Rev. Bob Hovda on Liturgical theology:

"There is a modest and essential place in every liturgical celebraiton for human rhetoric, but it is a modest place, subordinate to the proclamation of the word of God in scriptuure, subordinate to the symbolic action of the whole assembly. Implied in all of this is the conviction that what is most important about public worship is that we gather the sisters and brothers together for a festival, a special occasion, a cebration of the reign of Gdod (not yet terribly evident in daily life nor in the institutions of society), that helps all of us feel so good about ourseles, so imprtant, so dignified, so precious, so free, so much at one.. not as escape, not merely in distinction to daily routine, but in judgment, in the Lord's judgement on those ways and institutions. A celebration of the reign of God that goes way beyond the tight, drab, rationalistic, verbose, pedagogical exercises we sometimes try to make of it___all those dreadful "themese" that we love___into a large, broad, fully human landscape, where Jesus is truly the firstborn of a new humanity, and where our other lliturical tools (festival excess and colors and tastes and textures and odors and forms and touches) penetrate the Babel of our words and points and arguments to heal the human spirit and to raise it up in the covenant communty's vision of new possibilities. Good liturgical celebration, like a parable, takes us by the hair of our heads, lifts us momentarily out of the cesspool of injustice we call home, puts us in the promised and challenging reign of God, where we are treated like we have never been treated anywhere else."

REV. ROBERT HOVDA