adventures in liturgy
Last Sunday we led worship for a small Episcopal church that several of Offering’s support volunteers attend. Most of us band members are from non-liturgical churches, so this tends to be a special treat for us. Liturgy, to me, feels fresh probably *because* I don’t worship through and with it on a regular basis. I recently started reading an amazing book called Common Prayer – a liturgy for ordinary radicals, co-written by Shane Claiborne. A quote that touched me from the introduction:
“Participating in the liturgy of the worldwide Christian community , whether on a Sunday morning or at another time, is more than attending a service or a prayer meeting. It is about entering a story. It is about orienting our lives around what God has been doing throughout history. And it is about being sent forth into the world to help write the next chapter of that story.”
There is something so powerful about praying prayers like the Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy), and reciting the Nicene Creed (I believe in God the Father…). It’s not that, as protestants, we *don’t* use either in our worship experiences. But I think we often do not realize the sense of community that these prayers, these statements of faith, are being prayed and proclaimed by Christians all over the world at any time during the day. They often date back to the very early days of the Church. So, I am grateful for the reminder, and am looking forward to celebrating more in this way in the months and years to come.
