Worship Old and New Part 3: Rival Stories [] = omit from spoken presentation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2uQIfBWi3wg&si=lrBcgi6MSWvg_fn_

Practical Application: Apostles’ Creed[1]

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit

and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen.

 

Bible Readings

 

Ephesians 1:1-22

John 1:1-18

 

Preamble

 

Tonight’s teaching is at the centre of my messages; and far beyond this series!

 

How It All Began

We forget most of what we hear, [and sermons are generally no exception]. I however clearly remember going to an evening meeting in Adelaide around 1976 where Geoffrey Bingham was expounding Ephesians 1, a passage which culminates in “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” There was something about the grand sweep of the plan he expounded that was all engaging. [It corresponds to the “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13) into which we are called.] What Ephesians speaks of as a “plan”, we can describe as a story, the story of Jesus from one end of eternity to another, from our being “chosen [ us] in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Eph 1:4), to our reigning with him “as a kingdom and priests” forever and ever (Rev 1:6; 5:10).

I used to begin my lectures to Introduction to Christology with this quote: “’What role does God play in our lives?  It is an inevitable but wrong question.  We shall be freed from it only by captivation to the right question:  what role do we play in God’s life?  The story is not our story with a role for Christ.  The story is Christ’s story with roles for us.”[2] The Spirit that dwells in you [in Christ] will forever prophetically testify to this truth (John 15:26; Rev 19:10). As a liturgical scholar puts it, “God tells me to find my place in his narrative. In God’s story, he, with his own two hands- the incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit- recapitulated and reversed the human situation so I can now live in him.” (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship). Without a consistent story that embraces everything, nothing makes sense. This is why abefore I met Jesus, I was hopelessly depressed[3]. If hell is sheer absolute personal anonymity[4], then contemporary Western culture, riddled through with so-called “social media” disconnections, flowing into a me-centred individualistic perspective on worship and what it means to be human, has stripped the Church of the glory of God in Christ. We desperately need a revival of the story of how God created us to be in a world made for his glory revealed through exclusive worship directed to the one Lord in the name of Jesus.

 

Fall loses Everything

The story of Jesus opens up a completely new world view so that human existence is understood within the matrix of a world made for communion with God. 1 Corinthians 3:21-23 is one text that testifies about such realities [to the divided Church in Corinth so much like our own],  “So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” God’s original plan[5] was to call the whole world to be filled with Eucharist, that is, that is with heartfelt thanksgiving. “Original” sin isn’t primarily that Adam “disobeyed” God; the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for God and for God alone. Adam ceased to see his life as depending on the created order as a sacrament of communion with God. His sin was that he was tempted [to think of God in terms of religion, i.e.,] to think of the Lord in a way that opposed [God’s nature] to the abundance of life which Jesus later promised us (John 10:10). The real Fall of man is to live a non eucharistic life in a non-eucharistic world[6]. The Fall is not that Adam simply preferred the world’s delights to God[, so distorting the balance between the spiritual and material,] but that he treated the world as only material, instead of worshipping/serving the Lord transforming everything into “life in God,” filled with meaning and S/spirit. (Schmemann)[7]

Christians should never function with a split/dualistic worldview which separates grace and nature or the natural from the supernatural, the unity of all things is already found in the Incarnation of God in Christ[8]. In Christ we understand humanity has always been called to minister as prophets, priests and kings of the whole world (Ps 8; Heb 2:5ff; 1 Pet 2:9; Rev 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). [Biblically speaking, cosmology is always subordinated to Church (ecclesiology) and Church is subordinated to Christology. [Within a trinitarian framework.]]

Since Adam and Eve were called to “fill all things” with the divine life [already] resident in them as the image of God (Gen 1:26-28), but later failed, Jesus reverses/recapitulates[9] the failure of the first Adam (1 Cor 15:45) and restores/renews the human situation through his perfect union with his Father. God’s plan is to fulfil all things in Jesus (Eph 1:9-10); what most Christians do not see is that the present highlight of this plan is Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his taking the church with him. [This exaltation is a precondition for the fulfilment of the mission of the Church that God will be “all in all” “through the Church”[10] (1 Cor 15:28; Eph 1:23).] This provokes serious questions. How have we lost the dimensions of the story of Jesus and how can it be revived?

The Problem of Idolatry

Satan, [who has from the beginning (John 8:44) been part of God’s great plan,] has always understood that to change the story people believe in is to change reality as they see it. This means that his strategy [,allowed in the eternal wise councils of God,] involved perverting the direction of our ultimate love. The essence of idolatry is falling in love, for itself, with anything, other than God. Idolatry means that instead of receiving created things as heavenly gifts (James 1:17) moving us to an greater enjoyment of the Lord, we are limited to a vision of “things below” (John 8:23), [ led us away from “the worship of heaven”[11]]. Paul puts this very starkly in Romans, God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Rom 1:20-21)[12].

Any story about the world [and what it contains] when given ultimate status will fail. For example, as a science student at university, I was very attracted to the scientific story, but it proved powerless to help my depression[13], for all stories other than the Jesus story are idolatrous.

The genius of Israel’s religion was that the God who had sovereignly chosen them to be his people in covenant[14] claimed all of space, time, and behaviour as holy for himself [as he dwelt in the midst of his people (Ex 25:8)]. The loss of God’s limitless glory drives men and women to every form of idolatry[15] to fill up the emptiness of their hearts with anything that will bring some measure of satisfaction, [however small and temporary][16].

The Subversion that Surrounds Us[17]

Being born fallen means we are immersed in a world we always interpret as existing for us. [Just as baptism symbolises our immersion into the story of God revealed in Christ,] we are in union with whatever story our heart becomes attracted to (cf. Gen 3:6; 1 John 2:16). Everyone has a practical theology about the world. We can join the tradition (of conservative Evangelicals) of treating people as first of all as rational thinkers/knowers, or, we can see ourselves as essentially lovers made in the image of God who is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Our own experience teaches us that we are first of all lovers, whose desires for things is formed long prior to the maturing of our rational faculties[18][19]. Using biblical language (Prov 4:23 etc.), we can choose a “head theology” or a “heart theology” and the Lord powerfully shifted me from the first to the second in my 40’s.

As a human being you have to, you must, love passionately. The question is whether you will love the visible world or the invisible world of God (Heb 11:26-27). I need to expound this a little in ways we may not have reflected on. The loves of our hearts are shaped by outward habits and practices that form our identities[20] because they are in fact what James K A Smith calls “secular liturgies”, unassumed patterns of thought and behaviour that control culture. On a global scale what the Bible calls Babylon [in both Old and New Testaments (1 Pet 5:13)] is a symbol of the forms of life that continually surround us. Take the ordinary shopping mall;   considered spiritually it is a ceremonial centre whose beauty and message  is intended to enthral and attract submission to a story about consumption as the key to the good life[21].  This covertly/unconsciously but powerfully and gradually converts us into an anti-Christ way of life[22]. Such patterns of life do his because they oppose true liturgies shaping us into Christ likeness.

In blunt biblical language, communion with Christ and fellowship with demons are incompatible. Paul must say to the Corinthians,  “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that fan idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:19-22). In the next chapter he goes on to speak of the sick and dying at the Eucharist as signs of God’s discipline on a sinful church (1 Cor 11:27-31). Like it or not, nothing has changed between now and then.

Western culture is escapist, and some people go to church because they enjoy the “feel good” mood, especially in the singing. Why aren’t our contemporary song writers exhorting us to beware the temptations of pleasure seeking, materialism, greed, and sex? How about prophetic songs about loving and forgiving one another and taking care of the poor? The contemporary Christian music scene needs to go through a spiritual reformation if it is ever to empower believers to overcome the idols of this world. [Revelation is saturated with hymns or fragments of songs (Rev 4:8; 4:9–11; 5:9–10; 5:12; 5:13; 7:10; 7:11–12; 11:15; 11:16–18; 12:10–12; 15:2–4; 16:5–7; 19:1–4; 19:5; 19:6–8) because it was written to a tiny persecuted Church oppressed by a powerful evil empire and in danger of compromise with idolatry. We need this sort of literature today as part of “the testimony of Jesus”.] Christ-centred liturgies should bring us into new realms of time and space which counter the seduction of ever-present idols.

Recapturing The Story of Jesus

In recapturing the story of Jesus as the antidote to all false stories we cannot ignore past moves of the Lord; the Reformation, the post-Reformation revivals[23], the Pentecostal-Charismatic wave.  What the Lord did in these moves gives us patterns of how he might restore to the Church the story of Jesus today. First, the depth, maturity and longevity of any move of God hinges on preaching the Word[24]. The 18^th century Evangelical Revival in the UK and America was primarily led by great preachers[25]. The fruit of this foundational preaching continues in the self-identified Evangelical churches of today spread across the globe. [Compare this with how the famous Welsh Revival, based largely on testimonies, burnt out after less than two years[26].]

Bible based teaching is indispensable to worship because worship gathers up [recapitulates] the Gospel story of creation, fall, incarnation, death, resurrection, exaltation and consummation of all things as anointed preachers [repeatedly] proclaim Jesus and his saving deeds, culminating in the exaltation of the crucified Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit (Webber, Divine Embrace, p. 253)[27]

A second element that is essential for recapturing the story of Jesus today is a return to the substance of the creeds. In the last several months we have seen the Church in Australia as divided as the world by the Indigenous Voice referendum and the Hamas-Israel war. This has radically exposed our failure to receive the truth of Jesus’ prayer, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and cloved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:21-23). In praying over our inabilities to see in the Spirit what the will of the Lord is in relation to things like this, I can see more than ever that we have been falling prey to principalities that control political movements today[28].

When I was a Church of Christ minister, I came across their classic motto, ““In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity i.e. love””[29] It is ironic that there are so many denominations who deny the expression of their fulness of their unity in Christ by prejudicially, and in some cases arrogantly, never employing creeds in congregational worship[30].

The ancient Christian Creeds[31] should be seen as weapons of spiritual warfare[32] originally designed to be memorable [counter-intuitive] stories opposing popular mythologies concerning the origins of the world and its destiny. They affirm God’s story of creation, incarnation, death, resurrection, new creation[33] and that the faithful Creator sustains his relationship with the cosmos until he brings it to glory in Christ.

Thirdly, and a subject I will address on week 7 of our series at length, there needs to be a revolution is music and singing[34]. Singing is something quite unique to the Christian experience of salvation. To quote John Stott, “The clearest proof of (grace and forgiveness through the gospel) is the simplest.  It lies in the hymns of Christian worship.  A Buddhist temple never resounds with a cry of praise.  Mohammedan worshippers never sing.  Their prayers are, at the highest, prayers of submission and of request.  They seldom reach the gladder note of thanksgiving.  They are never jubilant with the songs of the forgiven. . . .”[35] New forms of praise in song are the fruit of a move of the Spirit[36].  (This is something we should seriously ne interceding for.)

Lastly, restoration in the Church depends on dramatic re-enactment as a divinely appointed vehicle of renewal and revival[37].  I will teach on the dynamism of the Lord’s Supper in detail next week. But the neglect [or non-appropriation] of the Eucharist highlights a failure to recognise that whilst God’s story is the essence of Christian living, it is reflection on the Incarnation that is the missing link in today’s [theological understanding and practice on] worship. Inevitably, where the space reserved for Christ to have “first place” [in all things (Col 1:18)] is ignored, this spiritual vacuum is corrupted by idolatrous culture so that inconsistency and fragmentation plagues the Church. The epicentre of biblical worship flows from the death, resurrection, ascension and return of Christ [38].

Regaining Eschatology[39]

One massive problem we face today is ignorance of biblical eschatology. There are a host of factors behind this. One is a failure to read and see that the Old Testament essentially points to Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:27, 44-45). We are not talking about a spirituality that has the future figured out [from a pre, post, or amillennial conviction,] but one that is lived out eschatologically. In “waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” The first Christians lived out lives according to the revelation that all existence is being organised around the ascended Christ [in the messianic kingdom of God] anticipating a miraculous reconstruction of the whole cosmos (2 Pet 3:13-14; 1John 3:1-3)[40]. When a liturgy is eschatologically conceived, it embodies the sharp conflict between the kingdom of God and the doomed kingdoms of the world (Rev 11:15). [It will also yield to the advent presence of Christ. As happened at “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1) liturgical language itself will be “transfigured in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”. (Torrance).]

Presently, many Bible believing congregations have regressed to liturgies [mirroring evangelistic/revivalist models of 1. singing,  2.preaching the gospel, 3. invitation to receive Christ, 4. end of service, structure that omits the biblical story line of creation, fall, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension. new heavens and earth. In ]reducing God’s plan to re-create all things to “me” sized proportions that omit the great drama of the Bible. One consequence of this is our ignorance of ongoing spiritual conflict. Real spiritual warfare is normal for the Church. Angelic presence in meetings is not a strange thing (1 Cor 11:10; Rev 2:1 etc.) because it points to the heavenly significance of our assembling. The rule over this present time is always contested by deceiving powers. The Church always needs a robust Christ-centred eschatology to carry us to the End when there will be no more contest.[41]

Losing the Mystery

Our worship has lost a sense of the divine mystery of holiness[42], what some people call “reverence”. This was lost in conservative Christianity through embracing rationalism[43], whilst Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians have suffered from what sociologist’s call “expressive individualism”[44]. The mystery which the Bible expounds applies first of all to the story of God in Christ before it applies to us, then to the world. This is the story revealed in Jesus as God’s self-revelation (Rom 16:25-26). To think of mystery [like the medieval mystics thought of it,] as a state of inner personal transformation is to would exchange the vast cosmic story for what takes place in me [and my little subjective experience,]and to lose the dimensions of the mystery are the life of Jesus[45] which are “unsearchable/unfathomable” (Eph 3:8).

Conclusion

Two things come together as we try to summarise the implications of today’s teaching. First, are we willing to reengage with worship in the atmosphere created by the story of Christ as it was reenacted by the Early Church[46]. In New Testament times the social cost to Christians of attending church rather than the [common] cult dinners and sacrificial feasts of the time would have been considerable. Without sacred places, temples, shrines, cultic images, or a distinguished priesthood the Christian faith was “weird”. Early believers were considered atheists, practitioners of incest, cannibals and the like[47]. Compared to that level of spiritual conflict contemporary Western Christianity has been thoroughly tamed. What was at stake then, as now, is something as great[48]as what the eternity of a new humanity will look like in the coming cosmos. And what it will look like is all about….Jesus!!

Today’s “worship war” (to use an Amercicansism) isn’t between conservative parts of the Church advocating hymns and songs about gospel facts versus charismatic parts of Christianity who emphasise experience. It is a war between worshipping “the creature rather than the creator” and worshipping God as he has revealed himself finally, fully, and forever in Jesus Christ. Are we truly worshipping in the mystery? Everyone’s a worshipper, it just depends on what or who or how we are worshipping. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us a greater share in the devotional life of Jesus. This alone is the place where we will find deepest healing. The worship of the Father is drawn out of the heart of Jesus through a revelation of the wisdom, beauty, love of God’s plan to save “all things” through himself (Eph 1:10). May the Lord grant us insight into such wonderful things and turn us into worshippers in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24).