Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren

In the Christian faith it’s almost a philosophical principle that the universal is known through the particular and the abstract through the concrete. We love people universally by loving the particular people we know and can name. We love the world by loving a particular place in it—a specific creek or hill or city or block. The incarnation of Jesus is the ultimate example of this principle, when the one who “fills all in all” became a singular baby in a tangible body in a particular place in time.

our love for the church universal is worked out in the hard pews (or folding chairs) of our particular, local congregation. A local congregation, a parish, is our small, concrete entry into the universal church. It is the basic unit of Christian community and the place where we encounter God in Word and sacrament. The body of Christ—ancient, global, catholic—is only known, loved, and served through the gritty reality of our local context.

We have sinned and grown old, and become dulled to the wonders around us. Though it may seem counterintuitive, enjoyment takes practice. Throughout our life we must relearn the abandon of revelry and merriment. Throughout Christian history, Christian worship has been a profoundly sensuous experience, a training ground for pleasure and delight.

These symbols and aesthetics silently retell the story of Christ’s life and teach theology.

If rest is learned through habit and repetition, so is restlessness. These habits of rest or restlessness form us over time.

My disordered sleep reveals a disordered love, idols of entertainment or productivity.

In the nitty-gritty of my daily life, repentance for idolatry may look as pedestrian as shutting off my email an hour earlier or resisting that alluring clickbait to go to bed.

Our powerful need for sleep is a reminder that we are finite.

This is the message we receive from our culture: no limits. Nothing should stop you, slow you down, or limit your freedom. Not even human embodiment. You can be unlimited, and if you’re not, someone’s to blame. We believe that we need better technology, better efficiency, and better organization so that we can exist as people unbridled from creaturely limits. We can be boundless, competent, and utterly self-determining.

Our culture of restlessness and limitlessness has not only affected our bodies. It has shaped our faith. As Americans and as evangelicals, the subtle idea that our relationship with God relies on our own efforts and energy is part of our DNA. The idea that our bodies don’t matter and that limits are simply obstacles to be overcome misshapes our understanding of worship and mission.

We are prone to embrace a faith that is full of adrenaline, excitement, and activity. But we have to learn together to approach a Savior who invites the weary to come to him for rest.

“The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don’t have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual or mental state.” In worship, we show up, we abide, and we rest. And as Galli says, “If we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up.”13

When I first began to attend a church that worshiped with historic liturgy, I cried every week. I hadn’t realized it, but for most of my life my worship experience had been marked by my own striving to get to a particular emotional or cognitive place—a place of joy or crisis or emotion or ardent doctrinal affirmation.

We learn to rest by practice, by routine, over time. This is true of our bodies, our minds, and our souls, which are always intertwined.