Hello, everybody, and welcome back to day 11. So today I want to talk about the role of communal worship or liturgy, in the contemplative dimension of Christianity. And I want to take a moment and reflect on some thoughts I've had, that I think fit into this part of the course on the role of contemplation in general, and contemplative Christianity in our broader cultural changes and patterns, and how that affects questions about contemplation and church belonging. So my hope is that those of you who are listening and participating come from a wide variety of backgrounds. So some of you might be committed and practicing Christians in various traditions, denominations or churches. Some of you may have grown up in the Christian tradition, but at some point, decided to leave that tradition.

Others might come from other spiritual or religious backgrounds, other world religions, and some of you perhaps come from no particular religious or spiritual background. Regardless of where you come from, I doubt any of you would be scandalized if I say that our era our culture today is marked by deep skepticism about religious belonging about the Christian church, or traditional forms of religious authority and belonging. I mentioned this because participation in communal worship or liturgy has been a traditional hallmark of belonging to the church from the very beginning of the tradition. Therefore, this topic that is the relationship between communal belonging to the church and participation in worship, and the contemplative dimension of the Christian tradition, I think has the potential to be one of the more difficult or tricky issues that we're dealing with in this course. So let's consider a few aspects of the challenges to traditional forms of Christian engagement today.

First, we live in an age when what might be called the secular option is one of the most accepted and supported in our culture. So think about it this way for all of human history that we know of up until about the last couple hundred years, every human culture has included as part of its predominant worldview, some kind of vision, and human relationship to what we might call the transcendent, something beyond this world, whether that's the realm of one monotheistic God or the gods, heaven or heavens or Nirvana or something like that. But we now live for the first time in human history. where their predominant forces point towards a worldview that focuses almost entirely on the present material world that we can feel in touch with our senses. So it's not that religious or spiritual belief is impossible in this era, but rather that the strongest predominant cultural forces that we're surrounded by, don't necessarily direct support faith directly.

So we can see this for example, in what is the fastest growing religious demographic that sociologists identify and call the nuns and they don't mean the nuns as in the women who walk walk around wearing black habits but ends as an N o n e. s. People who on a survey when asked to identify their religious affiliation, check none. Okay, so that's the culture at the same time, there's always been a little bit of skepticism towards contemplation Within the Christian tradition itself, there are a lot of complicated reasons for this that we won't go into. But I think some of it revolves around perhaps a concern that the emphasis upon the interior dimension of a person's experience will lessen the contemplatives commitment to the church community, its traditional forms of authority, its practices and beliefs, and even perhaps less than the importance of participating in the community's worship.

Traditionally, this skepticism has been the strongest in the more evangelical churches, but it has strands in every denomination, including my own Catholic tradition. And yet at the same time, there is a real spiritual hunger that exists in people today. In fact, why else would you sign up for a course like this? In fact, I think one way to understand our cultures are people's interest in mindfulness and yoga and Meditation and contemplation today is a sign that this yearning for something transcendent, something more doesn't go away, even if it starts to express itself differently in a secular culture. So I mentioned all of this because I think this all comes together to make it difficult for each of us who are interested in contemplation to figure out where we fit in this thing we call the church, or the theologians call or Christians call it that. And I think part of the struggle in our culture is that we're actually caught in a little bit of what I would describe as almost a ping pong game where the two options seem to be giving into a kind of unquestioning faith that verges towards fundamentalism, or rigidity on the one hand, or towards just leaving it all behind for a kind of radical skepticism.

So I think ultimately both of these options are unsatisfying, but I do see and have encountered a lot of people telling their stories about how they feel like these are sort of the only two options. And I really believe wholeheartedly that contemplation, contemplative Christianity can provide a more fruitful way forward between these two alternatives that ultimately are unsatisfying, at least I think so. So I'll return to this solution or this way of approaching the tradition, from the contemplative path at the end of our discussion. But in order to get there, we need to consider the role of worship and liturgy in the contemplative journey. Okay, so what do I mean when we use the terms of worship and liturgy? worship is the term you're probably more likely to be familiar with and that's the communal recognition and praise that believers in God of any faith tradition, offer publicly.

The term liturgy is a term that theologians use perhaps not as well known by many listeners. But in the Greek It literally means the work of the people. And we might think of liturgy here as the work that the people gathered together to worship God, offer on behalf of God. So here's how Wikipedia describes liturgy. It's the, quote, customary public worship performed by a religious group, according to its beliefs, customs and traditions, and quote, if we look to the scriptures and the earliest historical data, there's not much if you ever get into studying biblical scholars and historians of this time, there's not much people agree upon. But there are two things that nobody really disputes that are foundational to Christian worship.

First is that Jesus shared some kind of ritual meal, probably a Jewish Seder meal in preparation for Passover, right before his execution by the Romans. And second, that the earliest followers of Jesus gathered together to read scripture to sing songs to support each other in faith and at the center of this gathering included sharing a communal meal or a Eucharist. This is recorded in the gospels, where Jesus says do this and remembrance of me which is repeated by Paul in First Corinthians. So there's strong evidence that this was happening from the very beginning. So I've called this a communion or a Eucharist. Eucharist in the Greek simply means to give thanks.

And communion refers to the bond of unity between the person and Christ. Among the worshiping community that is strengthened by participating in this Eucharistic meal. Again, different Christian denominations have quite divergent theologies or ways of understanding and practicing communion but this basic element of practice is shared by all Christians. Perhaps the best way to tie this practice of Eucharist or communion into contemplation is through reflecting on this icon of the Trinity from the Eastern Orthodox Church. And this icon, the story of the three angels who visited Abraham in Genesis 18, is interpreted allegorically here as referring to the three persons of the Trinity, who are depicted seated around a table. In the middle of the table is a cup that is symbolic of the communion cup and as you look at this icon, You'll note as the observer that the front of the table is open to you, inviting you to participate in the communion that is being offered both the communion that is available in drinking from the crop.

So this is participation in the Eucharist and also from the communion that is offered by being invited into relationship with God, who is a trinity of three persons united in love, and always seeking us in love. So I find this icon and many others as well to be a very helpful image for thinking about the communion that is offered in communal worship. And to bring it back down to my own experience a little bit. I've had moments of feeling frustrated or disillusioned with the imperfections and challenges that I see in my own Roman Catholic Church tradition and For myself, in my own experience it was being exposed to and learning about the contemplative tradition and Christianity that really kept me committed to the church through those frustrations, and they still come up, because it provided me a way to understand how the church can be both a divinely inspired and yet in perfectly broken community, while also helping me to keep in mind that there's something bigger and more important going on than just the human side of the institution.

So liturgy, worship, even when celebrated among sinful, hurting imperfect human beings, or perhaps, especially when celebrated this way, points the way towards divine Union as a communal experience as being invited not only into communion or union with the Trinity, but also to be a part of that communion of saints, all of whom were imperfect and Experienced forgiveness, healing and mercy on their journey. And we all need that. So contemplation is not about withdrawal from community and relationships. Rather it is about seeking reconciliation or communion or Union as an imperfect, sinful, but wholly lovable member of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, called the beloved community. And I want to mention one more piece here. The public ritual of liturgy also supports another important aspect of contemplation by helping us to develop what some have called a sacramental imagination.

And again, different Christian churches and denominations have distinctive ways of understanding the sacraments. But in general, a sacrament is a visible physical, material sign of the entity Eternal transformations and actions of God's grace. So for example, water and baptism or bread and wine in the Eucharist, become the physical signs or the sacraments, of the love of God being poured into the hearts of those who participate. So when we're infused by this sacramental way of engaging the world, through public worship and liturgy and through our own contemplative practice, a sacramental imagination can begin to emerge, where we begin to see all of created reality, every single thing in existence as conveying the beauty and the truth of the Creator or the sources loving design in every one and everything that exists. Once we start having those kinds of moments throughout our daily lives, we know that we've been really infused with this contemplative sacrum Mental imagination or worldview.

So with that contemplative vision of worship in place, I want to leave you with a quote from the Theologian and Jesuit priest Karl rahner. He wrote in the mid 20th century that the devout Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he or she will cease to be anything at all. People of today, I don't think are satisfied with any easy answers. There's a real spiritual hunger for the experience of the transcendent or the desire for God that is built into our very nature by our Creator. And belonging to a worshiping community prevents contemplation from becoming just another way of satisfying our selfish or false self desires. Shadow self keeps us accountable to others and keeps contemplation from becoming a way to escape the very real challenges of living in relationship with others.

On the other hand, the inner experience and transformation of contemplation can help us to appreciate the true and deeper purpose of the external forms of worship and rites that make up the tradition. It prevents us from becoming trapped in an overly narrow or rigid experience of becoming attached to certain kinds of beliefs and practices that again can lead towards a kind of fundamentalist approach to religious practice. But Taken together, I think both communal worship and the interior experience of contemplation help us to hone that sacramental imagination, to seek God in all things and to truly love Others on the journey. So I thank you again for continuing to be here with us and tune in tomorrow where we'll talk about practices of love and justice as contemplation in action within the community.