Liturgy: “Therefore Did My Heart Rejoice”
While Christianity provides answers to life’s most important questions, it has always acknowledged the great mysteries of human life.
What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.
This Week’s Lectionary Readings:
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Psalm 16
This week’s liturgy is contributed by Dr. David Tubbs, Associate Professor of Politics:
A formative intellectual experience in my life occurred in graduate school, when I was introduced to the writings of Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet and essayist. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, Milosz became known to some Americans following the publication and translation of The Captive Mind in the 1950s. When reading this book as a graduate student, I encountered a fascinating account of why some very intelligent people in central and eastern Europe rejected Christianity and embraced communism soon after the Second World War.
In Milosz’s account, some of the best minds of his day were attracted to communism’s promise ultimately to explain every facet of human existence. The word “ultimately” should be stressed. Those who joined the communist parties in Europe insisted that the critical spirit and rationality of communism would someday dispel all the mysteries of life—including matters linked to basic questions of human existence, such as the differences between good and evil, love and hatred, and kindness and cruelty. For Milosz, this promise of comprehensive or universal knowledge was the great temptation facing educated Europeans of his generation. But he would have none of it.
Milosz reminded me that while Christianity provides answers to life’s most important questions, it has always acknowledged the great mysteries of human life, and Christian thinkers have never promised anything like comprehensive or universal knowledge. At that point in my life, this was a crucial reminder, and I often think of Milosz during the season of Easter, when the sense of mystery is so profound and beautiful. “Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; and also my flesh shall rest in hope” (Acts 2:26).