Inhabited by Grace: The Way of Incarnate Love

By William O. Daniel and Prince G. Singh

What does it mean to inhabit the life of liturgy? What does it mean to be inhabited by Christ? This book offers a way to rethink what we do when we pray, so that we do not so much call on God for help but join in a conversation.
Readers will learn how to think about God through certain habits and practices: how posture effects our perceptions of God and Christ, how feasting on Christ in the Eucharist shapes our understanding of the body—both our individual bodies and the body of the Church. The author also offers tools for forming a deliberate rule of life to ground readers in the transcendent life of liturgy.

Readers will recognize the inseparability of the tables of their homes and the Eucharistic Table, relating daily life with Eucharistic life. Dr. Daniel connects the language of the Book of Common Prayer with the everyday realities of ordinary life, compelling the worshiper to discern how daily practices correspond with or fight against her participation in the Eucharistic economy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640651913

William O. Daniel

WILLIAM DANIEL serves as rector at Saint Michael's Episcopal Church in Geneseo, New York. He is an adjunct professor ofHumanities at SUNY Geneseo, and serves as a coordinator for seminary formation and District Dean in the Diocese of Rochester. He completed his doctorate at the University of Nottingham after earning degrees from Nashotah House Theological Seminary, Duke University Divinity School, and Trevecca Nazarene University. Father Daniel lives with his family in Geneseo.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

What Is Liturgy?

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

—Philippians 2:1-13

In The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson describes a Japanese driver’s manual that has been translated into English for expatriates who need to take the driving test in Japan. In the section discussing the right of way for pedestrians, it reads this way: When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn, trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigor. . . .¹ I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard anyone trum pet at me melodiously, although I have had people tootle me with vigor. There are obvi ous flaws in the transla tion, and the manual has clearly been translated by someone for whom English is not their native tongue.²

Jesus does not take us to the Father by going on that journey as our representative and carrying us along with him by throwing out sacramental lifelines. Jesus goes to the Father in our experience of him as victim, which is our experience of ourselves as forgiven and cut loose from our selfmade world. —Sebastian Moore

This is a primary example of why Alasdair MacIntyre says that a language cannot be translated; it can only be learned. Language is cultural; it is not a strand of words thrown together. It is not separable from the person speaking or listening, nor is it separable from the places where we speak and listen. It is interwoven with our gestures and movements, our habits and practices, which are always part of a community of interpretation. In a word, language is attached, and it is attached to the people who use it, the places where it is used, and the things involved in our speaking. It attaches us to the people, places, and things with whom we interact on a daily basis. This is why a language can only be learned. When we translate, too much is lost.

This book is about the untranslatability of language. More than this, it is about the rootedness of Christian speech in a habit of liturgy. Liturgy, however, is not universal. Many churches worship differently, which means parishioners in one church will speak and think differently about the life of faith, and even about God, whether or not they are part of the same denomination. Not all Episcopalians, for instance, speak the same language because not all Episcopalians worship in the same manner—even churches that use the same Book of Common Prayer.

In what follows, we will unpack this dynamic relationship between thought, word, and deed as it relates to the people, places, and things involved in the liturgical life of a community. But first, we need to unlearn something about liturgy. For starters, liturgy is not the work of the people. The word liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia. This is usually parsed out in the following manner: leito = people; ourgia = work. Hence, the work of the people. This is what is commonly called a word-for-word translation. It’s similar to translating compromiso in Spanish to compromise in English. The words look the same, they even sound the same, but whereas English usage tends to imply that two parties have made concessions and have arrived at a synthesized conclusion, or one party has given in to another’s desire, Spanish usage falls more in line with the historic meaning of the word: with promise, or commitment. (Interestingly, if you insert compromise into Google Translate and ask for the Spanish equivalent you get compromiso. However, if you reverse this and enter compromiso to get the English translation you receive commitment, as in "I commit myself.") In the late nineteenth century, leitourgia was similarly misunderstood. With this misunderstanding the worship of the church is reduced to an all too human action.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We do participate in worship; however, this translation fails to call our attention to worship as an involvement in the self-offering of Christ—suddenly it’s my offering. If we translate leitourgia according to its use in the New Testament, the Septuagint, as well as how it is employed well into the Middle Ages, we get something like this: the work of one for the sake of many.³ Now we have a very different understanding of worship. As the work of one for the sake of many, liturgy calls our attention to what God is doing in worship. We are hereby involved in an action that transcends our ability to act, yet in no way reduces us to passive spectators.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul speaks of this regarding Epaphroditus’s liturgy: Still, I think it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus—my brother and co-worker and fellow soldier, your messenger and liturgist to my need. . . .⁴ Epaphroditus’s liturgy is for Paul’s sake. Epaphroditus does act, but his actions benefit Paul. The emphasis for Paul, however, comes in verse 30: "because [Epaphroditus] came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for those liturgies that you could not give me. For Paul, liturgy is the work of Christ done by one person for the benefit of others. Epaphroditus and Paul are hereby co-workers" in the work of Christ: Christ’s liturgy. In other words, when I serve others, I do so as a participant in the work of Christ. I become a co-worker—a co-liturgist with Christ. I am enjoined to the self-sacrifice of Christ because I act—not in a way that benefits me but instead inhabits the offering of Christ, whose sacrifice is always an offering to the Father, even though it is for the life of the world.⁵

This understanding of liturgy focuses our attention solely on God, just as Jesus’s self-offering is always in obedience to the Father. God the Son—Jesus of Nazareth—is the only person who can make an offering to God the Father. Jesus is uniquely positioned, as Second Person of the Trinity, to give to God. Why? Because only God can make an offering to God. What may at first seem contradictory or to belittle what we do week after week when we gather for worship is perhaps the single most reassuring claim we can make about the liturgy of the church. As Rowan Williams has pointed out in Tokens of Trust, the most reassuring thing we Christians know about God is that God doesn’t need us.⁶ If this were not true—if we could make an offering to God on our own—this would mean that God needs something from us that God doesn’t have. If there is something that God lacks, then the triune God revealed in Jesus couldn’t possibly be God. What it means for God to be God is for the Trinity to be full and complete in their Oneness. God is completely God without us. And, paradoxically, this is why we can trust God. The God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth does not need our worship. Jesus is the only offering that God needs, which is to say that God needs only God to be God. Therefore, what God does—because God needs nothing from us—is always for our benefit because, unlike us, God has no ulterior motive. God only ever acts according to God’s nature as absolute love, without a need to be loved by what is not God. God doesn’t even need us to love God in return. God is love, which means there is nothing missing in the life of God. Nothing could be more reassuring, knowing that God has created us for our enjoyment of God’s very life.

Recognizing that Jesus is the One who can offer himself to the Father does not, however, reduce what we offer in worship. On the contrary, in Christ we now have something to offer; we are enabled to worship. In Christ we are blessed; by Christ we are chosen; through Christ we are adopted; all to the praise of his glory.⁷ All things, reminds the Chronicler, come from you, [O Lord,] and of your own have we given you.⁸

What does all this mean? It means that liturgy is a gift. It means Jesus himself is liturgy. What we do when we gather for worship is participate in this particular and peculiar divine action that is always happening in the very life of the triune God. Our worship is enjoined to a worship that is always taking place.⁹ As we proclaim in our Eucharistic prayers, we join our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your Name.¹⁰

Commenting on the liturgy, St. Irenaeus (d. 202) writes,

We offer to [God] his own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist . . . so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. Now we make offering to him, not as though he stood in need of it, but rendering thanks for his gift, and thus sanctifying what has been created. . . .¹¹

Irenaeus carries forward Paul’s theology of liturgy, reminding us that when we worship we are gathering together the gifts of God, offering to God what God first gave to us, and in this way are we transformed by grace and united with Christ in his singular offering to the Father. We gather, then, to give thanks for this union we have received in Christ, made one with his offering, in, by, and through which we become, as St. Chrysostom says, little Christs. Our participation in Christ’s offering is how we are transformed into Christ. We become Christ in worship—the image in which we are created, which is why Paul tells the Ephesians that, There is one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.¹² Our body is Christ’s; our faith is Christ’s; our baptism is Christ’s; our Father is Christ’s. This is what Paul means when he says that [to] live is Christ. . . .¹³ I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to go to church!

Even though we are created, even though we are dust and to dust we shall return,¹⁴ Christ is immortal, and in Christ we have life, and life abundant. Not only does this take the pressure off us to get everything right, it also gives us good work to do, which is why we pray at the close of our celebrations of Holy Eucharist, And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do. . . .¹⁵ It’s the same reason we commit ourselves in the Baptismal Covenant, not simply to do this work, but to do so with God’s help. Because Christ is Liturgy, we know that the work we do is a work that Christ is doing in us.¹⁶ Because Christ is liturgy, we can do all things through him who is our strength.¹⁷ Because Christ is liturgy, we have received life in the Spirit.¹⁸ Because Christ is liturgy, life is at work in us.¹⁹

In the following chapters, I offer an account of what it means for us to inhabit and to be inhabited by the life of liturgy that is Christ—what it means to be inhabited grace. I offer a way to (1) rethink what we do when we pray and how when we pray we do not so much call on God for help but enjoin ourselves to a conversation—the eternal conversation within the triune God. I discuss (2) how we learn to think about God through certain habits and practices, and how even our posture affects our perception of who God is and what it means to follow Christ. We will also discuss the call of liturgy on our lives (3) to be reconciled with our neighbors, and to be reconciled with all of creation. We will delve into the mystery of (4) Holy Eucharist and how feasting on Christ shapes our understanding of the body—both our individual bodies and the corporate body, the church. At the close, I offer a way to (5) reflect on your rule of life. We all have a rule of life. More often than not, however, we acquire this rule by accident, rather than through thoughtful discernment. I offer tools for forming a deliberate rule of life that will help ground you in the transcendent life of liturgy. (6) I share some stories of personal habits and practices that help me pattern my everyday life on the movements of Christ as I strive to inhabit the way of incarnate love. More importantly, it is my hope that after reading this book you will have a renewed sense of the great gift we have in the liturgy of the church and how it far surpasses our understanding, and the numerous ways our liturgy calls us to act—to work the works of Christ.²⁰ In other words, it is my hope that you will come to know in your body the work that Christ has begun in you and obtain new tools for inhabiting this work more deeply.

God’s speed in your journey.

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1. Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1990), 11.

2. Ibid.

3. For a complete genealogy of the term leitourgia and the importance of its translation, see William Daniel, Christ the Liturgy (New York: Angelico Press, Ltd., 2019), ch. 1.

4. Phil. 2:25.

5. John 6:51.

6. Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2007), 3-30.

7. Eph. 1:3-6.

8. 1 Chron. 29:14.

9. Rev. 4.

10. BCP, 362, 367.

11. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), IV.xviii.5-6.

12. Eph. 4:4-6; BCP, 299.

13. Phil. 1:21.

14. Psalm 103:14; BCP, 265.

15. BCP, 366.

16. 1 John 4:4.

17. Phil. 4:13.

18. Rom. 8:11.

19. 2 Cor. 4:12.

20. John 6:28.

PART 1

Spoken into Being

When you pray . . .

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward