Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy 2014

speech of Martin Luther King Jr., on 28 August 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. This speech, with its vision of racial equality and justice, blends, I believe, with the vision of CSL, and the close relationship that the liturgical pioneers saw between liturgy and justice.

Indeed, as the great liturgical theologian Amos put it in the mid-eighth century BCE: I hate, I despise your festivals,

and I take no delight in your

solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your

burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them;

and the offerings of well-being of

your fatted animals I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of

your songs; I will not listen to the melody

of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an

everflowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24) And, as the twentieth- and twenty-first-century prophet Nathan Mitchell has written: Liturgy is God’s work for us, not our work for God. Only God can show us how to worship God—fittingly, beautifully. Liturgy is not something beautiful we do for God, but something beautiful God does for us and among us. Public worship is neither our work nor our possession; as the Rule of St Benedict reminds us, it is opus Dei, God’s work. Our work is to feed the hungry; to refresh the thirsty; to clothe the naked; to care for the sick; to shelter the homeless; to visit the imprisoned; to welcome the stranger; to open our hands and hearts to the vulnerable and the needy. If we are doing those things well, liturgy and the . . . identity it rehearses will very likely take care of themselves. Liturgical art is our public gratitude that God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And there, perhaps, is where ethics and aesthetics together can begin to change the face of worship.45 The liturgical dreams made possible by CSL and the dreams for social justice and equality both remain unrealized or only half begun in our own day. And to both of these dreams, clearly related, we are invited to begin anew. Thank you.

24 NAAL Proceedings