What I learned from attending worship at an Orthodox church
It was smelly, long, painful, and I found it utterly refreshing.
In 2018, I was on sabbatical for three months. I visited seven different church worship services during that time, and the one that impacted me the most was to an Orthodox Church. The priest of the church and I were in a Clergy Leadership Program together. It was a pastoral education program, and our cohort met from 2015-2017. I grew to appreciate the priest very much.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Orthodox church, it has a legitimate claim to be the oldest Christian denomination. Orthodox Christians suggest that the Roman Catholic Church broke away from them. While they are quite similar to Catholics, there are also many differences.
During my sabbatical, I also visited a Catholic mass, and I found it mostly familiar to my Protestant worship service. The Orthodox worship service, however, was a whole new ballgame. I want to describe the Orthodox church for you a bit more in detail because there was an idea that struck me that day, an idea that I want to share with you.
The first thing I noticed was the numerous times throughout the Orthodox service that they used incense. I like smells. But I struggled a bit with the smell of incense, which I suspect was frankincense. I wonder if they can use other smells such as fresh bread?
Incense was not the only way Orthodox worship was so different. The only technology they used was a couple microphones. There were no musical instruments. Zero. Instead there was a small call-and-response choir, positioned near the back of the room. The choir called and responded throughout the entire 2 hour and 15 minute service. Sometimes we would sing with them.
Did you notice I wrote that the service was 2 hours and 15 minutes? Also I would venture a guess that 75% of that time we were standing. That included a period of about 45 minutes of uninterrupted standing during communion at the end of the service.
Worship also included lots of kneeling and bowing and kissing. Anytime the liturgy mentioned the name of God, they made the sign of the cross. The liturgy said the name of God a lot!
The service followed a prayer book which was available in the pew. I was constantly flipping pages, thinking I found the right spot, and then getting totally lost, and flipping pages again. Afterwards my friend the priest told me that the whole time I was in the wrong section of the book!
The service concluded with communion. I was not allowed to participate in either Catholic or Orthodox communion, because you must be a member of their churches, and I respect that. So I observed from my seat.
At the Orthodox church, I had never seen anything like it. Participants went forward in a single-file line. Deacons held a napkin taught, right under each participant’s chin so as not to drip a single drop of the blood of Christ. The priest had a huge goblet, into which the bread was soaking in the wine. He then dipped a spoon into the goblet, ladled out a piece of wine-soaked bread, and spoon-fed it into each participant’s mouth. Person by person by person.
Meanwhile the choir in the back was repeating one line over and over, slowly, chant-like, “This is the body of Christ, the fountain of eternal life for you.” The congregation joined the choir in singing for the entirety of communion. I think we must have sung that line at least 50 times, maybe more. My feet hurt, my back hurt, and I admit that I got to a point where I wanted it to be done.
And you know what I thought? It was actually refreshing.
It was long, smelly, and made my back and feet hurt from all the standing. It was confusing at times, beautiful at others, and somewhat hard to follow. Yet I found it refreshing. Why?
Because the Orthodox Church is what they have been for centuries, and they stick to that. Furthermore, every single element of worship carries significance. From the incense to the candles to the kissing, and the liturgy and the icons and the spoon-feeding, all of it has a theological underpinning. There is a beauty to the depth and symbolism of all. I found that super-refreshing.
I get it that other people might find Orthodox worship very distracting. That’s okay. To be honest, my feeling of finding it refreshing stems from a couple places. First, the priest is my friend. I had a personal connection. Second, I am a pastor, and my feelings were impacted by that. Let me explain.
A pastor in the Orthodox church doesn’t have to make sure the PowerPoint is good, or that he has great videos, or inspiring illustrations in his sermons. There is no pressure to have really awesome worship services to reach people who could just as easily go to the ultra-cool church down the road. It seems to me that the Orthodox church doesn’t need to worry about the consumer-minded culture of their people. That was a breath of fresh air to me.
That is the idea I want to share with you. We Americans are steeped in a consumer culture, and we bring that to church. But we should be on guard against our consumerism. A consumer is one who chooses between a multitude of options as to what they like, and they select what they like, and they consume it. The focus is on them. The Orthodox church, in how it worships, assaults this notion of the consumer as the focus. Clearly Jesus is the focus.
We low-church protestants tend to give high-church liturgical worship a bad rap. We say that we don’t see high liturgy anywhere in the New Testament. The reality is that when I read the New Testament, I also don’t see the kind of worship that non-liturgical churches like ours practice. What worship is acceptable to Jesus? Probably all of it, if he is glorified, his word is preached, and people are encouraged to be faithful to God, with an opportunity for the sacraments.
I saw Christ honored in every single one of the churches I visited during my sabbatical. Jesus was glorified at the megachurch, and at the small church. He was glorified at the liturgical churches, and he was glorified at the churches with worship services like my own church. I saw a theme in all the churches I visited: worship should help us stop being self-focused consumers, and reshape us to be God-focused disciples of Jesus.
My book Flourishing in Community: A Theology of Togetherness is available at Wipf & Stock and on Amazon. Follow the book’s account on Instagram.