I invite you to make fuller use of our five senses in worship and to infuse them into the elements of your services of worship.
In this series, each column–“‘Do You Hear What I Hear?'” or “A Sound of Silence”, “A Wink of Color”, “Keeping in Touch”, “A Whiff of Faith” and “Tasting the Holy”–lifts up one sense. Its core is simple: Worship is a total experience which involves the whole person. However, worship is as complex as the depths of feeling and the holy connections it evokes. Woven together, environment and ritual invite worship to be an active response to an active God.
I am as intrigued by this fabric of worship as by the mystery which is worship. I also am willing to play the fool if this brainstorming leads to your own musing and the expansion of your worship parameters.
Two life-altering physical changes color my understanding of worship, bringing a fuller awareness of the role of our senses in worship. As sight diminished, I grew more finely attuned to the communication of hugs and touch and to an inner sensing of presence. Unable to sing and speak without discomfort, I listened to the sounds of worship. Now exploring worship from the pew after twenty-one years in parish ministry, I admire its treasury of sensory resources.
We are multi-dimensional people for whom worship happens at many levels. Our worship is both solitary and communal. It proceeds from a scent which evokes memories of early faith-growing. It commences with a chance meeting of the affirming eye of another, a quiet companion on the spiritual path.
Most worshipers shrink from a barrage of polysyllabic sermons or over-simplified droning. Services become equally prosaic if pastoral prayers lapse into the same themes. Too much stimulation threatens to bring on chaos, to dissolve the order which our liturgies offer and to cancel the delicate waking of the sense of the holy. So, as worship leaders, we develop the art of creating spaces for the Divine mysterium. We design worship to balance as a breeze refreshes a summer day.
II
One way to view worship is as a series of continuum. At first, these appear contradictory. However, worship components lift up a unifying “both/and” image.
As worship leaders, we try to maintain professional symmetry between being participant and guide. Entering into the spirit of worship, we become part of the worshiping community. We engage our congregations as partners on the worship journey. However, the extremes of moving into solitary worship ourselves or turning a service into a worship production separate us. We remain “present for” our congregations to assist their worship.
When entering the sanctuary, worshipers close off the external world. Respite is also a time of preparation for being in the world. Worshipers enter the church as individuals. We enter disconnected and reconnect; we enter separate from and find unity; we enter alienated (in sin) and leave at-one (in forgiveness). The order of worship guides us through this multi-leveled process.
The invocation calls God to be present. Praise–the Psalms, hymns and gifts of monies, flowers and talents–draws us away from ourselves. We remember God. Praise focuses us upon God, yet it also brings us more fully in touch with our own presence.
Interplay of the communal and the individual shapes another continuum. Prayer, scripture and sermon imply dialogue. A time for greetings, unison responses and announcements renews horizontal relationships with neighbor. While often said together, confession essentially is alone–coming to reality, admitting the weak places in our lives, asking forgiveness. We address the assurance of pardon to the whole congregation; its message speaks to individuals. That we are loved and are lovable echoes in fellowship as we name each other and reaffirm worth as persons.
Within this mystery, worship, we bond together. Worship leads us to stretch beyond ourselves. We become in touch with the incarnate God. Worship moves worshipers toward being one-with or atonement.
Worship provides an intricate pattern of receiving and giving with varieties as broad as minds can create and senses can absorb. Worship carries us to relief and thanksgiving, the readiness and willingness to give it–life, work, relationships–another try. Fortified and grateful, we dedicate ourselves by giving of ourselves. The conclusion of worship brings a blessing as well as a charge, both an ending and a commencement.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, CSS Publications. From Dallas Brauninger. 1992 Series, “Come to Your Senses,” Worship Environment Column in EMPHASIS: A Preaching Journal for the Parish Pastor.
