6 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

By Nicholas Wolterstorff

"I myself... say that prayers and thanksgiving made by worthy persons are the only sacrifices that are perfect and well-pleasing to God" (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 117.2).

"Because of all your wonderful dispensation towards us, with open mouths and uncovered faces we give you thanks and glorify you without ceasing in your Church, which has been redeemed by the precious blood of your Christ, offering up praise, honor, thanksgiving and adoration to your living and life-giving name, now and at all times forever and ever" (The Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari).

PART of what identifies the Christian church as a distinct people in history is that it engages in the Christian liturgy. Sunday after Sunday the members of this people gather together from their places of dispersion to celebrate the divine service. A second aspect of the church's identity is that it embraces the writings of the Old and New Testament as canonical Scriptures. Christianity is a religion of the book, but it is not a religion of a book in the way that Judaism and Islam are. For the center of its religion is not the book, but the one on whom the book is focussed: Jesus of Nazareth. The book centers on a presentation and interpretation of Jesus, and the church is "the Jesus party" in history.

This Jesus of Nazareth practiced and spoke of justice. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied," he said in his Sermon on the Mount. And he added, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:6, 10). In calling humanity to practice and struggle for justice, and in blessing those who do, Jesus was standing in continuity with the great prophetic tradition of the Old Testament, and he used that tradition to interpret himself. The God of the Old Testament loves justice and calls people to love as God loves. Thus the canonical Scriptures, which we of the church who assemble for the divine liturgy embrace, is a book that calls us to practice justice and to

Nicholas Wolterstorff has taught at Calvin College and The Free University of Amsterdam and is now Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. Among his numerous publications are Until Justice and Peace Embrace (1983) and his moving statement on death and grief, Lament for a Son (1987).

7 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

share in the struggle against injustice, doing so in the name of God and in the course of its witness to the prophets and to the one whom we follow, Jesus.

I

The issue I wish to discuss in this article is now before us. Liturgy and justice-what do these two have to do with each other? Our intuitions tell us that they are not meant to sit side-by-side in our Christian existence, but rather are meant somehow to interact with each other, authenticating each other, expressing and nourishing each other.

So often, of course, they don't do this. Frequently those concerned with issues of social justice say or suggest that the essence of the church is to be found in how it embodies itself in the world. Its essence will be revealed if it lives justly and charitably when dispersed. Such persons regularly treat liturgy as a more or less dispensable practice and regard concern with liturgy as a distraction and a danger. On the other side, those concerned with liturgy often say or suggest that the essence of the church is revealed in its gathering for the celebration of the liturgy. Such persons regularly treat the practice of justice as more or less dispensable, and regard concern with issues of social justice as a distraction and a danger. Often they call this danger "horizontalism." And then there are those who see the essence of the church in evangelism, who regard both liturgy and justice as more or less dispensable and view concern with them as distracting at best and dangerous at worst.

My thesis is that all such attitudes are aberrations. The church is to gather for the celebration of the liturgy, and when it is dispersed it is to practice and to struggle for justice and to spread the word about its Lord. When one of these is thought to be closer to the essence of the church than the other, aberration has set in, and that aberration always shows itself in distortion of that very activity that was thought to reveal the essence.

In this article, I will have to be content with explaining just one of the many connections between the doing of justice and the celebration of the liturgy. Before I set out, however, let me briefly explain how I understand liturgy, and how I understand justice. Liturgy I view fundamentally as action. As the great contemporary Catholic liturgical scholar J. A. Jungmann puts it, "Liturgy is not simply ceremonial-the ceremonies are simply the outward signs of a more profound action. Nor is liturgy merely a set of rules and regulations or an established procedure-rather it is itself the act."¹ It may be added that on this understanding of liturgy all sub-communities of the Christian church participate in liturgy. Not all of them have printed instructions, prayers, and the like. Not all of them have ceremonial. But all of them

¹J. A. Jungmann, The Liturgy of the Word (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1966), pp. 1-2.

8 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

assemble and in their assemblies engage in liturgical actions. Furthermore, if we look closely we will see that always those actions exhibit two distinct orientations. Some are actions by the people oriented toward God-actions of praise, of confession, of worship, of thanksgiving, and so on. Others are actions oriented toward the people-actions of Scripture reading, of preaching, of absolving, of greeting, of blessing. I myself would say that some, at least, of these latter actions are actions done by God. The liturgical agent is not just the assembled people, but also God. In any case, those who say that liturgy is worship (typically these being persons with a Catholic or Orthodox mentality) and those who say that liturgy is proclamation (typically these being persons with a Protestant mentality) are both speaking too simplistically. From the earliest days of the church, and always since, liturgy has been both. Actions of both orientations belong to liturgy-the word "liturgy" etymologically meaning just public service, or more precisely, a service performed by someone for the benefit of the public.

As for justice, we will not go wrong, in my judgment, if we think of the essence of justice along the lines that Aristotle already suggested: justice consists in a person's receiving what is due him or her-to which we may add that justice is also manifested in a group's receiving what is due it. Justice consists in some agent's receiving what it has a right to receive, what it has a legitimate claim to have. Our fundamental disagreements over justice are not disagreements over the bare concept of justice but disagreements over that to which agents have rights. They are not disputes over the concept of justice but over the contours of justice. In this article, I will be guided in my understanding of the contours of justice by the prophetic words of the Old and New Testament. In my view, important things should be said about the contours of justice that are not said in the Scriptures. Nothing is said in Scripture about freedom of speech and of religion, for example. Nonetheless, what the Scriptures do say about the contours of justice will be for us authoritatively formative.

I will mention two clues as to how the biblical writers think of the contours of justice. First, over and over they say that God loves justice. In the current political climate in the United States, the justice that comes into view is seldom anything other than retributive justice. It is a reliable rule of thumb that when contemporary American politicians speak of justice they have in mind punishing criminals. But nowhere do the biblical writers suggest that God loves punishing people. So when they say that God loves justice they must have something in mind other than retributive justice. When God, speaking through Amos, said, "Let justice roll down like a mighty river," the meaning is not, "May prisons multiply and police forces expand." God did not mean, "May criminals writhe as they receive their just deserts."

A second provocative clue to the prophetic understanding of the justice is the repeated referral in the Old Testament to widows, orphans, and aliens. Over and over, when justice is spoken of,

9 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

it is these three groups that are brought to the fore. Reflecting on the significance of this frequent three-fold citation leads one deep into the biblical understanding of the contours of justice. By contrast, when Plato speaks of the just society, widows, orphans, and aliens are nowhere in view. The fundamental contour of justice is identified by Plato with a certain kind of "law and order." A society is just when authority is exercised by wise persons and is pervasively obeyed. Evidently for the biblical writers, the fundamental contour of justice is something different. The just society is the society in which all the weak and voiceless ones have been brought into the community so as to enjoy its goods.

II

Almost everyone in the Christian community operates with some view as to what would deprive liturgical actions of their authenticity. Recently, I attended a service in which the minister said that, though reared in Methodism, he had left it because in his experience Methodists too often just mouth their liturgical forms without putting their hearts into them. In his view, liturgy loses its authenticity when the words are not said with full conviction and attention. Others would say that liturgy loses its authenticity when those who engage in it do not hold the right doctrines, or when the liturgy departs from the apostolic tradition, or when it is led by someone who is not validly ordained or who performs it in ways not authorized. For some, liturgy is inauthentic when women do not occupy a significant role in the liturgy, and, for others, liturgy loses its validity when women do occupy a significant role. Though we differ in our views as to the conditions that must be satisfied if liturgical actions are to be authentically performed, almost everyone in the church has some view on the matter.

In the biblical writers, one also finds such views. A prominent theme in them is that liturgical actions lose their authenticity when those who participate in the liturgy do not practice and struggle for justice. More generally, one finds in the biblical writers the theme that the authenticity of the liturgy is conditioned by the quality of the ethical life of those who participate. Before we begin our reflections on this theme, let us pause for a moment to let ourselves find this biblical connection between liturgy and justice remarkable. Let us allow ourselves to be surprised, astonished, taken aback by it. In the liturgy, we sing hymns of praise to God. Why isn't it enough that we do this with awareness and intensity? Why isn't it enough that we mean the words we sing? Of course, it is important that we also act ethically. But why does our failure to act ethically cast a shadow over our liturgical praise? What aren't these just two separate things? Or again, in the liturgy we participate in the intercessory prayers. Perhaps we pray for God to give bread to those who lack it. Can't we mean that, when the words are said? And if we mean it, isn't that enough? Hasn't the

10 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

genuineness of our prayer been secured by our meaning what we say? What does our ethical practice have to do with the authenticity of our intercessory prayers?

Cultic liturgical actions have often been understood as devices for currying favor with God. Clearly, the Old Testament prophets regarded that as a common understanding of the cult in their own day, and J. A. Jungmann contends that in Western Europe on the eve of the Reformation, "Hearing Mass was reduced to a matter of securing favors from God."² The idea is that God likes the things we do in the liturgy. They give God pleasure and thereby make God feel well disposed to us who do them. We can expect that God will express this feeling by acting graciously toward us. Indeed, enough of such pleasing liturgical actions may compensate, in God's eyes, for a rather poor ethical life. They will atone for our sins; they will propitiate God.

On this understanding of liturgy, the suggestion that injustice would bleed liturgy of its authenticity is just nonsensical. Yet we all know the judgment of the Old Testament prophets on the matter. Liturgy in the absence of justice does not please God; it nauseates God. Gregorian chants or Genevan psalms or Lutheran chorales or Anglican anthems or Orthodox troparions sung in the presence of injustice disgust God.

I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offering and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream (Amos 5:21-24).

Perhaps not many of us in the modern Western world think of liturgy as a strategy for currying favor with God. We see ourselves as having advanced beyond such primitive views. We are inclined to think of it rather as an occasion to escape from the ambiguity, boredom, pressure, and corruption of ordinary life and to center ourselves on God. We see it as an occasion to be alone with God, to draw near to God, to focus on the transcendent. Liturgy for us is flight to God rather than propitiation of God.

It is equally hard, in this understanding of liturgy, to see why injustice would bleed it of its authenticity. In this view, the authenticity of liturgy is interior to the cultic actions themselves and to the present mentality of the participants. Yet to us who hold this escapist view the biblical writers say the same thing that they say to those who hold the

²J. A. Jungmann, "Liturgy on the Eve of the Reformation," Worship, 33 (1959), p. 511.

11 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

wheedling view:

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
and oppress all your workers.
Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to hit with wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
will not make your voice to be heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a rush,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58:3b-7).

And here is yet another passage in which the point is the same:

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of he-goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who requires of you this trampling of my courts?
Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of assemblies-
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread forth your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
defend the fatherless,
plead for the widow.
Zion shall be redeemed by justice,
and those in her who repent, by righteousness (Isaiah 1:11-17, 27-cf. Jeremiah 7:1-11).

12 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

III

Let us halt the course of our questions for just a moment to consider a certain hesitation about what I have been saying. I have cited these well-known passages from Amos and Isaiah as examples of the prophetic insistence that the authenticity of a community's liturgy is conditioned by whether or not it practices and struggles for justice. It might well be asked, however, whether the passages cited do not make a different, and even more radical, point: that justice is to displace liturgy.

I think it must be admitted that, if these passages were all we had to go on, that would be a compelling interpretation. But of course they are not all we have to go on. It seems clear that if we set these passages within the context of the totality of the prophetic literature, then the prophetic insistence is not that liturgy is to be abolished, nor even that sacrifice is to be abolished. It is rather that liturgy practiced in the absence of justice is so seriously malformed that God finds it disgusting.

On the other side, however, let me emphasize once more that these passages are not saying merely that God wants justice as well as prayer, mercy as well as praise, love as well as Eucharist. The call for justice as well as liturgy has often and eloquently been made in recent years-for example in this passage in which Jürgen Moltmann is speaking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

He fought passionately against the withdrawn piety of those who put up with every injustice on earth because they have long since resigned themselves to it and only live life here in a half-hearted way. But he opposed with equal passion the flat and trivial this-worldliness of those who consider themselves enlightened, who want to enjoy the present, resign themselves in the face of the future, and therefore only live half-heartedly and without fervour. An other-worldly piety, which wants God without his kingdom and the blessedness of the soul without the new earth, is really just as atheistic as the this-worldliness which wants its kingdom without God, and the earth without the horizon of salvation. God without the world and the world without God, faith without hope and hope without faith are merely a mutual corroboration of one another.³

The point that Moltmann here attributes to Bonhoeffer, and with which he allies himself, is profoundly correct. It will underly all that I say in what follows. Yet it remains a both/and point: both liturgy and justice. The not/unless point on which I wish to reflect is different and more radical: not authentic liturgy unless justice.

Let us begin our attempt to extract the underlying pattern of thought in what has sometimes been called "the prophetic critique of the cult" by looking at another well-known biblical passage: Micah 6. The passage as a whole is structured as a sort of trial scene. God

³Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 283.

13 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

presents a grievance against the people: They no longer remember what has been done for them (one finds similar trial scenes in which God expresses grievance against the people in Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 50.). The people then reply to the grievance: They are remembering. They have faithfully been bringing offerings to atone for their sins. What more does God want?

In reply, God explains what true remembering would be.⁴ God's opening trial speech begins with a moving cry of lament, "Oh my people," and then moves on to a brief recital of God's salvific acts. God does not have to be wheedled and cajoled into acting graciously toward Israel. God has freely initiated Israel's deliverance and redemption from slavery. But Israel has forgotten, not perhaps in the sense that it has put God's acts out of mind, but in the sense that it is living a life of forgetfulness. The grievance, as a whole, is a pained call for remembering:

"O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you?
Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of bondage;
and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,
and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord."

God's interlocutor in the polemic is represented as baffled by this lament, be the bafflement real or. feigned. Israel offers sacrifices. Why isn't God satisfied with those? Are the sacrifices perhaps too cheap? Does God want more expensive sacrifices? Year-old calves entirely consumed in the offerings? Thousands of rams? Instead of a bit of oil, rivers of it? Human blood-letting? Is it sacrificial murder that God wants? Some commentators have argued that the form of this answer imitates a cultic entrance liturgy in which a worshipper asks the priest concerning the conditions for admittance to the sanctuary and receives an official answer (for other examples, see Psalms 15 and 24, and Isaiah 33:14-16.):

"With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
(Cf. Hosea 12:6; I Samuel 15:22).

⁴I have found the discussion of Leslie C. Allen particularly helpful in The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), pp. 362-375.

14 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

We all know the prophet's response to this cry of bafflement:

He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

What is the connection here between the divine lament over Israel's forgetfulness of God's salvific acts, and the divine plea for justice? Why is Israel's doing of justice the response God wants to God's acts of deliverance? Commentators are agreed that the connection is to be found in the idea of covenant. Lying in the background of the prophetic critique of the cult, making that critique intelligible, is the conviction that there is a covenant in effect between God and Israel. Indeed, one finds a similar covenant formulation differentiated into the two parts of a recital of God's saving acts and a call to ethical obedience in Exodus 10:3-6, Joshua 24:1-28, and I Samuel 12:6 ff.

The Lord our God, says Moses in Deuteronomy, has made a covenant with us, the people Israel. In keeping with God's promise to our forefathers, God has delivered us out of the brickyards of Egypt and is bringing us into a fair and pleasant land. Now God asks of us that we in response love God above all and express our love by keeping God's commandments:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children (Deut. 6:4-6).

In turn, if we do keep God's commandments, God will love us, bless us, and multiply us (Deut. 7:13).

The pattern is clear: deliverance, obedience, blessing. And once we see that the obedience includes justice, then it is obvious that the pattern of thought in Micah is just an expression of the conviction that there is a covenant between God and Israel. "Justice, and only justice, you shall follow," says Moses, "that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you" (Deut. 16:20).

IV

A new question now arises, however. It is indeed true that if one loves someone, then, other things being equal, one will do what the person asks. If we love God, we will do what God commands. But why does God command Israel to live this particular kind of life, including a life of justice? What is the connection between God's redemptive activity and the particular commands that God issues? Or is there none? Does God just arbitrarily pick out of the blue a certain way of life and then ask Israel to live it, as a test perhaps, a trial, rather like the arbitrary trials imposed in some of the Greek myths and in some of the classic fairy tales? Is the covenant to be understood as an arrangement in which God saves Israel and then bargains with them

15 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

that if they will undertake some arbitrary trials God will bless them? Alternatively, are the actions which are commanded to be understood as actions that by nature or convention are ways of expressing gratitude? Moreover, is God to be understood, at bottom, as commanding this expression of gratitude? When one actually looks at the actions commanded, this seems not at all plausible. How is not committing adultery a way, fixed by nature or convention, of expressing gratitude? How is not coveting a way, fixed by nature or convention, of expressing gratitude?

Let me suggest that there is nothing at all arbitrary about the connection. Why did God save Israel? Did God just want Israel free, liberated? Was that the whole of God's purpose? Once Israel was through the Red Sea, did God say, in effect, "My purpose has been achieved. You are out of Pharaoh's grasp. You are liberated"? Not at all. Liberation was not an end in itself. Liberation was on the way to a certain mode of life, on the way to Israel's flourishing. God's deliverance of Israel was no more, though also no less, than a step on the way to that mode-of-being that God had promised to the patriarchs (Deut. 6:10ff). What God wanted for the people Israel was not just liberation but that mode of flourishing that is called shalom in the Old Testament. Wanting shalom for them was the expression of God's love.

How do the commandments fit into this purpose? How does the keeping of the commandments fit into shalom? "The Lord," said Moses, "commanded us to do all these statutes for our good always" (Deut. 6:24). There is the clue. The keeping of the commandments is a component in shalom. Keeping the commandments is not something that God has arbitrarily stipulated as a condition for blessing Israel- the thought being that God might just as well have commanded other things. Justice is not something on which, by arbitrary divine fiat, the blessings of shalom will ensue. Justice is itself a component in shalom. The blessings do not and cannot by themselves constitute shalom. In the project of struggling for shalom God and Israel are engaged together; neither party can achieve the goal without the contribution of the other. Without our justice there is no shalom. And without God's blessing there is also no shalom.

The point is made in various ways in Deuteronomy. In one passage Moses says to the people that the keeping of the commandments "will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the people, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people' " (Deut. 4:6). He also says that Israel is to keep the commandments so that "it may go well with you" (Deut. 4:40, 5:29, 33; 6:3). And in yet others, as we have already seen, he says to the people that the keeping of the commandments is "for your good" (Deut. 6:13). The pattern of thought comes to its clearest and fullest expression in the closing paragraph of Deuteronomy 6:

16 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded you'? then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes; and he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land which he swore to give to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as at this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.

It is, then, no mystery why Micah represented God as calling for justice in response to God's saving acts, instead of calling for something quite different. God saves for shalom, for life abundant. And there is no life abundant without the people's justice. The significance of the covenant is that God and the people have jointly pledged to travel together on the road to human flourishing-God blessing, the people exhibiting wisdom, righteousness, justice, love, and mercy. The biblical critique of humankind is that we live with the illusion that we can get the blessing without the ethic and that the blessing will be enough for the flourishing-believing, in turn, that the way to secure the blessing without the ethic is to engage in the actions of the cult. Walter J. Burghardt is speaking of his own Catholic community, but what he says applies to all:

Does the Church have a role to play in the social, political, and economic orders? Many Christians, many Catholics, shout a resounding no. As they see it, the Church, as Church, has no commission to right human injustice. The Church is a spiritual institution, and its mission is sheerly spiritual: it is a channel that links the human person with God. The Church's charge is to help us know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next. Oh yes, poverty and politics, injustice and inhumanity, may stand as barriers to God's grace. If they do, then the Church must struggle against them-but not as a direct facet of its mission, only as obstacles at the outer edge of its vocation. The Church's commission is to gather a band of true believers who will prepare themselves by faith and hope for the redemptive action by which God establishes his Kingdom at the end of history.⁵

We now understand the connection, in Micah, between the divine lament over Israel's forgetfulness of God's salvific actions and the divine plea for justice. And we understand the dismissal of cultic actions as a substitute for justice. Yet there is no reason to suppose that Micah or any of the other prophets was in favor of the abolition of the cult. Their conviction was rather that the authenticity of the cult depends on the ethical existence of those who practice the cult. Why is that? Why is the cult not a self-contained phenomenon which God

⁵Walter J. Burghardt, S. J., "Preaching the Just Word," Liturgy and Social Justice, Mark Searle, ed., (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1980), p. 38.

17 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

wants in addition to justice and mercy? Are not the actions of the cult to be seen as also making their contribution to that mode of flourishing which is shalom? Justice is not a means to shalom but a component of it. Is the liturgical praise of God not also a component? Not coveting is a component of shalom. Is intercessory prayer not another component? Why this strange biblical not/unless? Why are we first to practice justice and then to bring our sacrifices? Why are we first to show mercy and then to do our fasting? The inclination of most of us religious people is first to do our singing and then, if time, energy, and persistence are left, to tend to justice. Why the biblical reversal?

It must be that the prophets are operating with a certain understanding of the meaning, the significance, the import of liturgical actions. Their understanding of the proper role of liturgical actions in our lives is an understanding that refuses to see those actions as an addendum to the other things we are called to do, but rather sees their import as consisting in a certain relation they have to those other things. An attentive reading of the prophets makes clear that it is not just sin-offerings-sacrifices meant to atone for sin-that are the subject of their critique.

The prophetic critique of the cult is grounded in the conviction that the point of the liturgy is to give symbolic expression to the commitment of our lives to God. The point of liturgy is not the performance of certain self-contained actions, such as confession and praise, no matter how sincere and appropriate those actions. Liturgy is for giving voice to life, to lives of faith. In our lives, we seek to obey God; in the liturgy we praise the one whom we seek to obey, and we confess our failings. In our lives, we demonstrate our love of God; in the liturgy we bless and praise the God we love. In our lives, we strive to be like God: holy, merciful, just. In the liturgy we intercede with God to be our guide and support. It follows that, if our lives are not in fact committed to God, then going through the motions of the liturgy constitutes a malformation so serious as to anger God. If in our lives we do not struggle for the feeding of the hungry, then interceding with God for the hungry constitutes a disgusting malformation. If in our lives we do not actively imitate the divine longing for justice, then professing devotion to God in the liturgy is a disgusting malformation. Liturgy is for giving voice to life oriented toward God. This we learn from the prophetic insistence that the words and gestures without the life disgust God.⁶

⁶Compare the following passage from Irenaeus, Against Heresies: IV, xviii, 3: "For if anyone shall endeavour to offer a sacrifice merely to outward appearance, unexceptionably, in due order, and according to appointment, while in his soul he does not assign to his neighbour that fellowship with him which is right and proper, nor is under the fear of God-he who thus cherishes secret sin does not deceive God by that sacrifice which is offered correctly as to outward appearance; nor will such an obligation profit him anything, but (only) the giving up of that evil which has been conceived within him, so that sin may not the more, by means of the hypocritical action, render him the destroyer of himself...Sacrifices, therefore, do not sanctify a man, for God stands in no need of sacrifice; but it is the conscience of the offerer that sanctifies the sacrifice when it is pure, and thus moves God to accept (the offering) as from a friend."

18 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

V

In my reflections on the biblical not/unless theme I have thus far focused entirely on the Old Testament, but the very same theme carries over into the New.

Twice in Matthew, Jesus is recorded referring to Hosea's prophecy:

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6).

The situation in one case is that Jesus has once again violated the Pharisaic rules for holiness by having a meal with tax collectors and sinners, traitors, and those pursuing unsavory professions. The Pharisees, in reaction, once again level their accusations. Jesus responds, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matt. 9:13). The situation in the other case is that the disciples of Jesus have violated the rules for ritual cleanness by their behavior on the sabbath. When this is accusingly remarked upon, Jesus responds, "If you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless" (Matt. 12:7).

The not/unless theme also comes to the surface in the "woes" passage of Matthew 23, where Jesus unfavorably contrasts the cultic act of tithing with the doing of justice:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others" (Matt. 23:23).

It comes to the surface again in the argumentative episode recorded in Matthew 15, which Jesus concludes with these words:

Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said:
"This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the precepts of men."

And it comes to the surface once again when, in Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus says:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

In all these passages one finds the prophetic theme continued: the authenticity of our cultic and liturgical acts is conditioned by the quality of our ethical existence. The theme is even more awesomely expressed in Mark 11:25, where Jesus says that forgiveness in heaven is conditioned by forgiveness on earth: "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." It is, of

19 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

course, this thought that underlies the petition in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

I suggest that it is along these same lines that we must understand what Paul says about the celebration of the Lord's Supper at Corinth (I Cor. 11:27-29). There has been a great deal of discussion about Paul's word to his readers that they are to "discern the body." Does he mean that they are to discern Christ's body in the eucharistic bread, or are they to discern the body of believers in those who are present at the assembly (which, of course, Paul also describes as "Christ's body")? Though the latter interpretation seems to me the better, given the context, the arguments on the matter strike me as indecisive. For our purposes, though, it makes no difference since Paul makes clear his conviction that the person who eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord "in an unworthy manner" is not merely doing so in authentically but, worse, is "profaning the body and blood of the Lord." The question, then, is how one eats the bread and drinks the cup in an unworthy manner? One can do so, no doubt, in many ways, but the way that Paul actually has in mind is clear from the context. If one participates in the eucharist while there are divisions and factions in the church (for example, divisions whereby those who are well-to-do "humiliate those who have nothing," I Cor. 11:22), then one has done so in an unworthy manner.

Very early in its history, the church took these words with utmost seriousness. In Didache 14, probably written sometime in the first century, we find the instruction that before the eucharist is celebrated one must first confess transgressions "that your sacrifice may be pure." And then the writer adds, "Let none who has a quarrel with his companion join with you until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled." Confession and reconciliation were a condition for the celebration of the eucharist. It did not take long for the kiss of peace to enter the liturgy as the liturgical expression of reconciliation. And eventually the Roman church instituted a whole system of private confession, and stipulated that one must confess and be absolved before receiving the elements of the eucharist.

We all know, in general outline at least, what happened to this liturgical element and this liturgical prescription. Though the kiss of peace remained in both the Eastern and Western liturgies, it became a dead letter. No longer did the people pass the peace to each other as the sign that they were reconciled, and confession and absolution became, in the late Middle Ages, one more addition to all the practices by which people tried to buy favors from God without altering their ethical existence.

Confronted with this corruption, the Reformers, as part of their radical reform of the cult, rejected the private confessional entirely and put two substitutes in its place: They "fenced" the table with both stern admonitions and rigorous discipline, and they made confession

20 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

and absolution regular components of the public liturgy. The thought underlying these attempts to be faithful to the biblical not/unless theme were nowhere more eloquently expressed than in a passage from Calvin's Institutes:

Paul enjoins that a man examine himself before eating of this bread or drinking from this cup. By this (as I interpret it), he meant that each man descend into himself, and ponder with himself whether he rests with inward assurance of heart upon the salvation purchased by Christ; whether he acknowledges it by confession of mouth; then, whether he aspires to the imitation of Christ with the zeal of innocence and holiness; whether, after Christ's example, he is prepared to give himself for his brethren and to communicate himself to those with whom he shares Christ in common; whether, as he is counted a member by Christ, he in turn so holds all his brethren as his members of his body; whether he desires to cherish, protect, and help them as his own members. Not that these duties both of faith and of love can now be made perfect in us, but that we should endeavor and aspire with all our heart toward this end in order that we may day by day increase our faith once begun (IV. 17.40).

Eventually, of course, the reforms of which these eloquent words were an explanation suffered their own corruption and degradation. Rather than looking at those, however, let me conclude this extremely brief historical sketch with what seems to me the finest liturgical expression of the prophetic theme that comes to us from the early Reformation. It occurs in the eucharistic prayer composed by Cranmer for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our self, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that whosoever shall be partakers of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with thy Son Jesus Christ, that he may dwell in them, and they in him.

The declaration in this prayer that we "offer and present" our selves, our souls, and our bodies as "a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice" is, of course, an echo of Paul's appeal in Romans 12:1 "to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." It should be regarded as a third way-a way in addition to confession and the sign of unity-in which the prophetic not/unless theme finds recognition in the liturgy. We do not just offer to God this and that. We offer ourselves, our lives.

Of course the language of offering and sacrifice in the liturgy has been the subject of reams of controversy. The notion of an atoning, propitiatory sacrifice must indeed be rejected. But the offering of our lives is exactly what the prophets called for, and the liturgical declaration and expression of such offering is profoundly appropriate. To the objection that any sacrifice we may make is unworthy, I find the words of Rowan Williams in his little book Eucharistic Sacrifice: The

21 - Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy

Roots of a Metaphor eminently appropriate:

The effect of Christ's sacrifice is precisely to make us 'liturgical' beings, capable of offering ourselves, our praises, and our symbolic gifts to a God who we know will receive us in Christ.... We are always in danger... of regression in the Christian life: the basic fact of our unqualified dependence on grace can become an alibi, a refusal to assume the authority we in fact have as baptized Christians.... We have been given our selves, our Christian selves, as a free gift: to trust God means also to trust ourselves and our worth in his eyes. The haunting image of Addai and Mari, of praise offered "with uncovered faces," speaks volumes about proper Christian self-love. We need to acknowledge that God's gift in making us his children is a real gift, and we may do this by trusting his will to receive what we are and what we offer. Our liturgy should celebrate sanctification as well as justification.⁷

Worship acceptable to God, authentic worship, is the worship of a pure heart. And the only pure heart is the heart of a person who has genuinely struggled to embody God's justice and righteousness in the world and genuinely repented of ever again doing so only halfheartedly. The worship of such a person consists then of giving voice and symbolic expression to the concerns and commitments of the heart. This, I have suggested, is the biblical vision.

Once we catch the vision, the question with which we began fades away to be replaced with its near opposite. We asked why liturgy could not have its own independent, self-contained authenticity quite apart from the mode of life of those who engage in it. The answer we have gained leads us now to ask: Why isn't the expression in life of the concerns and commitments of the heart sufficient? Why is it important also to give voice and symbolic expression to those concerns and commitments in the liturgy? I have throughout assumed that it is important. I cannot on this occasion, however, defend that assumption.

I close by considering a question that these reflections will have suggested to some: Does not the line of argument that I have developed imply a sort of "works-righteousness"'? I think not. Consider some authentic liturgical expression of gratitude or praise or penitence-that is, some liturgical expression of one or the other of these that satisfies whatever you regard as a condition on its authenticity. I have suggested that everybody does believe that there are such conditions. Should such an act be regarded as somehow making the doer righteous before God, as undoing or compensating for his or her sin? Everybody in the Christian tradition would answer "No" to this question. My argument that a commitment to justice is one condition on the authenticity of liturgy does nothing at all to change the correctness of the no answer.

⁷Rowan Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Roots of a Metaphor (Branicote: Grove Books, 1982), p. 27.