uncover what makes worship powerful (or not) and use this new understanding to worship in more impactful ways.
All bodies feel. We take in the world around us through sensation, and we respond with emotion. When we come to worship, we can feel happiness, joy, pain, sorrow, anxiety, shame, and many other things both subtle and strong. Good worship recognizes this and finds ways to welcome our whole selves. Our encounters with the spiritual are bodily. Language itself cannot exist in an un-embodied way.203 God became human, took on flesh, and experienced affect just as we do. We are known by God through affect just as we know God through affect.
Good worship helps us feel deeply and express our feelings. This is not new behavior;
examples abound in scripture. In the Psalms, we read about experiences of deep gratitude but also experiences of great anguish: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me” (Ps. 22:14, NRSV). The prophets
demonstrate love and also anger, frustration, and despair. In Jeremiah, we read a heartbreaking response to the suffering of a people, “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart!” (Jer. 4:18, NRSV).
The scriptures are also full of examples of people taking time to attend to their bodies.
Jesus retreats from the crowds to be in prayer. Moses climbs mountains to be in the presence of God. Mary anoints the feet of Jesus. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. People are fed. People receive healing. These are bodily activities and examples of worship. From them we learn that good worship incorporates time and practices that help us attend to our bodies. Both baptism and eucharist focus on bodies—that alone should make this a valued practice. Mindfulness practices or silence incorporated in worship enable a recognition of feelings and sensations, elevating their significance and enhancing the worship experience. Worship leaders pause after a poignant
203 See Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).
sermon or song, take time to breathe before or after prayer, sing extra rounds of a chorus to allow people to enter the rhythm and dance, or use other opportunities present in their own
traditions.204
In the Episcopal church, worship includes bodily activities: people sit, stand, kneel, eat, sing. These things often happen without thinking, without intention, without understanding—
especially when we discount the significance of the body and the power of affect. Meaning emerges from these bodily activities regardless of our understanding and expression. Taking the time to notice, express, and respond to our bodily experiences in worship shapes the meaning in ways that help us behave and speak more like the Body of Christ so that we can impact the world around us in ways that reflect the Kingdom of God, so that we behave in ways that result in the inclusion and well-being of all people.
Most importantly, we learn about God through our bodies and the ways they feel in relation to God. Ritual action is pedagogical especially as it is practiced over time. Patterns of bodily engagement shape us.
In You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of habit, James K.A. Smith writes about the habitual love shapes us over time. Smith argues, “In short, if you are what you love, and love is a habit, then discipleship is a rehabituation of your loves.”205 In a chapter on pedagogy, Smith
204 If meaning emerges from the body, then the way we talk about the body also matters. Good worship avoids language that devalues the body; rethinking and pushing back against texts like,
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” (Matt. 26:41), or “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please” (Gal. 5:17). Scriptures like these and theologies related to them must be treated carefully so they do not perpetuate an unhelpful or harmful dualistic way of thinking that sets the mind and reason above body and emotion.
205 James K A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2016), 19.
describes the Catechesis of the Good Shepard, a Montessori style Sunday school class that takes place every week at St. Mark’s. In this method of learning, children play church—they engage with miniature replicas of the things found in the sanctuary—and through this play, they learn, in their bodies, something about God. “It is a pedagogy that is rooted in the conviction that we pray before we know, we worship before we ‘worldview.’”206 The children are being shaped and learning about God in this play as well as in their participation in the church’s liturgy, as are the adults.
At St. Mark’s, people come to the table every week and kneel at the rail to receive a wafer and a sip of wine. If the relation to God is shaped hierarchically, kneeling might signal or communicate to a congregant that they are to submit to the priest or the cross below which they find themselves. If the relation is shaped penitentially, kneeling could signal or communicate our unworthiness in the presence of God or clerical power. If the relation is shaped by mystery and desire, the liturgical words and practices could help express feelings of being overwhelmed by God’s grace, of being brought to our knees by an experience of sacrificial love. A person who is formed by the latter, who can connect a bodily activity with a message of God’s grace and love and our worthiness to receive, goes into the world in a posture of humility, able to give and receive grace.