INTRODUCTION:
There are great dangers facing a congregation engaged in trying to restore a more honestly liturgical and reformed pattern of worship, problems that arise because of good old-fashioned sin. Call it the human factor.
THE TEXTS:
“Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these” (Jer. 7:3-8; cf. Amos 5:21-24; Is. 1:10-15).
“But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” (Matt. 23: 5-8; cf. Matt. 5:5; Luke 20:45-47).
OVERVIEW:
One of the oldest temptations in the world, as old as dirt, is the temptation to appeal to God through external conformity and show. It is the temptation to trust in “lying words.” When this sin occurs, a separation (a dualism) is established between the worship of everyday obedience and the worship that is rendered in formal, religious settings. This is one of the central threats to the kind of liturgical worship that God will receive, and we must guard against it. People will come and in their folly or rebellion, they will try to detach it from the worship that we are called to render to God all the time (Rom. 12:1-2). Our worship here and our worship in the world must be integrated. These warnings are in the Scriptures for a reason. But that reason is not that we will automatically fall into the sin described. That would be a superficial critique—first, it neglects the perverse ingenuity of the human heart. Men can take as much pride in low forms of liturgy as high, and can be as proud of being called “brother” as another man is to be addressed as the “Rt. Rev.” Secondly, this critique ignores the fact that the same Bible that warns against the separation of personal holiness and set forms of worship also requires set forms of worship. So there is a real sin of dualism here, but the sin is not automatically caused by liturgy—any more than the presence of money causes covetousness, or the presence of a beautiful woman causes lust. The problem, as always, is in the heart.
FALSE FRIENDS
During the time we have been involved in the work of liturgical reform in the Church, this pattern has come up multiple times. In other words, this is not an abstract or hypothetical problem. There are individuals who are strong for what they call liturgy. They know what pectoral crosses are, and they show up at your Bible study with ash on their forehead placed there by some local unbelieving shaman. They talk learnedly of the history of crossing yourself, and how icons can be helpful if viewed in the right light. They go into raptures over some bishop’s purple shirt. At the same time, they are insolent and disrespectful to their parents and pastors. They feel perfectly free to use foul language, abuse Scotch, smoke too many cigarettes, and routinely watch what any other generation would have called pornography.
I am not talking about such things done in secret, but rather when they are done in the presence of other Christians as some kind of a badge of worldview sophistication. They are proud of it; they do not mourn over it (1 Cor. 5:2). They are actually guilty of attempted liturgicide. What they are doing, in effect, is trying to live out the caricature that our critics have for us. “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:5). Pietism is a bad business, but not all piety is pietism. Personal holiness is that without which no one will see the Lord. Any church interested in advancing this kind of liturgical reform will have to be prepared to police this particular border. If you don’t guard this border, any number of unwanted aliens will stream across it.
SIN IS DUALISTIC:
Now if you bring this up to some of these guys, they have their theological arguments in place. “Don’t you think that this emphasis of yours grants too much to a Cartesian dualism with its assumptions about internal and external? And could there be some carry-over in this concern of yours from your legalistic Baptist days?” The answer is that sin creates these dualisms, not the recognition of sin and folly. In other words, God charges us to live integrated lives—we are growing up into the perfect man—the Lord Jesus—and He did not live a life of fragmented pieces. The fact that we traffic in fragmented pieces, and find it very easy to do, is a testimony to our fallen condition. So if I point out to someone that his liturgical self is over here, praising God, and that his personal self is over there, looking at pictures of naked women, this is not dualism on my part.
A LITTLE LIKE WINE, A LOT LIKE WINE:
Compare it to the use of alcohol. Suppose you grew up in a teetotaling denomination, but over the course of years, you were confronted repeatedly by the teaching of Scripture. Wine is not a sin—it is a gift of God. You begin practicing this carefully, cautiously, and there has never been a Christian in the history of the world more balanced on the topic than you. You and your wife began honoring God through a temperate use of wine—at Sabbath dinners, anniversary celebrations, etc. “If we just live this way, rejoicing in the Lord, and continuing our pursuit of personal holiness,” you think naively to yourself, “then someday the grandparents will be forced to acknowledge that we have not joined a league with Satan.” And that is actually true—which is why the devil will be sure to send some drunkards, gluttons and fools your way.
It is the same kind of thing with liturgy. Our critics have a caricature of what we want to do. Our so-called friends share the caricature, with the only difference being that they like the caricature, and want to live it out. Your old pastor looks at you with squinty eyes. “Have you started wearing mitered hats yet?” You shake your head astounded that he could think such a thing, and somewhere behind you, in the ranks of your supporters, some twenty-one-year-old theology-meister is thinking, “Mitered hats! That’s what we’re missing!”
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:
In worship God is dealing with us. As we worship, and as we behold Him as revealed in His Word, we become more and more like Him. We are always conformed to the image of that which we worship. Since Jesus is the express image of God (Heb. 1:3), as we worship Him, the image of God in us is being restored. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). Pagan idolaters become like that which they worship (Ps. 115: 4-8), and we become more and more like the one we worship. When we finally see Him we will become like Him, because we are going to see Him as He is (1 Jn. 3:2). It follows therefore that as we behold Him in worship now—even if it is through a glass darkly—God is growing us up into a mature humanity. The devil will do whatever he can to interfere with that.