transformation | the gospel side

Part 2 of a series on the Daily Office

How is one “remolded” from within? How are people “transformed”? It helps to know a bit about the word we translate “remold” or “transformed.” The original Greek word is “metamorpho.” We get “metamorphosis” from it. “Morphing” entered the public consciousness in the 1990’s in the children’s show, “The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers,” in which teenagers had the power to transform, accessing super powers to save the world from alien invasion. There is also a DC Comics superhero by the named Metamorpho who is so transformed that, unlike most superheroes, he cannot return to his pre-changed state.

The problem with “morphin’” as a pop-culture phenomenon is that the Power Rangers gave us the silly idea that morphing is something that we could do ourselves and do in an instant…and a change that could be undone just as easily. Scripture paints a different picture. In the New Testament “Metamorpho” is only used three times: Once of Jesus who is “morphed” at the transfiguration. The second is in Romans 12:2. The third is in 2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

In both places Paul uses “metamorpho” to refer to followers of Jesus the word is in the passive voice – the action of transformation does not happen by us rather it happens to us. In both places it is in the second person plural, “y’all” – In other words the “transformation” is for the whole church as a community, rather than merely for the rare super-hero or super-saint. In both places being “remolded” presumes a life-time of faithfulness rather than the instantaneous appearance of transformation, such as Jesus’ transfiguration or the Power Rangers. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, “metamorpho” is the process of becoming like Jesus: “being transformed” (by the Holy Spirit) “into the same image (Jesus), from one degree of glory to another” (we become progressively more like Him). These two usages of “morphing” leave us with three principles: 1) Transformation is a work of God’s grace that happen to us rather than by us, 2) it is for the whole community, 3) it occurs over a lifetime…in other words, through repetition.

Interestingly enough, the power of repetition to change us is exactly the idea the Anglicanism was founded on. The concern driving Archbishop Cranmer, assembler of the first Book of Common Prayer, was how to make disciples of Jesus in a nation in which the king had just dissolved the monasteries and their communal life of prayer. Archbishop Cranmer, in the Preface to his first edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1549) set forth the following goals to course-adjust the worship of the English church, freeing it from medieval papal innovations:

Combine the seven books necessary for communion, daily prayer services, and scripture readings into one book for use by all Christians (rather than just the clergy). That way the church would “need no other books for their public service, but this book and the Bible.” Worship, thereby, would be “by the book” – a book of shared prayers. That book would be…
Understandable – rather than the “holy language” of Latin, the bible and the prayer book would be read in the language of the people so that “…they might understand and have profit by hearing.”
Common: Everyone in the community would be united by this set of scripturally constructed prayers prayed together that “…the whole realm shall have but one use.”
Scriptural: “The whole Bible (or the greatest pare thereof) should be read over once in the year.”

Thomas Cranmer also articulated the idea that scripturally-immersive “common prayer” is the ancient and original method God had used to form the people of God and was “…agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers”

To the surprise of many Episcopalians, Archbishop Cranmer’s vision for the church and Christian life was not the weekly Eucharist, but the Daily Office: The services of Morning and Evening Prayer. Cranmer, imagined a life in which Christians would meet daily to read and pray the Word of God together as a community in order to live as God’s Word in the community. In the services of Morning and Evening Prayer we read the Bible every day, each year, for the rest of our lives with the result that we would live story-formed lives. As old record albums had grooves cut in them for the needle to follow, Christians lives deeply cut in the scriptures have grooves in our souls that make our lives sing Jesus to the world. The scriptures and the ancient prayers based upon those scriptures form a daily routine grooving the patterns of Jesus into our lives, transforming us into the image of Christ through a pattern that we surrender ourselves to – an immersion in the scriptures deeply permeates our souls s0 that when tough times come we go into layup mode-automatically channeling the stories, cadences, and rhythms of the presence of God.

What might we be like if Christians were so formed and immersed in the scriptures that we had the time in the scriptures that Larry Bird had in shooting jump shots? I have a feeling that we might be like Metamorpho-the super hero so transformed he could never return to his former state.

We are, each of us, being shaped by something…always being conformed into the image of something. What is it you are being formed into? What if we were shaped by daily immersion in the Bible? What if we read it, prayed it, and did it together, as a group? My guess is that we would be, as Paul described, “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” A daily ritual such as the Daily Office is a chance to have a “warmup routine,” a familiar pattern that conforms us to Christ by immersing us in the scriptures. When embraced over time it gives us the ability to, like Larry Bird with a basketball, get to places spiritually we could never get another way.

When the subject of worship “style” comes up, people generally start getting antsy. We stop listening and begin forming our objections. The young among us say, “I can worship any way I like.” The more mature, recognizing the self-centeredness of statements like this, will rightly counter with Paul’s limitations on Christian liberty, (1 Cor. 10:23-33) but go on to say, “How we worship is optional, subject to the preferences of the unbeliever, and not mandated by Scripture.” Whether or not that is true will be the subject of a later post.

Let us suspend those arguments for a moment and ask why worship matters… Passages of Scripture that immediately come to mind include the first two commandments, the Psalms, the practice of Jesus both in private and corporate worship (In the gospels we often see Jesus in the synagogue, temple, & private prayer. Jesus begins his ministry at Baptism and ends it with instituting the Lord’s Supper before going out to pray on his way to the Cross to lay down his life. The life of Jesus is surrounded and ordered by worship.) In the book of Revelation, the last thing we are doing is engaged in the “chief end” of humanity, in the words of the Westminster Confession, “to worship God and enjoy him forever.” Indeed, It appears an inescapable fact that all humans, regardless of religion or irreligion, worship something. We were made to worship.

How then, I wonder, can we say, that the manner in which we worship does not matter? Unless, of course, the object of our worship does not matter.

What if we assume three things about worship, simply because it is true of all of the Christian life: First, that what other Christians have done and thought through time is relevant. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Asking how those who stood closest to Jesus worshiped, is surely wise. Second, that the aspirations of our youngest members is relevant, since they will carry the baton when we are gone. Third, that we are part of a universal church, “one holy catholic and apostolic,” …that we are umbilically tied to every Christian in every corner of the globe, so their practice is also relevant.

Interestingly, On all three of those assumptions, the question arises, “What about liturgy?” After all, It is the way the first Christians worshiped and is the worship pattern enjoyed by 90% of all Christians who have ever walked the earth. Liturgy is also making a comeback among young evangelicals in unlikely places like PhoenixOne, a 1000 person young adult gathering, and on the stage of the church that invented the non-denominational “seeker movement,” Willow Creek. Third, it is the form of worship utilized by 2/3 of the Christians on the planet today. So you might want to check liturgical worship out, if only to see what the cool people are doing. Ok, so I’m joking. Sort of.

The most important thing about liturgy is that it isn’t taught, it’s caught…or, more accurately, something you get caught-up in it…like being tossed into a cold swimming pool by the older kids in elementary school.

The Greek word leitourgia comes from two root words – laos, “the people”, and ergas, “a work”. Therefore, you will hear it said that liturgy is “the work of the people.” That’s a little bit true since liturgy is participatory…the term “pew aerobics” comes to mind. Liturgy does involve all of you in worship – your whole body, which is important because our hearts and heads follow our bodies. You know that intuitively if you have raised your hands or bowed down in worship.

But “work that people do” is not really the meaning of “liturgy” at all. leitourgia was the word to describe an act of public service initiated by a wealthy benefactor. For instance, a person of means might build a temple and foot the bill, but the work itself benefited the community. Any public work done in service to the gods, but for the benefit of the community was liturgy. So liturgy is work dedicated to God, initiated for people, and which serves to transform the world–and that is the big meaning: liturgy is about the faith community being transformed for the purpose of going out and transforming the lost world. And a transformed community that couldn’t stop sharing the Good News is exactly how 11 scared dudes turned the most powerful empire in the world upside down in less than 300 years.

So liturgical worship is for God, transforms us, and benefits a lost world. Who wouldn’t want that?