The Legacy of John Calvin and the Renewal of Christian Worship
Henderson Lectures, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary May 1, 2009
John D. Witvliet, Director, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Professor of Worship, Theology, and Music, Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary Grand Rapids, Michigan
Lecture 1: Our Help Is in the Name of the Lord: The Shaping of Public Worship in Calvin’s Geneva
This is an edited transcript of the audio recording.
When my students and I study Christian history, we do so in search of wisdom, Christian wisdom, to guide faithful ministry today. Now when I make a comment like that, I know what that does to my colleagues who teach in history. It makes them a little nervous, because sometimes those of us who do history or work at history from the point of view of practical theology or ministry don’t do history well. We like to look back in history for examples that confirm what we already believe. We look and we see things that we are eager to affirm. We find those cases, those precedents, and we hold them up. And meanwhile, we do not really do justice to the complexity of a given time and place, the cultural context, the intellectual currents that shaped what was happening in that time and place. In grounding ministry in a certain way, we fail to do
history well. It is very difficult for those of us who work in the practical disciplines to ever gain the scholarly credibility to work in the field of history in a way that masters all of the details of social history and intellectual history and textual criticism of any historical period. But I refuse to let my colleagues across the country and the world who prevent us in practical theology from looking at history to take away our opportunity to draw deeply on these historical resources. And so, in trying to carve out a place for having practical theologians work at history, it is important for all of us who do that work to try to be as attentive as possible to hear the voices from history in their historical context, to play close attention to the careful work that social and intellectual historians have done, and then with a kind of purposeful gear-shift, to be very judicious in how we make the connection between a given historical period and our own. I hope to reflect that move in each of the three lectures today. We’ll spend most of the time in these lectures immersing ourselves in primary sources of the 16th Century. It’s why your handout is so big. And then toward the end of each lecture, I’ll make a gear-shift. The gear-shift will then invite us to reflect on proverbs and beatitudes for Christian ministry today that are shaped in reaction to our study. Sometimes drawing direct inspiration out of what we see, sometimes actually drawing inspiration out of an example that is not exemplary, that we wish to avoid—and hopefully through this process gain credibility in the kind of history we do but also gaining great wisdom and depth as we think about the practice of worship today. So let’s begin. And I invite us to begin this morning not with Calvin’s theology— we’ll do that in the third lecture, not with Calvin’s musical practices—we’ll do that in the second, but rather with people in Calvin’s congregation. I would like to take you, on page 1 of the handout, into the consistory meetings of Calvin’s Geneva. And for all of you back here for Alumni Day, I just want you to imagine what it would be like if some deacon in one of your congregations from about 20 years ago, unbeknownst to you, kept copious notes of all committee discussions that you have ever been a part of, and 20 years after your death decided to donate them to the archives of Pittsburgh Seminary, and then 200 years later to have some cultural historian become an expert at reading the nearly illegible handwriting of the day and
translating these for the world to read. In a sense, that’s what we have here, thanks to the work of Robert Kingdon at the University of Wisconsin and his students’ patient work over the last several years. We have these translations now of very careful editions done of the handwritten notes from the consistory meetings at Calvin’s Geneva. The examples that I will show you today introduce us to people in Calvin’s congregation in the community at worship, and they reveal a great deal of complexity in the years 1542, 1543, and 1544, just after Calvin had returned from his exile in Strasbourg, some 20-25 years after the initial moves of the Reformation then well into the second or even the beginning of the third generation of the Reformation as a whole. And these stories reveal what it was like for ordinary people to experience the profound change of the reformation period. We begin. Let’s start actually with example #3. A certain gentleman by the name of Robert the Packsaddler. Brought into the consistory meeting, he is asked by a certain elder why he does not appear and present himself last Thursday when he should have, and asked about his charge and how he carried out his charge and why he did not present himself and do his duty. And Robert the Packsaddler answered that he did what he could and he did attend sermons, but no, he could say nothing much about his faith. So the consistory is of the opinion that he be given a longer term to instruct himself better in the faith, that he come, in fact, every Thursday to the consistory meeting to show how he
has profited.
And that he come every Thursday before
communion and that he be given a more severe admonition. Asked what profit he has made and how he has profited from the sermon since his last appearance, and he reported that he has listened every Sunday and that last Sunday he heard the sermon at St. Peter’s and he does not know who preached or for that matter what he said, and that it was at vespers and that it was Faret or another and he has not really been there much on Wednesday, but he kind of remembers a sermon on the Commandments, and so again the consistory tells him to come back next week. Or example #4, a woman brought before the consistory asked about her faith and why she has not received Holy Communion. It’s a line we would pass over quickly, until we remember that most Genevan congregants took Communion only once per year throughout the late medieval time period out of fear, fear for mishandling the holy body
and blood of our Lord. It was Mass that was celebrated every week, even daily. People participated in worship by coming to the worship space and watching the Mass unfold, but they only received once a year and that because they were told by the Second Letter of Council that they had to. And so here the Genevan Council essentially is saying, why have you not received Holy Communion? It’s another way of saying, why do you persist in your Catholic piety? And she talks about her faith and she explains her belief in the one God. She explains that she wants to live in God and the holy Church. She recites, we find fourth line down, Herr Pater, the Our Father, in French. And answers that our Lord knows our hearts, and that she believes what the church believes and asked, what does the church believe. But she does not really have an answer for that much. And so you see the conversations unfold between the Genevan consistory and worshipers, ordinary worshipers making the transition from Catholic to Protestant piety. Turn to example #7 on page 2. Johann the Constant, the tailor, who is brought before the consistory to answer a charge having to do with muttering at the sermon. That word in translation confounded Kingdon and his students at first, but it becomes a recurring theme. You’ll find it in 6 or 8 of the examples that I have here before us today. Muttering at sermon. But this conversation is also about the persistence of Catholic piety into the life of 16th Century Geneva. Catholic Christians in the year 1500 or 1530 would have been expected to be at Mass each week but as I mentioned, only participating once per year. What would they have done at Mass? They would have been there watching the priest perform the service, priest with back to the congregation, and they would have been in those pews—or actually they would have been standing— speaking their devotional prayers. They would have been speaking under their breath. They would have been muttering. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
The Ave Maria, the Lord’s Prayer,
devotional prayers that would have been their mode of engagement of public worship. Turns out that Johann the Constant is quite, in fact, constant. Because he answers that he mutters at sermon, that he says the Passion, and he can read and understand it in Latin, and he is more attached than he ever was to the Gospel. He knows the Our Father in Latin, and the Ave Maria, and the Office of Prime and Terse, the daily prayers.
So the consistory advises concerning his hypocrisy that he come every Thursday to give an account of his faith and go every Sunday to catechism and be admonished more sharply that he abstain from the sacraments until he is better informed.
So
Johann is excommunicated for a time for persisting in Catholic piety. And the excommunications in Calvin’s Geneva were not kind of once for all being cut off apart from the church. Excommunications were, as one of my colleagues is wont to say, a kind of “ecclesiastical timeout.” You would be expected to be at sermons, but you were asked to refrain from participating in the Lord’s Supper for a time. Sometimes as short of period of 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks, until you could go back to the consistory, demonstrate renewed vitality in your faith, perhaps reconciliation with a neighbor, and again be invited to participate. Can you feel then, how church discipline and pastoral care and concern for liturgical participation are all brought together in these conversations? Let’s turn over the page to example #16. A certain widow of the boatman is brought in before the council. She is brought in because of the sermons and other things. And she answers that she was at the sermon Sunday at St. Peter and John Calvin preached, and she does not know what was said except that it was good. And that she does not hear because she is a little deaf and does not understand what the preacher says. In other cases where people complain of hearing loss, the council gives the sage advice that they simply should sit near the pulpit, which is then enforced in further discussions. Other accounts are more poignant. Example #14 across the page. A midwife. She is brought before the council because of the children she delivers, and that she says the Virgin Mary and invokes the Virgin Mary in aid, and answers that sometimes it escapes her and she says that truly none has power but God and she asked grace, groaning and weeping. She does not want to be anything other than a respectable woman. But these people who grew up with the firm conviction that their devotional prayers were genuinely a way in which God’s favor could be invoked, this was very difficult to give up. There was a persistent Catholic piety that continued long after Calvin was established, throughout his ministry. It was a process of remarkable change that was really forced on a wide variety of people, and there were evangelical
convictions behind it that I am firmly grateful for. But it is poignant to identify with this group of Genevan worshipers in this period of profound change. Let’s turn the page over next to page 4, and try to get an even clearer grasp of what these public assemblies might have been like. Page 4, we see the brief overview of the arrangements for worship in Geneva. They say a great deal about worship life there.
These, which come from a kind of document in 1541, a draft of a set of
ordinances that would govern worship life in Calvin’s Geneva. Each Sunday there is to be a sermon at St. Peter in St. Gervais at the break of day. We learned later in Calvin’s ministry that that break of day worship service was for the servants in household. The servants would go to church 5 a.m., 6 a.m., very early, and then worship would be set at the usual hour at St. Peter in St. Gervais, the rest of the townspeople coming mid morning. At midday, there is to be catechism, instruction of the little children in all three churches. Prior to Calvin’s time in Geneva, there was catechesis, Catholic catechesis, but especially in the home focused on the memorization of devotional prayers. Calvin insisted that that be continued but that it be complemented with the catechesis of the church led by pastors each week. And then at 3:00, a second sermon in St. Peter in St. Gervais.
The number of services steadily increased through the next 15 years of
Calvin’s ministry in Geneva to the point in which not merely 5 pastors, but something like 20 were needed in order to staff all of the services. We see that for the bringing of the children to catechism and for receiving the sacraments, the boundaries of the parishes should as far as possible be observed, maintaining Catholic practice, and we see the last line that to maintain these charges, it will be necessary to have 5 ministers to aid and assist as necessity requires. On page 5, we have some texts that introduce us to Calvin’s ideal for the Lord’s Supper, one of the greatest areas of discontinuity between late medieval Catholicism and Reformation Geneva. Perhaps the greatest change was the change of furniture, a change of furniture described in Calvin’s Institutes, “The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar upon which to offer a victim. He has not consecrated priests to offer a sacrifice, but ministers to distribute the sacred banquet.” And so the grand altar at the far east end of St. Peter’s in Geneva was removed and very small temporary tables were brought out and set near the pulpit. The pulpit was installed, not on the end
of the worship space in Geneva, but on one of the large columns, perhaps two-thirds of the way down. Benches would be set around that pulpit and think of the change that is simply marked by that architectural move. People coming into that space, not standing watching the priest at the altar at the far end, but gathered in benches around that pulpit with temporary tables brought in for celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. One of the Catholic detractors of the period said in a scoffing tone, “It reminds of me of the setup for school. A school in the middle of a church.” Calvin, as is well known and has been reported with greater appreciation in the last several decades, longed to have the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis. Already in 1537, it’s the next document down page 5 of the handout, left column, it would be well to require that the Communion of the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ be held every Sunday, at least as a rule. But as we know, this practice was not instituted in Calvin’s Geneva. It was too radical break for the town council. You can almost hear, can’t you, you veteran pastors, the logic: “but we’ve never done it this way before.” Patient having participated partaking once per year were now challenged by Calvin in that original vision to partake weekly. What was settled upon was a quarterly set of celebrations but Calvin in a genius move staggered those quarterly celebrations at each of the parishes so that Communion was celebrated within the town of Geneva roughly once per month. He was a little sly, I think, too. In fact the next words give us a clue of this. “In view of this, it seemed good, while hoping that the people who are still so infirm will be the more strengthened that use be made of this Sacred Supper once a month in at least [we might say] one of the three places where preaching now takes place.” And over on the bottom of the right-hand column of page 5, you see a document much later in Calvin’s career, one of his treatises on the Lord’s Supper where he advises, “The custom ought to be well established in all churches of celebrating the Supper as frequently as the capacity of the people will allow, and each individual in his own place ought to prepare himself to receive it whenever it is administered to the congregation.” And then to page 6, which bring us to the Ordinances, which set up the consistory meetings, whose minutes are reported a bit earlier. This set of Ordinances promulgated for the supervision of churches in the rural areas in 1547, essentially Calvin’s attempt to take Genevan practice into a wider range of rural communities
around Geneva with very clear expectations. Everyone in each house is to come on Sundays, unless it be necessary to leave someone behind to take care of children or animals, under a penalty of a fine. And if there be preaching on any weekday, arranged with due notice, those that are able to go and have no legitimate excuse are to attend at least one from each house. So there was a little laxity. Basically, everyone’s expected to be there on Sunday, and basically every household is expected to represent during the week. Number 4 is crucial. Everyone is to be present at sermon when the prayer is begun. Now think about that for a minute. I see two interesting things there. First of all, the service is entitled, “the sermon.” Not the Mass, not even worship, nor not even the assembly. It is called “the sermon.” And people are expected to be present when the service, called “the sermon,” begins. Traditional Catholic piety late medieval period, the priest would begin to say to Mass, in Latin often in the low voice which you could barely hear throughout much of the space, and people would come into Mass, often halfway through. My good Eastern Orthodox friends practice this on a regular basis themselves, down to this day. The service had a kind of objective presence that did not depend on the congregation. It simply began and people in that late Catholic practice would come in and would be there in time for sure during the consecration of the Host through which they participated most times by viewing. So the Genevan reformers had a challenge that still plagues many of us, which is to get everyone to show up on time to sing the first hymn. Attention had to be given to it. It was mandated and cajoled and encouraged in all of these conversations. And then, #5. Everyone is to pay attention during the sermon and there is to be no disorder or scandal. Now there again, we can read that, a statement like that, and it seems to us quite commonplace. We are to pay attention during the sermon. But think about the profound change of mode of participation from moving into a church to pray the devotional prayers that you memorized, now to come to church to have to concentrate on an hour-long sermon, knowing that you will be asked about its meaning. There is a kind of capacity here that is not easy to develop. This takes time, it takes cultivation.
There is a kind of social capital involved in learning that skill.
transformative changes.
Huge
Let’s turn next actually ahead a couple pages, we’ll skip over material that we’ll come back to this afternoon, but I want us to take a little walk through page 12. In 1542, on the basis of his time in Geneva, Calvin published what he calls the form of church prayers and hymns. Until all of these wonderful consistory minutes were published and we had better access to some of the documents I’ve already consulted, for many years when the history of reformed worship was taught, it was this document that served as the basis. And it’s a very helpful document, though not nearly a complete description of worship as we might like. And there are many parts about it that are significant. The title is significant. The form of church prayers. There is a legitimate shaping to church prayers. Worship in Calvin’s Geneva, we might say, was liturgical. It had a pattern, it had a shape of significance. This pattern was done according to the custom of the ancient church. This was not an attempt by Calvin to invent something from scratch. Rather, it was an attempt to peel away the accretions of the late medieval period, to reflect more closely on the patterns that he read in both Augustine and (23:54) and other western and eastern sources among the Patristics. The worship began with the very same phrase that Catholic Mass began with, though Catholic Mass in Latin, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
Immediately the worship proceeded to an act of confession, and the
introduction to the confession again points us to an area of discontinuity. “My brothers [or we would say today, my brothers and sisters], let each of you present yourself before the face of the Lord, coram deo, and confess your faults and sins,” and then this very crucial line, “following my words in your heart.” This has been one of the persistent challenges of Reformation Protestant worship from the start, how worshipers could have the capacity to pray the words extemporaneously delivered by a person up front. This is a very different kind of prayer than a memorized preset prayer. It’s a very different kind of prayer that even you or I would pray extemporaneously on the basis of our experience.
This is liturgical
participation by following the words spoken by another in one’s heart. And it presents one of the grand opportunities of worship in the Reformed tradition and also one of the greatest challenges down to the present day. More about that later.
This prayer of confession was unapologetic. It was strong. “O Lord God, eternal almighty Father, we confess and acknowledge unfeignedly before your holy majesty that we are poor sinners conceived and born in the iniquity and corruption, prone to do evil, incapable of doing good, and that in our depravity we transgress your holy commandments without end or ceasing.” The doctrine of original sin is not edited or mitigated one iota in this prayer. But it is followed especially in the Strasbourg edition with the profound words of absolution, the absolution that our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ. After which the congregation is invited to sing the first table of the Commandments, the point at which all of my Lutheran students begin to raise their questions. The Commandments after the absolution? The Commandments after the absolution, reflecting Calvin’s third use of the law. The law not only restrains evil, it not only convicts us of sin, but it is the guide for our life of grateful living and so it is appropriately read following the words of pardon. Some variations on how this is kept and done in Genevan Strasbourg, but essentially a psalm sung by a congregation, a prayer for illumination, beseeching God (midway down and right-hand side of page 12), for the grace of God’s Holy Spirit so that his word may be faithfully expounded to the honor of his name and the edification of the church. It’s a small reference to the Holy Spirit, but very significant. Calvin’s theology and understanding of worship emphasizing the Holy Spirit’s work in every action; the Holy Spirit making it possible for us to receive God’s word and then later the Holy Spirit making it possible for us to be united with Christ in the celebration of the sacrament. An emphasis of the Holy Spirit that was actually shocking to Catholic ears. It was my Roman Catholic priest teacher, at the University of Notre Dame, who when I walked into campus the very first day, said, “It is so good to have another Calvinist around here.” I remember the look of shock that I felt and I’m sure showed, and all I could blurt out at the moment was, “Who’s the other one?” To which he replied with just a little bit of glee, “Me, of course.” And Father Regis Duffy in his seminars in sacramental theology later demonstrated his deep and profound appreciation for Calvin as the theologian, in his words, who in the West recovered the doctrine and awareness of the Holy Spirit. B.B. Warfield once called Calvin “the theologian of the Holy Spirit,” and Father Duffy was
convinced that was an accurate description. It took actually until the revisions of Mass following Vatican II for the epiclesis, the prayer for the Holy Spirit’s work, to be reintroduced into the great prayer of thanksgiving at Mass. And at least one of the key theologians involved in that process had done a dissertation in Calvin and Father Duffy liked to give me the pleasure of thinking that there was a direct connection. The sermon, hour-long, followed. A little hour glass was quite often placed on the pulpit in order to keep the sermons in check. One historian describes it this way: “An hour glass was placed on the pulpit to keep time, but not always with great success,” we’re told. This would be followed by a long intercessory prayer and this intercessory prayer, it is fascinating to realize, is almost exactly mapped out of a series of 4th Century intercessory prayers from the East. A form of intercessory prayer that really covered the whole territory, and it is a long intercessory prayer. Follow the paragraph headings with me. Bottom of page 12 on the very bottom on the right-hand side and then we’ll turn over.
First, we have your commandment to pray for those whom you have
established over us as rulers and governors, and then for the needs of all people and all human kind. And so the prayer begins. Next full paragraph, for all princes and lords. Next full paragraph, for all who have been ordained and for the Church.
Next full
paragraph, for all people everywhere. Next full paragraph, for all who have particular needs and face times of tribulation whether by poverty, prison, sickness, banishment, or any other misery of the body or affliction of spirit, and finally, O God and Father, to those gathered here. That’s a very a profound line: finally, O God and Father, we pray for those gathered here. One of my students remarked that in his experience, nearly all of the intercessory prayers he had experienced were for the people gathered there and on a good day, the church went beyond that to pray for others. In Calvin’s Geneva, following that 4th Century Eastern model, most of the prayers were for everyone else and only at the end did they turn inward to the congregation. But you’ll see that although the word “finally” was spoken, there was a good deal of territory that had yet to be covered. And what was covered in the second half of the prayer was essentially a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. You won’t find any of the
petitions of the Lord’s Prayer here but you will find each of the basic sentiments behind the language that is here. And if you were to study this section farther, you would find that actually the language of this prayer is almost identical to the language of the catechism, which people would have learned to interpret the prayer. Calvin was praying the catechetical language that children were learning about the Lord’s Prayer and using it in public worship as a way to unite the confessional catechetical work of the Church and the public prayer of the Church, the theme we’ll return to as the day unfolds. And then, right-hand column of page 14, a psalm would be sung, and the minister would dismiss the congregation with the familiar words of the Aaronic blessing from Numbers 6, “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be merciful to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and keep you in virtuous prosperity, keep you in peace. Amen.” We’ll revisit the Lord’s Supper section as the day unfolds. But now I want you to pause and think about all of this discontinuity, from Latin to German, from participation through seeing to participation through hearing, from memorized devotional prayers to praying the words that someone else is praying often extemporaneously. As we’ll talk about this afternoon, from the music sung by the choir to music sung by the congregation, from decorated space to white-washed space, from standing to sitting, from a congregational space that was organized not lengthwise but in some ways widthwise around the pulpit. From the Lord’s Supper reception not once a year, but four times a year or even more if you move from the churches in Geneva. There was huge and profound change as dramatic as any worshiper today whose congregation has recently dismissed the choir and organist and moved in with a praise band and projection screen. Profound change, that many worshipers in our own time have experienced. Think of that but times 10 or more in terms of the dramatic profound change that took place. But it is in the context of that profound change that what really stands out to me about the transformation of worship in Calvin’s Geneva is the full-scale effort to engage in the active participation of the people there. It happens through at least ten, perhaps eleven different mechanisms, which I will briefly list, some of which I have alluded to before. It happens in Calvin’s Geneva through home instruction. It happens in Calvin’s
Geneva through the Sunday afternoon catechism classes every week taught by the ministers of the church to memorize the Genevan catechism and to learn the full range of Christian doctrine. It happens through the explicit memorization program for the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles Creed, which every Genevan worshiper was challenged to memorize in French, not Latin, and to be able to speak before the consistory.
It happens through those questions about sermon
comprehension, which of course are not just a test before a consistory, but they are about a habit that the consistory was keying to form in the regular worship experience of all who participated. It was about some other things we haven’t had time to talk about, exegetical tests given to new ministers. Expectations that fathers had to be present at baptism. You simply couldn’t have a midwife present a child for baptism. Through public lectures on scriptural texts that were given. Through intense schooling practices. Calvin wanted the school children in Geneva to sing psalms for roughly an hour a day. We’ll talk about that this afternoon, learning the new music. And children participating and expected to be at worship on Sundays. There were sermons, including one we’ll see this afternoon.
Many of them where Calvin makes the homiletical move of
challenging the people to participate in that worship service in a unique way. After some time expounding the text, Calvin will make a move that says, and so when we sing together, let us. And so when we come to the table, let us. A kind of liturgical coaching going on as part of the form of preaching. All of these were examples to involve and challenge Genevan worshipers to participate, we might say, using good Vatican II language, fully, consciously, and actively. Full, conscious, active participation sums up the goal of Genevan liturgical reform. And so then here’s the point that I’d like to make the transition from this brief immersion experience in 16th Century sources to think about worship in our own day, in our context. The summary of my point I’ll offer in the form of a beatitude and a proverb. The beatitude is this: Blessed is the congregation with a culture of full, conscious, active participation in worship. And the proverb is this: Wise is the office-bearer, the consistory, so both ordained and lay. Wise is the leadership that not only attends to what happens in worship, but also to how members of the congregation engage with it and how they receive God’s grace through it. Wise is the office-bearer, the leader in a
Christian community, who promotes what we might call a kind of liturgical catechesis. Instruction in learning for the sake of genuine participation in Trinitarian worship. Now here’s why this especially stands out to me. The last generation has been a profound time of liturgical change. I would even risk saying it this way, that never before in the history of the Christian church, have churches been reforming worship in so many directions at the same time. The liturgical movement, symbolized by the Vatican II in the Roman Catholic Church, and the Book of Common Worship in the Presbyterian Church, USA—my doctoral supervisor at Notre Dame, Jim White, called the Book of Common Worship the perfect Vatican II book—that liturgical movement that’s given us the Revised Common Lectionary, new practice of liturgical psalm singing, much more frequent if not weekly celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, the practice of daily prayer according to the early monastic hours of the early church, and many other things—that liturgical movement is one strand of change. A very different strand of change has come from the church grown movement.
Make worship as relevant to culture as possible in a way that
presents the Gospel in that public assembly so that there are no barriers to participation. Although of course, in many ways, this is the opposite of the liturgical movement. The liturgical movement maximizes symbols, the church growth movement set aside symbols. Complicate this with the development of the charismatic movement and its many effects over the past several years, which gave rise among other things to music publishing houses, Vineyard, Maranatha, Hosanna!, Integrity, the contemporary worship movement, largely traceable historically back to the early charismatic movement. In just these three movements, you have enough to reorient the worship life of any church, and in some churches they’ve been reoriented two or three ways, one of which happens at 8:30, one of which happens at 10:00, and one of which happens at 11:30. But the more I have reflected on each of these movements of change, it has occurred to me increasingly, that in every one of them the attention has primarily, and this is a bit of an overstatement perhaps, but I think it’s a point I’d like to challenge us to dwell with—in each of these three movements in a slightly different way, the emphasis has been on liturgical renewal through what happens up front. Through what happens
in the book. What are the liturgical words spoken by the presider? Is the music that we sing good? Is it led by a highly trained musician? There’s a professionalization that has set in both of those recent movements for change, and in other forms as well. I’ve struggled as I’ve listened in conversations, for example, with Roman Catholics, who following Vatican II now 35 years or more, have conferences like this, Vatican II: The Unfinished Agenda. And I hear them tell stories about how remarkable change came out of Vatican II in some ways similar in scale to that of worship in Calvin’s Geneva. And then they’ll say, but all our energy went into the books. We have a new sacramentary. We have a new breviary for the daily office. Liturgical reform has set in by the adaptation of the lectionary, by making sure that all of these actions are more accessible. But as several of my friends and colleagues have said, Oh that we would have spent an equal amount of energy if not more training and forming congregations and individual families, and other participants in worship to understand what they were doing and why, to form this deep participation, giving equal attention not only to what happens at front but also to the mode of engagement of those in the congregation. I’ve heard very similar conversations in the broad Presbyterian tradition. Gathering on a regular basis with members of the North American Academy of Liturgy, there’s a little Presbyterian caucus and they invite a few of us from outside of the PCUSA to join in. I’m a member of the Christian Reformed Church, so it’s sort of a broader Reformed family that’s invited in.
And so often those conversations celebrate the
remarkable possibilities that are available in worship practices today. Greater reading of scripture and singing of psalms, and greater symbolic engagement and the prominence of the Lord’s Supper and its greater frequency. But then the conversation almost always turns to frustration. Why is there not a deeper gratitude and enthusiasm for these gifts? A deeper mode of engagement? And then we often talk about the fact that 80% of our effort over the last 20, 30, 40 years has gone into changing what happens up front and not necessarily into equipping the saints for active engagement. It’s an overstatement to say that in Calvin’s Geneva, 80% of the energy went to forming the congregation and today 80% goes to what happens up front. But I’d like us to live with that overstatement as the day unfolds, and to think, what would
contemporary ministry draw upon, how would we reformulate our goals and aspirations, if we were to think much more about the young children, the brand new Christians, and the seekers who come into our congregation and long to understand what is going on. Or the lifelong Christians, who’ve participated every single week and would love to get out of automatic pilot. Some years ago, I had a chance to teach a D.Min. course and out of that course I had a student who went back to our congregation and she took a church bulletin. And one Sunday, she decided in that church bulletin to print little arrows by every act of worship. By the reading of Scripture, she would put a little downward arrow. She told the congregation, downward is an invitation for you to experience this as God speaking to you. By the intercessory prayer, she put a little upward arrow. That’s the time in worship when we are speaking to God. At the passing of the peace, she put a little sideways arrow, because we are sharing with each other. And so the service unfolded, downward arrow, upward arrow, downward, upward, downward, upward, greeting, hymn of praise, call to confession, confession, assurance of pardon, response. And after the service, an older member of the congregation greeted her and said, “You know, I’ve been a member of this congregation my whole life long, 80 years. And now for the first time, it’s as if I have all this stuff figured out.” We could have a long conversation about just how and whether those arrows are the best symbols to use. That’s actually a very good theological conversation to have. But it was that little pedagogical move that helped this 80-year-old lifelong worshiper participate more fully, consciously, and actively. And it seems to me that one of the lessons we need to draw from Calvin’s Geneva is the kind of patient care of souls that is reflected throughout Genevan practice. Now I want to be very cautious. I do not think that those consistory interrogations are the best way to go about it. And so you see that what we’re not doing today is simply saying, what worked in Calvin’s Geneva would work for us today. We don’t repristinate practices and we don’t treat Calvin’s Geneva as a museum. But we do find that our immersion in the primary sources of the period, when we live into them, prompts us to reflect together on the shape of faithful Christian ministry today. and it seems to me that one key result is this deep, deep emphasis on nurturing the participation of all God’s people.
So with that in mind, I’d like to invite you as we close by turning ahead to page 26. As the day unfolds, we’ll have time for questions as part of this of our lectures too. But let’s close in a participatory way, singing Psalm 134.
The tune, of course, is
familiar. Originally the tune was not Old Hundredth. It was actually Old 134 th. And when you sing this psalm, think not of priests in the temple, but think of all the priests that Calvin was eager to form for worship. They, all of those people, all 31 of those saints who were described in those consistory minutes, are the ones that Calvin longs to hear God’s blessing. In good Genevan fashion, let’s stand and we’ll sing the two stanzas without accompaniment and with strong voice together.
You servants of the Lord our God, who work and pray both day and night. In God’s own house lift up your hands. And praise the Lord with all your might. The Lord God bless you from his throne. The Lord show you his gracious face. He who created heaven and earth. Give you his everlasting peace.
Amen.
Thank you all very much.