Worship & Liturgy
Worship
Old Mariners’ Church, enriched by its spiritual association and historic traditions, welcomes you. Whatever your church, whatever your faith, whatever your nation, we welcome you to this Church which serves as a “House of Prayer for All People.”
Worshippers are encouraged to observe their personal Churchmanship practices; Mariners’ tradition is to stand to sing, sit to listen, and kneel to pray.
Ceremony is not essential to the Gospel, but it is a help in doing “all things decently and in order.”
In our formal worship, we use the beauty of the outward forms of ritual, music, language, vestments, symbols and ceremonial — parts of God’s creation — as well as the joyous sincerity of contrite and open hearts to receive the Word of God, to distribute the Sacraments, and to give Praise to God for our Salvation and all other blessings.
“There remains to the church only one unique and peculiar responsibility: the conduct of public worship. If the church does nothing other than to keep open a house, symbolic of the homeland of the soul, where in season and out women and men, girls and boys come to reenact the memory and vision of who they are, it will have rendered society and each of us a service of unmeasurable value. So long as the church bids us to participate in the liturgies of the Christian faith community it need not question its place, mission or influence in the world.” (John Westerhoff)
Liturgy
Anglican liturgy can often feel like the Sunday morning work-out of the people of God, especially if this tradition is new to you. There are times to sit, stand, kneel, bow, cross yourself, walk, and so on. "Spiritual aerobics," some may say. That should not surprise us. The word “liturgy” is derived from the Greek word for “work of the people”. We are called upon to be participants in worship, not an audience to be entertained.
Jesus did say “do this in memory of me.” So Anglicans DO things in their services. And the “do” of Jesus is plural – so we do things TOGETHER, as a community. The community is bigger than this Sunday morning church congregation – in fact it is bigger than the local area. There are Anglicans essentially doing the same all around the world. And we’ve been effectively doing this (along with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and others) for a hundred thousand Sundays. Imagine it as one big community across space and time – doing worship.
Moreover, our connection is not merely with Christians through the ages, it is with heaven itself. "Therefore with Angels and Archangels, we laud and magnify Your glorious Name..." We worship with Angels and Archangels and all the heavenly host. In worship there is a lifting up of our selves, our church, the Church, toward heaven; and simultaneously there is heaven coming to us--an incarnational gift of Sacramental connection. Christ and His kingdom comes to us, and we feed on Him in our hearts by faith. We live in Him and He lives in us.
Nevertheless, when first encountered, Anglican liturgy can appear foreign, counter-cultural. But persevere. We shouldn’t be surprised it appears counter-cultural because our culture is individual, “me”, instant, “now”. Even the spirituality often on offer follows the individual, instant approach: "what do I get out of it?" is often heard. Anglican liturgy is first about honoring God because He is worthy and our job is to praise Him. We are to praise Him even if we don't "feel" special or "experience" nice emotions all the time.
And yet, even though we are to worship God regardless of what anyone else thinks or what "I" may think I get out of it (the Lord God is our audience, no one else); that is, even though the Divine Liturgy is more about God than me, it is also about transformation: bread, wine, me, our community, our culture and world. In this picture our heavenly Father doesn’t change us and then we do liturgy (that too may happen). In this picture I join the community that does liturgy and find, little by little (and sometimes by a surprising leap) the Lord God changes me.
Anglican liturgy is action which includes the timeless words of Scripture. Too often it is treated like mere words - with some illustrating actions. Liturgy is a discipline that takes time and patience to learn and grow into. Nevertheless, expect to grow, expect to worship.
