ALAN GAUNT
‘Worship finds its deepest meaning in the Cross’

For the Christian, the whole of life is worship – even unconsciously – perhaps being concentrated in private prayer and in church services. Indeed, it could be said that worship reaches a climax in the Sunday service, when the community of Christians share together in the praise of God, and in the seeking of God’s will – although, as the theologian PT Forsyth insisted, all prayer is common prayer, even in the privacy of one’s own room. And yet, perhaps for most of us, worship is at its richest when the community of the faithful share it together: Singing together, praying together, and proclaiming and listening for the Word of God. Preaching, of course, is not instruction in the sense of telling people how they should behave and exactly what they should believe. Preaching is, or should be, the communication of mind with minds, waiting for the Holy Spirit to reveal the very mind of God in Christ, inspiring and strengthening us to go back to the world, to continue worship as witnesses.

I have always been unhappy with church worship that begins with the prayer of confession. It makes me feel as though God might be some angry, punishing monarch, before whom we must grovel and, only then, receive any favours. I would always begin worship with words and a prayer of confident approach; confident approach to the God who loves us like a father and mother, whose first concern is for our wellbeing. Confession is always appropriate in worship, but it is the confession of children who know that they are loved by a parent who will never let them go, however much hurt they cause…

 Alan Gaunt is a hymnwriter, poet and a retired United Reformed Church minister

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BEN WILLIAMS
‘Orthodox worship claims direct continuity with that of the early Church’

Understanding context is a critical first step in interpreting Scripture, and plays an equally important role in understanding early Christian worship. We tend to view things in the past through the lens of our own time, place and circumstance, rather than understanding the culture of earlier times. Eastern Orthodox Christianity claims that our liturgical worship has a direct continuity with that of the early Church, never having gone through the Enlightenment or the Reformation. So why is that important or unique, and what’s the context?

Let’s start with a simple fact: A very large percentage of people in the Roman Empire were illiterate, and an even larger percentage of Christians were, as they came from lower classes in the first and second century. Additionally, there was no printed Bible. That helps explain the use of frescoes in the Jewish Temple and even in synagogues. This practice moved into early Christianity and then became more structured in the art form we now call iconography. In the absence of reading, visually understanding the story in the frescoes and icons taught the faith. Here, the visual sense was addressed and the result was learning and a deepening of faith.

A second example is sacramentality as part of the early Christian worldview. One’s worldview is the way one explains and interprets the world, and by extension, how one applies that view to life. Early Christians, like those around them, lived in a pre-Enlightenment world wherein one could commune with and experience God in creation. They understood that inasmuch as the Kingdom had come in Christ, that Kingdom and the divine could be experienced in this life. Thus the Christian life is a sacramental life. That explains the central role of the sacraments in Orthodox worship – they are not symbols, but actual acts of spiritual engagement and communion. Thus the Eucharist, the “sacrament of sacraments,” becomes both life-giving and central to the sacramentality of life. That sacrament is physically experienced through taste and consumption, and thus additional human senses are engaged…

Ben Williams is an Orthodox Christian and author of Orthodox Worship: A living continuity with the Temple, the synagogue and the early Church (Light & Life, 1990)