“Church, I don’t get anything out of it” by Fr. Evan Armatas
A couple of weeks ago, a new family attended a worship service here at St. Catherine for the first time. Over the past few months, I had gotten to know them fairly well through the Introduction to Christianity class that I teach on Wednesday evenings. In that time, I had come to appreciate their opinion on matters of the faith. The service they attended was one of the Pre-Sanctified Liturgies we hold during Lent.
The service is very different than anything one might label as worship in America. Knowing this and that this was their first experience of Orthodox worship, I was eager to hear what they thought. I joined them in the Fellowship Hall after the Liturgy. There, I asked if they wanted to share with me how the worship of the Orthodox Church compared to their previous worship experiences. The mother of the family looked at me shook her head and said, “Wow, the whole service was so focused on God.”
Such a reaction is not common. Many people, whether they are Orthodox or not, react to Orthodox worship negatively. The most common complaint I hear is, “I didn’t get anything out of it.” While other people have very similar opinions, such as, “The service is too long,” “It is sooooooo boring,” and “It’s very repetitive.”
Unfortunately, such comments prove to me that the object of worship for most people is themselves. Most of us, whether we realize it or not, want worship to be centered on us, to gratify us. We want the service to move us, stimulate us, feed us, or inspire us. Yet, true worship is not about us; it is about God. This means that true worship cannot be directed towards us.
Take the time someday to investigate modern American worship. It is so directed towards the individual. Many churches today use focus groups to try and determine what style of worship will best attract potential congregants. In fact, most Seminaries have courses that look and feel much like the advanced marketing courses you find in a Business School. Worship, like most things in today’s culture, is being promoted in a way that fits our tastes.
Still there is more to this emerging trend than merely a focus on self. Basically, we have forgotten why the first Christians gathered to worship in the first place. If we want to know what the Apostles did, all we need to do is turn to the Book of Acts and read. When we do, we will find that when they came together to worship, they celebrated the Eucharist (Acts 2.42, 20.7).
What, then, was the purpose of Christian worship that had focused itself entirely on God? It was and is in a word: Eucharist. In true Christian worship, the Body and Blood of Christ is distributed and received. This is the ultimate goal of Christian worship. In fact, Christians years ago were so committed and focused on this reality that they literally would risk death rather than miss receiving Holy Communion.
The true Christian is the one who lives between Divine Liturgies. The Christian is the one who, upon receiving Christ in the Eucharist, immediately seeks the next opportunity to do so. Therefore, when one lives truly as a Christian, attending Church infrequently becomes an impossibility. For it is only in the worship of Christ’s Church that the Mystery of communing with the Risen Christ through the Holy Chalice is made possible.
Such a liturgical consciousness is rare today. Few of us live between anticipating and receiving the Eucharist. Worship is about us, and communion is treated with a casualness that would shock any one of the Apostles. In fact, the Church long ago decided that a Christian had effectively excommunicated themselves when they missed receiving the Holy Body and Blood of Christ more than three weeks in a row! How many of us, at some time or another, are guilty of doing just that?
Of course a return to worship cannot occur without repentance, without a true change of mind and heart. We must be willing to humble ourselves, thus turning the focus of worship away from ourselves and towards God once again. It is only then that we will begin to understand what it means to live in anticipation of receiving God through Holy Communion. When this happens, we too will be able to exclaim, “Wow, when I worship, my whole being is focused on God!”
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10.23-25