Liturgy Through Chaos

Gordon Lathop

 

I am still tracking with Gordon Lathrop and his book, Holy Things.

In a chapter entitled, Things, he unpacks the "things" used in the Liturgy, how they hold meaning for us, and how we experience meaning from their use. These "things" include the bread, the wine, the water, the book, sacred time and the sacred space. Here he makes the following point:

"The things around which we gather in church are matters of concern, events, objects put to use. They focus our meeting, itself a thing. Moreover, they propose to our imaginations that the world itself has a center.  This may be a fiction from a scientific point of view, but we live buy such fictions, sleep and rise and hope and orient ourselves by them."


Later he writes:
"The primary theology of the liturgy, the liturgy itself searching 'for words appropriate to the nature of God' (Alexander Schmemann), begins with things, with people gathered around central things, and these things, by their juxtapositions, speaking truly of God and suggesting meaning for all things...these central things provide the 'words' that the assembly uses to speak of God.

This is a rather astounding statement, really, and one that needs our attention, I think. Lathrop opens to us the real nature of the world, which has to be described as chaos. If you doubt this just take a walk through the tortured halls of a children's cancer ward, where the chaos is palpable.


Now, what staves off the chaos? What offers the human being meaning in the face of the waves of meaninglessness and the endless, astonishing human brutality and suffering? For the Christian believer is it truly the central things of the Liturgy -- the bread, the wine, the water, the book, sacred time and sacred space?

And, we must gently ask, are these even things true? That is, do they represent only our invested meaning, or do they truly point beyond themselves to something more? Said another way, do these "things" offer the participant transcendent meaning?  Science will be unable to measure such data, of course, because science is not asking this question. 

 

We could actually ask the question this way: Have you, have I, found meaning in the midst of chaos while experiencing the "things" of the Liturgy? Do these "holy things" the assembly uses speak of GOD to us?

 

Later in the chapter Lathrop makes this statement: "...we wait for God who is away, who is here only in a hidden way." 

 

This seems right to my experience, right in the sense that it is the "holy things" of the assembly that mediate the promise of GOD'S presence. And it is my movement within the assembly's use of the bread, wine, water, book, time and place that offers a center while standing amid the shards of all this brokenness. 

 

The truth is, the chaos that is all around me is in me as well, and if I am not to succumb to this numbing injustice, both around me and in me, then I must find this center that holds up against the onslaught. Lathrop is arguing that this center is actually found in the Liturgy. 

 

But I must be careful here. I cannot be too comfortable. Much as I would like, I cannot pitch my tent in the assembly. This final point is one that Lathrop makes again and again. Namely, these "holy things" point beyond themselves to the Christ, for he is the center of the assembly and the meaning of the holy things and holy activities we undertake. And, stunningly, the Christ always points beyond himself to the ones outside who do not know that the chaos has been breached.