Jimmy Abegg – Reflections of Rich

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“This is what liturgy offers that all the razzmatazz
 of our modern worship can’t touch. You don’t go home from church going, “Oh I am just moved to tears.” You go home from church going, ‘Wow, I just took communion and you know what? If Augustine were alive today, he would have had it with me and maybe he is and maybe he did.’” — Rich Mullins

We are a product of what we live. One of the things that I loved most about Rich was he was literally a product of what he lived.

In any good story, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. Liturgy is profound because it paints a pattern— it becomes a compass in a person’s life. Whether daily, weekly, or monthly, hopefully there is enough frequency that it will evoke habits that inspire the people that you are with, and it will invoke personal traits that are more like the fruit of the spirit.

Agitators could say liturgy is just the church inventing a way to keep everybody under control. I have heard people argue that with great ability, and they might win the debate with me, but the same could be said for the Stations of the Cross, which is a historic invention to inspire faithfulness and regularity among Christians—to not just practice their faith, but to come to church and do the Stations of the Cross. It is a physical evidence of something that’s supposed to be taking place internally.

To me, the liturgy is just fundamental instructional ideas. You don’t have to follow it—there are people who love to walk barefooted in the snow. There are people that love to go in the rain without a raincoat. There are many ways to live, but the liturgy can function as a kind of baseline for living as a believer. If we can subscribe to even a small portion of it, liturgy brings something unnoticed to light in your inner life. The way I understand and practice the liturgy is to remind myself of what it must be like to be saintly, or to be humble, or to be meek, or to be righteous.

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