February 6, 2011
(Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany)
(From The Lectionary Page)
The Play of Worship
Last week we learned from the prophet Micah, that relationship with Yahweh produces people who do justice, who love mercy, and who walk humbly with their God. We learned, as Canon Sommer said so eloquently, that our engagement of Scripture “…so permeates our consciousness, that our day to day lives reflect and proclaim the story itself. We become,” she said, “a living gospel.” Today’s reading from Isaiah continues this theme, pointing toward the connection between the worship of God and the life lived by those who do so. Isaiah’s complaint is not that the people worship, or even how they worship. His charge is essentially, that they haven’t allowed it to affect them. Their worship of God is in question because it has failed to make their life together incarnate God’s values. The production of these values certainly can’t be said to be the point of worship. If worship can be said to a have a purpose, per se, it would have to be that of praising God. But, that this worship does not produce change brings into question for Isaiah, what they doing in their worship.
That is also Jesus’ charge in the gospel. The righteousness of his followers, he says, must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. Later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus clarifies this charge, telling his followers, “…do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”[1] By definition, there has to be an outward similarity between the life we live and the God we worship. To say that we worship something or someone means that we are formed by it. And this formation happens in the act of worship.
To engage in worship at all in our time, is a peculiar thing to say the least. So much of the goings on in our lives and in the world around us are about purpose, about goals. The activities that we engage in are normally defined by the purpose that those activities serve. They are related to our goals. But what, then, is the goal of worship? Most casual observers would say that our worship here today looks pointless – without purpose. But it is precisely in this worship that we are exposed to and formed by God’s justice and mercy. The humble walk with God begins with the worship of God.
Many years ago, I found myself in the backwoods of central Missouri, as I often was, and I saw the most amazing thing. As the dark woods began slowly to become visible in the breaking dawn, I heard the unmistakable baying of dogs in the distance. The commotion seemed to be coming my way, and I soon learned what it was about. Unaware of my presence, an adult fox ran out in front of me, and stopped to look back in the direction of the baying dogs. It ran up to a large brush pile about thirty yards from where I was, and began to tip-toe around to the other side, making a semi-circle, an easily readable scent trail. Then it turned and tip-toed back in the same half circle to the near side, where it had begun this wilderness choreography. The dogs continued getting nearer, obviously hot on its trail. The fox then leaped into a thicket on the opposite side of the brush pile from where it had circled, and was gone. And no sooner was this animal out of sight than the producers of the racket came running into sight. Three dogs raced up to the brush pile with noses to the ground, and immediately followed the scent trail around to the other side, where it then disappeared. The dogs circled around frantically, bumping into and running over each other, and then decided to continue the chase in the direction they had been going. A clean getaway! I’ve thought a lot about that morning, and wondered about the process by which this animal learned its art of evasion.
In my years of study in biology, I learned that play is actually a survival skill found in higher mammals. Playing helps animals to develop skills that they will need to survive. I’ve seen footage of young tigers, for example, pouncing on each other, simulating and honing movements that will enable them to hunt prey. And the fox that entertained me all those years ago would have engaged in a sort of “hide and seek” ritual in which it learned to misdirect its seeker. But while their play does produce skills that will ultimately mean life or death to those animals, their play serves no immediate purpose. The young animal at play doesn’t necessarily have any awareness of a goal. And yet, this play is immeasurably formative in its nature and effect.
In 1918, a Roman priest named Romano Guardini wrote a ground-breaking book in which he described liturgy itself as having playful characteristics. He described the move from the “purposefulness” of life into the “non-purposefulness” of liturgy, like beginning your day in a gymnasium, and then walking into the woods. In the gym, everything around you has purpose. Nothing can be seen that isn’t there for some known reason. But moving into the forest, you are surrounded by that whose purpose remains hidden, if indeed it has “purpose” at all. This absence of purpose can be uncomfortable. Father Guardini said that this is because it is not a means to anything at all. To talk in terms of the forest’s purpose is to travel a fruitless road. In the forest, unlike the gymnasium, we lose track of ourselves and our purposes, and become engaged by something outside of purpose altogether.
So, too, in our weekly celebration of Holy Eucharist: our gaze, here, is redirected from ourselves and our purposes, toward our Creator. In the Eucharist, as Father Guardini said, we are not intended to edify ourselves so much as we are to learn and know, that we “…exist in God’s presence, and that we live in a world of divine realities, truths, and mysteries.”[2]
As we are formed by this reality, our lives are changed. Our concerns and purposes do not disappear, because they are part of being human. But they no longer utterly define our lives. We learn to see just a bit more like God sees. Our concerns are quite real, but they are not all there is. God’s presence surrounds us even in their midst, reminding us that there is more. And it is this Divine Presence that moves us, perhaps without our knowing it, to speak God’s wisdom, as Paul said in the second reading; that makes our light to break forth like the dawn, as Isaiah said. It is God’s presence that makes “…what would otherwise be words, stories, and ideas become practices, habits, patterns of action.”[3]
[1] Matthew 23:3
[2] Guardini, Romano. The Spirit of
the Liturgy (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1997, 20th Edition)
p. 66-67
[3] Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells.
"The Gift of the Church and the Gifts God Gives It." Published
in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, edited by Stanley
Hauerwas and Samuel Wells (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004)
p. 17
