Not a casual drop in on the sacred. . .

Of all the things that confuse and confound me over the years, perhaps the greatest is the way we have made the sacred into something casual or informal -- as if it were no big deal at all.  While you can argue with me about the come as you are dress code or the constant attention to coffee or some other drink in the pews or the gawking around as if this were soooo boring or the ringing of cell phones or the dinging of the text message, we seem to have lost our sense of the sacred and these things are merely symptoms of that loss.  Even among the liturgical wing, the so-called high church contingent, there is a noticeable loss of the sacred, of reverence, and of attention to the God who is come in our midst to deliver Himself and His gifts.

The problem lies not with the rites nor necessarily with those performing them (although this is a problem as well) but with the loss of solemnity that pervades our modern day life.  We literally shop in our pajamas, work in our undies, dress up in pre-faded jeans with holes, and have our good tee shirts as well as our everyday versions.  We may say we long for the days of more formal attire but we do not long for them enough to try to resist the impulse for the casual in all that we wear.  We literally work from home and do our personal shopping at work and so we blur the lines between labor and leisure until they do not even exist anymore.  We insist upon turning everything into a joke -- from weddings to funerals!  It is no wonder that we do not know what to do when we enter into the sacred domain of God's House, God's formal presence, and God's Table.

Rome wants to make it about Latin and the Old Mass when it is really about the lack of reverence and the casual atmosphere in the New Mass that overshadows any mystery of God's doing in it.  Lutherans seem to caught up in which version of the Divine Service and whither with thy spirit or also with you when it is really about the lite atmosphere that pervades even formal liturgical settings, jokes that seem irresistible to those who preside and attention given more to the creature comforts of the worshiper than the God who is being worshiped.  The mystery and solemnity of the past has become a mere relic in our modern era of fast food, fast worship, and fast exits all the while we sit in padded seats watching like spectators but judging what we see on the basis of its entertainment value or meaningfulness.  

I remember many, many years ago a woman apologized to me during a break in the concert because she had coughed.  Now I have given up concerts after years of people talking on their cell phones, taking inane selfies, drinking, and otherwise entertaining themselves while the music is supposed to be the center of it all.  Even national anthems have become occasions to demonstrate prowess or draw attention to their style instead of those songs in which the singer disappears into the words.  We cannot stifle any want or desire for any cause -- not even God.  Lord knows that there is little danger of returning to the days when people sat stiff and unmoving in such venues but we ought to recover some sense of the holy, of the solemn, and of the grand mystery -- if for no one else but for God 

It is not God who loses out.  We cannot make holy Him who is by nature holy nor can we make Him casual by extending our own lack of sense to His domain.  We, however, will have lost out not only on the mystery but of the majesty of the God who is not a carbon copy of me but wholly other and whose presence is itself an occasion for joy.  Yet that is the problem in culture and in worship.  We are so wrapped up in ourselves that we cannot give attention to God or any cause or person besides ourselves and we think we are somehow protecting ourselves.  In reality, we are causing our own disappointment and suffering the loss of the sacred in our lives.  Because everything is now subject to the litmus test of boredom or entertainment value, we have consigned ourselves to the muddy middle of everything.  

As a Lutheran, I know this is true of so much of what passes for Lutheranism.  Moderation in everything has become simply the dull middle in which nothing is holy and nothing is unholy.  Our children have learned only too well our lesson of casualness and a blurred line between the sacred and the secular (or everything else).  Look at their closets.  They have no clothes but casual and nothing even hangs in the back of their closets to be pulled out just in case.  Look at the clothing placed upon the dead.  We do not dress up for anything -- much less death.  God is lost in the mix and then we wonder where He is and why the holy seems so ordinary.  The Lutheran test has become we don't have to do anything so we will do as little as possible and if it is not necessary or essential it is extraneous and superfluous.  Where has that gotten us?