This was in today’s reading from The Book of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.
When a song isn’t working for you (during worship), consider praising God, because that probably means it is working for someone else who is very different from you. Offer your worship as a sacrifice rather than requiring others to sacrifice for your pleasure or contentment. There is something to the notion of becoming one as God is one; it doesn’t mean we are all the same; it just means that we are united by one Spirit. After all, we can only become one if there are many of us to begin with.
Liturgy puts a brake on narcissism. Certainly, there is something beautiful about contemporary worship, where we can take old things things and add a little spice them, like singing hymns to rock tunes or reciting creeds as spoken word rhymes. But liturgy protects us from simply making worship into a self pleasing act. So if a song or prayer doesn’t quite work for you, be thankful that it is probably really resonating with someone who is different from you, and offer a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15).
