Kyle Dresback

Friends,

Recently I made the mistake of asking a room full of 13-year-olds to impersonate me. (I don’t recommend this.) 

They stood up and began shouting phrases, from the vaguely purposeful, “Does the text say that!?” and “Be the hammer, not the nail!” to nonsensical filler, as when one just shouted, “I meeeeeaan…” More than one student gesticulated wildly, evidently warding off some wayward logical argument.

As I stared dumbfounded at this recitation of me back to me, I caught a glimpse of what they had picked up after a year in my classroom. It struck me that, for better or worse, this was all part of my “accidental liturgy.”

James K.A. Smith has written extensively on humans as “storied creatures,” highlighting the cultural liturgies all around us, from universities to football stadiums. These liturgies reinforce the stories that provide us with meaning, shaping our loves, and orienting our desires.

As we grow up in them, certain repeated, embodied, and meaningful liturgies can find their way into the deep places. They interpret and provide language for our lived experiences.

Today’s lectionary is wonderfully curated to include both Mary’s Magnificat and also the “liturgical” source material that brought it about.

Confronted with a life-changing—indeed cosmos-changing—promise, Mary responds with a song. But her Magnificat is not novel. Her words are borrowed. She is “impersonating,” in a way, the childless Hannah, the humble King David, and the hopeful prophet Isaiah, among others.

As Mary is steeped in the story and the liturgical language of her forbears in faith, she finds meaning in their words reapplied to her own situation:

My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.

With these words, Mary joins a cloud of witnesses who have left behind both a language and a posture for encountering God. Mercifully, God has entrusted the Church with those repeated, embodied, meaningful liturgies—corporate prayer, holy days, baptism, the Psalms, the Eucharist; liturgies that form us quietly over time as we seek God in faithful humility.

In Christ,

—Kyle