Tuesday 14 August 2007

I find Walter Brueggemann able to bring so much insight into the importance of worship for the very days of our lives. We continue in "Mandate to Difference."



This delicate tension between dominant version and sub-version, I believe, is the true character of worship. The claims made in the sub-version, claims such as "Christ is risen," are a deeply felt, eagerly offered truth. And yet in its very utterance the community at worship knows that the facts on the ground, the data at hand, contradict and give evidence that the odor of death is still very much in play. It will not do for the church to become cynical and give in to the dominant vision. But it also will not do for the church to become excessively romantic about its sub-version and so to imagine its dominance. Rather, I believe that the worshiping community must live knowingly and elusively in this tension, not cynical, not romantic, but wise and innocent, always engaged in negotiation between sub-claim and the world the way we find it.



Again, we come to worship to be grounded in a story that maintains this tension that comes into being every time the story of the resurrection is announced. Every time the Spirit lifts up the church and sends it out running in a new direction, we are not allowing ourselves to become another part of the dominant reality of the world. To be inspired people who have heard the sub-version of reality, we have a life to enter that may ask us continue to be engaged with the powers that so often try to overwhelm us. We are a people who must remain in dialogue and yet we must be a people who are constantly grounded in the storytelling of our worship so that we can see and enter a reality that is not a part of the dominant powers. We must always be willing to ask "what does this mean?" - a faithful sort of question that will help to maintain this tension that is so vital to the life of the church in the world.



Connection: Always keep an eye on the vision given to us in worship and then...in the everyday events through which we walk, use that vision to help move through the day.,



Lord of the Resurrection, we continue to come to you for life that is not under the control of the powers of the day. We are encouraged because it is a life as real as this day and life as strange as your unbounded love in a world that knows not the power of such love. Grant us a glimpse of this life in your name so that we might walk there. Amen.