By our intentional worship, comfort us with your grace, O God. Amen.
Have you ever wondered why it is that some people seem to be fed by coming to church and others aren’t? Well, if you haven’t, don’t worry – I’ve wondered enough for the both of us. While I don’t want to claim that I have “the” answer to that question, I do have at least one response. And it’s simply that we cannot control what we believe. I know that we don’t like to hear that, but it’s the truth. Just as we cannot control whether or not something makes us angry or happy, we cannot control what we believe to be true. Yes, of course, we can always have experiences that change our minds, but we don’t get to decide which pieces of information will change our minds. Faith is in this category of things that we are not in control of.
Coming to worship and expecting an intellectual experience will likely be unfulfilling. We might say, “That was an interesting sermon, the music was lovely, and the people were nice, but it just didn’t do anything for me.” Well, that’s half-right. Such responses correctly identify the problem – a lack of resonance. But the problem isn’t with the worship, it’s with the expectation. Worship is not intended to be solely an intellectual experience. The goal of faith is not to think in particular ways or hold certain convictions. Sure, there are beliefs that are central to a vibrant faith – things like God is love, or God makes a way out of no way, or every person bears the image of God and has dignity and worth. But this is not a classroom. Worship is not about following a lesson plan. No, the reason why we gather is to have an experience of the God who is.
More than being an intellectual experience, we might say that worship is an emotional experience. To be clear, it’s not only about generating feelings. It’s no coincidence that emotion and motivation have the same root. If worship is going to do something for us, it has to connect with us on an emotional level. So if we say that worship doesn’t “do anything” for us, we often mean that our emotions were not stirred by worship. But, then again, if we come to worship not expecting to have our emotions stirred, we might well miss it.
Though worship is about our emotions, as I’ve already said, we can’t control our emotions or our beliefs. Some will come to worship and experience something that will forever change their lives and others will come to the very same liturgy and only get a short nap out of it. This difference is because we cannot predict how something will effect our emotions. There are, however, certain strategies that we have available that can evoke certain emotional responses. At St. Luke’s, one aspect of our identity statement is “intentional worship,” and this is a part of it. Our worship is intended to draw you closer to the love of God and comfort you by God’s grace.
The academic way to speak about this sort of intentional worship is to describe worship as an “affective technology.” As a disclaimer, the foundation of my sermon is drawing on a lecture I listened to recently by Simeon Zahl, a professor at Cambridge. Preaching doesn’t have footnotes, but I was so persuaded by his lecture that it would be disingenuous for me to not mention this influence.
What is an affective technology? Well, technology is simply a tool or a strategy, and affect is our emotional response. So, an affective technology is something we use to influence emotions. If you’ve ever seen a movie categorized as a “tearjerker,” then you know what affective technology is. In the church, sometimes it’s known as an “Altar Call;” where a preacher plays on fears and excitements to facilitate a religious experience. Social media is essentially an affective technology run by algorithms and paid for by advertisers. Campaign ads are another example, as candidates want to fire us up to vote one way or another. Anxiety medications are an affective technology that changes our moods, hopefully in helpful ways. And the thrill seekers among us know that roller coasters and haunted houses are designed to take us right up to the edge of what we can handle.
Our intentional worship, laid out in the Book of Common Prayer, is also an affective technology. When Thomas Cranmer composed the first Prayer Book in 1549, he wasn’t thinking in terms of “what kind of worship is right” or “how do I craft a liturgy that teaches theology?” No, he understood that worship is a technology of the heart. Following the pattern of this week’s Collect, our worship is intended to take us from the recognition that we are sinners who are overwhelmed by our unruly wills and affections and into the comfort of having our hearts surely fixed in the true joys of God’s loving grace. This is the plot, the drama, of our worship – from brokenness to healing, from fear to peace, from weariness to comfort.
As a piece of technology, we can study how this liturgy attempts to do this. Prayer Book worship is a wonderful blend of things that stir both the heart and the mind. Consider the opening Confession. If the words were something like “We are perfect people who have come to share the answers we’ve figured out,” we’d immediately recognize it as something false. Likewise, if the Confession had us begin by saying, “We are awful people who deserve nothing but wrath and punishment,” a lot of us would be turned off by that and respond “Maybe I did a few things wrong this week, but I’m not that bad.”
As it is though, our Confession invites us not so much to think about our sins, but to feel the weight of them. It names us as “lost sheep.” Sheep aren’t snakes. We can identify with sheep. And sheep stray and wander not because they are evil or bad. Because of the limits of their brains, sheep get into trouble. That’s something we can resonate with – we try to do our best, but somehow our best isn’t what always comes out. We left undone those things that we meant to do and we do things that we didn’t mean to do. But we are relieved to hear that God’s mercy gives us a way back to God when we are wayward. As an affective technology, our worship begins by naming our shame and guilt, not in a burdensome or judgmental way, but as an honest assessment of who we are: sheep who have gone astray, yet who remain a part of the flock of our good and loving shepherd.
We then move on to a series of readings and responses. Yes, it can be easy to get lost in hearing passages of Scripture that are thousands of years old read. What helps me is remembering that Scripture is a story – and stories invite us to imagine and wonder. The reading of Scripture is meant to be an affective experience, one in which we respond emotionally to hearing the story of our salvation. We might feel hope when we read about Daniel in the lion’s den, inspiration when we hear about Esther’s bravery before the king, disgust when we hear about David’s actions with Bathsheba, or longing when we read a story about Jesus healing someone.
At its best, the sermon is to be a part of this technology of the heart. This is not a classroom and this is not a podium. This is a pulpit where Good News is to be proclaimed – news that stirs us to justice, that inspires in us gratitude and praise, that comforts us in our afflictions. The Creed and Prayers are further responses to the reading of Scripture in which we join our voices together in proclamation and petition. You might know that the word “Creed” is related the root where we get the word “cardio.” The Creed is about our heart. And the prayers are about our feelings of hope and sorrow for ourselves and the world.
We then move to the Eucharist, which begins with what is known as the “Sursum Corda,” the “lift up your hearts” part. As an affective technology, the prayer does not begin by reminding us of things or telling us what to think about. No, we are summoned to lift our hearts, to leave behind our anxieties and the things that are weighing us down so that we can approach with boldness the throne of grace.
One of the reasons why the Eucharist is such an important and powerful ritual is that it is not intellectual – it is participatory. We aren’t told to think about Jesus’ sacrifice, we are made present to it, invited to meditate upon and be moved by his Passion for us and for our salvation. We then come forward with empty hands and hold them out as beggars do. No matter how much money, power, or status we have according to the metrics of the world, we all stand empty-handed before the Cross of Christ. That action is meant to evoke in us both an awareness of our need and our gratitude for the tremendous gift that we receive in the Body and Blood of Jesus.
As we pray the Prayer of Humble Access, we are put in a place where we recall that it is not our merit that makes us worthy recipients of this Sacrament, but rather God’s mercy. The prayer notes that mercy is a property of God. Just as it is the property of water to flow and fire to burn, it is God’s property to always have mercy. This declaration gives us a sense of confidence – we can always trust that God’s forgiveness is stronger than our sins.
The reception of the Eucharist is what moves us from that place of repentance that we began the liturgy with into the place where true joys are found. Once we have been given these tokens of our salvation, we pray in the Post Communion Prayer, that, being assured of God’s goodness and favor towards us, we might be sent into the world to do the good work which has been given to us to do. We receive grace and are thereby enabled to take grace into the world. We have been comforted so that we might offer comfort to others.
In an earlier version of the Prayer Book, a part of the prayers of preparation to receive Communion included the line “Draw near with faith and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort.” Comfort is the intended product of the affective technology of the liturgy. Comfort is at the heart of our intentional worship. And this is what Jesus points us toward in the reading we heard from John, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Indeed, through the gift of worship, we are drawn to Jesus, nourished by the bread of heaven, and comforted as we drink the cup of our salvation. Today, we think of comfort as a nice pair of sweatpants, shoes that make our back pain go away, or a conversation that doesn’t make our palms sweaty. But that’s not how the Prayer Book envisions comfort. You can hear the word “fort,” as in “fortitude” or “fortress” in the word “comfort.” The comfort of our faith isn’t about everything being easy; it’s about having the strength to be able to endure what life sets before us.
This is the comfort our worship is designed to make us feel. And when you have felt this comfort in worship, in confessing sins, in hearing assurance of our forgiveness, and in receiving the Sacrament of our salvation, well, that’s not something you’re going to choose to skip out on a Sunday morning. Faith is not about abstract ideas or a moral code; faith is about having real, tangible, and transforming encounters with the love that is making all things well. Our worship is intended to make the comfort and solace of this love tangible to us and something that we not only hear about, but something that we experience and feel.
Liturgy can be a little bit like dancing – if you’re thinking about where your feet are supposed to go, you’re not quite dancing yet. That’s more like synchronized stepping. Dancing happens when you no longer have to think about the movements and can be moved by the music in powerful and surprising ways. Worship is the same – it takes practice to be moved by worship. As we approach Holy Week, which begins next week on Palm Sunday, we will have the opportunity to be moved by the rhythms of grace that sound throughout the week. We will offer intentional worship every day of Holy Week, so make your plans now to come and be a part of this intentional worship. It is as Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you comfort.”
