While straightening up the Retreat House a headline in a newspaper left by a guest caught my eye. It announced, “Lutherans worshipping in the fast lane.” A sub-heading offered more clarification: “Express service guarantee: In, out in 45 minutes.” A local church had introduced a streamlined service to meet the perceived needs of the modern world. The pastor was quoted as saying, “people want to worship, but they don’t want to worship long.”

I found the article very perplexing. It is not that I believe there is a standard length of time to which all liturgies should conform. Here at St. Augustine’s our Sunday Liturgy usually goes just over an hour and a quarter; the weekday Eucharist, however, takes only about 35 minutes or so. Lauds and Vespers are even less, and the Little Hours during the day hardly last 10 minutes each. St. Benedict in his Rule even indicates that there should be moderation in the length of the monastic prayer services. There is nothing sacrosanct about any certain length of time for church services.

The disjuncture I experienced with the article has to do with the unexamined assumption behind the so-called “express service.” A member of the congregation observed that the short service was a good idea for the younger people who “have to be out of church in a hurry.” People used to hurry so they wouldn’t be late for church; now they are in a hurry after they get to church. Worship is here not seen as a destination with its own end and purpose. It is only something done along the way, a necessary nuisance best kept to a minimum so as to present the least delay and distraction to some more important objective or destination. Movie theaters have more confidence in the services they offer. They would not think of paring down their features to 45 minutes so their patrons could get out earlier. The point of coming to a theater is to see a movie, and the patrons expect to get their money’s worth. Surely the activity of worship is of no less importance. We should come to church because we want to be in church.

A nun once pointed out to me that prayer takes time and one needs a certain measure of leisure for its practice. Of course, the physical availability of some free time is necessary, and the present pressure on employees to work on Sunday is alarming in this regard. But perhaps more important is the attitude of leisure that we must bring to worship, and this can be missing even when we have the physical time and leisure. Fr. Arthur often had visitors who unexpectedly dropped in on him on days for which he had other plans. He always managed to receive them hospitably and even joyfully. He once explained to me that in order to be gracious in such circum-stances you have to push everything back on your desk and say to yourself, “I have nothing to do today.” Only by creating time and space in this way could he be free to give unexpected guests a warm and genuine welcome. It seems we need to do something similar whenever we come to church or even pray privately: “I have nothing other to do.”

As a student of the Liturgy I am aware that throughout most of Christian history the tendency has been to lengthen, not shorten, public prayer. Generations of Christians prolonged their worship with additions that accumulated over the centuries. In the Lutheran tradition hymns were composed of more than 25 stanzas, and the cantatas of J. S. Bach can last a half hour. From time to time these lengthy accretions have had to be pared back, not just for the sake of time, but so that the primary elements of Christian worship would not be obscured under a too elaborate super-structure.

Nowadays, at least in monastic settings, we give expression to our love of worship not so much by the addition of texts as by the deliberate and meditative pace in which the Liturgy is conducted. In his book My Brothers’ Place George Weckman described it this way: “Monastic worship sounds different because it is slow, generally quiet, and often silent. . . . there are frequent pauses, extended periods of silence, and a lack of haste in all the chants and readings.”

I cannot drop the subject without observing that this has an application to church architecture as well. Our new chapel is designed to have much open or “wasted” space, both vertically and horizontally. As with most monastic churches the seats will be on the side and the middle of the building left largely open. Occasionally we may have to fill the floor space with overflow seating, but most of the time there will be lots of room and no sense of crowding. This is an architectural way of signaling release from the confining concerns and anxieties of life that often leave no time and space for God. The church is to be the ample and unconfined space that is the image of salvation used in Psalm 66: “We went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out into a spacious place.” Here we will not want to hurry on to other things. Here we will gladly take the necessary time to discover that “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Is 40:31).

Sincerely,
Fr. Richard G. Herbel

The Problem is Heaviness

The following is from Tales of a Magic Monastery, a collection of short, imaginative stories by Theophane the Monk (Crossroad Publ. Co.).

Let me tell you something that happened on the last day of my retreat. I told the guestmaster that I didn’t think I’d be able to get back soon because I wouldn’t have the time. He came right back with “The problem is not TIME; the problem is HEAVINESS.”

He turned and went downstairs, returning with a little carpet. “Here take this. It is a magic carpet. If you’ll just sit on it and let go of your heaviness, you can go anywhere you want. It’s not a question of time.”