Hein-Fry lecturer Mary Collins with Dean Philip D. W. Krey, center, and Hein-Fry Board Member the Rev. Burton Everist

Human beings naturally resist giving up their claim to universal self-importance. Hence, they demand from God "an extra terrestrial presence to ease their burdens" and complain about the experience of God’s absence, failing to recognize the presence of God even when God is "intentionally absent" from the people God loves.

In such a context, "the church is the community of the revelation of God," Mary Collins explained recently to Seminary students here. "God will not save us from free fall or an intentional absence of God," the internationally renowned expert on church liturgy and worship told attendees at a Hein-Fry Lecture Series presentation this month at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. But the practice of symbolically intense worship is the setting where people sense both the mystery and presence of a God in whom they place their trust, she said. In such community believers "short-circuit their acknowledged self-centeredness." Through sacraments and by means of God’s grace discovered in liturgy, worshipers continually sense the revelation of Christ in their lives, calling them out of themselves. Worship practices, thus, have the potential to establish a growing understanding of what it means to be in relationship with Christ in the context of the God-given history of the world.

Collins, a Benedictine sister who is the director of the Liturgical Studies Program at the Catholic University of America and professor in the Department of Religion and Religious Education there, said liturgy provides avenues for discovery of God in a material age of consumerism. Such opportunities for discovery take place in the midst of a culture where many sojourners yearn for a spiritual presence in their lives.   "In the midst of their free fall through life, worshipers find that liturgy puts before them the story of Jesus and invites their trust, invites them to learn trust," Collins said. "They discover they don’t have to control their free fall. They can trust God’s ways and find new life." Through liturgy, the cross, an experience of terror, is surrounded by images and "things," which soften the terror, transforming the cross symbol to a sign of hope.

The practice of liturgy today demands new approaches in many quarters, Collins said, if the practice is to achieve its potential for helping strangers interpret the meaning of the story of Jesus. Sometimes the practice has emphasized "the neck up….Part of the tradition has been overlooked. It is much more than what can be put into words," she said. Preaching, creeds and doctrines are critical to the practice of liturgy, she said, but if liturgy is predominantly cerebral, the practice is "culturally confined." She said that many cultures, including African traditions, through styles of repetition and dance had achieved a level of serious ritual playing in the practice of liturgy that is all-enveloping.

"This all-encompassing celebration of mind, body and spirit is an effective way of engaging in liturgy," Collins said. "It is a way of retrieving aspects that have sometimes been dropped from liturgical practice, a way of ritualizing ideas through the use of every means possible." She made a strong case for carrying out such serious ritual playing in our liturgical lives "for the sake of the next generation."

The Hein-Fry lecture Series, funded through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, annually brings to seminary communities throughout the U.S. a pair of thought-provoking presenters on a wide range of topics of current church importance. Joining Collins this year in speaking before seminary audiences about the impact of modern culture on liturgy was the Rev. Dr. Gordon Lathrop, Charles A. Schieren Professor of Liturgy at LTSP.