At this point, we move from what liturgists like to call the “Liturgy of the Word” to the “Liturgy of the Table.” I don’t find that distinction very helpful, but it does place a certain shift at the same point in the service at which I am tempted to say that we move from “praise” to “worship.” It isn’t that clean a break, of course. Praise leads to worship, but sometimes worship becomes so boisterous that it’s almost indistinguishable from praise, so that a gentle moving back and forth from one to the other seems to be a better image than a straight line.
Still, at this point in the service, we move from a contemplation of God’s glorious action in human history (both past and present) into a time of gazing rapturously on the heart of the One Whose Love Conquered Death. Many of the world’s “gods” have claimed to save, but none has ever dared to do so by setting himself between us and the penalty for our sin. All the praise in the world is meaningless, powerless to bring us to “worship in Spirit and in Truth” unless it is the praise of One Who Gives Himself. This is what makes our God worthy of worship. This is what sets Him, and us who follow Him, apart.
The Offertory, the first movement in this wondrous ballet of renewal, is often overlooked. Yet it is an indispensable step. Unfortunately, a lot of the time this is only where we pay the bills, where we get the Table ready for the real work of the Eucharist.
If we were put on the spot, most of us would acknowledge that there is more to it than that as the bread and the wine come forward, but I have yet to see the offertory reflect the words of Psalm 51. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” What if the contents of our envelopes or the money we placed loosely in the plate were real tokens of hearts broken with desire for Communion with our Maker? Aside from the improvement in the church’s budgets, imagine what that might mean for our worship as we really, really bring ourselves to the altar, offer up our every attempt at provision and self-sufficiency, every thing that might blunt our awareness of the sharpness of our need for Him.
All our talk of tithing is pretty meaningless in the world of intimate worship. A “tenth” seems a vastly inadequate response to the One I meet in the Passion of Jesus. Indeed, tithing is just as much a symbol of the gift of my broken heart as the bread and wine are symbols of the fields and vineyards all of whose produce I also place at the Father’s feet.
The offertory then, is the moment during which I make room in myself for His heart. The broken, contrite heart I bring and leave at the altar will be transformed no less than the “elements” of the Communion. I come to the offertory hungry, desperate to be fed, to be filled by His Spirit, His heart. In order to make room in myself for Him, I empty the produce of my efforts out of my pockets while I cast even the crowns of my righteous acts to the ground at His feet.
And I cry out, “Though they be as filthy rags, receive the gifts that I can give, Father! Empty me! Search me! Make as much room in me for Your Spirit as I can stand!” With tears of relief or of sorrow, of joy or of conviction, I bring my mortality before the Lord, to be transmuted (dare we say transubstantiated?) and given back to me as immortality, my death being swallowed up by life.
As I pray on this, I become more and more aware that this moment in the service needs a lot of attention, a lot more time in order to permit it to function as the preparation it can be to receive from the Heart of the Father. More than an anthem and a song, this is a very risky dance that requires a gentle and persistent touch. Like a DJ working a reluctant wedding reception, it’ll take some time to get most of the folks onto the dance floor. I look forward to the day when I can write about the way we’ve worked that out in my congregation!
In Him,
Jeff
