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Maxwell E. Johnson, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, is Associate Professor of Liturgy in the Department
of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. Ordained
in 1978, he has also been a parish pastor, serving parishes in Minnesota
and Indiana. Married with two children, he recently became an Oblate
of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville. Johnson’s academic experience
includes studies in universities such as Wartburg Theological Seminary
in Dubuque, Iowa, Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, St. John’s
University in Collegeville, Minnesota and doctoral studies in Notre Dame.
This is the second half of a two-part interview with Johnson.
The first part appeared in the November issue of ML (26:9). In this
second part, Johnson continues his discussion on the way that history impacts
our liturgy, and the role which early liturgies play in setting a liturgical
precedent today.
MJ: History itself is not normative but it is instructive
and it should be liberating to us. The issue is not should there
be baptism, should there be Eucharist, should there be ordered ministries
in the church, should there be I suppose any other number of things.
That’s not the issue that’s there. The issue here and the question
at hand is how we can structure them in legitimate and reconciled diversity.
We don’t need to do the same thing. We don’t need to necessarily
structure or order things the same way. Furthermore, these should
not be issues that preclude us from communion with each other. Early
liturgy is rather heterogeneous, but there are some common elements.
And we don’t need to be homogeneous today.
What we can talk about and argue about are the best ways to do these
other things. Were we to take early liturgical history more seriously,
I can imagine that our contemporary books would probably be quite different.
We would have different kinds of Eucharistic prayers. We probably
wouldn’t put all our baptismal eggs in the Easter basket. We probably
would end the liturgical year rather than start it with Advent, as the
great eschatological season. We’d probably do the liturgy of the
hours, daily prayer, quite differently. We probably wouldn’t have
as many psalms in it.
When you say we went and put all our baptismal eggs in the Easter
basket, you mean we’d have baptism throughout the liturgical year?
We would probably do more seriously what the Episcopal church has tried
to do, at least on paper, and that is to think more seriously about baptismal
festivals. For example, Easter would rank right up there, of course,
but so would Epiphany or the baptism of Jesus on the Sunday after Epiphany.
So would All Saints and Pentecost. We would make these four kinds
of feasts — and there are probably others — more primary in focus.
One could even structure a whole catechetical process around those and
do pre-baptismal instruction for parents in relationship to those feasts.
Regarding the Easter festivals that you might have in mind, are you
imagining those would be focused around infant baptism or adult baptism?
Either. There would be a catechetical period of preparation,
a catechumenal period of some sort. And I mean that requires a lot
of time and effort and energy, and it's probably too speculative to put
in motion. But it would seem to me that, even in the Roman Catholic
Church, the suggestion would be for the baptism of infants to take place
at Sunday Mass.
And I think to be precise the suggestion is for baptism to take place
on Sunday but not necessarily at Mass.
Yes, that’s right. It does allow, though, for it to be held even
within the context of the Sunday Mass so that the connection between baptism
and the Eucharist is most clearly shown. So there is a preference
there. I know the Roman Catholic Church has a long tradition of doing
confirmation liturgies or baptisms on Sunday afternoons. Why not
do several baptismal Masses during a year within that context?
What do you see as the challenges to liturgical churches today?
First of all, there would need to be a renewed attention to this basic
ordo of Christian worship as being a kind of normative for what the church
does on Sundays. I think that’s one of the challenges.
A second one is that we are really struggling today with liturgical
music, and there’s a big debate especially in Roman Catholic circles today
between what is called sacred music, church music and liturgical music.
People are really struggling with that. Liturgical music would seem
to me as music that flows from and is a part of what the liturgy says and
does. In other words, one sings the Lamb of God. One sings
the psalms, the Kyrie, the ordinary and proper in this classic terminology
of the liturgy. This is music that expresses and bears the liturgical
text, action or gesture. Sacred music might be choral, or even the
kind of music that may not have anything to do with the rite at all.
For example, Verde’s Requiem, would that be sacred music or liturgical
music? Well, it is certainly music that comes from the liturgy, but
it’s probably more appropriate in the concert hall. If liturgy by
definition is participatory, should not the music be that which is sung
by the assembly? But these are big issues that people are debating.
That’s something that the liturgical theologians and musicians are really
going to have to pay attention to in years to come because it’s becoming
a politicized kind of issue as well. Some music is probably more
performance-oriented than liturgical. Some music, however, is much
more of a different kind of performance orientation, namely a solo piece
or music that really has no relationship to the liturgical act or event
itself. This can become problematic. How does one make use
of that? There’s no particular culture that is necessarily more religious
or holy than another, so the question really becomes the development of
criteria for making selections.
The third challenge is another toughie, and that is the whole multicultural
concept. I don’t think we yet know what multicultural liturgy is.
But at the same time, it’s quite obvious that in the late fourth century
and on, it is precisely that face-to-face encounter of the different cultures
that really does lead towards a kind of universalizing of certain ritual
elements throughout the church. You have various ritual aspects being
present in one church taken over by another. So it seems to me that
maybe that’s not a bad model, too.
The final challenge for liturgical churches today is really a recovery
of that baptismal basis for Christian unity and ministry. We have
not yet done enough with baptism. We’ve talked a lot about communion
ecclesiology, and that’s been helpful. But we need to go to the next
step and ask what is it that brings about the possibility of any kind of
communion ecclesiology — and that’s going to be a common rootedness in
the font. I think those are probably enough to keep us busy for a
while.
Recommend reading list:
White, James F. A Brief History of Christian Worship,
Abingdon Press, 1993.
Foley, Ed., From Age to Age: How Christians Celebrated the
Eucharist, Liturgy Training Publications, 1992.
Bradshaw, Paul F., The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship:
Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, Oxford University
Press, 1995.
Taft, Robert F., The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (American
Essays in Liturgy), Liturgical Press, 1992.
Johnson, Maxwell E., ed. et al., Living Water, Sealing Spirit:
Readings on Christian Initiation, Pueblo Publishing Company, 1995.
Johnson, Maxwell E., The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their
Evolution and Interpretation, Liturgical Press, 1999.
ML
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