I have always found it surprising, if not strange, that so
many of my generation are finding their spiritual home in the
liturgical tradition. Postmoderns revel
in story and uncertainty. Our parents
and grandparents think us “wish-washy” when it comes to ethical standards and
doctrinal creeds. And yet, many of us
find ourselves drawn to the historical church, to the traditional creeds, the
candles, the prayers. What is it about
liturgy that captivates the postmodern soul?
While I cannot speak for an entire
generation, much less a philosophical epoch, my own experience seems to
resonate with many others.
I. Liturgy provides in anchor
in the storm of epistemic uncertainty
While many young Christians who take their faith seriously
have rejected the ethical and metaphysical relativism of the postmodern worldview (if such a thing exists), we have
accepted a fairly strong dose of postmodern epistemology. We may believe there are such things as
Truth and Right and Good, but we are not as confident as our grandparents about our
ability to discover them. We are acutely
aware of how limited we are by perspective, and of how many other sincere
Christians disagree with us. At times this results in deep struggles of doubt and uncertainty. Even when we believe things, we say that penal-substitution may be part
of what is going in in the atonement; that amillennialism makes sense of some of the biblical data; that we believe that the woman can be priests. After all, even if we do know them, we doubt that we can know that we know them.
Personally, I think such epistemic
modesty is one of the crowning achievements of postmodernism. It is probably a proper response to the
epistemic hubris of the modern era. But
it leaves those of us who embrace it with a significant feeling of
insecurity. While we may believe something
today, we don’t live with the certainty that we will believe the same thing
tomorrow, because we might be wrong. And someone might show us why we are wrong. Or we might come to know something that causes us to doubt what we believed yesterday.
In such a
stormy sea of epistemic insecurity, the great creeds of the faith, the prayers,
the symbols--they all give us something to hold on to, something that has been
tested by time, something that is non-negotiable.
We
believe in One God, the Father, the Almighty.
in our darkest hours
We
believe in the forgiveness of sins…
when we haven’t a clue which theory
of the atonement is correct.
And when our eschatology is in
shambles, we hope in…
…the
resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come
We stand with the Church through the ages affirming these
truths. We may struggle with them, at
times even doubt them, but we will not give them up without a fight.
II. Liturgy gives us words,
when our story leaves us speechless.
Postmoderns long to have their stories heard. We need someone, something, to give us a
voice, especially when our stories become too heavy for us to bear and when our
faith is too weak to manifest itself in a spoken word. The historical prayers, ceremonies and
symbols of the church give us those words when we cannot find our own. This became vividly clear to me during two experiences.
When I was living over seas, I started taking a seemingly innocuous drug
for indigestion…that ended up causing severe anxiety, panic, and near
psychosis. Every waking moment for over
a month was filled with inexplicable and debilitating terror. I spent my days controlling the overwhelming
urge to run away from I-knew-not-what, screaming in horror. Any object of thought became an object of
fear. This including God (though, thankfully, not my husband). I could not find the words to pray. I didn’t even know if I wanted to. But somehow I found myself repeating pieces
of liturgy that I remembered from my Anglican church back home. I wasn’t sure if I believed them (there
wasn’t much room in my terrified thoughts for notions like belief). But I had enough of my sanity left to hold on
to them.
Eternal God, heavenly Father,
you have graciously accepted
us as living members
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ,
and you have fed us
with spiritual food
in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood...
It didn’t really matter that I had not actually taken
communion. Just maybe I was a living member of his Son even though I couldn't believe that I was. The church gave me words with which to worship when I had none of my
own.
The second time was when my friend passed away last
month. The sorrow, the pain, the regret,
the anger all silenced me. My heart was
broken for my friend's wife, also a dear friend. I mourned all the dreams he never fulfilled—all
of the profound insights he would never share with the world. And I didn’t know how to pray. But at his funeral the liturgical order of
service gave expression to all of my fear, sorrow, and longing. It gave expression to the deep darkness as
well as the rays of hope. It gave all of
us words when we had none of our own.
There are a dozen other reasons why I love liturgy. It is beautiful, and poetic and sacramental. It is profound and rich. It is familiar, like the old blanket you wrap
around your shoulders during a storm. It
reminds us that we are indeed part of the great communion of saints. These are all reasons why this postmodern
soul so finds its home in the liturgical tradition.
