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[email protected]
Traps work because the offer the unsuspecting creature a benefit, only the benefit masks the danger hiding beneath. Provided the creature hasn’t figured out the game, it will necessarily succumb, though in the process it may get at least a bite of that delicious cheese!
Liturgical forms can be traps, and much like the mouse hankers for that delicious piece of cheese, when liturgy becomes about what we want, like, or what makes us happy, there is likely a devilish trap disguised beneath the consumerist forms. And if we’re not careful, we will succumb and become insnared to our own desires.
Liturgy matters because worship is not merely prostrating ourselves to personal preference and opinions about prayer forms, the pastor’s pithy pejoratives, or the musicians’ performance prowess. The trap is when we think worship is about me and my tastes, my wants, my likes, my dislikes…my feelings. It’s a trap because, on the surface, it seems quite similar to how we judge just about everything in the consumerist-centered world, making us used to the concept and bringing it into the Christian faith and the church.
But under the trap lies in wait, like a venomous spider on her intricate web, the devil who is hellbent on drawing our attentions away from Christ and back into ourselves.
Why does liturgy matter? Because liturgy, when done properly, draws us to Christ and His cross; it draws us out of ourselves and up to the place where the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered. It draws us to the font, the altar, the pulpit, and to the heavenly realm where the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven sing and bow and pray and offer thanksgiving to He who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever. Amen.
At St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, we follow the historic liturgy which has been handed down from generation to generation, going back to the early church. It is a liturgy chalk-full of the Holy Scripture, a liturgy which brings people together to sing, pray, listen, and receive. It is a liturgy which has stood the test of time and continues to serve God and His church faithfully, and it is a liturgy which comes with no hidden traps, no bait and switch, no attempts to turn anyone in on themselves, but wholly works to draw sinners to repentance; to draw Christians to Christ and His cross.
