The Courtesy of Liturgy

"Liturgy is not, as some suppose, aesthetics. It is courtesy. And theology. It is being mindful that there are others to whom God speaks and who risk their lives in an answer. It is the gracious acknowledgement that others in the family also have needs and rights, and that I am neither the only nor the favorite child…

It is God’s will that none of us do any of this alone.
Individuals don’t “make up” the community, they are produced by it.
Helmer Ringgren told us bluntly: “The psalms were not written for private use.” We were not invited, it seems, to a private audience with our God.

Left to ourselves, we are never more selfish than when we pray. With God as the Great Sympathizer, the Great Giver, the Great Promiser we go to our knees and indulge every impulse for gratification.

Liturgy pulls our prayers out of the tiresome business of looking after ourselves and into the exhilarating enterprise of seeing and participating in what God is doing."


-------Eugene H. Peterson
“Answering God”