Answers

  1. Why is worship important? Many possible answers, including: Worship is how humans interact with God. Worship is how all of the Church– living, departed, yet to be born– join together.
  2. What are the two dimensions of Orthodox Christian worship? (1) Worship is God’s presence with his people. (2) Worship is the people’s response to God.
  3. Name the two principal modes in which Orthodox Christian worship is expressed. Action and Language
  4. Name two liturgical texts in the Bible. Possible answers include: The Psalter, the Book of Odes, the Song of the Sea, any individual Ode or Psalm, etc
  5. According to many scholars, is the oldest passage in the Bible a historical text, a liturgical text, or a geological text? A Liturgical text. (The Song of the Sea, Exodus 15)
  6. Name two places in the Bible where a vision of heavenly worship is described. What do both of these visions have in common? Isaiah and the Book of Revelation. Both of these visions show angels at the throne of God singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
  7. When human beings worship God, who are they representing? When human beings worship God, they represent the angels (cherubim and seraphim) who sing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
  8. How do we know that people should be able to understand the words they are using to worship God? The texts of worship were always composed in language that the people using them could understand.
  9. Why is it impossible to fully understand the meaning of the worship of God? The worship of God cannot be fully understood because God is too great to describe in words (“ineffable”), too great to understand using words (“incomprehensible”), and too great to imagine using words (“inconceivable”).
  10. What role do liturgical translators have in Orthodox Christian worship? If human beings are going to worship God in language that we can understand, then somebody has to translated the worship of God into every human language. This is what liturgical translators do.