Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #276: A History of Christian Worship Part Five - The Middle Ages (

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Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations, the latest album from Rick Lee James, has garnered praise from CCM M Magazine, Worship Leader Magazine, UTR Media, and more. Written and arranged using hymnals and prayer books for inspiration, this collection of 10 modern hymn-like worship songs will inspire individuals and congregations to draw near to the heart of God. <LYRICS>Old in name of God</LYRICS> Highlights include Christ is Lord, inspired by St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer, Advent Hymn, and the Communion Hymn: The Invitation. Worship leaders will be glad to know that all songs on the album are published through Lifeway Worship. Find Hymns, Prayers Invitations on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, CD Baby, and at rickleejames.com.

<LYRICS>Christ to guide me.</LYRICS> Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, I'm a singer, songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. I am so glad to be here with you again this week. This is part 5 of our study going through the history of Christian worship. I hope you have been enjoying it. I have been. It has been quite a week, quite a busy time. Summer is really starting to get busy for me, and this is going to be no exception. This week I am about to head off to Escape to the Lake to join a lot of other artists and great people who are coming together who love independent music. And just so proud to be able to share music with people like Andrew Osenga and Krista Wells, Nick Flora and Brothers McClurg, and just a whole bunch of other great people. And I'm looking forward to making some new friends and being able to share the stage with artists like that up near Chicago. Also, this weekend coming up, at least at the time of recording at this time, the middle of July, I'm gonna be heading up to Chicago and being on the podcast Things Not Seen one more time. I'm really excited to do that. It's a show that I've been listening to for a while. Wonderful podcast. It's led by David Dalt, a scholar and a gentleman and a good friend, and it's syndicated on several NPR stations. So I'm really excited to be able to join him again. Also, I'm going to be playing a concert Indiana, very near Cedar Lake where Escape to the Lakes can be at this coming Sunday. So anyway, that may not apply to you, any of those things, where you may be able to come and be a part of an event I'm going to be a part of, but just check my website at rickleejames.com, and you can go to rickleejames.com/bookings and find out more about those upcoming dates, or you can look up my schedule online and and see all kinds of different things. I also have it on good authority from my producer Chris Hoisington that the new album is the next thing in line to be mixed. So, really excited about that. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will actually have a real honest-to-goodness new album to be able to present of Thunder. Well, enough of the announcements. Let us go right into Session 5, Week 5 of our study of the History of Christian Worship. This week: the Middle Ages, 5th to 15th centuries. We're calling this the Not-So-Dark Ages. The 5th through 15th centuries are often referred to as the Dark Ages primarily because the former Empire of Rome was conquered by Germanic invaders who shoved aside Roman traditions in favor of their own. Most of the written records at the time had a strong Roman bias, and for those who saw Rome as the pinnacle of human achievement, it was indeed a dark time. Even though the Middle Ages are often referred to as the Dark Ages, for the Western world we know that it was actually an energetic period where the foundations of Western culture were laid. New things were happening in the Middle Ages that would change not only the world but the church, its position in the world, and its worship. In the Middle Ages, we see the roots of modern democracy, capitalism, urbanism, science, and medicine, the great Gothic cathedrals are evidence to the fact that the Middle Ages were an age marked by faith, when the church not only made peace with the world, in many ways it conquered it. Some would argue, however, that in spite of the social and political advances of the church in this period, Christian worship was in decline. From the 6th century onward, many of the once freestanding altars were moved against the apsidal wall, making it impossible for the priest to stand behind it when leading the people in worship. The priest now would lead the Mass with his back to the congregation, being one of the sole actors in the church's worship while the congregation simply watched. Altars, once the center of the church's table worship, were now cluttered with books, ornaments, candles, and vessels to the point that it started to look more like a side table than the center of Christian worship. This arrangement of the altar shifted the focus of Eucharistic action and signified a foundational reinterpretation of the rite of Holy Communion. Also during this period, monasticism would have a huge and largely positive effect upon Christian worship. Monasticism's major influence upon the Mass was the Divine Office, a non-Eucharistic service rooted in the synagogue practice of Synaxis, or the service of the word. Monks would weekly recite the entire book of Psalms in an effort to pray without ceasing, as the Apostle Paul instructed . The Divine Office usually consisted of prayer and scripture, usually without a sermon. This type of service was well suited to the needs of monastic communities who gathered together daily for worship. Gradually, the Divine Office caught on in churches outside the monastic community. The prayer offices were often sung by groups of monks who were associated with the churches. Sometimes laypeople attended these services so that they could pray with the monks and hear their singing. By the time the 8th century rolled around, Priests were reciting a private form of the prayer service from a prayer book called the Breviary. Unfortunately, the lay people were generally kept from participating because of the private nature of the books. Since the priest alone recited the Breviary, it kept the laity from actively participating and promoted non-Eucharistic, passive, individualized worship. The earliest monasteries were lay communities, but by the 8th century, monasteries became more involved in missionary work, so a large number of priests were admitted. The priests, as was their duty, wished to celebrate the Mass, but given how many priests there were, there were often more priests than monks participating in the Mass. Because more priests wanted to lead the Mass, it led to more and more services daily in the monasteries. It got to the point that priests would often recite the rites to themselves and lead the services without the presence of the worship community. The Daily Mass began being adopted in parishes outside the monasteries, and while a number of priests protested, the private Daily Mass became a widespread practice. The daily private Masses evolved into what came to be known as the Low Mass. The low Mass was a subdued, mechanical service spoken by the priest with his back to whatever congregation might be present. There was no music, and it was spoken in Latin, a language the people no longer spoke. The service became so individualized that the majority of the service was spoken silently by the priest, giving the people less and less reason to be there. The once unified Sunday Mass for the community of believers proliferated into many individualized daily Masses. This is where the concept of "personal salvation"— I say that in quotes— had its roots. As the people gathered together less and less— think of this for a moment— it wasn't until this moment in church history where the concept of personal salvation began to show its head. This is where the roots of that came from, that concept. Many laypeople paid priests to pray for their souls and the souls of dead family members, often in chapels built by wealthy donors specifically for that purpose. Because the Low Mass was spoken in an unintelligible language, it had no offering, no sermon, no congregational music. The impression of the Low Mass was that it was a mechanical, individualistic affair for the priest to say rather than a liturgy for the people to enact. Worship became something to be watched rather than to be participated in. That's a tragedy in my opinion. The offering, a beautiful symbol of the people bringing their gifts before God, now dropped off of the service completely. The tradition had been for people to bring in bread, wine, and other foods to lay on the table during worship The items were used not only for the Eucharist but to support the priests and to aid in charitable works. This had always been an integral part of the Eucharistic serving as a ritualized way of enacting the communal work of worship. But now in the Low Mass, only the priest made the offerings. The offertory, instead of being a time for the people to offer their gifts, became a time for the priest to prepare the bread and wine. The liturgical thought of the day tended to stress the Mass as a mysterious divine gift of God given to the people rather than an offering of the people. Whenever the church celebrated the Eucharist, it was always assumed that Christ was present, and it wasn't much concern at this point in history about with how or when Christ was present. However, beginning in the 4th century, there was growing interest in when Christ was present, and there was much speculation about the moment of consecration. Until now, the entire Eucharistic prayer was a grateful proclamation of the full saving work of Christ. As we move into the Middle Ages, the Eucharistic prayer becomes more elaborate, and it was less evident that the Eucharist was a proclamation of God's full saving work in Christ. The Eucharistic prayer now more like a formula to be repeated over the table as a way to cause something to happen. Suddenly there was great emphasis upon "the moment," the time in the Eucharist when Christ was felt to be especially real. "The moment" came to be defined as the moment when the priest repeated the words, "This is my body." The effect was that "the moment" came to be seen as the most important part of the Mass. The priest, rather than being the celebrant, the one who leads the congregation in worship, was now looked upon more like a cook mixing up a confection for the Mass. Also, by exalting the words of the Upper Room, the Mass became more and more identified only with Christ's suffering and crucifixion, rather than with the entire entire Gospel story as it was intended. The Western Church in the 9th century, having defined when Christ was present, now became concerned with how Christ was present in the bread and wine. Around 831, a monk named Pascius Radbertus suggested that the body of Christ was present in the Mass via a miraculous transformation of the bread and wine. While the appearance was unchanged, the original substance of the bread is transformed into the body of Christ. The doctrine was disputed and debated for many years, but by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the doctrine of transubstantiation became dogma. The medieval mind had a penchant for understanding and explaining everything, even things as mysterious as Christ's presence in worship. Realism was the predominant philosophy of medieval times, separating reality into substances and accidents. Substances, the most real aspect of reality, participate in the universal ideas which are the source of all reality. Accidents are the characteristics that we perceive in things— size, shape, weight, color. Accidents, while connected to the substance of things, are not the essence of those things. In transubstantiation, the substance of the bread is transformed into the body of Christ, but the accidents of the bread make it appear to be ordinary to our senses. The most troubling aspect of the doctrine of transubstantiation is that it tended to conflict with the church's historic belief that the person of Jesus unites his human and divine natures. According to transubstantiation, The substance of both Christ's human and divine nature must be present in the bread and wine. Some priests who doubted the substantial change in the elements into the natural body and blood of Jesus were actually forced to sign statements saying that at the Mass, the priest actually touched the body of Christ and that the communicants bit into the Lord's body with their teeth. The doctrine of transubstantiation was solidified and sanctioned in 1215, making the sacrament even more more solemn. In the Middle Ages, the cup was taken away from the people, and the laity could only now commune using the bread. As the priesthood became more and more identified with the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, regular bread was no longer good enough. The bread itself went from being fully leavened to being served as pure white wafers baked by sanctified hands. The same Lateran Council that decreed transubstantiation also decreed that every Christian should receive the Eucharist at least once a year. That's a huge change from receive it every day, sometimes. Once a year. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the people didn't worship during Mass. I don't want to leave that impression. They did worship. The people were encouraged to say their own prayers and to adore Christ's presence in the sacraments. The person of Christ, his suffering in his passion, and the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament became the center of late medieval devoutness. Prayer books, genuflection, and the rosary, also known as prayer beads, were all created to keep laypeople involved in activity during the services. Unfortunately though, these activities were individualized, they were personal, they were private activities rather than corporate worship activities. So, in the midst of corporate worship, you had a bunch of people doing private activities, not at all what was envisioned in worship in the early church. For the average person, devotions outside of the Mass became the center of their religious life rather than the corporate worship together with the body of Christ. Within the Mass, a bell would be rung while the priest elevated the host, and that was the main focus. The Mass was viewed as a way to conjure up the presence of Jesus so that he could be adorned, rather than a time of communing with him together with other believers. The growing importance of the saints, devotion to Mary, and their inclusion in the church's worship began to obscure the real focus of the liturgy into a slew of minor celebrations celebrations and commemorations for favorite saints and for Mary. Many times when a saint's day landed on Sunday, the commemoration of the saint would overshadow the celebration of Christ and the Eucharist. The focus of the church year, the liturgy that once centered on Easter, now became cluttered, full of saints' days and celebrations of various doctrines. The orderly movement toward the center celebration of atonement had been obscured if not lost. In the West, infant baptism now was the normal practice. When the rite began, the sign of the cross was made upon the child's forehead and breast. Salt was placed upon the child's mouth, and hands were laid on the child's head. This was all that remained of the lengthy catechumenate preparation described in Session 3. However, The baptism ceremony itself had become very elaborate, with images, anointings, symbolic acts, and prayers. A blessing recalling many of the biblical images of water and consecration was said over the font. There was almost a magical objectification of the power of the water. Once the water had been blessed by the priest, any baptized person who touched the water was, in effect, rebaptized. Being that there was a pervasive fear of limbo, a place where the souls of unbaptized infants went, baptism became no longer a time for repentance, confession of the faith, the gift of the Holy Spirit, death and resurrection, and conversion into the community. Now it was mostly seen as a time for an individual's sin to be removed so that their soul would be fit for eternity. Confirmation now emerged as a separate rite, usually performed sometime well after baptism. Confirmation usually took place in early adolescence and involved the laying on of hands with a prayer for the gift of the Sevenfold Spirit. Medieval theologians struggled to explain this new rite since it marked the dissolution of the once-unified rite of Christian initiation. And seemed to disjoin the gift of the Holy Spirit from baptism. New Eucharistic practices, the new Rite of Confirmation, and the practice of infant baptism had the effect of separating First Communion from baptism. 13th-century decrees forbid communion prior to Confirmation, linking the Rite of Confirmation with the age of discretion. For the first time in Christian history, Listen to this: For the first time in Christian history, baptized children were not to receive communion until they were old enough to discern the bread as the body of Christ. Infant baptism, when practiced with confirmation, had the effect of separating baptism from admission to the Lord's table. This was a first. Baptism was no longer an obvious part of Christian initiation.. It had been until this time. It was a no-brainer. To be a Christian, you were baptized. Now, it was no longer that. In fact, except as a way to wash away original sin, it wasn't apparent anymore what baptism actually accomplished or signified for the Christian in relationship to the community. Baptism, like Mass, had become an individualized experience. Where for most people no one was present except for parents and godparents. In effect, this removed a person's individual journey from the community of believers, making baptism little more than a rite that celebrated birth into society as a whole, rather than initiation into a transformative community of faith. At the close of the Middle Ages, we see a church having lost the older conflicts between the church and the world now focusing its worship upon the conflicts within the self. Growing introspection and individualism were now the focus of a person's spiritual life. There was an almost exclusive focus upon the Passion of Christ as the main significance of Christ's work combined with a preoccupation on individual sinfulness as the chief object of Christ's work. The church's worship became fixated on individual sinfulness with the Mass and baptism as the means of grace for the forgiveness of individual sin. The prevalent view became that the Christian life was mostly concerned with eradicating individual sinfulness. This led to a liturgical life which was severely limited in its adoption of faith and disastrously lacking in expressions of liturgy as the work of all God's people together. Reformation was desperately needed. By the way, when I talked about earlier in today's lessons about all of the different things that were happening, happening, and the focus of the church year changing instead of being about Easter to all these other calendar days, I believe we see this secular version of this today with the Hallmark calendar overshadowing the celebrations of the church calendar. In our present context today, at least here in North America, the secular holidays of the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving often seem to overshadow seasons such as Advent, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, etc. The roots of those things are right here in the Middle Ages. Some would say this was a period of great decline for Christian worship. I would be one of those who said that. You don't have to agree, but I hope at least it will help you think about some things in a new way. That during this time through the 15th century, new things had happened that had never been done before in worship. And that's not to say, as some people do, "Well, we've never done it that way before." It's to say that theologically speaking, concepts that were never intended to enter into Christianity in their worship began to enter in, and in effect it changed much of what Christian worship was and what Christian worship meant. It's a very interesting thing to study, and I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have. It's interesting to me— just one other thing to note before I close this session— Since participation was mostly taken away from the people in worship during this time period, and people were encouraged to do new individualized activities during worship, such as prayer books, and genuflection, and rosary beads, I feel like we still are suffering with the effects of that in our worship. We still gather in community, but we still have a lot of individualistic things that we do together. Rather than seeing those things as part of a healthy devotional life outside of the church in our own personal growth, we've actually taken those things to be what worship is. And so often, instead of doing things together in worship, whether it be confession, whether it be singing together, whether it be praying together, just a number of things, the offering, we've often made those things so individualized that they don't seem to be something we do together. At times. I just wanted to ask this question: How can we do it better? Is there a way to make this more communal again? Is there a way to take us back to communal worship together with the church? I'm interested in finding out, and I hope that you are too. It's a really interesting conversation and something that I would like to pursue more. Well, we're gonna pursue it more, and we're gonna keep moving on. Through History, as next week you'll come back for session 5. Now, I'm gonna try something a little different at the end of this episode. You know, if you've been listening for a while, that my outro has been wrong for a while, uh, has a couple details wrong. So I'm gonna attempt something in this episode. I'm gonna try to do it live. I'm gonna try to record a new outro today to be used on future shows. So wish me luck. Here I go. I'm gonna do my best to do the outro live. By the way, in case I royally messed this up, thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head. I really appreciate you being here week after week, the kind comments that I receive, and I'd love to talk to you more, so make sure you drop me a line anywhere that you can find me online. Just look up my name, you'll find me. There's ways to get a hold of me. I'd love to carry on this conversation, and if any of you live close enough, I'd love to carry it on over a cup of coffee sometime. Alright, here we go, the new outro for 2018. Well, thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com. Follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. Like my artist page on Facebook.com/RickLeeJames. And keep up to date on what I'm writing on my author page on Amazon. There's also the Voices in My Head Facebook community at Facebook.com/VoicesPodcast. And if you want to follow my alter ego on Twitter, follow my popular Mr. Rogers quote account found at Mr. Rogers Say. Yes, that Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, Fred Rogers. It's a quote page and we are growing daily, sometimes by the hundreds. I'd love to have you be a part of that community there on Twitter @MrRogersSay. Also, make sure to follow my appearance schedule on my website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert a speaking engagement, a book event, whatever you like, you can book me through my website at rickleejames.com/bookings. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you would review this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace who raised Christ from the dead strengthen you in your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.