Romans 6:18-23; St. Matthew 5:8-13
During the Summer, I am using the few minutes I have during the homily to deepen your appreciation and experience of the Divine Liturgy. The first two weeks, I spoke about how the length of the service was fundamentally related to its function and about how the service draws us into a real and visible union in Christ. This week I want to speak about the Liturgy as the “Work of the People” (this is the meaning of the word, “Liturgy), and I want do so with three points.
1. Liturgy is work and work requires effort. When we garden, its not enough for us to spend a certain amount of time sitting among the plants and flowers or kicked back on the seat of our John Deere. That may check some imaginary box of “spent two hours working on the yard”, but it doesn’t contribute towards anything worthwhile. It may even be said that such an approach is a waste of time. The same may be said of Liturgy: it’s not about spending a certain amount of time in a certain place but about getting things done. So we’re here now and don’t want to just waste our time – what needs to get done?
2. The cosmic setting: the Liturgy holds back chaos, defeats death, and restores harmony and life to creation. For whatever reason, God chose humans to be the stewards of this world. We were put here to work. To draw the best out of things. Or to go back to the gardening example: to pull weeds and cultivate beauty and health. Liturgy has always been part of this process. Why does so much of the Old Testament deal with ritual? Because there is something about the way creation is made that makes Liturgy – the common and directed effort of God’s chosen people – powerful. Unfortunately, the Old Testament ritual – more generally referred to as “the Law”- was not strong enough. Or to be more precise, the chosen people were not up to their assigned task. Their sin kept them from working in unison with God’s greater purpose. But, as St. Paul points out in today’s epistle, we are no longer bound by sin. Our Liturgy is perfected in Christ. Through Him, our efforts can perfect the world. When we really work with one another, strengthen by Christ and the Holy Spirit, chaos is thwarted, death is defeated, and goodness prevails. It really is that important.
3. But Christ did not just come to save the world. He did not just come to infuse the Liturgy with the power it needed for us to do the jobs we were created to do: He came to save us from sin and perfect us as well. Going back to the gardening example: the good gardener does not just enjoy the way his bit of land looks when he has done a good job. The good gardener is able to keep starvation at bay and nourish his body so that he might live. Through this Liturgy, this bit of land is transformed into a mystical garden in which grows the fruit of eternal life and perfection. We work it hard so that we can enjoy its beauty and so that we can be saved and sustained by its harvest.
So Liturgy takes work. But it is not just “busy work”. Done well, it perfects us and all of creation with us. If we shirk this work – or if we ignore it altogether – then how can it do either?
