We are finishing our second round of Back to Basics classes at Christ
Church Cathedral. Basic Discipleship is the lynchpin course -- during
the five weeks we learn about and experience the spiritual practices of
prayer, worship, learning, serving and giving -- and build a community
of support and accountability for integrating them into our lives. For
each week of the class, I'm posting a very truncated
summation of the ideas we discussed and the homework given. It's not
meant to be a substitute for the class ... but I hope it will whet your
appetite.
Opening Prayer - Quiet our minds, O God, and gladden our hearts; that, as we come together to worship you, we may be open to your presence and find that this place is the very gate of heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Part I – Who Do You Say That I Am?
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
The purpose of the church is to follow Jesus.
The five spiritual practices we are studying and embracing are about following Jesus. Following Jesus means getting to know Jesus and loving Jesus. Peter’s answer was – Jesus, you are my everything. That is really the answer we want God to grow inside us. That is one of the destinations of our pilgrimage.
If I asked you that question right now – Who do you say Jesus is -- we would probably have as many different answers as there are people in this room. And that’s absolutely what I would expect. This isn’t about learning to parrot the right answer. It’s asking the question that is critical -- the key is answering it honestly and asking Jesus to keep loving us and keep us growing toward him.
We then went into table groups to discuss the homework. What were people's experiences of setting up their prayer space, praying a minimum of 10 minutes a day, having one act of prayerful work a day. Initial challenges/benefits? What did you notice?
Part II - Worship
Prayer is personal. Worship is corporate. Both are important.
People sometimes say, “I can go to church in my garden.” – no. you might PRAY in our garden, but unless you have some people over, you don’t worship in your garden. Even monks and nuns worship together.
Prayer is important – like sailors with celestial navigation it is that daily orienting ourselves toward God. Resting in your true identity as created in God’s image and beloved. Listening for God’s voice in your life. On a daily basis, placing God at the center.
Prayer is the individual centered on God. Worship is the whole community together centered on God.
Why is corporate worship important?
1) Jesus said it is. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, you will be in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) We believe in God as Trinity. Love is dynamic. Has to have an object. We don’t just pray as one because even God isn’t one. We come together in relationship because that’s how God came to us. Incarnational. Relational.
2) Because we are never Christians by ourselves. The basic unit of Christianity is never one. Even our God is three! We are the body of Christ not individually but together. (1 Corinthians 12:27). We gather for worship because it is not just about sustaining each of us as individuals but it is about sustaining us as the body of Christ. It is the meal and the conversation and all the nourishment that helps this body live.
3) Community provides a necessary orthodoxy. It makes it harder (though certainly not impossible) to make God in our image instead of acting more like we are made in God’s. A community of faith that has to come together around one table makes it much more difficult to have a theology of comfort where we take one from column A and one from column B. Communities can do this, too, though … which is why we need to be vigilant and prayerful and study and serve and give!
4) Scripture tells us God is revealed -when we center ourselves on God -when we give our lives away -through the people we would least expect, usually not people of our choosing. Worship is a place where that happens.
5) Worship has a motion of gathering and sending. It mirrors the life we are to lead. In the Pentecost Gospel. Jesus comes among them, gathers them, then breathes holy spirit on them and sends them out “as the Father has sent me so I send you.”
Look at what happens in worship. We gather as a community and lay our lives together on the table with Christ. Then those lives get mixed up with one another and Christ's life and become something new. We each receive that new life and then we become something new -- we BECOME the Body of Christ. We are more than just ourselves. There is a piece of everyone else in us and also there is Christ in us. And then the deacon sends us out into the world to love and serve in Jesus' name. That's the motion of the Eucharist and our lives -- gather and lay our lives on the table ... be sent and go into the world and serve and give.
6) Worship includes prayer but worship is not just prayer. Good worship will be prayerful. Good worship will connect you both to the Christ in each other and to the Christ outside us. It's not just "me and Jesus time" but there is a personal experience. Good worship has horizontal and vertical elements.
7) Changing behaviors is the hardest thing to do. Need communities of support and accountability. We do as a group what we do as individuals – offer our lives to God.
It is rare to have conversations about liturgy that are not about personal preference ... but that is exactly what we need to do. Worship is not about a personal religious experience. That may happen, but it's not the point. Worship is about a communal centering in Christ and experience of Christ ... and also the community creating an offering of love of beauty for God.
It's incredibly difficult to embrace worship as communal when we don't have a practice of daily prayer. Most people look to worship to fill the prayer need because they don't have the daily habit ... and that's where most fights over liturgy happen, because we're worried about what "feeds me" instead of what helps make us the Body of Christ.
I heard Archbishop Rowan Williams give a lecture on the Body of Christ. He said we lay our lives on the table together. When we do that and when we receive the Eucharist we have to have peripheral vision. We have to see that it isn't just me being fed but people on either side of me are, too ... and we need to ask ourselves "how is my life that I am laying on the table tied up with that life over there?How are we offering a common life? How can I help them offer that? How can I be a part of that person being fed?
We then went down to the altar in the sanctuary. Everyone had brought a small symbol that represented something they were going through in their life right now. We took turns explaining the object and laying it on the table. Then we had Eucharist, blessing not just the bread and the wine but ourselves ... those lives we had laid on the table. We gave each other communion and affirmed that all we had shared was now a life we share. And we now know a little better how to pray for one another, how to love one another, and how to be the Body of Christ together.
Homework
Opening Prayer - Quiet our minds, O God, and gladden our hearts; that, as we come together to worship you, we may be open to your presence and find that this place is the very gate of heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
The purpose of the church is to follow Jesus.
The five spiritual practices we are studying and embracing are about following Jesus. Following Jesus means getting to know Jesus and loving Jesus. Peter’s answer was – Jesus, you are my everything. That is really the answer we want God to grow inside us. That is one of the destinations of our pilgrimage.
If I asked you that question right now – Who do you say Jesus is -- we would probably have as many different answers as there are people in this room. And that’s absolutely what I would expect. This isn’t about learning to parrot the right answer. It’s asking the question that is critical -- the key is answering it honestly and asking Jesus to keep loving us and keep us growing toward him.
We then went into table groups to discuss the homework. What were people's experiences of setting up their prayer space, praying a minimum of 10 minutes a day, having one act of prayerful work a day. Initial challenges/benefits? What did you notice?
Part II - Worship
Prayer is personal. Worship is corporate. Both are important.
People sometimes say, “I can go to church in my garden.” – no. you might PRAY in our garden, but unless you have some people over, you don’t worship in your garden. Even monks and nuns worship together.
Prayer is important – like sailors with celestial navigation it is that daily orienting ourselves toward God. Resting in your true identity as created in God’s image and beloved. Listening for God’s voice in your life. On a daily basis, placing God at the center.
Prayer is the individual centered on God. Worship is the whole community together centered on God.
Why is corporate worship important?
1) Jesus said it is. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, you will be in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) We believe in God as Trinity. Love is dynamic. Has to have an object. We don’t just pray as one because even God isn’t one. We come together in relationship because that’s how God came to us. Incarnational. Relational.
2) Because we are never Christians by ourselves. The basic unit of Christianity is never one. Even our God is three! We are the body of Christ not individually but together. (1 Corinthians 12:27). We gather for worship because it is not just about sustaining each of us as individuals but it is about sustaining us as the body of Christ. It is the meal and the conversation and all the nourishment that helps this body live.
3) Community provides a necessary orthodoxy. It makes it harder (though certainly not impossible) to make God in our image instead of acting more like we are made in God’s. A community of faith that has to come together around one table makes it much more difficult to have a theology of comfort where we take one from column A and one from column B. Communities can do this, too, though … which is why we need to be vigilant and prayerful and study and serve and give!
4) Scripture tells us God is revealed -when we center ourselves on God -when we give our lives away -through the people we would least expect, usually not people of our choosing. Worship is a place where that happens.
5) Worship has a motion of gathering and sending. It mirrors the life we are to lead. In the Pentecost Gospel. Jesus comes among them, gathers them, then breathes holy spirit on them and sends them out “as the Father has sent me so I send you.”
Look at what happens in worship. We gather as a community and lay our lives together on the table with Christ. Then those lives get mixed up with one another and Christ's life and become something new. We each receive that new life and then we become something new -- we BECOME the Body of Christ. We are more than just ourselves. There is a piece of everyone else in us and also there is Christ in us. And then the deacon sends us out into the world to love and serve in Jesus' name. That's the motion of the Eucharist and our lives -- gather and lay our lives on the table ... be sent and go into the world and serve and give.
6) Worship includes prayer but worship is not just prayer. Good worship will be prayerful. Good worship will connect you both to the Christ in each other and to the Christ outside us. It's not just "me and Jesus time" but there is a personal experience. Good worship has horizontal and vertical elements.
7) Changing behaviors is the hardest thing to do. Need communities of support and accountability. We do as a group what we do as individuals – offer our lives to God.
It is rare to have conversations about liturgy that are not about personal preference ... but that is exactly what we need to do. Worship is not about a personal religious experience. That may happen, but it's not the point. Worship is about a communal centering in Christ and experience of Christ ... and also the community creating an offering of love of beauty for God.
It's incredibly difficult to embrace worship as communal when we don't have a practice of daily prayer. Most people look to worship to fill the prayer need because they don't have the daily habit ... and that's where most fights over liturgy happen, because we're worried about what "feeds me" instead of what helps make us the Body of Christ.
I heard Archbishop Rowan Williams give a lecture on the Body of Christ. He said we lay our lives on the table together. When we do that and when we receive the Eucharist we have to have peripheral vision. We have to see that it isn't just me being fed but people on either side of me are, too ... and we need to ask ourselves "how is my life that I am laying on the table tied up with that life over there?How are we offering a common life? How can I help them offer that? How can I be a part of that person being fed?
We then went down to the altar in the sanctuary. Everyone had brought a small symbol that represented something they were going through in their life right now. We took turns explaining the object and laying it on the table. Then we had Eucharist, blessing not just the bread and the wine but ourselves ... those lives we had laid on the table. We gave each other communion and affirmed that all we had shared was now a life we share. And we now know a little better how to pray for one another, how to love one another, and how to be the Body of Christ together.
Homework
*10 minutes a day of
prayer – focus on question “Jesus, who are you?” Use the confession of Peter reading from Matthew as a focus
if you like. But concentrate on listening.
*Prayerful work each
day.
*New prayer partner.
Check in Tuesday and Saturday.
*One hour of worship a
week. (Sunday is the easiest!)
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