lord’s prayer, Sanctus. Second in the liturgy of the table at communion.

With the three G’s in mind, it is important to distinguish between sentimentality and authentic expression. I find often that the praise music industry seeks sentimentality as a marketing tool rather than authentic expression. People may argue with me on this but it is not without repute in the United States that “happiness” is a major industry and, just maybe, our praise music has been commoditized to that effect. Authentic expression is honest and honesty is not always pretty. Think Psalms.

The Psalms are a wonderful model for how we worship. They are songs of pain, darkness, hatred, praise, worship, anguish, jealousy, and prayer. They explore the wide range of human emotion and inform us that it is perfectly normal to feel what we feel in regard to God. Life is painful and it would ring tone deaf for me to perform a psalm of praise when a parent has just lost a child. What would a pastor say to the family? God is good? Truthfully, I doubt the father or mother would believe the pastor wholeheartedly.

Our music must not always seek to only express praise for God; after all, it is our congregations who are hearing it also and among them are those in pain. Rather, the music must seek to empathize with the worshiper wherever they are in their heart. The cathartic effect that music of anguish has on a sufferer is immeasurable; dopamine is released in our brains as the words of the sufferer in the psalms resonate with our own suffering to the realization that we are not alone in our pain.

The reality is that we are connected to our past to billions upon billions of others who have suffered and used the empathetic ear of the psalms as comfort. Between the Gravity of Sin and Grandeur of Grace lay the idiosyncrasies of our own emotions, nuanced and honest. The result is a liturgy that makes us characters in the story of God.

Lastly, we must remember that the language we use in liturgy will be formative of people’s prayer lives. The well-worn grooves of our worship services and liturgies will be the vessels from which our congregations will adapt their own prayers in the quiet of their mind. The melodies and words we sing, play, and lead must seek authentically to express the multifarious emotions of the psalms and, indeed, the human condition. The tune may not always be pretty but must always be beautiful. The harmony will not always be predictable but will always be aligned with the faithful. The rhythms need not always be fast or steady but must always move forward.

Our faith is complicated and our music allows us to be present to its nuances and complications throughout our faith lives and in doing so, allows us to be honest witnesses in the story of God in the Liturgy. Liturgical appropriateness becomes more about simultaneously conveying expression and inspiration to the tune of honest prayer. And it is so with me that it becomes the springboard to living our lives to the service of our empathetic brethren.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.