Dream Awakener

Kim Fabricious is a consistent contributor to Ben Myers blog entitled Faith and Theology.  I really appreciate his insight on many topics.  Recently he just posted his ten propositions on worship.  I have listed a few of them, you will have to go to the blog entry to view the rest.

The image above is by Kalfatjarnarkirkja at flickr.

3. Is worship necessary? Not for God it isn’t. God does not need our worship – because God is worship, the perichoretic adoration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Worship is, however, necessary for us, for it is only as homo adorans,
participating in the very life of the Holy Trinity, that we become
truly human. As the psychologist says in Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, “If you don’t worship, you’ll shrink.”

6. How should worship proceed?
Worship is a dialogue, or, better, a two-beat tempo of revelation and
response, grace and gratitude. Worship is also an ellipse, spiralling
around the foci of word and sacrament. And worship is a time machine
that takes us back to the future. And the various liturgies? They are aides-memoirs,
not incantations, synopses of the unfinished story we are invited to
indwell and improvise; therefore they should not aim at closure but
make space for contemplation and imaginationn.[sic]

7. How should worship end? With
an ellipsis…. For when the liturgy is over, the service (λειτουργία)
begins. Leaving the church is the ultimate liturgical act: Ite, missa est.
On Romans 12:1-2, Ernst Käsemann observes that “the cultic vocabulary
serves a decidedly anti-cultic thrust. Christian worship does not
consist in what is practiced at sacred sites, at sacred times, and with
sacred acts. It is the offering of bodily existence in the otherwise
profane sphere.” Or as Michael Marshall puts it: “You do not become a
Christian by sitting in the pew anymore than you become a car by
sitting in the garage.”

8. What should we get out of
worship? Wrong question. Worship is not a utility but an offering, i.e.
a sacrifice, an economy of grace that interrupts and critiques the
feverish cycles of production and consumption – which is why the
collection is not fund-raising but cultural critique. If you want
relevance, excitement, or profit, go to a rally, a concert, or the
stock exchange. To put it most counter-culturally: Blessed are the
bored, for they will see God.

9. What about people who don’t
worship? We are responsible for them. Hence intercessions. But more:
all worship is a vicarious act – in fact, Christ’s vicarious act – so
that when we come to worship, we bring the whole world with us. Worship
is the end of “us” and “them” – and a sneak preview of the
reconciliation of all things.

I think these propositions give you a taste of what the others include, enough to have you go and read them all.