Introduction

What is Liturgy? What does it mean? Liturgy comes from the Greek word meaning public service. The first great service Christians offer is the worship of God.  So ‘liturgy’ comes to mean the public worship of the church. Christian liturgy has two main elements: Word and Table.  This page looks at the Liturgy of the Word.

Worship as Narrative

When Christians gather to worship, they meet to tell a story.  The story we tell is a tapestry of tales of faith in which people encountered God as God encountered them.  At the heart of these stories, there is one that we use to make sense of all the others.  This ‘story at the heart of things’ tells of God who meets us in Jesus.

Many of the stories we tell are found in the collected Jewish and Christian writings we call the Bible. The Bible is not the only story of Christian faith – otherwise, we would have to forget the past 1900 years of our faith-history.  However, the Bible is the collection of writings all Christians hold sacred. So when we meet to worship, the Bible stories have a special (or ‘privileged’) place.

The importance of the Bible has led Christians to use it in two quite different ways:

               ^. as a study book;

               ^. and as a liturgical book.

The Bible as a Study Book

Christians often use the bible as a study book, whether in private prayer or in house groups. Together, or alone, we study the scriptures in order to discover its meaning.  To do this we need to read the text in detail.

The Bible as a Liturgical Book

When we gather to worship we do not use the bible as study text. Rather, we wait to hear the word of God.  It speaks to us and we listen.  In the Liturgy of the Word we listen to a number of passages, so that we hear a more comprehensive message emerging. Normally, this means that we listen at least to Old and New Testament passages. It often means that we listen to excerpts from the Gospels and the other NT writings as well as to the OT.

Old Testament

What we call the OT may also be called ‘the Hebrew scriptures’.  In worship, we hear the same scriptures that Jesus and his disciples would have heard read in the synagogue. We ought to listen in this way, rather than trying to read back later Christian ideas into what we hear.

Epistle

This group of NT readings contains not only the letters, but also the books of Acts and Revelation. As we listen to them, we are hearing the thoughts and correspondence of early Christians on the message of Jesus as it touched their private, social and public life.

Gospel

The Gospels record the central story of Jesus. In the Liturgy of the Word, we listen for the voice of God transmitted through these four different voices.

Gathering, Proclaiming, Praying, Serving

In the Liturgy of the Word we gather to hear and proclaim the Word of God (‘the Word made flesh’); and in response to the Word, we pray for our world and our service in it.  In our encounter with the Word, we are called to conversion; and in our encounter with ‘the Word made flesh’ our conversion is made possible.

Further Thinking

When we gather for the Liturgy of the Word, what do we expect to hear?

How do we expect to change?  Do we long to see things change in ourselves?

How does Sunday worship transform our lives?

Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, Reading. RG1 3BE   Tel: 0118 957 2197