In the world in which Christianity emerged—a Greek speaking, Roman and later Byzantine political and cultural environment—a liturgy (leitourgia) was an act done by a benefactor for the sake of the people’s common life. It was also closely related to religious rituals performed in the temples that benefactors might support. Two senses of the term, then—a (religious) work of the people and a work done for the good of the public came together in Christian usage. That usage suggests the instinct of Christians that in the Eucharist, two things happen: God is thanked and praised, and the church joins in God’s own activity to do something on behalf of the world. God, the one true benefactor of the world, has done a work for the world in Jesus Christ, loving it, saving it, and calling it to communion with God. As Robert Taft has put it, in the deepest sense, the one true liturgy is God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the Eucharist, the Christian community joins in that work made present to it again and participates in God’s love enacted, made real in the world. The church, in fact, both commits to working together in the great benefaction of God’s gift of love through Christ, and is empowered to be part of it. In this way, Christian faith is renewed again and again in the Eucharist, not simply as a set of ideas to be held, but a form of life to be lived.
We can see, then, how the terms ritual, sacrament, and liturgy finally converge on a basic idea for Christians: that through its Eucharistic thanksgiving to God, rendered through the hearing of Scripture and the eating of sacred food, something is not just recalled, but enacted; not just talked about appreciatively but brought to pass again. We don’t just express beliefs in a dramatic way in the Eucharist, but we become, like our young man who acted a certain way until he became who he acted, a people of God who are ourselves a continuing part of what God is doing in the world out of love.
Of course, Christians do not do this perfectly, or immediately, or easily, and there are moments in the liturgy when we acknowledge our own failure to enter fully into participation in the one liturgy of God who is Jesus Christ. We will turn to that element, and all the other elements of the liturgy of the Eucharist soon enough. For the moment, it is worth making sure that we have grasped this central point: that the Eucharist is a ritualization, through the eating of sacred food, of an identity into which we ourselves are called by the grace and invitation of the One who has made us and is the deepest end of our desire.
St. Augustine, a great theologian of the Western church, was once reflecting with the newly baptized on the idea in Christian Scriptures that the church is “the Body of Christ.” Augustine pointed to the bread and wine on the altar and said to the newly baptized:
If it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members, it’s the mystery meaning you that has been placed on the Lord’s table.… It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent.… So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make that Amen true.… Be what you can see, and receive what you are.3
A very similar sentiment is expressed in more contemporary terms by Robert Taft, an Eastern rite Catholic scholar of liturgy. Taft said:
If the Bible is the Word of God in the words of [human beings], the liturgy is the deeds of God in the actions of those men and women who would live in [God].… The purpose of baptism is to make us cleansing waters and healing and strengthening oil; the purpose of Eucharist is not to change bread and wine, but to change you and me: through baptism and eucharist it is we who are to become Christ for one another, and a sign to the world that is yet to hear his name. That is what Christian liturgy is all about, because that is what Christianity is all about.4
With all this in mind, we turn now to the environment, structure, and texture of the Eucharistic liturgy itself, for the way in which we enact in liturgy both thanksgiving for the love of God and embodiment of the love of God is through the specific prayers, gestures, words, and actions of the rite. In this book, we will focus our reflections about the sacramental liturgy of the Eucharist on the rite—the specific ritual form—that it takes in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the authorized liturgical text of the Episcopal Church, and on volume 1 of Enriching Our Worship, one of the supplemental liturgical resources that are also authorized for use in the Episcopal Church. The understanding that we seek of the liturgy is aimed, in the end, not at being informed about the liturgy, but being ready to be formed by it, to embody the love of the One who first loved us.
The Sacred Geography of the Liturgy
There is a great variety of spaces in which the liturgy occurs. We will not even begin to attempt to describe the differences among the many architectural styles of churches in East or West, but we can say something about the centers of the sacred space. Those centers are the key to the sacred geography of the liturgy, even though the centers are themselves arranged in various ways within the room.
The centers of liturgical space are three: the place where the Scriptures are read, the place where new members of the community of faith are initiated, and the place where the community gathers to eat its sacred food. In short, the centers of the sacred geography are the Ambo, the Font, and the Table. The liturgy not only occurs within them but reinforces their significance in the process.
The Ambo is the place from which the Scriptures are read and, perhaps, the sermon is preached. In some churches, particularly those built in recent years, the Ambo is a single lectern, podium, or standing desk; in older churches, there will often be more than one such piece of furniture that serve together as this liturgical center. Perhaps the Scriptures will be read from one and the sermon delivered from the other. Since the hearing of the Word and the preaching of the Word are linked, we will talk about the Ambo here in the singular.
The Ambo stands in the midst of the people, a symbol of Christian life as marked by responsiveness to God. We are hearers of the Word, listening in our sacred texts for the Word of God to be spoken: calling, coaxing, commanding, instructing, encouraging, judging, renewing. Some Christians—only a few, historically speaking, and restricted largely to the modern era—take the Bible literally. For most Christians the Bible is the Word of God in human words. Strictly speaking, Jesus alone is the Word of God, in whose life we witness the gracious call to a transformed life of gratitude and care for others, and the forgiveness of sin. Yet it is the Bible that speaks of Jesus as the Word, and so the Bible is the Word of God because it bears witness to that Word who is Jesus Christ, and it reveals God’s care and call to us. Christians do not simply direct their own lives and destinies but orient themselves toward God as those who listen, receive, and obey the commands of God as the law of life, the outlines of a life well lived, the path to human flourishing as God intends for us.
The Font is linked to the Word, as in fact all three of the centers are to each other. The Font is the receptacle that holds the water by which new members of the community of God-followers are initiated. Some are small and off