Storytelling and Worship

Today I was working on the bulletins for the Candlemas service for Christ Church on February 2^. Candlemas celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. As I was placing the Gospel reading into the bulletin, something dawned on me. When I was reading the story of the infant Jesus in the arms of the Simeon in the temple, and his proclamation of “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel,” I pictured in my head an elderly man, holding the infant, and seeing the baby’s story unfold before his eyes, and being at peace with the end of his story. It is all very human, so simple, so mundane, and yet so profound—the Son of God, in the form of a man, being held lovingly like any other child in the world.

It has been almost a year since I started attending services at Episcopal Churches, and in that time I have started to understand the Liturgy. Within it is something so profound and yet beyond comprehension. And though I had the Liturgy as a part of my life while growing up Roman Catholic, it has only been recently that I seen what it means to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” and how we are called to “offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

I studied history while in college, and in it I learned of the many ways to view history. One particular methodology that I have adopted in my writing is the narrative school. Stories have power, we respond to stories, we tell stories, and indeed we communicate our stories in everything we do. I believe at the heart of Christianity is storytelling. The Bible is a collection of stories, Jesus taught oftentimes in parables, and the heart of evangelism is storytelling. And that is what the Liturgy is, it is a story: it is the story of God, of humanity, of us—both our individual stories and collective stories. It begins with the sharing of stories of what once was and moves to what is where it reaches its climax in the sacrament of the Eucharist where we not only tell the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, but also call upon God to transform simple bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The story ends by pointing us to the future and tells us where we are going. And then, should the Last Gospel be read, the entire Liturgy arcs back to the very creation of the Earth, and the story starts anew, again, again, and again. Every Mass, every Liturgy calls us through the narrative to partake in God’s redemptive work by drawing us to the altar, to God’s table, to experience the wonder of the Holy Sacrament.

All that we do, all that we are called to be, and all that we hope for begins and flows from the altar like a river from its glacial source in the mountains. As it flows, it nourishes everything it touches on the mountain. And from there, it flows out to the world.

I think at the heart of being Catholic is the melding together of our individual story into a collective story. In that call to the altar, we are not only encountering God, we are called to be with one another. All people, and all their stories are welcome to meld and merge and become the great story of God that continues to flow in the world and replenishes, renews, and restores this world.