Because God is the subject of worship, we must back up a step to recall that, before liturgy can involve the work of the people who offer their praise, it begins with the presence of God graciously inviting that response.

It seems to me that some of the worship wars over liturgy could be easily resolved if we remembered that we worship by God’s invitation and not by our own concoction.

Using God’s own works in liturgical responses helps to remind us that worship is God’s gift to us before it can be our gift to God. God is the subject and the object of what we are doing.

Losing God as the subject can turn liturgy into performance rather than sacrament. This results in a modern form of a medieval notion against which Martin Luther fought–the notion that liturgy’s power and effectiveness depend upon the priest’s worthiness.

The modern version insists that liturgy must be performed well in order to be effective and its potency is determined according to the criterion that every participant must have had some sort of emotionally satisfying experience.

from Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down