I preached about repetition yesterday. I said the way to make other people's words, like scripture and printed prayers, our own was through repetition. I said that's why we repeat things during worship, like the Lord's Prayer and the doxology and certain verses of scripture. I said children need repetition so that they can learn and be involved in worship without having to read.
When I was growing up, my pastor always opened the worship service with "This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." That's now deeply ingrained in my soul because I heard it so many times. It's now a part of me and not just someone else's words. So I always open the worship services I lead with it. I want it to become deeply ingrained in the people I lead as much as it is ingrained in me.
After worship, one person asked, "When does repetition become brainwashing, and when does it become simply repeating empty words?" Good questions. I suppose, in a way, our repetition in worship is a bit like brainwashing. Are we brainwashing our children to think that God created the day and we should rejoice in it? I do want the children in our congregation, and the adults, too, for that matter, to know that God loves them. And I will repeat it as much as it takes for that realization to wash over them, over their souls as well as their brains.
Today I started to wonder, not just what words I repeat, but what actions and thoughts do I repeat? I remember someone saying that the people who watch Wheel of Fortune every night get really good at learning how to turn over letters. Is that what I want to repeat? Is that what I want ingrained in my soul? What about pausing throughout the day to pray, or greeting everyone I met throughout the day with a kind word?
What do you repeat most often? What are you washing into your heart and mind?
1. It's only brainwashing if I don't know you're doing it. In worship, we keep everything transparent.
ReplyDelete2. It may be "empty words" sometimes, but that's my issue, not the issue of the repetition. I remember one service where the Apostles' Creed came alive for me, but it wouldn't have happened if I had repeated it, Sunday after Sunday, for years.
Richard Francis, Vail and Westside Iowa
Thanks, Richard. I like that understanding of brainwashing. And your ideas on "empty words" helps me as I'm thinking about the prayer of confession. I was wondering if we really change because of it or if it's just something we do in worship. We might not change every time, but the practice of doing it is important.
ReplyDeleteJust ran across this in C.S. Lewis, _Reflections on the Psalms_:
ReplyDelete[In worship] the duty exists for the delight. When we carry out our "religious duties" we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last the water comes, it may find them ready. I mean, for the most part. There are happy moments, even now, when a trickle creeps along the dry beds; and happy souls to whom this happens often.
I like the C.S. Lewis quote. Reminds me of a quote by Richard Foster who says something like the spiritual disciplines put us in a place where God can connect with us.
ReplyDelete