Liturgy Is Reality in Motion
There are so many things I enjoy about coming here to worship on Sunday mornings, our liturgy is one of them. With its 5 C’s of Call, Confession, Consecration, Communion, and Commission — our liturgy moves us through the story of redemption, carries us along all the contours of the gospel, and helps us revel in the experience of redeemed sinners before their Holy God. I love our liturgy.
And yet, I also tend to take our liturgy for granted. Perhaps you do as well. It wouldn’t be a surprise if you did — I mean we have the tendency to take just about anything that we regularly do or experience, for granted, be it eating a meal, driving a car, or spending time with family.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, especially in regards to our liturgy. And one way of avoiding the loss of our liturgy’s luster is by reminding ourselves that the story unfolding through our liturgy is a story that is being told in the present tense.
What I mean, is that in the Call to worship (the first of 5 C’s in our liturgy), we are not merely looking back on the fact that God has called us to worship him, but recognizing that God is right here, right now calling us to worship him. He is, right now, saying, “My children, turn your eyes this morning to me, see and enjoy my glory, receive, for this day, the satisfaction that only my presence can provide you.”
Our liturgy in present tense means that in our Confession of sins, (the 2nd C in our liturgy), we’re actively receiving the grace that God is so willing to give us, this day. His mercies are not old, my brothers and sisters, but new every morning. So we give our sins to him knowing that he is, in this very moment, merciful and just to forgive us our sins.
In Consecration, (the 3rd C) we seek to marvel at the heart-changing, soul-shaping work God is presently doing in us, as we hear his word preached and as his Spirit works upon us. His word is living, not dying, and active, not retired, and God aims to pierce us with it and shape us by it into greater and greater conformity to his Son every time it’s put before us.
In Communion (4th C), the God of the universe — more holy than we could dare imagine, more glorious than what we have capacity to comprehend, so awesome that the Seraphim themselves shield their faces before him — is sitting down at the table with you and me, as we proclaim, “We are now one week closer to the day when we’ll eat this meal with him in paradise.”
Finally, in the Commission (5th and final C), we receive Jesus’ call to action, just as if he were in this very room saying to us in this very moment, “Go and make disciples,” for, in fact, he is. And so we hear and we respond by going toward the end that there will be more Christians in the world next week compared to this week, because of our gospel efforts toward it.
Our liturgy is reality in motion. Our liturgy is a story told in the present tense. Our liturgy is a right here, right now kind of thing, because the one we worship is a right here, right now kind of God. And because he is here with us — we can say, “may our liturgy freshly move us toward him today.”
And this reminds us of our need to confess our sins.
Father, as said, we have the tendency to take just about anything that we regularly experience for granted including you. We lose the wonder of your reality, we stop enjoying your presence, we glaze over before your glory. And as a result we wander into other sin as well. So we turn now, and bring these sins, and all our other sins, before you in this moment of silent confession…
Father, we believe right now, in this moment, you hear us. Amen.