The Economics of Liturgy
If you want to fight economic injustice, go to church.
My wife and I celebrated our 11th anniversary on Saturday.
The day passed almost as it would on any other weekend. We enjoyed a morning outing at the nature center at a large nearby park. I spent the afternoon in a meeting. We ate a simple spaghetti dinner with our children. She wrote me a last-minute card. I bought her a couple of 4-packs of cider. As evening descended on our home, my wife and I began reflecting on how far we’ve come in eleven years. We never could have thought that our life would be so full of love and purpose.
I remember growing up inundated with advertisements and movies that instilled in me the importance of big gifts and celebrations on wedding anniversaries. Often, these messages were directed at men with the implicit message that such large gifts and grand gestures were a mark of faithfulness; their absence must mark a bad marriage.
I admit I felt this pressure early on in our marriage. As a gift-giver by nature, I always felt that my gifts symbolized the strength of our marriage. Over time, however, I have learned to let go of the pressure I used to put on myself. My wife and I have come to see that expensive gifts and grand gestures do not mark faithfulness but ordinary and loving presence over time.
It could be that this is just a byproduct of getting older, but I believe it is more than that. The ordinary liturgy of the church has shaped us into the kinds of people who do not need to mark time and celebration on our own. We already participate in a shared life that has marked times and seasons of celebration for us. (Big gifts and grand gestures are great, by the way, if that’s your thing. Embrace the limits of my personal illustration.)
I can’t help but feel that the economic pressures of seasonal holidays have ramped up post-COVID. I remember shopping at Costco in early September last year. I was shocked that there were no Halloween decorations or costumes on display; instead, aisle after aisle was filled with vibrant Christmas displays. In September. I asked my cashier what had happened to all the costumes because we did not have ours for the kids yet. He replied, “Oh no, those are gone by early August. It’s Christmas season now.” In September.
It used to be that Valentine’s Day was a C-class holiday that only took up a couple of weeks in February. It was known for bad candy, overpriced flowers, and perhaps a modest gift. New Year's has marked a turn toward Valentine’s Day celebrations in recent years, complete with home décor and personal apparel.
Holidays that were once confined to a specific month are now advertised for three or four months before their actual celebration. Holidays that we collectively viewed as less than have now risen in their importance. Across the board, our shared Western holidays have gotten bigger, longer, and more expensive.
Thanksgiving still gets shafted, of course. We are far too busy tracking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales (both that now begin at least a week earlier, if not more) to be concerned about giving thanks.
As creatures who embody space and time, we are inherently liturgical creatures. The opening chapter of Genesis says that God gave us the sun and moon to mark “sacred times, and days, and years” (Genesis 1:14). There is something inherently human about needing a shared calendar to mark our days and reasons for celebration. It is no wonder that every culture in every place has developed shared liturgies – collective rituals often involving some religious worship – to mark our days and celebrations.
I remember talking to an in-law about what it feels like to live in Southern California. One comment stands out vividly in my memory. He said, “The weather here is nice, but without seasons, it’s hard to remember when anything happened. Everything blurs together.” We, by nature, crave the ability to mark time. Without it, our lives and our history become one big meaningless blur.
As Western culture becomes increasingly secular and post-Christian, the liturgical calendar of the Christian tradition has less and less influence with each passing year. Even the average Christian in the West today is likely little familiar with the historic church calendar, as many Christians have opted for a low-church, nontraditional congregation where the Sunday service is viewed as little more than an event that requires only optional participation.
In the absence of the Church's historic liturgy, imposter liturgies of consumption have taken its place. Without liturgies, we become commercialized animals who crave structure and order. The gods of the economy are more than happy to oblige.
As their materialistic followers, we become disciples of greed and participants of unjust economic systems.
In their book Work and Worship: Reconnecting our Labor and Liturgy, theologians Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson express the importance of shared Christian liturgy in resisting unjust economic systems. Without shared Christian liturgy, we allow the world’s counternarratives to shape us instead. Liturgy and economics go hand in hand.
And so, surveying the prophets, Kaemingk and Willson rightly highlight how “the prophets cry out against the corruption of economics, politics, and liturgy. [This] explains why, in one breath, a prophet will criticize sacrifices and taxes, songs and wages, vineyards and temples.”[1] Disciples of unjust economic systems will carry that formation into the sanctuary. In fact, our religious liturgies can become captive to these unjust systems themselves.
Kaemingk and Willson continue,
In ancient Israel and in contemporary America, gathered worship can easily be twisted and manipulated to cover up a wide variety of marketplace sins. Human beings are well practiced at using worship to distract workers from economic depravity and devastation… There are all sorts of ways in which corporate worship can either ignore, excuse, or empower marketplace evil.[2]
The less formative and central our Christian liturgy becomes, the more susceptible we are to moral evil. Kaemingk and Willson quote theologians Stanley Haerwas and William Willimon with this heart-piercing reality:
Bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.[3]
It does not have to be this way, however – not if we’re willing to listen to the saints that have gone before us. As Kaemingk and Willson demonstrate, the early church had a robust understanding of liturgy that followed from their Greek context. They believed liturgy had three purposes: poverty relief, ministry support, and worshipful communion. In other words, a robust Christian liturgy shapes us for faithfulness in all of life; our liturgies should be “theological and civic, spiritual and material.”[4]
A Christian liturgy with this depth will form us into those who reject “the old economic life of anxious grasping and [begin] to practice the new economic life of gracious offering and reception.” In the shared liturgy of the Church, there ought to be a “gracious exchange between God, workers, and all of creation… This is the liturgical economy of God.”[5]
Christian liturgies are often described as a “counter-narrative.” Following Abraham Kuyper, theologian John Bolt describes Christian liturgy as the practice of “God’s called-out and assembled people in which they practice a storied communion with God that loosens their ties with and involvement in the world’s counterstories.”[6]
However, the church's liturgy is more than a counter-narrative; it is also a counter-economic system that confronts unjust economic systems and loudly declares to the gods of this world, “No more!”
Escaping the gods of consumerism is more challenging than I would like to admit. Despite my best efforts, the natural gift-giver in me cannot help but get pulled in. I already have several Christmas presents I’ve purchased for my children hiding in my closet.
Even so, my hope is that as our children are raised to practice historic Christian liturgies, they will learn to participate both in receiving such gifts and generously giving of their own, thus embracing the economy of God’s kingdom that disrupts the economic injustice of this age.
If you want to fight economic injustice, go to church. Anchor yourself to a people who are committed to the historic practices and shared life that our Christian ancestors have practiced for millennia. Learn to receive from others and give generously in return. Participate in the economy of God.
As you do, you might find your allegiance to the gods of consumerism waning. Letting go of our materialistic worship might be painful. But when did justice ever come without sacrifice?
[1] Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson, Work and Worship: Reconnecting our Labor and Liturgy, 123.
[2] Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 128.
[3] Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, quoted in Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 128.
[4] Kaemingky and Willson, Work and Worship, 165-167.
[5] Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, 177.
[6] John Bolt, “All of Life Is Worship? Abraham Kuyper and the Neo-Kuyperians,” in Our Worship, ed. John D. Witvliet and Harry Boonstra, trans. Harry Boonstra et al., 326.