This morning as Shayne and I were in the church kitchen at St. Andrews preparing food for the luncheon after the service, I was preparing my heart for worship and ramping up my expectation. While we were in the kitchen my friend Nahum Beard, a priest here at St. Andrews, was preparing for pre-service prayer with some of the deacons and deacons-to-be in the sanctuary. What I didn't expect was that they would invite me to join them. As I approached where they were kneeling to pray I was handed a "book of common prayer". Wow, I thought, this is going to be good, and it was. As Nahum led us through the written prayers and we read the responses I could feel the weight of The Spirit falling on us and I wondered if anyone else could feel it also. As we continued to pray and others began to weep at the Lords presence I realized there was something deep happening. When we first came here I had no experience of written prayers, no experience of formal liturgy or Anglican worship. I thought it all quite dead and a bit contrived although if pushed I probably wouldn't of said so. My experience here has proven to me that there is nothing dead about it. Whether our prayers are poured out to the Lord "off the cuff" with our eyes closed as they are in most evangelical churches, or whether they are offered up to Him with our eyes open reading them off the page of a prayer book, it is the state of our hearts and the motive behind the prayers that decides whether they will be heard before the throne of God.
The Lord has been revealing himself to us in ways we never imagined he would and revealing some deep things about apostolic tradition, church tradition and our on-going participation in the passing along of the truths of our faith to the next generation that we never expected. As I learn about the liturgy of the church, the ceremony, the tradition, and the symbolism behind a lot of what we do as Christians, it takes me into deeper and deeper realms of appreciation for what we do when we gather on the Lords day. I am gaining a new and profound understanding and respect for our Fathers in the faith and their liturgical ways. We experienced a baby baptism here a few weeks back, a Schafer family first, as well as chanted prayers, a very fun Schafer family first. One of the highlights of Christmas was of course the Midnight Mass on the 24th, but the highlight of the mass for me was the burning of incense. I'm not exactly sure what the meaning of the incense is but I know in the OT they burnt incense to the Lord, but I will testify that to stand and worship the lord with the strong smell of the incense and the smoke thick in the sanctuary all around us was an experience I will never forget. I wonder if in our search for relevance we have lost some of the powerful expressions of our worship and devotion to God. I wonder if we look back in history at the Apostolic tradition and to the tradition of the believers in the first few centuries of our faith, if there are practises we could learn from and redeem. I believe that the Liturgical expression of Faith has a lot they could learn from Evangelicalism and that Evangelicalism has a lot we could learn from the more liturgical expressions of worship.
Rather than turning from the past and pushing forward, I'm having a lot of fun looking back and learning from those who have gone before us. A new understanding and appreciation for ancient ways of worship.
Thanks for Journeying with us,
The Schafers
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