Worship Concluded … The working out of what has been done.

A couple years ago I happened on GEEZ magazine; I believe the maiden voyage issue. Some friends told me those who put it together had some connection to AdBusters. Since the first issue I have been hooked. The most recent edition of GEEZ offers “30 Sermons You’d Never Hear In Church.” I was considering not renewing my subscription as I often feel overwhelmed by the reading regimen I keep. When I turned to the first sermon I immediately changed my mind. I will be renewing. Titled “The Detoxification Sermon,” Stephen T. Berg offers some of the best lines I have read in a while regarding Christian worship. Three quotes to mull over,

When Christian worship subtly links itself to patriotism or leans into pietism and moralism, worshippers can soon identify themselves not simply as believers but as “true believers.” and the category “true beliver” is only sustainable as being over and against what isn’t “true.”

and,

But in real Christian worship no high or holy architecture is needed. There is nothing to produce. Everything has been concluded. Worshipping Christians are nothing more than witnesses to something done and transpired, witnesses to the “forgiving victim,” the victim who has absorbed our exclusion and victimizing violence and in return, forgives. And in this forgiveness our needing to secure ourselves by being part of an “us against them” is undone.”

and,

True worhsip, as theologian James Alison contends, “leads to a slow, patient discovery of being able to like people in their bizarre particularities, and see the beauty in those things, not abstract from them.” The test of true worship then is to receive others with their quirks and annoyances, not simply to “love the brotherhood” in abstraction. This means that real Christian worship is relaxing, and in some sense entirely unremarkable. (GEEZ, Summer 2008, Issue 10, p.10-11)

About the Author
Husband to Patty. Daddy to Kimberly and Tommie. Grandpa Doc to Cohen, Max, Fox, and Marlee. Pastor to Snow Hill Baptist Church. Graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Reading. Photography. Golf. Colorado. Jeeping. Friend. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and should not be construed as representing the corporate views of the church I pastor.

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