A favorite liturgical text from seminary days is Robert W. Hovda's Strong, Loving , and Wise - Presiding in the Liturgy (The Liturgical Press, 1976). While thoroughly steeped in Vatican II reforms, this little book represents some of the better thinking of that era in terms of liturgical renewal and reform of the clergy. Here are a couple paragraphs on the reverence and mystery in worship:
There is no conflict between reverence/sense of awe, on the one hand, and the atmosphere of hospitality, on the other. Reverence is not stiffness and pomposity - quite the opposite, for those qualities involve a self-assertion and a feeling of self-importance that are antithetical to reverence. What is less apparent is the psychological fact that efforts to make people feel at ease in liturgy, unless they are built upon and suffused with this sense of mystery, cause people to recoil rather than to relax.
In liturgy, the numinous, the holy must be almost tangible. It must be evident in the presider's attitude toward the other persons in the assembly, as well as in everyone's attitude toward everyone else. If we do not feel in liturgy that there is more to us than meets the eye, that we are dwelling places of the Most High, that beneath our masks and roles and camouflage and superficial categories we share a common dignity as well as a common creatureliness, then one of the more important functions of the liturgy and ritual experience is unfulfilled. (p. 67)
Reverence and hospitality are not mutually exclusive, though they are often treated as such. Some would abandon reverence altogether in favor of making people 'feel comfortable" and meeting their needs. Others would abandon hospitality in favor of reverence and awe. Hovda makes a good point. Attempts to make people feel "comfortable" in the liturgy, if these attempts are not suffused with a sense of reverence and mystery, will actually make people recoil in discomfort. Dissonance is never comfortable. Likewise, reverence without respect is rude if not arrogant. Though appearing "holy," it is simply egotistical.
The way of the liturgy is a "relaxed dignity," as a church organist I know puts it. Reverence and awe for the holy things combined with respect for the priestly dignity of Christ's holy people. I recall attending a divine service in which the presider exhibited this relaxed dignity, one rarely found among Lutherans. His voice was strong, his gestures confident, his manner relaxed and fatherly. You had confidence in his leadership without being intimidated by his office. He didn't hide behind his vestments, he wore them with priestly dignity. In the pulpit, he was himself - no tone, no affect. He was genuinely transparent, including even a Canadian "eh?" at the end of a couple of points together with a fatherly smile and a touch of humor. You wanted to hear more.
I had lunch with him the next day. I was an inexperienced paster at the time, just three or so years from my ordination and still trying to find my way around the liturgy. I asked him, "How do you do that? How can you be so at ease and yet so reverent?" His reply, "You first have to be comfortable with yourself. Then it will come."
I didn't understand then, but I do now, thirteen years later. One can hide oneself behind vestments and ceremonies or one can discard them and put oneself on display. Neither are desirable. To achieve "relaxed dignity" as a presider requires that one be comfortable as a justified sinner, unworthy in one's self but worthy in Christ to serve holy things to holy people.