How Anglican Liturgy Stewards Our Emotions
As someone raised within the charismatic tradition, I grew up believing that emotions played an important role in Christian worship. However, after seeing numerous worship leaders and pastors use certain practices to fabricate an emotional atmosphere within worship, I became disenchanted with certain worship styles and their façade of authenticity.
I later had the opportunity to study theology in various academic environments. While I appreciated how my studies deepened my understanding of God, I noticed that this knowledge did not always translate into deeper intimacy with him. My knowledge of God did not lead me toward a life of personal holiness; instead, it fostered arrogance and pride. I had rejected the emotionalism of my youth for a dry intellectualism, and it was only by God’s grace that I did not become a “theobro” who ruins good parties.
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Discovering Orthopathy
During a theology class in seminary, one of my professors stated that we need “orthopathy” just as much as we need “orthodoxy” and “orthopraxy.” My professor understood that our human nature’s physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects are deeply interwoven and dependent upon each other. If we neglect to steward our emotions, it will negatively impact our life of faith.
One of Anglicanism’s gifts is its intentional stewardship of our emotions in worship. Instead of overly focusing on them or relying on dry intellectualism, the Anglican tradition disciplines our emotions to ensure we feel rightly about God and our life in him. It achieves this through the way the liturgy directs our attention to the gospel’s narrative.
The Gospel Narrative within Anglican Liturgy
Theologians have often described the gospel story in four movements or “acts,” similar to a play. The Reformed tradition to which Anglicanism belongs characterizes these acts as creation, fall, redemption, and restoration (For more on this understanding, see Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview by Albert M. Wolters). Anglican liturgy presents the gospel story within a framework for the church’s worship. This framework directs the congregation’s attention toward the gospel story and fosters their participation in it.
Creation
In the first act, the story begins by describing God as the unique creator of all things and the source of all goodness. The opening portions of scripture reveal God as a perfect being utterly distinct from creation and his goodness manifested through it. Likewise, the opening portions of Anglican worship acknowledge God as our good creator. This is especially evident in our opening prayer for purity, which begins every Eucharist service. In this prayer, we acknowledge God as our creator, “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” The prayer concludes by asking God to “cleanse our hearts” so that we may acknowledge our creator’s goodness and seek the creator’s guidance in our act of worship.
Fall
The second act of the gospel story is the fall. The fall points to humanity’s disbelief in the goodness of God and choice to rebel against God. God’s good creation becomes tainted by humanity’s sin and evil enters the world. Creation, which once perfectly displayed God’s goodness, becomes tainted and broken. While the Collect of Purity and in the Kyrie (or sometimes the Decalogue) expresses this act, nothing captures it like liturgical act of confession. In confession, we acknowledge this world’s brokenness and recognize it residing within our own hearts. We admit our sins and ask God for forgiveness and healing, which only come from him.
Redemption
The third act of the gospel story is God’s act of redemption. Our good God sees humanity’s cry for deliverance and seeks to reverse the damage caused by sin. The Bible is the story of God constantly seeking to be present with humanity and redeem them from their fallen nature. This, of course, culminates in the person of Jesus, whose life, death, and resurrection encompass God’s climactic act of undoing the curse of the fall.
God’s act of redemption finds its expression liturgically through the reading and preaching of his word. Anglicans hold that preaching is a sacramental act that directs people to the resurrected Jesus. Divine action collaborates with human agency, making the crucified and risen Savior present in the preacher’s seemingly foolish proclamation (1 Cor. 1:18-25). The power of God’s word is revealed through Jesus Christ, the divine Word. Jesus becomes present to his people and proclaims the freedom and forgiveness accompanying his presence. This is poignantly reflected in the absolution given by the priest after the congregation’s act of confession.
Restoration
This leads to the final act of the gospel story: restoration. After becoming present to us through the reading and proclamation of scripture, Jesus invites us to enter more deeply into his divine life. He invites us to experience the life we were always meant to live: a life that reflects the truth, goodness, and beauty of heaven. This is the life that God intended for all humanity. To use the words of an old college friend, it is a life that “looks, feels, and smells like Eden.” We receive the tangible essence of this Edenic life at the communion table, which is the culmination of our Anglican worship.
In Communion, our prayers assure us of “these holy mysteries: that we are living members of the body of Your Son [Jesus] and heirs to the eternal kingdom.” We receive the tangible promise of Christ’s presence with us and look forward to the day when his kingdom will be fully manifested “on earth as it is in heaven.” In Communion, we glimpse our promised future when everything broken will be made whole. The service concludes, and the liturgy sends us out as forerunners of the coming kingdom to “do the work God has given us to do: to love and serve as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.”
The Gospel Story Shapes our Hearts
Fyodor Dostoevsky once famously wrote in his novel The Idiot, “Beauty will save the world.” The gospel story is true, good, and beautiful. It is the beauty of the gospel that captivates our hearts and orients them toward Jesus. The spiritual power of the Anglican liturgy stems from its imaginative focus on the gospel story: the tale of the Creator who yearns to restore his broken creation and dwell within it. Like water flowing over a stone, the pressure of the liturgy smooths the rough edges of our lives through its gentle repetition of the gospel narrative.
More Than an Intellectual Assent
Believing the gospel is not merely an intellectual assent to historical and theological truths. Rather, as Dr. Bryan Hollon, President of Trinity Anglican Seminary, notes, it involves “rightly ordering” our loves towards God. To believe in the gospel is a holistic endeavor in which we actively and continuously love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). God blessed us with emotions and bodies so that we can meet with Him in real, tangible ways. As we collectively participate in the ancient liturgy of the church, our hearts follow the movement of our bodies, enhancing our awareness of the God whose beauty captivates us.
I pray that our Anglican tradition will continue to steward the gifts that God has given us. May our liturgy continue to proclaim the “old, old story of Jesus and his love” and may that tale’s beauty continue to captivate our hearts.
Photo by Ryan Lane from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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