Walter Brueggeman, in his book, Israel’s Praise, (Foretress Press, Philadelphia, 1988) explores the world-making task of liturgy. He suggests that the words that we use in worship help shape our perception of reality and therefore organizes how we interpret the experiences that we have in our lives.
Note how the words that we use in our daily life affect our perception of reality. We currently live in a world which is dominated by the language of business and technology. Our viewpoint is shaped by references to “the bottom line” and “bytes of information” and “overload.”
Our worldview determines how we interpret the experiences that we have. Someone tries to provide us information that we do not want to hear and we say that we are on overload and shut down. Our child wants to be an artist and we ask what the bottom line is on how she intends to support herself. This, we consider, is the real world.
Liturgy provides an alternate vocabulary and helps us become aware of an alternate set of lenses through which we can interpret our experiences. There is a lot more power to litrugy done well then we often recognize.
