Reviving liturgy

On a rainy evening in December, the archbishop of Paris held a staff crafted from a beam plucked out of the fire that devastated Notre-Dame Cathedral 5½ years ago. With it, he rapped three times on the doors of the now-restored cathedral.

In response, the choir inside sang Psalm 121.

That second of the Psalms of Ascent begins: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” While the pilgrim heading to Jerusalem is pictured seeking strength for the journey, as the ESV Study Bible note points out, the psalm also serves as a reminder that the believer’s perseverance in faith comes from God’s sustaining help.

This theme of steadfastness echoes earlier questions around how to restore Notre-Dame, which revealed deep cultural divisions. In the days after the fire in 2019, serious doubt surrounded how Notre-Dame would be rebuilt—­perhaps with a modernist twist to better suit today’s secular West. Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard, remarked to Rolling Stone, “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation.” The writer used the professor’s insight to suggest that for some, Notre-Dame represented an “idealized Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place.”

Britons will recall 60 years ago this month the death of Winston Churchill, who appealed to Christian Europe in the fight against Hitler’s neo-paganism. A year after the successful Dunkirk evacuation, the Luftwaffe bombed London and destroyed the Commons Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. Churchill came down firmly on the side of restoring the chamber to its original design: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” he said famously in 1943. Churchill’s point wasn’t just about architecture—it was also about the structure of institutions and habits that shape the life of a people.

This point came to mind during a conversation with Jonathan Gibson, an associate professor at Westminster Seminary, who authored a “daily liturgy” titled Be Thou My Vision. “Jonny,” as the friendly Irishman insists on being called, likened Churchill’s insight to personal worship, arguing that its structure—like the design of a cathedral—ultimately shapes us over time. “First, we shape our quiet times, hopefully with a good liturgy and a good structure,” Gibson said, “and then they shape us.”

I’ve been using Be Thou My Vision since Jonny opened a WORLD board meeting last June at Westminster in Philadelphia with a brief devotional. I’ve shared it with friends, colleagues, and my kids and their spouses. If you haven’t made a New Year’s resolution, I can’t think of a better one.

Gibson’s insights on liturgy were shaped by his own struggles during COVID lockdowns in 2020, when he found his devotional life sagging. “The world bombards us with information, noise, and opinions,” Gibson said. “We need to soak our minds in the Word of God—because if we don’t, the world will influence us more and more.”

The daily liturgy begins with a call to worship, affirming that “God initiates worship by calling us … through His Word.” This is followed by a prayer of adoration, the reading of the law to reveal God’s will and expose sin, and a confession, culminating in an assurance of pardon through Christ.

The liturgy includes a creed—alternating weekly among the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds—which Gibson says “summarize the gospel” and affirm belief in the triune God. A short Trinitarian hymn, the Gloria Patri, serves as a response of praise.

Next, a question from the Westminster or Heidelberg catechisms deepens understanding. “When I say the Lord’s Prayer,” Gibson said, “I now say it with greater depth because of what the catechism teaches.” The liturgy concludes with a prayer for illumination, Scripture reading, intercessory prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer.

Gibson acknowledged that “liturgy” might sound foreign to many evangelicals but emphasized its Biblical roots: “The word liturgy … is a biblical word, a liturgia, the Greek word … it can be used for the whole of life … but also more narrowly for the worship that took place at the temple or tabernacle.” He saw value in bringing the structure of a church service into daily devotions.

He addressed concerns about written prayers feeling rote: “What I find in these written prayers is more thoughtfulness as to what was actually being said. These are saints of the past who have trod the path of learning how to pray, helping us to pray in our day.” Ultimately, he said, “It’s not whether you have a liturgy or not. It’s just which liturgy are you going to have?”