Tinkering in tongues - on liturgies badly performed

I could probably be placed squarely within the audience James K.A. Smith imagines when he is writing. Having grown up in a pentecostal church, only to spend the past decade slowly moving towards Catholicism and even (...) 'Eastern' Orthodoxy, just being aware that Smith had written this book was a challenge to my self-image. Other books by the same author had provided bridges for my 'crossing-over', is he now trying to bring me 'back' across that gap? On the one hand I want him to be right. Indeed, if one could isolate what pentecostal churches do (at least in terms of social work etc) from their own often rather studdering attempts to articulate theological rationales, that would be great. On the other hand, if Smith is right, and Pentecostalism has 'something to offer' philosophically, then it also feels a little like I would have to reconsider quite much of my own 'journey' so far. And that would be uncomfortable, I guess, and I would probably prefer to avoid that. Who likes admitting they're wrong...?

James K.A. Smith is a very good writer with a rich toolbox of anecdotes and home-made hyphenated words (I know from his blog that he is consciously honing his writing skills - probably unlike many academic writers - and the result shows). Earlier he has written on how reformed Christian philosophy might benefit from interaction with anglo-catholic 'Radical Orthodoxy', how Evangelical apologists must not simply reject all that is called 'postmodern', and how Christian education lies embedded in the 'rhythms' of embodied, habitual, and collective practices rather than in the content of the curriculum. All very bold projects, considering Smith's largely Evangelical context.

His latest work(s) draws heavily on that of Charles Taylor, in particular on the concept of the social imaginary. In short, Smith takes 'social imaginary' to mean '(big) ideas implicit in practices', which is an OK short-hand for what Taylor is speaking of. On this (phenomenological) view, meaning resides not primarily in heads as propositional thoughts, but is rather 'always-already' embedded in collective habitual bodily conducts. (Like Taylor, Smith bypasses the question of the ontological relation between practices and discourses - the main point is that these are never entirely synchronized, and that the former is more vital). Smith then introduces the idea that this 'social imaginary' resembles notions carried in the word 'liturgy': our deepest desires are directing - as well as being directed by - the embodied 'common work' a group performs together. Then he can speak of the liturgies of shopping, the liturgies of higher education, you name it. Practices we take for granted can hence be analyzed as formative of our desires, as 'cultural liturgies', which might or might not conform to 'orthodox' theological articulations.

At this point, both self-proclaimed secularists and Catholics might hesitate. Smith anticipates the critique of the former (evoking familiar 'secular' names from scholarly fields with 'post' in front of them), but seems (to me at least) to neglect the latter, who might have objections regarding this 'watering down' of the Rite to simply include every collective practice in equal measure. In any case, I am willing to go quite far with Smith down this road (as would many catholic theologians as well). Personally, I am very warm to the idea that 'culture' should be assessed in terms of liturgy, (but then) taking the Eucharistic event as fundamental to all reality. And I like Smith's academic boldness, pure and simple. But in this book problems arise even for me.

I realize that my hesitance might stem from my own background and journey. When I was a teenager in a pentecostal church, the word 'liturgy' was meant to denote empty practices done by mere habit rather than by conviction. And that, so it went, was a really bad thing (as if habits could ever be 'mere', or practices ever be 'empty'). Of course, at a certain point you have to concede that 'we also have a kind of liturgy', and then encourage the services to be 'open' for 'interruption' so that authenticity might be preserved. At a certain point I began thinking that since 'everyone has a liturgy' the difference would have to be how well-performed and comprehensive these liturgies were, and that they should be somehow comparable. So I was hoping this book would have something to say on that. Maybe my notion (now conviction) that 'high church' liturgies are simply better than pentecostal ones must be qualified?

Smith's project is to tease out the big ideas that are implicit in the embodied, habitual, collective practices of pentecostal worship, and to show that these not only beat 'modern' reductive rationalism every time (which is probably true, as far as I'm concerned - but hey, that's an easy target), but that they are closer to traditional 'orthodoxy' than pentecostal articulations of doctrine itself sometimes tend to be.

There are several issues here. One question is what Smith thinks is the relation between the meanings he discerns in the practices of 'ordinary' pentecostal worshipers, and the somewhat different meanings these 'ordinary' worshipers (or even pentecostal theologians) are articulating. Smith grants that practice and articulated theory are not always in synchrony, but does not attempt to explain their actual or ontological relation. Here stops phenomenology, so Taylor would be excused for not going further, but why does not the theologian at least attempt to connect the two?

But much more importantly, there is something revealing about Smith's choice of 'field studies':

Smith wants to 'decode' the rhythms of pentecostal worship, and does so by referring to single events, single Sunday services treated as full examples of Pentecostal worship. It is for example telling that these events as they are described could be taking place at any time of the year. There is no sense in Smith's recaps of pentecostal worship of any 'long-term' rhythm, akin to the traditional church year, with its high and low points. And this is probably accurate. Had he attempted to do the same with Roman Catholic services, he would have had to consider the service in the context of the whole church calendar, with its slow ebbs and flows of different seasons.

And why would Smith limit pentecostal 'worship' to Sunday services, when all collective habits are supposedly 'liturgical'? Doesn't the 'flat' nature of the pentecostal church year signal any 'implicit understandings'? To me, it seems this aspect of the pentecostal social imaginary is far closer to the market/individualism Smith rejects than he would want to admit. Maybe the absence of a 'thick' annual calendar structure in pentecostal worship suggests that the 'overlap' with other (ultimately contradictory) social imaginaries is more problematic than Smith allows for. Because he isolates 'pentecostal' behaviour to Sunday services. Smith actually ends up ignoring the actual complexity of embodied life patterns, and how the 'market liturgies' (to take an example) penetrates into the 'pentecostal imaginary' itself.

Smith also bypasses any comparison of the centrality of preaching in pentecostal services with that of the Eucharistic event in 'higher' liturgies. He focuses on the centrality of embodied action in pentecostal services as an implicit critique of procrustean rationalistic categories. But is not in fact the sermon the central event in the pentecostal service, rather than the bodily actions that happen before (song) or after (alter call) it is delivered? While many elements in pentecostal worship emphasize the goodness of human embodiment, the very structural centrality of the sermon (as well as the architectural centrality of the pulpit) still imply a heavy leaning towards disembodied and 'unmediated' transmission of abstract and unchanging content.

If one compared the sermon as the central event in a pentecostal service with the Eucharist and sharing of bread and wine as the central event in a service in a(ny!) 'higher' church tradition, what would be the difference? My hunch is that such a comparative study might  reveal two very different 'ideal types' of the church (and here we might invoke catholic thinker Charles Taylor for support, this time against Smith) implicit in the two performances.

In the pentecostal service, then, the implied social imaginary would perhaps be one where fundamentally atomistic individuals come together for mutual benefit, centered on the transmission of a 'pure' message that they are then to 'apply' after hearing it. As the message "moves from our heads to our hearts", it can also 'seep into' the world outside. This is very akin to what Charles Taylor calls the modern social imaginary. For all its emphasis on embodied movements, it remains strictly modern as much as the market that Smith wants to provide an alternative for.

In the 'high' church service, the implication is that one single yet universal (!) event provides the eternal foundation for all other events in reality, including the individuals 'emerging' from its relational centre. The ontological 'archetype' implicit in the Eucharistic rite is one where relationality as such is fundamental and originary, and where all events (such as individuals) are ultimately such only by a kind of sharing in one single event - that of the Incarnation.

If we were to compare church years (longer term rhythms), or architectural organization, or what is the high point in the liturgical 'narration' (sermon or Eucharist), I still feel that Pentecostalism is 'modern', far too 'modern'. 

I have long been on a kind of journey from Pentecostalism to something kind of more 'catholic'. But I am not really more 'catholic' than 'pentecostal'. I don't really know what it would be right to call myself. My theory and practice are still out of sync, though I believe I am slowly catching up with myself. Smith's book unfortunately (because I was actually hoping a little - maybe that's why I'm a bit touchy) provides no answer to what for me was the question spurring my journey:

It's liturgy all right, but is it well-performed?

Discipline and Participation - a personal story

Two years ago, I was asked by a student group in one of Oxford's churches to speak on the topic of Christian discipleship, and the following is a version of what I said:

In high school – where I introduced myself through, in the second week of my first semester, standing on the table in the full cafeteria shouting that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and promising physical healing to everyone who would let me pray for them – I used to wear a sweater with the text “YOU CAN BECOME LIKE JESUS” written in large capital letters on the back, white on black. The idea was, I think, to provoke questions, and in that it was partly successful. That is, it was definitely provocative. People were annoyed and irritated and sometimes very provoked indeed. But only a very few times did it actually generate any questions, and then only from other Christians who wondered what the heck I was up to. And so I got to explain to them, rather condescendingly, that as Christians we are called to be like Jesus; to be imitators of God; to be shaped into His likeness. I would then quote Bible verses such as 2. Cor 3:18 or Eph. 5:1-2, mainly to shut up the Christians who questioned the necessity of ‘taking it that far’.
 

‘You can become like Jesus’. Never mind this was an interesting thing to say to people I was literally turning my back on! But there is something in that approach to discipleship that started to bug me, certain tensions that it took a somewhat different approach (for me, at least) to resolve. Sort of resolve, I guess I should say. So here follows my very personal and not at all universal description of the journey that took me from this ‘starting point’ to where I think I might be today, the development of a particular tension, if you like.
 
The tension I am talking about was, very shortly, between these two statements:
 

‘I want to be more like Jesus and do what he did’ vs ‘There is none like Jesus, and no one can do what he did’
 

This becomes a tension because I cannot know in what precisely I should ‘imitate’ Jesus. How should I know what Jesus would do? I figured the Bible would say what Jesus did, and so I took it from there. But what if he would spit in a blind man’s face in order to heal him? Should I do that? When and where would that be appropriate? Or, should I call my elders ‘offspring of snakes’? Should I declare that I am the living bread who has been sent from heaven? Jesus did all of these things…

And so, for me at least, it seemed that I must in the end begin searching for a kind of ‘spiritual’ principles ‘underneath’ what Jesus did, and attempting to understand these hidden principles, and ‘apply’ them. And so I began concentrating on what I understood as ‘revelation’, or occasional moments of sudden intuitive insight (in my “heart” and not my “head”). ‘Oh, if I could only really grasp and understand in my heart that God will take care of me, then I wouldn’t worry so much.’ Or, ‘if I could only ‘have a revelation’ of what Jesus did on the cross, then I would be healed’. But how can I experience these moments of insights, or at least facilitate for them to happen, since I cannot force God to give me ‘revelation’ in this sense?

Again I can only speak for myself. I did two things in particular: Firstly, I read the Bible. A lot. I studied it, I knew all the kings of Judah and Israel, where and when they reigned, whether they were considered godly or not, and their relatives. I challenged my leaders to quote a random verse from any book in the Bible, and I would tell them from which book it was taken, and sometimes even chapter. I looked for patterns in the narratives, e.g. when things turn out right and when things turn out wrong in the stories of God’s people – assuming there were key principles to be ‘excavated’ from the text. I memorized verses. I cross-referenced all the prophets to the stories about the times they lived in. I studied the mentioning of particular cities, places, persons, names, people groups, etc through the scriptures. And I did this without using references or commentaries, since I detested theology as an academic and ‘top-heavy’ discipline that made people lose their authentic ‘living faith’.

Secondly, I prayed. At least, that is what I thought I did. The third year in high school I got up at 5.30am, prayed through a chapter in the book of Proverbs for an hour (pacing up and down in my morning-cold room), had a short breakfast, and went to school an hour before I had to. I then walked a particular route around the whole school, both inside and outside, praying, before going to one of the small practice rooms in the music department to pray for the people in my class by name. School started at 9am. At noon we had an hour off, and every single day without exception I organized prayer meetings in a particular room for the whole of this hour. After school I went home, locked myself in my room to read the Bible and ‘seek God’. I would stay there until dinner, eat quickly and go back upstairs, and read, sing, and ‘seek God’ (which basically meant that I concentrated really hard on ‘feeling His presence’) and meditate on Bible-verses, before I went to bed at 11.00pm, to be able to get up at 5.30am (6.5 hours of sleep). Every day. For a year and a half. On Wednesdays I went to church prayer meetings. I also fasted every Wednesday, as well as for one week in spring and one week in autumn + some other occasions. On Fridays I went to the youth service, where I played in a worship band (which meant arrive early, leave late). On Sundays I slept.

But the question, to return to that, still was: Am I now being shaped into his likeness? Put another way, does it not seem that if this is discipleship, then only intellectually curious people driven by perfectionism and with a lot of time on their hands can be true disciples? To be honest, I thought I was doing better than most. But I did realize that things were not ‘breaking through’ the way I intended them to. I then thought that it would have to come down to two things: My priorities (since doing something else than this would be a kind of idolatry), and secondly, authenticity (since I must ‘really, really mean it’ or everything I do would be a waste). So prioritize the right actions, and be authentic in carrying them out.

But how can I know that I am being authentic? On the one hand, God looks to my heart and not to all the things I do; on the other hand, my priorities reflect my heart’s desire.

This is where this kind of thinking took me. All that was left for me was to do as much as I could, while knowing that it would never be enough, and that God would look to my heart, and not like what He saw there, but nevertheless allow me to be His. At this point I found I was caught in a kind of strange circle of guilt and falling short: My guilt would always be greater than the sum of what I had done wrong; while at the same time God’s forgiveness would always surpass my debt; which in the end meant that my debt of gratitude to God was always more than I could give.

Somehow this turned God into a manipulating superior who gives more than I can repay and makes me feel that I should give more back. It is like when a distant relative surprisingly gives you something way too expensive for your birthday – thereby paralyzing you with a kind of invisible ‘debt’ of gratitude! What kind of manipulating God puts you in an eternal debt of gratitude?

Today I think differently about what it means to be a ‘disciple’.

I think the missing element in my approach was the church and the collective practices of the church. Take the word ‘disciple’ and the word ‘discipline’ – practice, embodied action, habitual performance.

What I didn’t realize was that God is not asking me to do specific things to make other things happen – He is inviting me to share in something God is doing within Godself. But wasn’t this what I thought I was doing? Surely I thought that I was participating in God’s work when I was praying for my school – I actually saw it that way, God is working with this, and I participate. That’s not what I mean. I mean that it is like God is already doing something within Godself , and we are invited to participate in that. One picture that the church has used to think about this is the picture of the three guests of Abraham  This has been understood as an image of the Trinity. We see three persons sitting at a table, sharing a meal. They are relaxed (notice feet position) and attentive to one another (two are listening to the third). They share one meal at the centre of the table. The community is real, there is mutual sharing and waiting upon each other, all already taking place without our contribution. The nearest end (to the viewer) of the table is open, and we are invited to participate if we want to. All we need do is sit down and do what they are already doing. 

Relax, be attentive to the other, share, wait, receive.

Take the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ as an example of something central to Christianity, the one narrative that runs like a thread through the New Testament. When He is crucified, Jesus surrenders everything, He gives up everything. In the resurrection, He receives everything back. So in a way, Jesus is both Giver and Receiver. He is both Servant and King. Think about it this way: Within the Trinity, in the ultimate relation between Father, Christ and Spirit, there is always, all the time, a giving and a receiving taking place. This is fundamental to Reality as such. In short: God IS love. God is always, in His Trinitarian self, centred on the other, submitting in service, receiving in gratitude.

These virtues, if you like, are ingrained in the practices of the Church, and we are shaped through these.

And there is a paradox here. Who is it that has something, and therefore has more status in the relationship? It is the one who gives; the Servant. And who is it that does not have, and therefore less status? It is the one who receives; the King. When Jesus washes the feet of the disciples and says that if you are high then you must be low, and that those who are low will be lifted high, He is only being realistic about the exchange of gifts. The one who has serves, and the one who does not have receives – the one who has is servant, the one who has not is king.

The giving and receiveing of thanks reverses this process, folds it back on itself, as it were. The servant receives praise, the king gives thanks. An eternal reciprocal relationship is what the Church is, because it imitates God, it shares in the internal economy of the Trinitarian Godhead.

Think for example of how we go through the readings during a session of evening prayer. Notice how it is all centred on response. I give you a word, you receive, you give me a word, I receive, both of us always both waiting for and coming to meet the other. This is not found in the content of the text, it is ingrained in the liturgical practices. It takes time; it takes bodily performance and mindful attention.

Lit-urgy; entreaty-activity; “performing prayer”.

Think of when the church ministers the Eucharist. The gifts of money, bread, and wine are carried from the back of the church to the altar to be blessed. We give our gifts to God, yet as a response. On one level, we give and receive bread and wine from one another (we are here giving and receiving from one another Christ Himself) and at the same time, on another level, Christ is in me (His body, the bread and wine) and I am in Christ (His body, the church). This single Eucharistic event is the single defining event of Reality as such – a bottomless reciprocity; participation all the way down, and all the way up.

As the architecture of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool speaks so clearly of, the Eucharistic event is hence the central event, whereas all other events in the world are considered ‘extensions' of this centre, like chapels surrounding the nave where the altar is located. When we share in this event, and in its extensions throughout Reality – waiting, giving, receiving –, we are participating in something that God is doing amongst Himself; we are part-takers in the divine nature, sharing, as it were, in who God is. Performing Godself; the-urgy.

Consider the icon again – this relationship, this community, this mutual gift-exchange, is always-already taking place. God does not need our help for this to happen. God is not waiting for us so that He can become who God is. God is not telling us to imitate something God could only do because He (Christ) was God. God is not asking us to grasp principles and then ‘apply’ them. God is not giving us everything only to leaving us struggling with too much to be grateful for. God invites participation.

While this is always-already going on, there is an 'individual' side to it.

When I was interviewed by the police about me not wanting to join the military (most Norwegian men of 18 are drafted), I was asked what I would do if a man was chasing me with a knife (‘run for my life’), or if he was catching up (‘run faster’) or if he was sitting on me, stabbing me… I had to say, in the end, that I did not know. And I don’t think we know how we would react in hypothetical situations (…), because in crises we react from our spine, not from conscious convictions or beliefs.  

Perhaps participating in the liturgies and practices of church shapes habits in us, on a much deeper level than we could ever manage without actually participating in them. I believe that would we allow these practices to become habits, over time they would sloooooowly become part of us; and shape our spine reactions. To be a Christian disciple is then nothing else than to be shaped into the likeness of Christ through participation in the (multiple worldly extensions of) the Eucharistic event. To be sent, to give, to receive, to make, to lose. To be emptied, confused, doubting – handed over (traditio) to be crucified - and receive oneself back from death. Perhaps to be a disciple of Christ is to be handed over to series of embodied, habitual, and communal practices (disciplines; liturgies; theurgies) which over time shape me into the kind of broken/whole human being God intends me to continuously become – from the spine and out.