Worship: A Constellation of the Senses

I love today’s blog title.  I only wish I had thought of it.  That honor goes to Thomas Troeger professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity. 

"I am trying to map the landscape of the heart that still rejoices in God yet lives in a world that is often oblivious to the spirit.  I believe to live gracefully with this tension is the mark of wisdom.  Such an understanding may baffle the dogmatic mind, but it does not lie beyond the capacity of the poetic imagination.  The imagination often holds together realities that are logically inconsistent yet dynamically coherent."  (Thomas Troeger)

Whether we admit it or not, our “poetic imagination” lies at the heart of how we understand worship.  And that imagination has been formed in great measure by the culture in which we have been raised and that in which we live as adults.

Cultures are dynamic social realities, that also have distinctive characteristics.  When we encounter another culture, we discover that actions that we assumed to be the “natural way of doing things” are in reality learned behavior, something taught us by our culture.  For the anthropologist, “culture is all learned behavior which is socially acquired, that is, the material and nonmaterial traits which are passed on from one generation to another.  They are both transmittable and accumulative, and they are cultural in the sense that they are transmitted by the society, not the genes.”

Our home culture has given us answers to questions that are implicit in the traditions and practices of all cultures:  

• How will we use our eyes?
• How will we use our ears?
• How will we use our bodies?
• How will we use language?
• What is the meaning of how we use eyes, ears, bodies, and language?

The answers to these questions vary so tremendously that it is useful to think of cultures in terms of how our sensory perceptions are organized.  As we cannot give attention to all of our sensory input at once so our culture helps us by teaching us what our priorities should be. Walter J. Ong calls this the sensorium.  (cf The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History)

“The sensorium of a church at worship is deeply rooted and difficult to change.  Consider, for example, a single sense: smell.  There are churches that use incense so heavily that its fragrance hangs in the air even when no service is in progress, and there are churches that have never considered engaging the sense of smell in worship....If a pastor were to eliminate incense from the one church or introduce it in the other, there would likely be a revolt in the congregation.  The people would feel that the sensorium of the church had been violated...Even a change that keeps within the boundaries of the sensorium may meet resistance because it violates the expectation that worship will provide a familiar path to the holy.”  (Thomas Troeger, Preaching and Worship. 6)

While we may joke about the comment “we never did it that way before” it needs to be understood that the resistance to change flows from the nature of ritual as an action that has been repeated in regular and predictable ways.  There is comfort and security in the familiarity of habitual actions in worship.  There is also understanding.  Understanding how what I am doing and what I am saying is bringing glory and honor to God.  Any changes, of necessity require time before the new pattern achieves the same level of “normality.”

The importance of understanding the ritualistic norms of our church (Army) cannot be understated.  The power of speech gives way to the greater power of our actions.  E.g. children learn much about how to behave (sacred or secular) by observation and imitation.  They see and hear that the use of the body and the voice varies as we move from family settings to public gatherings.  (to my children--no worries--your behaviors are safe with me--that is unless I need an illustration!)  

As the new generation has come along there has been a desire to make changes in worship so that it more closely resembles the sounds and sights that are the current norms of their culture.  These “wars” as they are sometimes dubbed are nothing new.  The problem goes all the way back to the church’s inception.  Paul had to deal with the clash of cultures (i.e. Jew vs. Gentile).  Should they eat food dedicated to idols or not?; was circumcision necessary? The Church still continues to wrestle with a clash of cultural norms.

• Is music so enticing that it draws the church away from prayer?
• Are ceremonial actions of bowing, making the sign of the cross, and liturgical dance contrary to the pure spirit of worship?
• Can women exercise authority and leadership equal to that of men?

It is incumbent upon us to keep the essentials of worship intact even as we recognize the need for those elements to avoid clashing with the culture(s) of the worshippers.  I suppose that nowhere does that dilemma challenge us more than in the area of music.  But that’s next week’s blog.