One area where I think most protestant denominations, at least that I've been part of, is missing out on is in the area liturgy. I'm assuming Lent falls under "liturgy" as well, but if not, please forgive the error. My question is, can someone post a Lent timeline and what is/is not allowed during that time?

I'm really wanting to increase my understanding of this and it's clear that my background has left me woefully ignorant on the subject. Any good resources? My wife and I, along w/ our closest friends, do a weekly "house church" and would like to start incorporating more liturgy. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Read David Dark and why he often tweets "Liturgy" as a hashtag.

http://www.daviddark.org/

Realizing that liturgy is more than religious ritual is his point and that our lives are liturgy (Everybody worships something). Liturgy is evident and present in every day life and how we interact with the world. I've also watched/read recent messages about drawing a line (correctly or incorrectly) between the secular and religious and that there really is no "secular" world.

James K.A. Smith has a great Q-talk message about this that I enjoyed. Here is the message synopsis:

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The term "secular" is perhaps overused when referring to government, schools, business and western culture in general. But is the secular something "out there?" Or are we all "secular" now? What's changed? And is secularism the last word? Philosopher and theologian James K.A. Smith gives us context for this shift and how Christians can effectively engage it.

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Edit: this video is not a sermon but a message at Q-talks

"THE liturgy" in Orthodox parlance refers to the Divine Liturgy, ie, the service which culminates in Holy Communion.

Liturgy is any rubric for worship. Liturgical worship is just a way to describe something that follows a rubric, though as poster above me pointed out, all denominations have some kind of form they follow.

So, liturgical services in orthodoxy are usually called the divine services and include vespers, orthros (matins) etc.

As far as lent goes... the resurrection was the first holiday of the church and remains the focal point of our entire year. Every week is a microcosm of the annual calendar. Every Wednesday we fast in memory of His betrayal, every Friday we fast and mourn His death, every Saturday is His rest, and every Sunday we celebrate His resurrection. For this reason we don't kneel or prostrate Sundays, because on Sundays we are reminded that we are become sons of God.

In the ancient church people prepared for baptism on Pascha by prayer and fasting, and the faithful joined with them. Numerous ancient texts such as The Didache, the writings of St Justin and St Hippolytus reference to the practice of fasting with those to be baptized. Lent is an outgrowth of this, it's us preparing for the great Passover, because He is our Passover.

For orthodox the Lenten services are in the Lenten Triodion, named for the style of the verses in triads. This service book has all of the hymns, prayers, etc said in all of the divine services starting ten weeks before Pascha and ending with the service of Pascha.

Aside from the actual words of the prayers the main differences during lent are ceremonial things and new or different services. We use different lighting, the church actually stays quite a bit darker during lent (just as we use different lighting in vespers vs orthros vs liturgy). Because the overall spirit of lent is one of anticipation and not celebration, we don't celebrate the liturgy except on sundays, and instead during Sunday we reserve a portion of the gifts for use in a presanctified Liturgy service.

We have other special services that involve readings as the canon of st Andrew or the life of St Mary of Egypt.
http://www.orthodox.net/greatlent/great-canon-of-andrew-of-crete-explanation.html

Also, the services before great lent are all of comparison for us, one good example, one bad. (Pharisee and publican, prodigal son, sheeps and goats). The Sunday before the beginning is the Sunday of forgiveness, and lent begins with a service called forgiveness vespers, so we can enter into the fast with a clear conscience.

We add the prayer of St Ephraim to our morning and evening prayers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_of_Saint_Ephrem

And of course... we fast.
The traditional fasting discipline begins with the Sunday of the publican and Pharisee. The following week we do not fast at all, to remind us to not be like the Pharisee. The following Sunday is meatfare Sunday, and is the last day of meat. The final week before is fast free except for the absence of meat, to clean out eggs, cheese, etc.

Traditionally we fast from all animal products, olive oil, and wine. Animal products includes dairy and eggs, and meat (the exception being shellfish - basically poor people food an antiquity). Olive oil usually covers fried foods as well. Wine is usually interpreted for all liquor. But beer is always ok.

The first three days of lent are typically a "black fast" - no food at all, and we break our fast Wednesday night (tonight) after the first presanctified service. Many people will take a small meal, or uncooked food only as no food for three days is pretty tough.

We eat fish for the feast of Annunciation (3/25) and on the feast of Palm Sunday. And wine and olive oil are eaten on weekends.

Fasting is a long discussion that I'll save later, but it's important we don't become pharisaical about it. The spirit is what matters.

Great Lent ends on Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday. Holy Week is technically separate. The Holy Week services we have today are not particularly ancient, but they are quite beautiful.

You can read about them here
http://www.antiochian.org/1175027131

Summary is:
Monday - commemoration of st Joseph the son of Jacob (as a type of Christ) and parable of the fig tree
Tuesday - parable of the ten virgins
Wednesday - sinful woman who anointed Christ and the service of Holy Unction
Thursday - twelve readings from the gospels about the passion
Friday - no liturgy of any kind. Black fast day. Unnailing vespers and lamentation service - first glimmer of joy
Saturday - my favorite day of the year. Hope and barely restrained joy. Priests wear white, Liturgy in the morning where we celebrate victory over death. We read about Jonah and the whale and sing arise O god and judge the earth (Ps 82:8).

Saturday night - Pascha service begins late and ends in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Then you bless the food and feast!! Bright week is the week after, fast free, all light and joy.

Man I get chills just thinking about it!!!

k2,
Thanks! That's very helpful. Still planning on visiting your church some day. Sounds like it will be a culture shock but if you're representative of the folks there, then I'll take my chances.

To answer the OP question, though, I'm not sure you can incorporate "parts" of liturgical services.

The Orthodoxy Church believes that the priesthood was founded by Christ Himself, just as the Levitical priesthood was. And just as not any person could service as a priest in the Temple, not any person is called to priestly service under the New Covenant. The Divine Liturgy is performed by priests. We see in the NT always that where the apostles went, they appointed people to the priesthood, through ordination and laying on of hands. This apostolic succession is unbroken in the Church. The writings we have from the 1st and 2nd century are clear that within the first generation of the church, and most likely during the apostolic era, the three-tiered clergy structure of bishop, priest, and deacon was already set.

St Clement wrote:

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Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not. For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen.

Let every one of you, brethren, give thanks to God in his own order, living in all good conscience, with becoming gravity, and not going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him. Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death. You see, brethren, that the greater the knowledge that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed.

The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe.

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Thanks. So, under Orthodox reasoning, are house churches looked at unfavorably, or that they are really just more like a Bible study vs an actual "church"?

Places where there is no temple or priest available can do reader services like these. This would be appropriate for a modern day "house church" with no priest.

We also have small missions, which have a priest or a circuit priest, but those are set up to eventually become parishes and exist under the episcopate already.

An orthodox temple has an altar, both are consecrated for worship by a bishop alone. A priest can't found a church.

We believe that when we worship, we worship with the entire Church...that literally wherever the bishop and his flock is mystically constitutes the whole of the Church. When we commune, then, we commune with the whole of the church in the liturgical now - the same Body and Blood as Christ gave the apostles. We are in the upper room. When we participate in the Holy Mysteries we participate with Christ. This relates to the Lenten services; when we participate in them, we participate with Him. And this also sheds light on how we view bishops in their role - acting as Christ, in place and as a type of Him. And He is there with us.

From Orthodox Wiki:

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A bishop is the successor to the Apostles in the service and government of the Church. The bishop thus serves in place and as a type of Christ in the Church. It is the belief of Orthodoxy that Christ is the only priest, pastor, and teacher of the Christian Church. He alone forgives sins and offers communion with God, his Father. Christ alone guides and rules his people. Christ remains with his Church as its living and unique head. Christ remains present and active in the Church through the Holy Spirit.

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Dumpster Fire said:

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Realizing that liturgy is more than religious ritual is his point and that our lives are liturgy (Everybody worships something). Liturgy is evident and present in every day life and how we interact with the world. I've also watched/read recent messages about drawing a line (correctly or incorrectly) between the secular and religious and that there really is no "secular" world.

James K.A. Smith has a great Q-talk message about this that I enjoyed.

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I'm a fan of James KA Smith. I subscribe to his quarterly Comment magazine. Cracks in the Secular, which seems to be the basis of the talk you posted, was the Fall 2014 issue. I remember the story of the painting he mentioned. If I remember correctly, the portion of the painting that was cut off was simply blank canvas in which the curators didn't think it was "part of" the whole painting.
https://www.cardus.ca/comment/print_issues/4269/cracks-in-the-secular/

I'm of a similar mindset to you. I grew up Catholic however I wouldn't say I was a practicing Catholic. Just attended that's all.

Now I attend a baptist church and I wish Lent was something we observed. I'll do a 40 day study and reflection leading up to Easter but it's not formal and just on my own.

I'll take some pics of the service book tonight. We start with public confession and absolution. I would start there.

Hold please!

I'd PM you but you're a lolpoor with no stars -- we just finished the first presanctified Liturgy of Lent. If you want to visit, next Wednesday would be good. Presanctified is one of the prettiest and orthodoxy-est services.

AstroAg17 said:

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If anyone feels like this is a derail, I can start a new thread on this, but I'd like to discuss that video.

The presenter asserts that there is a conflict between a desire to believe in something more and the secularism he describes. I don't agree.

For a person attempting to be reasonable, desire has no impact on belief. I want there to be more out there. So do a lot of other atheists on here (I'd argue that they all want that, if you ask the question right). That simply is not a relevant consideration in the question of what we believe is supported by evidence.

Hope and belief are independent, ideally. We often fail at this in our lives, and believe things without reason simply because we want to, but that's a failure of our ability to reason, not a failure of a consistent philosophy.

So if religion is going to fill the gap between yearning for more and belief as the speaker suggests, nothing less than evidence and argument is required. But, it's the perceived failure of religion to meet this criterion that is cited as the cause of the secularism in the first place. This makes religion ill suited for the task.

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I don't have anything really to say that can convince (or provide evidence/argument) for Christianity other than my own experience; which leads to the never ending cycle between hope and belief and religion never satisfying them (If I read you right).

But, as a Christian who believes that there is profound eternal beauty and meaning in all of life and all people, I like the video and JKAS' writings (among others) that seem to battle the belief or idea that Christians should withdraw from the world and not engage. As if there are only two options of 1) assimilation and losing your religion (YEAH REM!) or 2) withdrawing completely to hold on to our truth/belief structure.

Here is another video of an actual sermon by Tim Keller about the same kind of tension between Christians and living in the "unbelieving" world: (It's a bit longer so just fyi)



And Liturgy is how we worship whom we follow by living as he commands and with desires like his.

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For a person attempting to be reasonable, desire has no impact on belief.

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I don't think it's possible to stop your desires from shaping your beliefs. I recently read a book about negotiation and it talks about how all our decisions are emotional. We think we are logical and rational but truthfully we are all irrational. Otherwise we would mostly agree on things if we were simply following logic.

Nice post Astro.

First off, I want to reiterate that the conflict between the need to intellectually believe something, and the emotional coping with the desire for something more, is medidated on very well in Nick Cave's "Into my arms." The song uses the love of a woman to illustrate the point, but I think that the overall conflict there applies generally.

Here is my analysis on that song:

https://texags.com/forums/15/topics/2694870

More on your question in a minute.

There is a path of thought about knowledge that was a theme of the Enlightenment that basically argues our best hope to understand the universe, not only the physical universe as it exists today, but the really big questions like what the universe is made up of, where did it begin, and why are we here, is going to be best understood through scientific experimentation and rational analysis.

Our experience in finding enough answers here has been mixed. We better understand the current state of the physical universe. However, we are far, far from really grasping what the hell is going on. Every time we make a discovery, it provides a hell of a lot more questions than answers, and we start to come up with plausible "scientific" answers that are simply offensive to logical thought or rational analysis.

One part of the argument here is that we should be more humble about our intellectual abilities. We are unable to put forward good models that describe everything that happens in the universe. We are not able to answer the question of why we exist. We have difficulties with things like consciousness, and the reason why humans have this underlying desire for something more / mystical.

The evidence that there is something out there that is more is sufficiently strong to support belief. You are not going to find that evidence through scientific experimentation, but even that methodology has limits when we start to get into the metaphysical stuff.

I would submit that there is a difference between when we "believe things without reason simply because we want to" and considering things that are outside the realm of traditional science, like emotion, spirituality, desire, the beauty of the human mind / heart, etc., as potential evidence that there is more to life than equations.

tl;dr

You state that religion has failed to provide evidence and argument to support belief. I supplant that we have been unable to provide scientific evidence to prove the existence of God.* It seems that the practice of rejecting all other evidence that is not purely scientific that shapes your worldview. This practice is a kind of stubbornness that limits the realm of possible answers, and, for many, has lead to a less fulfilled life.

*(However, we have tons of theories out there adopted by science that we cannot provide scientific evidence to prove).

Re: AI

It is possible that godel's theorems also show that mechanism is false, that AI in a programmed (i.e. formal and consistent) sense will never be able to become like a human mind.

Yeah I'm not sure how that distinton becomes relevant. Even a learning ai is deterministic I think.

AstroAg17 said:

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What theories are these? String theory?

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Gravity
What the hell is gravity, and where does the force come from? Is there such thing as a gravitron? What does it look like? Where does it come from?

We know gravity is there. Why is gravity there?

Sleep / Hiccups / Etc
There are a whole lot of things that our bodies do that we don't understand why they do it.

Energy
What is the universe really made of? We understand atoms. What is up with all of this dark matter and dark energy? What are these? What are they made of? Where are they?

Consciousness
What is this thing? How do we define it. When is it permanently lost?

What is up with time and light?
Yes, we know that it dilates with speed. Why? "The speed of light is constant for all observers." What the everloving hell? Why is C the most powerful force in the universe? Wouldn't it be more logical that individuals could experience light at different speeds. Why is this true, and why was the universe built this way?

What is the quantum wave?
Do you really think we have this thing figured out, understand why observing it impacts its behavior, why it acts the way that it does? We are just babies in this area.

Again, I go back to my brewer example. Around 1550, humans started to perfect the art of making beer. Take grain, boil this much water, add it to that much water and seep grain, run that off, boil it, put it in an open vat in an underground cave, high chance of success.

Centuries later, we started to figure out why all of these processes made the best beer. We could explain that the reason you wanted to seep grain at 152 degrees for an hour is that the amalayze enzyme from the malted grain broke down carbohydrates, which are larger molecules, into sugars, which are smaller molecules, which can be eaten by the yeast that has taken up residence on the walls in your fermentation cave.

When it comes to physics, and some of the more complex biological stuff, I think we understand what quite a bit. We understand why very less often.

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Logic and reason are the more general things we use to evaluate the world. The things (emotion, spirituality, desire, etc...) you've listed don't really have a place in my fundamental toolbox.

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I would submit that logical and rational analysis of where these things come from (human love of music, human desire for "something more", the nature of love / altruism) are perfectly acceptable subjects for trying to understand the larger metaphysical questions of "why are we here" and "who are we".

Taking them out of your toolbox limits the universe of potentially acceptable worldviews.

I guess the question is, why take them out?

Eh, you get my point.

We accept a whole lot of things as true even if we don't understand them.

abiogenesis is a good one to reflect on here.

You say that this theory is the simplest theory that is most consistent with all the observations, but what you mean is it is the most consistent with all scientific observations, outside of the larger meaning of life questions.

We have not been able to replicate abiogenesis in the lab, although we are trying pretty damn hard, yet many believe that it is most likely.

But, abiogenesis does nothing to tell us why humans have that strong desire for something more, for instance, or where consciousness comes from.

If we expand our realm of possibilities outside of the confines of scientific observation, different possible explanations show up which could potentially explain both the physical and metaphysical questions.

The reality is, we don't know that abiogenesis is fact, even though it is taught as such. It might be, it might not. The argument is, the fact that life seems so empty and meaningless to a particular person is not irrelevant to the question of whether abiogenesis is true. Refusing to consider it as part of the issue is to pre-suppose a conclusion.

AstroAg17 said:

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but you listed observations which aren't predicted by theory.

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Eh, I would say that I listed a bunch of questions that show our theories are built on assumptions / observations that we do not fully understand.

Here is a book i'm reading by James KA Smith regarding liturgy in our culture. (Sorry to break up the other discussion)

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Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans-as Augustine noted-are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome Desiring the Kingdom, as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers.

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AstroAg17 said:

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I'd argue that abiogenesis answers some of the deeper questions (who are we, why are we here) pretty succinctly, by the way. We're just something molecules do.

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The point is, why does that answer feel so empty? Does the fact that this answer "We're somthing molecules do" feels so empty have any bearing at all on its validity?

Pair that with the insatiable desire of men to do something more. Most are not content to be just "something that molecules do". We want to make a broader impact.

One route is to dismiss the fact that these feelings and desires exist and are largely universal as irrelevant to trying to understand the nature of the universe and our realities. The argument is that they do not have to be.