Oops!
Once, a young woman was preparing a pot roast for a family dinner. She cut off the ends of the roast before placing it in the pan. Curious, her husband asked why she did that.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “My mother always did it that way.”
Determined to find out the reason, the woman called her mother and asked, “Mom, why do you cut the ends off the pot roast before cooking it?”
Her mother thought for a moment and said, “I’m not sure. That’s just how my mother always did it. Let me ask her.”
So, the young woman’s mother called her own mother and asked, “Mom, why did you always cut the ends off the pot roast before cooking it?”
The grandmother laughed and said, “Oh, I did that because my pan was too small to fit the whole roast!”
Tradition. By definition, this is something that’s been handed down to us from one generation to the next. As Orthodox Christians, we have a ton of traditions, and, perhaps, none more sacred that the Divine Liturgy itself.
The Divine Liturgy is so central to who we are as Orthodox Christians that one of the Ecumenical Councils calls for the excommunication of people who, for no good reason, miss the Divine Liturgy for three consecutive Sundays (Quinisext Council, Canon 80).
Some priests interpret this to mean that even if one is physically present, they can still “miss church” if they don’t commune. Their argument is that, once upon a time, one couldn’t simply attend church without communing. If you weren’t going to partake in the sacrament, you were dismissed after the scriptural readings. Thus, to “attend” Liturgy implies receiving the Body and Blood of Christ.
Some of this may sound shocking to you. But the idea behind this canon is the value that one isn’t simply an Orthodox Christian because one is baptized and chrismated. Being an Orthodox Christian is a way of life. It’s a constant, daily return to Christ that lasts a lifetime. And, for us, part of of that constant turning towards Christ is ongoing participation in the Divine Liturgy.
For these reasons, I want to take a few Sundays to discuss the Divine Liturgy so that we have a better understanding of what’s happening and what it all means. I don’t want us to be cutting off the ends of our pot roast just because. My hope is that you’ll come away with a better appreciation of Orthodox worship, that you’ll be able to talk about the Divine Liturgy with your non-Orthodox friends in a way that intrigues them, and that you’ll be excited, every Sunday, to be here to hear the words, “Blessed is the Kingdom.”
Ugh!
There’s a lot to discuss when it comes to the Divine Liturgy, but I want to start by looking at it very broadly. And, I think, in the broadest sense, it’s a remembrance. But to fully understand what we’re remembering, we have to go back over 3,000 years to an obscure Middle-Eastern tribe that found itself trapped by the powers of the day.
That tribe was the Hebrews who had gone to Egypt to escape famine in the Holy Land. However, the book of Exodus tells us that over several generations the Egyptians eventually enslaved the Hebrews. In time, God decided to free his people, but Pharaoh was stubborn, so God sent several plagues to cause massive devastation.
After nine plagues Pharaoh still hadn’t budged, so God sent one final plague. He struck all first born males, both human and animal, dead. But, before doing so, God let the Hebrews in on a secret: There was a loophole. If they sacrificed lambs, spread their blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses, then ate the lambs with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, then the angel of death would pass over that house leaving the first born male unharmed. This event became known as Passover, or, in Greek, Pascha.
Of course, Pharaoh wasn’t aware of the loophole, so his when his oldest son died, he finally relented and allowed the Hebrews to leave. Eventually, they made their way to the Holy Land and established the nation of Israel. But, things started to go south again.
After a few generations, the kings of Israel refused to listen to God. They refused to be shepherds of the people and care for them in an equitable way. So, as punishment, God used the Babylonians to destroy Israel, and, thus, God shockingly sent his own people into exile—they were, once again, enslaved.
By the time of Jesus, the people were still looking for redemption. Babylon was gone, but now Rome was boss: One tyrant had been replaced with another. So, for the Israelites of Jesus’s day, the Passover celebration wasn’t just a remembrance of how God had freed them from Egypt a long time ago, but it was a prayer asking God to free them again. They longed to establish their own government and worship without hindrance.
Aha!
Now, at this point, you’re probably wondering: What does the Exodus and the Exile have to do with the Divine Liturgy?
This is where it gets interesting. The Evangelists––those who wrote the four Gospels––present Jesus’s death as a Passover sacrifice. So, what the Gospel writers are telling us is that God, through Jesus Christ, is rebooting the Exodus story … But instead of Moses, God acts through Jesus Christ. This is why we still call the Feast of Feasts, Pascha or Passover.
But, the Jesus story adds an entirely new layer to the whole story. Instead God’s people being freed from earthly powers—such as Egypt, Babylon, or Rome—Jesus frees us from death. Because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we are a redeemed people, no longer slaves. And the Holy Land? That’s what resurrection is about. We are raised from the dead so that we can enter into the Holy Land as God’s people. Or, to put it another way, because of resurrection, death passes over us as it did those Hebrews over 3,000 years ago.
The Liturgy is our remembrance of this great Exodus, undertaken by Jesus Christ, and our participation in it. Every Sunday, we journey with Christ to the Promised Land.
Whee!
This is, perhaps, no more apparent than in the liturgy of St. Basil the Great. One of the key prayers reads in part,
“Because sin came into the world through a man and death through sin … [Jesus] was well pleased to be born of a woman … so that as in Adam all die, so also in Him, Your Christ, all be made alive. … He delivered us from the error of idolatry … and He acquired us as His own special people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. He cleansed us by water and sanctified us with the Holy Spirit, and He gave himself as an exchange to death, by which we were held captive, sold under sin. Through the cross He descended into the netherworld, so that He might fill all things with himself, and He loosed the pangs of death. He rose on the third day and for all flesh opened the way to resurrection from the dead, as it was not possible for Him, the Author of life, to be held by corruption. And thus He became the first fruits of those who have died, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. He ascended into heaven and sat at the right hand of Your majesty on high; and He will come to render to each, according to their works.”
This is prayer of freedom. It describes a new Exodus, one from death to life. It’s a cosmic Exodus, a cosmic victory over the powers of death that affects the entire world.
Yeah!
As Orthodox Christians, this story not just defines our worldview, it is our worldview. Every week, as we partake in the Body and Blood of Christ, we unite ourselves to Christ, and we journey with him as he flees slavery and enters into the Promised Land.
We retell the story of Christ’s victory every week because we are a people of freedom. Through the Divine Liturgy, the story becomes real. It becomes our story. It becomes our salvation.
In the following weeks, we’ll continue to dig into the Divine Liturgy, looking at different aspects and dissecting what it all means. But, for this week, I want you to remember that the Liturgy is both a remembrance of how God has set us free, and participation that looks forward to our freedom to come.
Amen.
Great
Thanks for reading, Fred! I pray you’re well.