The Assembly At Worship—The Assembly At Work

Who prays the Collect of the Day, or the Prayers of the People, or the Eucharistic Prayer?

I ask this question because on August 29, while I was in St. Louis, I worshiped at Christ Church Cathedral—the place in which Lisa was baptized, we were both confirmed and married and I was ordained both the diaconate and to the priesthood. And after Mass I was talking to someone who told me that he was in the audience at my ordination.

It is always shocking for me to hear the congregation referred to as 'the audience.' It happens more often than one would think and the use of this word gives expression to an unspoken, but deeply felt sense that liturgy is about people 'up there near the altar' (who are the focus of liturgy in this model) performing for people 'down there' in the congregation—thus the mistaken term audience.

But that's not at all what the liturgy is about. The word liturgy means something like 'the work of the people,' or a public work done by a whole group of people for the sake of the community in which they find themselves. Liturgy is the public work of the whole assembled people of God, called together by God, to offer praise and thanks to the Father, as the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The work of worship is done by all of us. (This is why at the end of this insert we list Ministers of the Assembly rather than Participants as many parishes do—everyone in the room participates in worship and the Ministers of the Assembly facilitate our shared worship).

Many in the Church have advocated various remedies for the mistake of thinking that some people perform the liturgy for the sake of an audience. The reformers insisted on worshipping in the language of the people rather than Latin for instance—a step in the right direction. Recent approaches to dealing with the performer/audience problem usually recommend more spoken parts in the liturgy, an increase in congregational singing, and added ministers like chalice bearers, acolytes, lectors, etc. All of this falls under the general description active participation, and it's fine as far as it goes.

If the larger issue is not addressed, however, active participation can actually contribute to the performer(s)/audience distinction and might become, in fact, audience participation (which is exactly what one woman at a former parish admitted to calling it when she first moved from the Methodist Church to the Episcopal Church). Adding singing and speaking parts might just reinforce the sense of clergy as performers and the congregation as a passive audience that really only participates in the liturgy when the clergy hand over the 'talking stick' (or the 'singing stick' as may be the case). And multiplying the number of ministers (acolytes, lectors, etc.) may simply swell the ranks of the 'performers' and make the 'audience' smaller. In both of these cases, the congregation is still functionally an audience.

What is needed in addition to more active participation is a redefinition of what it means to actively participate. Thus my original question: Who prays the Collect of the Day, or the Prayers of the People, or the Eucharistic Prayer? The answer is the whole assembly. A priest acts as a leader, giving voice to the Collect of the Day and the Eucharistic Prayer, and preferably a deacon or a lay person leads—gives voice to—the Prayers of the People. BUT... we all say Amen because we, as one Body, even if we don't all use our mouths to do so, pray these prayers together. They are the prayers of the assembly, the whole Body of Christ, addressing God our Father.

Does it matter whether the congregation thinks of itself as an audience or not? Yes, for many reasons. One important reason is that the performer/audience model is focused inward, that is, on the performing clergy and other ministers, and on the effect (spiritual, emotional, psychological or otherwise) that they have on those who come to experience the show (which, by the way, encourages a consumer mentality—a topic for a later issue of Grace Notes).

But worship is not a show, and its focus is neither 'performance' nor its subjective effect on an 'audience.' Its focus is God. Worship originates from outside the community (it is God who calls us to worship) and is also directed outward to God for the Life of the World. This is what it means to be a priestly people in worship.

But perhaps the most important reason this matters is that liturgy shows us who we are. The performer/audience model of worship suggests that it is the clergy who are really the Church and that ministry is solely the work of the ordained. Let us be clear: the Church is not divided into ministers and non-ministers. Ordination sets one aside for a particular kind of ministry, but it is Baptism that makes one a minister of the Church, not ordination. All of the Baptized are essential to the liturgy, and all of the Baptized are essential to the whole work of the Church. There aren't performers and audience members either in the church building or out of it.

And so, despite what the person I quoted at the beginning of this piece said, no one was in the audience at my ordination because there was no audience. It was not the bishop laying his hands on me and praying the prayer of consecration alone that made me a priest. The whole congregation prayed that prayer and I was not a priest until the congregation, that particular expression of the Body of Christ in that time and place, said, "Amen."

On Sunday—the day before the day that the secular world calls Labor Day and every time we gather together as the Body of Christ, let's be about worship, which is our work—the work of the people of God—all of the people of God.

--Father Rhodes