The most visible activity in belonging to a religious society is our gathering together on Sunday mornings. In fact, many people think there is nothing more to belonging to a church than attending Sunday services. (How goes the old joke about ministers? Missing six days a week, incomprehensible on the seventh?) Of course, there is much more to our shared lives than that. What is true is the Sunday service is the visible focus of our religious lives. And, I believe, the Sunday service speaks to deep and ancient human needs.
I believe a consideration of the words “worship,” “religion” and “liturgy” may be helpful here. The best definition for worship I’ve discovered is derived from the Old English and means simply to “find worth.” While there is some debate about its etymology, many people believe the word religion derives from religare, to “bind together” or to “bind back.” This view certainly informs my understanding. And, finally, liturgy means “the work of the people.” All these meanings; finding worth, binding together, and work of the people; are, I really believe, the substance of our Sunday services. They also speak to what we should be about seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. But, symbolically, this all comes together on Sunday morning.
In his famous “Divinity School Address,” our ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of two gifts to humanity from our Christian heritage: “first, the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world…. And secondly, the institution of preaching.” Sunday, set aside for contemplation and celebration—and preaching, what Emerson called “the speech of person to person;” I believe these two things, celebration and the sermon, inform each other. Taken together, they give us much of value whatever the particular shape of our individual understandings of our contemporary free faith.
Unfortunately, within the liberal religious community there is a tendency to reduce the Sunday service to a “sermon sandwich.” That is a hymn or two, a reading or two, some announcements, and an offering, all merely filling out the time around a sermon.
I believe the sermon is very important. Just paying attention to a carefully crafted sermon can be an opportunity for engaging the deep places of our human condition. Well done, the sermon is a place where we can consider, reflect and meditate on some issue.
And this is important. When I preach, I try to focus mainly on the concerns of life and death: Why are we here? Where are we going? Why do we die? And out of this, what is morality and social choice? How do our beliefs affect our actions? Illuminating them with stories out of our personal experiences as well as Jewish and Christian scripture, the epic of science, great mythic sources, the earth-centered traditions, and the traditions of the world’s faith’s we can discover much about ourselves and the direction of our lives. In short the sermon is anchored in the depths of our human condition, and is about our human condition.
Now, while I am intimately concerned with the questions of meaning and the possibilities of direction in our lives, this doesn’t mean all has to be solemn. Frequently the theme should be lighter—we need laughter and celebration and song every bit as much as reflection. I think of Emma Goldman, who said, “If I can’t dance, I won’t join your revolution.” And I see our church as a dancing revolution. We are engaged in a dance within the mystery of the cosmos.
The preacher is a voice of the community. Certainly not the only voice; but very much the visible, corporate voice. As a preacher I bring an intellectual, but, I hope, also deeply personal and spiritual voice to our community’s Sunday service. And that voice needs to be understood within the context of our living community. We are drawing together, discovering what binds us together, that which gives us worth. So, this is the work of the people, all of us.
Here I want to return to the issue of that “sermon sandwich,” and why I think we can aspire to a more meaningful experience. I believe our Sunday worship must be grounded in liturgy—a considered, and well-structured and regular service that involves the whole of the community in this great work, both symbolically, and, as much as possible, in actuality. Possibly this includes all the elements in that sermon sandwich. Possibly not. What is important is that we consciously investigate how best to serve the larger purpose. If the sermon is a “jewel,” the setting truly is equally, and occasionally more, important.
Some of our congregations have rediscovered, and a few have never lost, the understanding of liturgy at the center of our Sunday service. I profoundly understand that the pattern of worship we’ve developed in our individual congregations is a sacred liturgy and should not be casually changed. Liturgy arises out of the community as a whole; it is genuinely the work of the people. There can be great strength, and deep feeling, found in such a regular and well-designed liturgy, where the sermon is an integral part, but not the only important element.
There is no great mystery in the power of liturgy. All it takes is awareness, the realization that the whole service is valuable, and giving each part its proper its attention. When this is done with care and respect; then we’ve found worth, then we’ve found what connects us, then we’ve really done the work of the people.
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