WORDS CREATE WORLDS
In Walter Brueggemann’s Israel’s Praise, he develops the idea that words create worlds. It is not the objective experiences we have but the way we interpret those experiences that constitute the world in which we live. If my mind is filled with medical terms and health statistics, then I see food as relating the the world of health. If I am a chef who continually is reading about new recopies, then I see food in terms of taste. If the words that dominate my life are dollars and debts, then I see food in terms of cost. In lay terms, the words that fill our lives become the spectacles through which we see and interpret the world of experiences around us.
LITURGY CREATES WORLDS
When I first heard this in his Sprunt lectures, it gave me a new understanding of the power of liturgy. Every week people step out of their various worlds of finance, internet, business, law, government, medicine, etc. and gather together to participate in saying a different set of words. In effect, through liturgy we offer a different perspective, a different world, through which to interpret our experiences. It often challenges the other worlds that people inhabit. How do you interpret a world in which God exists, grace is experienced, forgiveness is a viable option, generosity is encouraged? Liturgy is not just a set of words to mumble through before we get to the sermon and see if it offers us any new ideas. Liturgy offers us an alternative world through which we interpret our experiences.
LITURGY AND ANXIETY
In previous blogs, we have been discussing the world of anxiety out of which people are responding. Those anxious people come into our churches, prepared to act in the church out of their world of anxiety. You have the opportunity to provide them words in liturgy that counter the toxic effect of anxiety in their lives.
Stop for a moment and consider at least three to five basic ideas of faith that if truly believed would act as a counter to the anxiety they are feeling. For example, with many of our institutions failing to live up to their promise, it is easy to join the Tea Party and trust no one and no institution–particularly not the government. If you were convinced that God is sovereign and continually worked through imperfect people to accomplish good purposes, as the Bible suggests, how would that alter how you interpreted what is happening in the world? If you sang Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation, how would that affect your feelings of despair? How does praying “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” affect your inclinations as you responded to some of the conflicts you experience in your life?
Our anxiety and sense of vulnerability easily leads to us wanting to find fault with others, demand perfection around us, and become less sensitive to our neighbors. Consider litanies that emphasized God’s sovereignty, grace, hope in the face of the impossible, the power of love to transform, etc. Consider the power of prayers of thanksgiving to alter our fears of scarcity and experience the joy of having been blessed.
A PASTOR’S STRATEGY
As a pastor, you have the power to shape liturgies that emphasize the core doctrines of our faith that counteract the toxic effect of our anxieties. Begin with yourself. What are the forces and events that are causing you to feel anxious? Then think of the basic doctrines of faith that speak against that vulnerability. Finally, begin to integrate those faith ideas into the various parts of the liturgy. Of course, it will be strengthened if you develop in sermons how those ideas of faith can become a shield against the principalities and powers that threaten us. Do not neglect, however, to create a world of faith words through which your members can interpret their experiences in the world.
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