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What is Worship?
Reverend Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of
Edmonton, September 27, 2005
This service came before a discussion of the results
of a recently conducted worship survey. Instead of a full sermon,
I offered these comments at various points during the morning a
sort of ‘director’s commentary’ on the unfolding
service.
Before the service, we began with Announcements.
These often generate the most controversy in any worship survey.
Some people view announcements as a vital part of community life.
Like visits to the market square or the town well in the old days,
it is the place where information about the community is shared.
Other people find them to be an intrusion into the worshipful mood
they are trying to find in this sacred space, especially when there
are 10 or 12 speakers in a row. Balancing these competing goods
is hard. One thing we have been doing for several years is having
them before the formal start of service. That way they don’t
intrude on the mood the service planners are trying to create. Certainly
we do need to publicize our church events and some of those from
the larger community. And experience has shown that no Order of
Service paragraph or bulletin board poster is as direct or effective
as a spoken announcement.
This year we are trying an experiment: only the service leader
and/or a Board member presents announcements. The goals are to save
time and the shuffling of feet. We’ll try it for awhile. Let
us know what you think.
Prelude
The formal service begins with the Prelude, the first of three pieces
of incidental music used in most services. Kenneth Patton wrote
in ‘Let Us Worship’, “Let us love the world in
heart and mind and body.” Meaningful worship needs to reach
the soul and move the emotions. Touching the heart in worship is
no crime against rationality. We are complex and complicated beings.
Sometimes our intellects block us, keep us from accepting messages
we truly need to hear. Now and then a beautiful piece of music can
get past those cerebral safeguards. When I select music for a service,
they are usually pieces that have moved me to tears, or elation
or that have comforted me in time of trial.
The goal of the Prelude is to help members and friends move into
a worshipful state. It’s time to leave the outside world behind,
to quiet the mind and move away from the distractions of conversation.
It is an aesthetic way to draw the circle of community.
That act of centering continues with the Opening
Words. Sometimes they are chosen to be words of welcome,
other times they will establish the theme for the day. As often
as not, they contribute to our ability to settle down and become
present to the service.
Chalice Lighting
The first ritual element of our service is typically the Chalice
Lighting. The symbol is both ancient and modern. In the great traditions
it is the lamp of knowledge calling us to use our faculties of reason
to search for sensible explanations to the challenges that face
us. But fire is also a traditional symbol of community. In that
sense this fire is the one around which we gather for safety and
companionship. In another context it is the very spark of the spirit.
You can see fire, even feel it, but in some sense it is not there.
It exists ethereally in the place between wick and air.
Perhaps one of these interpretations speaks to you, perhaps not.
What is sure is that in all cultures and all times, fire has stood
as a metaphor for purity, passion, truth, warmth, light and even
life itself. All these are wrapped up in our weekly ritual.
This year we have introduced the idea of having individuals and
families (however defined!) light the chalice. They can choose appropriate
words if they wish. In this context our ritual underlines the notion
of community even more as we introduce ourselves to one another.
In this way we also bring more voices into the shared ministry of
worship leadership.
Shared or Responsive Readings
In a 1981 book of Responsive Readings, the Unitarian Universalist
Association’s Commission on Common Worship commented:
“The Protestant tradition of chanting or reading a Psalm
for the day was once a common element of worship in all (and still
is in many) Unitarian Universalist congregations. Repetition made
these Psalms as familiar as most popular hymns. In (the 20th) century,
readings from other sources were added to the ‘canon’
of common use.”
In fact in most of the world’s major religions, the shared
and common speaking of words is part of worship. Whether it is a
Christian creed, a scriptural passage, a Buddhist sutra or a Hindu
story from the Upanishads, there is a commonality in sharing poetic
writing. Universalist minister Ken Patton wrote, “We come
to be assured that brothers and sisters surround us, to restore
their images on our eyes. We enlarge our voices in common speaking
and singing.”
The purpose of shared readings is not to force assent to a particular
idea or belief. In fact, there are two purposes. First, speaking
together reminds us that the possibility for community is here among
us, if we will let ourselves come into it. Second, the reading introduces
us to ideas and sentiments we might not have considered. It is an
invitation to think about the passage, to decide if it holds meaning
for you or not.
In our Unitarian tradition we continue to honour the poets who
struggle to find the right words to define and describe human experience.
Worship leaders look for just the right readings to enhance their
service plan.
Candles of Care and Connection
In many churches this is a controversial element, although most
of our congregations find some way to acknowledge the powerful moments
that touch people’s lives. I am sure that any of you who have
attended more than a handful of the Unitarian and Universalist services
here can rehearse the arguments about how they can run long, or
how some candles seem of more weight than others or that people’s
concerns are more political than personal.
I think the real point of tension goes right to the heart of the
idea of a religious community. There are many in western society
who, for good reasons, are highly suspicious of organized religion.
For some, anything that gets too ‘touchy feely’ can
make us a little nervous. Secondly, there are some people come to
church for a very private journey for reflection and thought. The
joys and celebrations of others can intrude upon that journey. Candles
bring people’s personal stories to the forefront, sometimes
happy sometimes sad, sometimes neat and tidy and other times just
a wee bit messy. And sometimes people are so moved by world events
that the political becomes personal.
I have no doubt that some of those stories create awkward feelings.
I have had them myself. But here’s the thing: this church
has long prided itself on being a caring community. How can we care
for one another if we don’t know each other’s stories?
There are a good many here who have never and will never light a
candle here and others who seem to come up on a quite regular basis.
But the point of the ritual is to make it acceptable to HAVE a personal
story, whether you share it publicly, privately or not at all. We
are all flawed beings moving through a flawed world. We all encounter
challenges at some point in our lives that seem too much to bear.
The candles ritual is our weekly reminder to those who are sad,
that wonderful things can and do happen everyday. And they are equally
reminders to the happy and healthy, that others need their support
and friendship when they are able to give it.
So I light a candle today for the act of sharing. It reminds us
that we are all part of the Human Race and that we are also a welcome
part of this Unitarian Church of Edmonton community.
Hymns
Why do we sing in church? I looked at Unitarian music resources
dating back to the early 20th century. Nowhere in the prefaces of
any of these six hymnbooks did anyone try to answer that question.
Perhaps it’s not a question that would even occur to a musician.
The authors just took hymn-singing for granted. Few people question
it, especially those in our congregations who love to sing, but
there are others who don’t care to sing, or who think they
can’t, or who don’t know the music. They simply stand
politely and perhaps read the lyrics quietly while the rest of us
carry on.
So why do we sing in church? Well, we have always done it –
more or less. Hymns are part of the tradition of western religion.
However there were times in the high Humanist era of the 19 40s-50s
and beyond, where hymn-singing was judged to be irrelevant and too
emotional for the sober, lecture-based services favoured by some
congregations. It wasn’t a Puritanical belief that “music
leads to dancing and dancing to touching,” as intoned in that
spoofing cell phone commercial these days. Rather it was a belief
that in far too many religions, appeals to emotion supplanted good
solid rational ideas. That led to people being blinded by faith.
For those who thought church-goers were being sold a smoke and mirror-like
bill of goods, singing was part of the problem.
These days we think differently. Sure, good music and good singing
touches the heart and lifts the spirit. Unitarian minister Jacob
Trapp wrote, “To worship is to sing with the singing beauty
of the earth.” And that’s not a bad thing. It balances
the rational. Going too far to one side or the other of the rational/emotional
equation is not healthy. In fact, there are a lot of people who
come to church just to get that little lift. And if you join the
choir and get used to singing for a couple of hours at a time, you’ll
discover that singing generates mood-lifting endorphins. It’s
hard to leave a Chorealis rehearsal not feeling better than when
you went in.
In our services here we use hymns in different ways. Sometimes
we sing songs of welcome and community. Other times we sing songs
that create moods for meditation, or a sense of social justice.
We create or borrow melodies that are comforting and uplifting and
add words that reflect our principles and approach to religion.
Some songs create energy and make you move your feet, others are
calming and nurturing to the spirit. Good worship leaders pick hymns
that fit the mood of that particular moment of the service using
them as a link and set up for the next element.
Sermon
Occasionally I get to be a guest speaker at other congregations.
I always enjoy finding out just what they call this part of the
service. Some say ‘sermon’, others use ‘address’
or ‘message’ or ‘program’. I suppose the
title of this main piece says a great deal about a congregation’s
comfort level with religious words.
Whatever you call it, this part of the service is for the sharing
of a main message. Hopefully the rest of the service elements have
been preparing folks for the ideas which will surface here. According
to the dictionary it is a “spoken or written discourse on
a religious or moral subject” and sometimes, “a piece
of admonition or reproof.” I am not much for reproving from
the pulpit, except perhaps in certain political matters, but I do
believe in the sermon is a powerful tool to prvoke thought and sometimes
to persuade. I like this old Middle English word ‘sermon’.
It is, indeed, a religious word, but we are an organization that
should be considering ‘religious and moral’ topics.
Or to put it differently, in this place we should be looking at
all service topics from a religious and or moral perspective.
Sermons and worship services can cover a wide variety of topics
and styles in a Unitarian church. They can be serious or silly,
political or philosophical, encouragements to either reflection
or action…or both. In style they can be straight ahead lectures
or somewhat more fanciful meditations or even dialogues or conversations.
And the topics can range far and wide. Some years ago a colleague
created a grid to help preachers plan their year. She suggested
that there need to be different kinds of themes addressed each year
in a well rounded congregation. There are holidays to be noted,
of course. There need to be some religious and theologically themed
sermons, some historical and tradition based ones, some institutional
ones like Canvass Sunday. Some services need to appeal to the heart
and others the head. And of course there need to be services dedicated
to issues of social responsibility and justice. A good worship committee
will also remember to address the various needs of the congregation.
There are young and old in a church, so some intergenerational services
are needed. There may be Christian or theist folks in the congregation
as well as humanists and agnostics. All need to have their needs
met at least some of the time. It is rather fun to try to keep all
these competing needs in mind as we plan services.
And everything we do must be in the service of worship. And just
what is worship in our context? Worship
comes from an Anglo Saxon phrase meaning ‘worth shaping’
or celebrating the things that mean the most to us. In the Christian
centuries this came to mean honouring and even adoring God and seeking
his favour. Well, that’s an approach that doesn’t really
work in the Unitarian Church. Not all of us believe in God, and
among those that do, few of us think he or she is sitting up there
preparing to intervene in our lives.
For Unitarians and Universalists today, worship is more about raising
the issues that matter most to us. These include questions of personal
meaning, finding ways to live a principled and moral life, finding
ways to stay balanced and whole in our lives and finding ways and
bring justice to the world. And along the way we want to celebrate
or grieve the great events that touch our lives.
Finally, in any given service we have to remember that there are
people who have just received wonderful news, and people who have
received hard news, people who are happy and people who are frustrated
and angry, people dealing with the issues relevant to every age
of life and people who are drifting, people who have been here for
decades and people making their first visit. There needs to be something
that serves them all, for worship is the one thing we all do as
part of a community. It is our work and our joy, our celebration
and our commitment. It needs to be the best thing we do in church
– every week.
Offering
The offering is pretty standard fare whatever religious organization
you attend. Certainly it is a necessary part of Unitarian and Universalist
congregations, each of which is a freestanding body of people respoonsible
for their own affairs and debts.
But the offering is more that just asking for money. It is about
reminding people that they arren’t so much ‘giving’
as sharing their abundance. One job of a church community is to
help people realize how much they have in life. Once we realize
that we all have some blessings in life, some kind of wealth, we
can discover how good it feels to share that abundance with others.
Nothing feels as good as open-hearted giving of one’s self
and one’s abundance.
Meditation
This time of the service is designed to encourage the inward journey
of self discovery. I once attended a church where in a small group,
the church president, a high powered businessman, described the
meditation as the only three minutes of waking silence he experienced
in his week. He said that often he came to church just for those
quiet moments, giving them to himself as a gift. In this reading
the late Unitarian minister Jacob Trapp describes worship as, “the
mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond. It is an inarticulate
silence yearning to speak; it is the window of the moment open to
the sky of the eternal.” In these next few moments, if we
allow it, there is room for that mysterious connection to take place.
Let us enter into the spirit of Meditation and listen to Jacob Trapp’s
words.
Closing Song
Years ago a Detroit congregation wrestled with whether or not to
hold hands during the closing song. During the weeks of debate a
woman in her 90’s came to the minister and quietly pulled
on her sleeve. “I hope we keep holding hands,” she said,
“I live alone and this is the only time during the week when
I can touch another human being.” With permission the minister
related the story. They have been holding hands ever since. The
Closing Song restates our mission as religious people and reminds
us that the gifts of this community can stay with us until we re-gather
in this place.
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