Liturgy is always an interesting thing when you do weddings and funerals and most of the people are unfamiliar with any liturgy at all in church. I feel a need to explain why we use it and the purpose it serves. It is the earliest form of worship and teaches the story of God through repetition and asks that participants take responsibility for telling the story themselves in the Creed and in other places by singing and speaking.
We who use the creeds regularly in worship should be the most comfortable evangelists. We should know the story better than anyone since we recite it each and every week, yet often the words never become real. We simply know the words without entering the story ourselves, the truth is external to us and we can own the criticism that it is no more than rote memorization. The problem on the other side of the issue is that personal experience is disconnected from theological truths which in fact matter. The only story we have to tell is our personal story and yet there is a grander story than our personal salvation, there is the story of the Triune God that begins "I believe in God the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth," takes in the life and death of Jesus for us, the Spirit given to us and concludes with life everlasting.
Liturgical worship draws us into common worship, we have sinned, we have been redeemed, we believe what the church has always believed, and in that we are drawn out of our private story and into the great story of the sweep of history that will continue into the age to come. Christ would have died for me if I were the only one who needed it, but He didn't, His work was bigger and greater and in accepting that I lose my sense of isolation and become part of the communion of saints. I need to celebrate that reality.
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