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Worship and the dilemma of the Poor and the Door
Locking Out The Poor from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.
I like what Shane is saying here. Let me try and turn it toward worship.
My most common thought about worship and the poor has gone something like this: "We need to get out of this building and get to helping the poor, whom I often refer to as the "needy" or "underprivileged" or other such derogatory term. I mean, who wants to be called "needy?"
I am learning to approach it differently. The ultimate goal isn't to get out the door to help the poor; rather it is to bring the poor through the door. (and all that this would signify) In fact, true worship gets rid of the door altogether. Think about the parable of the wedding feast-- the one where Jesus commends them to go to the streets and bring in the poor and the lame in order to "fill up my house."
Steve Fee wrote a song some years back called "Madly." The chorus went like this, "Let what we do in here fill the streets out there." I like it, but the more I reflect the more I would change it to, "Let what we do out there fill the seats in here."
So here's the question: Would the guy on the corner with the "Will work for food" placard feel at home or out of place in our sanctuaries. Maybe the biggest challenge we have isn't on the outside but on the inside.
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 8/12/2009 03:01:00 AM | 5 comments
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Story of Worship and Mission: Part 9
He comes to his threshing floor.Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'"
The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant. Matthew 21:12-15.
The place of worship had ceased to be a place of mercy. This is evidenced by the presence of the blind and the lame who were apparently being stepped around like furniture. The threshing floor is the place of judgment-- where wheat and chaff are separated. The good news is that the place of worship becomes a place of pre-emptive judgment. The place of worship holds out the possibility of repentance, a true turning to God, which leads to our redemption as opposed to destruction.
Now think back through the scenes of this unfolding story and make some theological connections. They are manifold.
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 2/16/2009 03:01:00 AM | 5 comments
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Story of Worship and Mission: Part 8
Remember Leviticus and the intricate connections between laws re: worship and laws re: showing mercy to the widows, aliens and poor.
Remember Ruth (widow and alien) gleaning behind the harvesters and later meeting up with Boaz on the threshing floor.
Remember the lineage: Obed--Jesse--David--Solomon. . . . . . . . Jesus
Remember David who purchased the threshing floor of Arunah the Jebusite and there offered sacrifice to the Lord, pleading for the stopping of the plague.
Remember Solomon building the Temple (the sacred place of worship) on the foundation of this very threshing floor.
Now remember John the Baptist, the last and greatest prophet according to Jesus. Note his language and metaphor which is both symbolic and literal at the same time.
Do you see where this is headed? Observations???? Predictions???? Stay tuned. . . . . .
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 2/12/2009 03:01:00 AM | 3 comments
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Story of Worship and Mission: Part 7
Finally, we get back to the Worship and Mission series begun here some months ago. If you are just joining us or need a refresher, click here, scroll to the bottom and read your way up through the six part series so far. Part 6 in particular will bring you up to speed. Despite the fact that we've lost momentum, if you will tune in, this series will surprise you in what could be a powerful fashion. In the series we are establishing a biblical trajectory for the union of worship and mission.
We left off with David purchasing the threshing floor from Arunah the Jebusite. Many scholars believe that this is the same threshing floor where Ruth met Boaz, and extended the mercy of redemption. This same threshing floor became the foundation of the Temple constructed by Solomon.
Remember-- Levitical law readily interweaves concerns for proper worship in the tabernacle with care for widows, orphans, aliens and the poor. (i.e. leave grain in the fields). Ruth, an alien widow gleaned behind the harvesters in the field of Boaz. Ruth and Boaz connect on the threshing floor. They give birth to Obed which downstreams generationally to David. David purchases the threshing floor from Arunah the Jebusite. Solomon builds the temple on the site of the threshing floor.
Coming Soon. . . . . . . John the Baptist, makes an amazing connection profoundly linking the past with the future. . . . . stay tuned. This is going to blow you away.
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 2/10/2009 03:01:00 AM | 4 comments
Friday, December 12, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 6 Previously on Worship and Mission. . . . . . .
Levitical Law revealed through Moses linking proper temple sacrifices and leaving grain in the field. . . . . . .Ruth, an (illegal?) alien widow gleans behind the harvesters outside Bethlehem in the field of Boaz. . . . . . Ruth lays at the feet of Boaz on the threshing floor and he later takes her as his wife, becoming her kinsman redeemer. . . . . . Boaz and Ruth give birth to Obed. . . . . who will sire Jesse. . . . . who will sire. . . . . . . David.
David, now King, takes an ill-advised count of Israel's army. The Lord sends a plague on the land. 70,000 dead and the plague rages on.
17 When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the LORD, "I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and my family."
18 On that day Gad went to David and said to him, "Go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite." 19 So David went up, as the LORD had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his men coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?"
"To buy your threshing floor," David answered, "so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped."
22 Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 O king, Araunah gives all this to the king." Araunah also said to him, "May the LORD your God accept you."
24 But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. 25 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the LORD answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
to be continued. . . . . . . .
Scenes from the next episode
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 12/12/2008 08:08:00 AM | 2 comments
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 5
As you read the following texts from Ruth, keep in mind the Leviticus text in the prior post in the series. Stay with me. It will take a few posts, but this is headed to an amazing vista of revelation.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!"
"The LORD bless you!" they called back. To read more of this fascinating encounter click here.
[SIDEBAR: that little exchange between Boaz and the harvesters-- that's a FARMStrong Farm!]
TRACK FORWARD NOW A BIT LATER:
1
One day Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, should I not try to find a home [a] for you, where you will be well provided for? 2 Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours? Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. 3 Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don't let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do." 5 "I will do whatever you say," Ruth answered. 6 So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do. 7 When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. 8 In the middle of the night something startled the man, and he turned and discovered a woman lying at his feet. 9 "Who are you?" he asked. "I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer."
13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 14 The women said to Naomi: "Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth." 16 Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, "Naomi has a son."
And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
to be continued...........
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 12/11/2008 08:34:00 AM | 1 comments
Monday, December 08, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 4
I want us to take a look at the following text and make some observations about the connections between worship and mission that emerge from the text. Don't be afraid of stating the obvious-- sometimes that's where the greatest insight comes. Get involved with this thread as it promises to unfold some potentially major epiphanies in the way ahead.
Leviticus 19
Various Laws
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.
3 " 'Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.
4 " 'Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the LORD your God.
5 " 'When you sacrifice a fellowship offering [a] to the LORD, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. 6 It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up. 7 If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is impure and will not be accepted. 8 Whoever eats it will be held responsible because he has desecrated what is holy to the LORD; that person must be cut off from his people.
9 " 'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.
11 " 'Do not steal.
" 'Do not lie.
" 'Do not deceive one another.
12 " 'Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
13 " 'Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him.
" 'Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.
14 " 'Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.
15 " 'Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
16 " 'Do not go about spreading slander among your people.
" 'Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the LORD.
17 " 'Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.
18 " 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 12/08/2008 07:22:00 AM | 7 comments
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 3
One of the challenges we face in making the connection between worship and mission is our own quickness to settle for what I call the "should-must" motive. The rationale goes like this, "God did this, therefore we must do that." Said another way: "Jesus came all the way from Heaven to Earth therefore we should get out of these cozy pews and take the Gospel to the nations. While this is certainly true, it stops short of a real theological rationale, settling for a moral-ethical motive. The "should-must" motive feeds into the classic "indicative to imperative" play. It works to a certain extent because it puts the imperative on our shoulders. The imperative quickly gets mixed in with the urgent. "Time is running out, we must do something now." This leads to all sorts of inadequate strategies and structures of getting God's mission done.
The primary problem is this approach subtly throws the responsibility back on us to "get-er-done-for-God." We turn to a hierarchy of strategies ranging from nobility to altruism to philanthropy to duty to guilt and finally shame. (I once read a statistic that said the number one givers to missionaries are other missionaries. Go figure.) Sure God will help us and that's where prayer comes in play. There are those who go and those who give and those who pray and those who take an occasional vacation break mission trip and then there are the indifferent masses who give a salute and don't get involved. This leads to a representative structure wherein those who are serious about the mission represent the rest of us who know we should be serious about it too.
Not only does this moral-ethical approach hopelessly bifurcate worship and mission, it goes further to endlessly atomize the work of mission into multiple departments and even compartments. Worship and Mission. . . . . I want to say, "What God has joined together let noone put asunder."
Our task is to recognize that while the mission of God has deep moral and ethical dimensions, there is a deeper rationale for this work; a reason dwelling in the very heart of the Godhead. Anybody want to take a crack at it? How do we get past the thin motives and into the deeper realities?
Labels: worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/25/2008 08:11:00 AM | 8 comments
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Worship and MIssion: Part 2
More on what the "inside-out" idea of worship is about. Getting back to the relationship between worship and mission, and continuing to track with Schattauer's essay referenced in the prior post, I want us to consider this word from Pannenberg writing some 25 years ago.
There is no reason for the existence of the church except to symbolize the future of the divine kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim. This explains in what specific sense worship is in the center of the life of the church: The worship of the Christian community anticipates and symbolically celebrates the praise of God's glory that shall be consummated in the eschatological renewal of all creation in the new Jerusalem. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1983)
I like what he is saying. It is emphatic but it seems a bit incomplete. It seems all anticipatory and missing the crucial formative element of memory. Consider Rodney Clapp's analysis here:
Liturgy also implies and enacts mission... All liturgy is related to mission. . . . The church exists for the sake of the world. . . . Worship teaches and forms us to live by the Jesus story so that others--the entire world, the church prays--will learn to live according to reality and wholeness. The people, the culture, that is now the church is joyful that God has already drawn it together, but it lives in hope of a greater joy, a joy that achieves fullness only in the kingdom's fullness. (Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society)
One more from Darrell Guder that puts an exclamation point on these ideas:
Our postmodern society has come to regard worship as the private, internal, and often arcane activity of religionists who retreat from the world to practice their mystical rites. By definition, however, the ekklesia is a public assembly, and its worship is its first form of mission. . . . . The reality of God that is proclaimed in worship is to be announced to and for the entire world. (Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America)
Do these thoughts provoke any stirring in you or are they mere statements of what is already obvious to you?
Labels: quotes, world, worship, worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/13/2008 08:15:00 AM | 0 comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Worship and Mission: Part 1
A few years back I came across an article by Thomas H. Schattauer entitled, "Liturgical Assembly as Locus of Mission." In the article he explores the way worship and mission get connected in worship services. He offers three alternatives: "inside and out" (conventional) "outside in" (contemporary) and "inside out" (radically traditional). Relying on his descriptions I will offer a brief summary of each alternative.
INSIDE AND OUT
The relationship between the inside activity of worship and the outside activity of mission is portrayed thus: worship nurtures the individual and sustains the community in its life before God and in its life together and from where Christians go out to serve the church's mission as proclaimers and doers of the gospel. They return to worship, perhaps with a few more folk gathered by this witness, and the cycle begins again.
OUTSIDE IN
A contemporary response to the conventional model has been to bring the "outside" activities of mission directly into the context of worship. The sacred precinct of liturgy becomes one of two things--either a stage from which to present the gospel and reach out to the unchurched and irreligious, or a platform from which to issue the call to serve the neighbor and rally commitment for social and political action. . . . The church's worship is reshaped to take up the tasks of the church's mission, construed as evangelical outreach, social transformation or both.
INSIDE OUT
This approach locates the liturgical assembly itself within the arena of the missio Dei. The focus is on God's mission toward the world, to which the church witnesses and into which it is drawn, rather than on specific activities of the church undertaken in response to the divine saving initiative. . . The gathering of a people to witness to and participate in this reconciling movement of God toward the world is an integral part of God's mission. The visible (or public) act of assembly (in Christ by the power of the Spirit) and the forms of this assembly--what we call liturgy--enact and signify this mission. From this perspective there is no separation between liturgy and mission. . . . . Like a reversible jacket, the liturgy can be turned and worn inside out, and by so doing we see the relationship between worship and mission--inside out.
So what do you think of this taxonomy so far? While it may be oversimplified, I think is extremely helpful in getting a good scope on the landscape. Can you see the differences? How might you classify your own church or group according to these?
More to come.
Labels: world, worship, worship and mission
posted by John David Walt | at 11/01/2008 02:49:00 PM | 4 comments
Today...