Simply being together “at the same time”

The New York Times Magazine (October 13, 2024) had a great story about the overwhelming number of (constantly) new shows available through Netflix. The author, Willy Staley, noted that a decade ago we had some commonality in what we watched on TV, something to talk about with each other on work breaks or elsewhere. But now, the breadth is enormous and disorienting. The marketing trajectory feeds a perpetual and limitless desire for all that is new, and the streaming business model provides that. Staley says this has “changed the very nature of television. TV once had the single, oppressive goal of amusing as many people as possible at the same time…”

It doesn’t seem such a reach to make some parallels with contemporary liturgies, and the ever-expanding variations on the ‘standardized’ pattern of a Sunday morning eucharist. At the very least, our official ordines allow for variations of texts and elements, which along with the plethora of music choices, ritual movement, visual environment, and language choices make for a varied palette from which to shape the experience of any given parish. In the Anglican traditions (particularly the Episcopal Church in the US), the official printed books now have a series of further text and ritual structures available online with an almost dizzying choice of prayers and music choices. Liturgy is truly, in many places, a curated experience – and not always one managed by those who know why some choices might be better than others for a given community.

I see this variety in teaching seminary classes in liturgy – the places in class where students share reflections and experiences from their own parish liturgy often elicits (polite) gasps because the described experience is so different than their own experience. Differences of rural/urban parishes particularly stand out, but also geographical, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural differences, along with the slippery ‘conservative-liberal’ differences. This is not a new conversation – I’ve been having these conversations with students for more than a decade. It is so prevalent that I often forget there are other experiences and assumptions of pastoral liturgy with different presumptions (and different anxieties).

This morning I was at a parish liturgy – one to which I’ve never been before – which had pretty minimal resources. They do not have lots of people, they clearly do not have lots of money, but they had the basics. They even had a musician (it’s an urban parish after all!), they had books (but no bulletins) and the presumption was that if there were visitors, someone would point out ‘where we are’ in person – which happened repeatedly as there were several visitors. It makes the other side of the experiential conversation more intriguing because of the lack of the commodification of liturgy in its curated diversity. What they offered as a vehicle of prayer, of praise of God, and of our sanctification was simple and unapologetic. But I think what struck me was the sense of contentment – even gratitude – for being able to gather together, pray together, celebrate the eucharist together. There’s nothing startling about that, but in a way it was startling because I realized it had been quite a while since I’d experienced it. This, in turn, made me realize how overwhelming the cultural tendency is toward wanting more, new, bigger, better, different, and the ‘latest’ in liturgical practices. My former colleague Louis Weil used to sing the praises of repetition in liturgy, in ‘learning-by-heart’ the words and gestures and, often, the music of the liturgy until it shaped us, formed us, rather than vice versa. I learned much from a humble, simple worshiping community that sincerity and depth of prayer, welcome to the visitor and comfort in communal continuity, and the recognition of God in our midst are sufficient for the moment. It doesn’t have to be Netflix every Sunday…