Selected Scriptures

February 7, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 19:50 in the audio file.

Or, Et Liturgy et Liberi

Series: Our Worship #6

Introduction

The philosopher-critic Friedrich Nietzsche used to use the Latin pun, aut liberi, aut libri. When thinking about what mark one leaves behind, what one can produce that matters in the long term, the pun offers the alternative: either children or books. Nietzsche was not a family man, nor a man of faith. For him the choice was not that difficult.

The pun is not merely another man’s Latin playfulness; we can commiserate. The labor of a (decent) father and the labor of a (decent) author are similarly involved. Some men, and I would count myself in their number, have trouble with quick context-switching so as to do both well. I don’t even listen to music while I write, let alone find it easy to keep my thoughts together while my kids are listening to music in their earbuds while loudly singing their version of harmony to that music walking around the house. This can be mitigated with the help of noise canceling headphones, and I praise the Lord for Kuyperian technology that covers every square inch of my ears, but that can’t help me when I’m in the middle of a sentence and a couple kids are in the middle of an argument. There is labor to ask questions to get the full story, and then labor to get back into the flow of whatever other thoughts I was trying to wrangle into something I was sure was a very important point.

But my kids have been used by God to humble me, and bless me. They have caused me to seek wisdom from the Lord and He has given me some wisdom, or at least perspective, to share. Whatever pages I think I could have written would be much more boring without their questions and sins and meandering stories and love and laughing. In my calling as a preacher I do have to do what is necessary to put the words together, but also in my calling as an elder if my kids aren’t together then my words mean diddly (1 Timothy 3:4-5). When it comes to kids and books (or in my case, sermons or talks), it’s not either/or.

How about when it comes to corporate worship? Aut liturgy aut liberi? Is it either liturgy or children? (Also, I do understand that “liturgy” is not Latin, which would be lītūrgia; it’s supposed to be a play on words.)

I would like to think that, at least by now, most of you know the answer. But I know that the answer doesn’t always feel like it’s the answer, nor does it help you help your kids feel like it’s the answer, nor does the answer give you an exhaustive checklist to know exactly what to do any given moment.

Of course the answer is both liturgy and children. Of course the answer is worshiping for generations. But the only thing harder than getting all your kids lined up and in order and participating in, or at least not distracting from, corporate worship is getting your heart in order and participating and not distracted from worship. This is a supernatural thing we’re doing; does it seem like it should be easy?

Including children in the service with us, and not providing Sunday School or Children’s Church, or even at this point a nursery with volunteer workers, is a purposeful choice the elders have made, not an oversight or a problem we’re hoping to fix in the future. This is not to say that there are no problems, ha. But if we are doing both liturgy and liberi well, we are always going to have issues, because part of parenting is learning how to be a parent, even while worshiping.

Let me also add that we are always going to have issues because part of parenting is fathers learning what it means to be a father, which includes leading his family in worship and not leaving his wife to carry the burden. For different reasons not every mother has a husband who comes; more is on her, yes. But by far the more common problem is dads [...]