What is this story that we are all a part of? What role does this story have in our corporate worship?
Lets begin by briefly covering what this story is. The Father, in His infinite wisdom and love, created. He created "all that is, seen and unseen"(Nicene Creed), He created us. He created all of creation to be in perfect communion with Him, that includes both us and the rest of all that we have seen, and all that is ,but will never be seen by human eyes. Adam and Eve had everything that we long for, they had perfect union with both God and the rest of creation. Yet, these first two failed, they failed and all was lost. Sin entered and creation was cursed. We being a part of creation were cursed with sin and death as well. Our bodies age, and eventually we die.....
But of course, the Father had something else in mind.....Christ.
This is the part of the plan that looks, well.....crazy and stupid to us before we are awakened to it. Christ, fully Divine, came as a human, He entered a real womb, gestated for nine months and came out as any other human...and infant. This part of the story is so vital to us, Christ was FULLY human and FULLY God. He was not some sort of Hercules-ish mix of God and man, He was the God-Man. Christ live the life that the first Adam lost. He lived sinless, and this is also so essential for us to remember. When Christ went to the Cross to satisfy the wrath of the Father, He bore OUR sins....otherwise the terrible death He suffered would not have worked. Sin is what causes death, our sin is what caused His death.
But again, this is not the end of the story. As we know so well, Christ conquered death....but what did this redemptive act do? Yes, most certainly it redeemed us to the Father, but that's not all. It also redeems us to creation, and to each other. In Romans 8 Paul speaks of the freedom from bondage that the Cross brought, and he speaks of Creation being set free from the curse it is under. Creation(yes this includes our bodies) is never spoken of as "evil" in scripture, it is spoken of as being under the curse, or bondage of sin.
It seems that perhaps God is asking us to be Christ...that is He is asking us to fulfill what Romans speaks of when it says that "all of creation groans for the day when the sons and daughters of God will be revealed". God is revealing Himself to creation, and to us....we are, not literally, but truly, Christ to those around us and to Creation itself. This goes so much deeper than the idea that we simply "represent Christ" to the world....we are Christ, He lives in us, again, not literally, but truly......
Our corporate worship "does" this story, not just in words, but in action. For instance, the greeting handshake is a beautiful picture of the redemption God has brought to His people. This greeting is but a "sub-symbol" for the symbol of our Gathering itself. God has not called one individual, but a people, and we get to see a picture of that every week, when all of us individuals decide to not sleep the morning away, but to gather as His people under one roof and recount His story, the story....
This recounting of God's story will hopefully never grow old to us. In the Old Testament God tells His people to "remember so you don't forget". This idea holds true for us today, we need to remember the grace and redemption we have seen, so we don't forget it in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. When we think that some element of our worship is "old and stale", perhaps we should remember that God never tires of beauty....He makes flowers bloom on hillsides that no-one will ever see. As one theologian put it, He never grows tired of making the sun rise, or flowers bloom because He is not old with sin, like us. Perhaps it is us who are "old and stale" and not His story.....this is not to say that we cant refresh and enliven our corporate worship with new things and forms, but it is to say that we shouldn't abandon forms of worship that we may not have seen, or been a part of before, just because they come to us from the past...
Well, I think I have gone on long enough for now.....
Hopefully this will be good fodder for further discussion
Peace be with you,
Jeff
