Living Out Our Worship Week 7

What do Christians do?

What do Christians do?

What do Christians do?

What do Christians do?

What do Christians do? What is the relationship between mission and worship?

What do Christians do? What is the relationship between mission and worship? Luke 10:38–42, Mary and Martha, worship and service

What do Christians do? What is the relationship between mission and worship? Luke 10:38–42, Mary and Martha, worship and service Delight, Encourage, Serve. Are these things related?

Class Overview I. Foundations II. Practices Worship means Ascribing Worth Worship involves Bodily Presence Worship involves the Symbolic Worship shapes how People live II. Practices Gathering Singing Communion Prayer Confession Scripture Reading

Class Overview Please note what we will not be talking about in this class: How we should or should not change what we do in our worship.

Class Overview Please note what we will not be talking about in this class: How we should or should not change what we do in our worship. This is a class about how we should practice Christ- centered living in our daily lives in light of what we do here on Sundays.

Week 5 Recap “Human gatherings always involve worship, and worship always implicates human gatherings” –Kenneson Gathering re-shapes our social imagination

Why do we praise God with song rather than just with ordinary words?

Singing Praising God in song [. . .] forms our imaginations and hence our sensibilities as to what is fitting in the created (and redeemed) order. Kevin J. Vanhoozer “Praising in Song: Beauty and the Arts”

Singing and Beauty Aesthetic—(from the Greek) “pertaining to sense perception, perceptible, sensitive”

Singing and Beauty Aesthetic—(from the Greek) “pertaining to sense perception, perceptible, sensitive” St. Thomas Aquinas argued that beauty is God’s goodness apprehended by the senses.

Beauty and Imagination In an experience of beauty, a person discerns the whole from the part.

Beauty and Imagination In an experience of beauty, a person discerns the whole from the part. Beauty cultivates love through narrative.

Example: The Birdsong

Beauty Cultivates Desire At the moment we see something beautiful, we undergo a radical decentering. Beauty, according to Weil, requires us “to give up our imaginary position as the center. . . . A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions” [. . .] they lift us (as though by the air currents of someone else’s sweeping), letting the ground rotate beneath us several inches, so that when we land, we find we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world. We willingly cede our ground to the thing that stands before us. Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just

Beauty Cultivates Desire What shapes our wants and desires in our daily lives?

Beauty Cultivates Desire What shapes our wants and desires in our daily lives? “Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are human eyes.” Proverbs 27:20

Beauty Cultivates Desire What shapes our wants and desires in our daily lives? “Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are human eyes.” Proverbs 27:20 “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Romans 7:15

Singing cultivates desire…for what? Singing is one way we teach ourselves to want what God wants.

Singing cultivates desire…for what? Singing is one way we teach ourselves to want what God wants. Singing awakens us to God’s beauty.

Singing cultivates desire…for what? Singing is one way we teach ourselves to want what God wants. Singing awakens us to God’s beauty. Singing reorients us to God’s story.

Singing cultivates desire…for what? Singing is one way we teach ourselves to want what God wants. Singing awakens us to God’s beauty. Singing reorients us to God’s story. Singing unifies us with believers in our congregation, in the world, and throughout history.

Singing cultivates desire…for what? Singing is one way we teach ourselves to want what God wants. Singing awakens us to God’s beauty. Singing reorients us to God’s story. Singing unifies us with believers in our congregation, in the world, and throughout history. Singing makes our bodies vessels for God’s song.

How can we bring the song of God’s peace to a discordant world?