Pray Tell is doing a series of interviews with liturgical leaders. It is loosely inspired by a series in Time Magazine. Each interviewee was asked to be witty, engaging and humorous in their responses. The views expressed in their responses are not necessarily those of Pray Tell.
Here is what we received…
Why are you in liturgy?
When I was 9, my pastor asked me to be an acolyte. That duty, in a Lutheran mission church of the time, involved lighting the candles, holding the baptismal bowl, and picking up the communion glasses from the kneeling communicants. Sometimes I think I am simply still doing that. Though I have fought for bigger fonts and for exchanging those glasses for a shared cup, I still see the faces of those communicants. Other times I think Suzanne Langer finally got to me: we need stronger, better public symbols to hold and orient us in the world. Christian liturgy—or, rather, Christian liturgy unbound—has at least some of those symbols. Yet other times I think the Bible got to me: it is most powerfully at home in a celebrating assembly being formed by its images.
Three things to be fixed in the liturgy – what would they be?
Ah, simple! The leaders should lovingly serve; the central symbols should be (as Bob Hovda repeatedly said) made larger; and the assembly should actively participate, including finally in the sending to a needy world. Or, maybe not so simple. How do you combine leadership and service? What central symbols should be made larger? And what would such sending really be like? A deeper fix might help us with all of those questions: make sure the gospel of Jesus Christ is what the meeting is about.
Pope Francis: good for liturgical renewal or not?
I understand the anxiety of people who say that an Argentinian Peronist not uncommonly signals a left turn and then turns right. But even were that so, those signals from this man have been remarkable and, like all really good liturgy, will not be forgotten and cannot be taken back. When he was introduced on the balcony, there was no stole and no blessing until first he asked for the people of Rome to pray for their new bishop (“bishop,” he said!) and bowed to them as they prayed. That is a man who has come to know what “The Lord be with you/And also with you” means. Perhaps he can help English-speaking Roman Catholics get those ecumenical words back. In any case, that first sign he enacted can help us all with the meaning. Many subsequent signs have also helped. I just hope we don’t eat him up with expecting too much. Expecting everything from one man is always wrong and itself contradicts the spirit of the liturgy, though such expectations seems to be a standard problem with the increasingly monarchical papacy in a time of “celebrity.” Francis himself seems to know this. I hope we all can know that both monarchy and celebrity are bad ideas.
Is academic liturgical study relevant to the real world? And would you advise a young person to go into it?
Good grief, yes! Can you imagine any other field that engages its scholars in theology, biblical studies, history, sociology, psychology, the musical and visual arts, anthropology, and even cosmology, and then turns all that toward real pastoral issues and real life, in the shared search for renewed, communal symbols?
How does liturgical scholarship need to change in the next 10 years?
Care again about reform, not simply reporting. And articulate the location and presuppositions of the scholar, combined with a fair measure of self-criticism. And laugh a little.
Organized religion isn’t exactly flourishing just now – are you hopeful about the future?
Hopeful? Yes. And the “not flourishing” doesn’t particularly worry me. These things come and go. And maybe our churches will be more faithful if they are smaller.
How come so many young people don’t go to church? What should we be doing differently?
I don’t know. Maybe our liturgies should be more like the music of Arvo Pärt: holy, limpid like a clear bell, open and without easy resolution, full of room for both pain and joy, lament and praise.
Favorite place in the world you’d like to worship?
Well, one answer would be either the St. Lawrence Lutheran church of Lohja, Finland, or the St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox church of Tapiola, Finland, the interiors of both of which are entirely covered with amazing wall-painting. I would love to join in the work of the assemblies that use these buildings. And if things got boring and problematic—as they do everywhere—I could always drink in the life and mercy in the wall-paintings!
Gordon W. Lathrop is a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and a retired professor of liturgy. In recent years he has taught at the St. Thomas Aquinas University in Rome, the University of Copenhagen, the Virginia Theological Seminary, and Yale Divinity School. After teaching at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia from 1984 until 2004, he was named Professor of Liturgy Emeritus there. He is the author of several books, including Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Fortress 1993), Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (Fortress 1999), Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology (Fortress 2003), The Pastor: A Spirituality (Fortress 2006), and The Four Gospels on Sunday: The New Testament and the Reform of Christian Worship (Fortress 2012). He was a participant in the preparation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), the current Lutheran service book and hymnal. He is an Editorial Consultant of the journal Worship. In 1985 he was the President of the North American Academy of Liturgy. In 2006 he received that Academy’s Berakah Award. From August 2011 until August 2013 he was President of Societas Liturgica, the international society of scholars in liturgy. In 2011 he received an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Helsinki, Finland. He lives now in Arlington, Virginia, in the greater Washington DC area.
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