trinitarian worship: Preparation for Advent Services

11.26.2010

Preparation for Advent Services - Christ holds our flesh in His!

As we prepare for the Advent season, I’d like to share the poem, Christ Child, my favorite poem written by dear friends John and Nancy McKenna. First published in The Burning Green (1996, Wipf and Stock), it is more recently found on p. 318 of The Great AMEN of the Great I-AM: God in covenant with His people in His creation, by John McKenna (2008, Wipf & Stock Publishers), where John uses their poem to punctuate the conclusion of chapter eight, “The Church and the World.” We are bid to ponder the wondrous and surprising message that Christ holds our flesh in His! Thanks John and Nancy!

Also below is a list of 14 ideas for a progression of four Advent services, sent to us from Ted Johnston, writer / moderator of The Surprising God. Thank you Ted!

___________________________________

Christ Child

by John and Nancy McKenna

Like the seas change
Land and the longing
Dark wraps like arms
The earth in sound,
A small child pushes in his hand
His dreams into a blue sky.
And round the beginningless roar
He alone who reigns holily
Shall take and hold,
For as long as forever is,
Their flesh in His.

___________________________

Fourteen ideas for a progression of four Advent services

*Hope - Isaiah 9:2
 *Peace - Isaiah 9:6-7; John 14:27 
*Joy - Isaiah 65:18; Galatians 5:22-25
 *Love - Deuteronomy 10:17-19a; John 13:34-35  

*God’s People - Isaiah 64.1-9 
*OT Prophets - Jeremiah 33.12-16
 *John the Baptist - Matthew 3.1-12
 *Mary - Luke 1.26-38  

*Waiting - Isaiah 52:7-10 
*Accepting - Luke 1:26-38 
*Journeying - Isaiah 55:6-13 
*Birthing - Luke 2:1-7

  *Expectation - Luke 1:5-17 
*Bethlehem - Micah 5:2
 *Angels - Luke 1:26-38 
*Shepherds - Luke 2:8-20  

*Expectation - Luke 21: 25-36
 *Preparation - Luke 1: 68-79
*Repentance - Luke 3: 7-18
 *Rejoice Luke - 1: 39-55

  *The prophets - Jeremiah 33.12-16
 *John the Baptist - Matthew 3.1-12
 *Mary - Luke 1.26-38 
*Three Kings - Matthew 2:1-12

  *Expectation - Isaiah 42: 1-9 
*Annunciation - Luke 1:26-38
 *Proclamation - Luke 3.7-18
 *Fulfillment - Luke 21: 25-36  

*People with a Song - Psalm 147:1-3,12-14
 *Song of a Brother and a Sister - Ex 15:1-21 
*Two Songs of the Big Night - Luke 2:8-10
 *Song of Mary - Luke 1:46-55

  *Here Comes God! - Micah 1:2-3
 *Like a Plowed Field - Micah 3:12 
*The Poor Man's Ruler - Micah 5:2 
*The Strong Shepherd - Micah 5:4

  *Anticipation - Isaiah 25:6-26:6 
*Patience - Romans 8:25
 *Hope - 1 Peter 1:3 
*Revelation - Hebrews 1:1-4

  *He Reveals Himself - Exodus 3:1-15
 *He Calls Us for Life - 1 Samuel 3:1-10
 *He Stretches Us - Jonah (selected verses) 
* He Accomplishes Great Things - Luke 1:26-38

  *Comfort My People! - Isaiah 40:1-2 
*The Straight Highway - Isaiah 40:3-5 
*The Breath of God - Isaiah 40:6-8
 *God's Good Tidings - Isaiah 40:9

*Mary's song - Luke 1:46-55 
*Zechariah's - song Luke 1:67-79
 *John the Baptist's song - Luke 3:1-18 
*Angels' song - Luke 2:14  

*Coming to Execute Justice - Isaiah 25:6-26:6 
*Coming to Forgive Sins - Ephesians 1:3-14 
*Coming to Renew Love - 1 John 4:13-16
 *Coming to Feed the Hungry - John 6:50-51

As always, ideas, comments, suggestions and questions are most welcome. Blessings, as you prepare to worship, serve and share during this Advent season!

0 comments:

Post a Comment

theology

This blog views worship as our participation in the ongoing worship of Jesus who is both worship leader and worshipper on our behalf. It is our calling to share with Jesus his worship of the Father, in the Spirit. Doing so gives expression to our communion with the triune God in Jesus, and edifies those who share in that expression with us.

This view of worship flows from a trinitarian, Christ-centered theology that has the following key points:

1. The Triune God created all people to participate through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ in the love relationship enjoyed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2. The Son became human, the man Jesus Christ, to reconcile all humanity to God through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.

3. The crucified, resurrected and glorified Jesus is the representative and the substitute for humanity at the right hand of God, and he draws all people to himself by the power of the Holy Spirit.

4. In Christ, humanity is loved and accepted by the Father.

5. Jesus Christ paid for all our sins – past, present and future – and there is no longer any debt to pay.

6. The Father has in Christ forgiven all our sins, and he eagerly desires that we turn to him.

7. We can enjoy his love only when we believe that he loves us. We can enjoy his forgiveness only when we believe he has forgiven us.

8. When we respond to the Spirit by turning to God, believing the gospel and picking up our cross and following Jesus, the Spirit leads us into the transformed life of the kingdom of God.

quotes

"[The] worship and mission of the church are the gift of participating through the Holy Spirit in the incarnate Son's communion with the Father and the Son's mission from the Father to the world" (James B. Torrance, Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace, p. 9).

“The Christian life is nothing but the gracious gift of daily thanksgiving for our real union with Christ in his glorified humanity and participating by faith in his faithful and continuing ministry to us and all those around us” (Gary Deddo, An Introduction to Torrance Theology, p. 156).

“Jesus our advocate….is not only a critic of our ideas of God but also of our ideas of spirituality. If he keeps the faith we cannot keep, then this casts a question over a spirituality that centers in “striving” to become spiritual “athletes.” Jesus is not a coach who instructs us how to train for spiritual fitness. A true vicarious mysticism of Christ begins with Jesus’ spirituality, neither our piety nor our mystical strivings….

“Worship is being caught up in his [Jesus’] response! Otherwise worship and spirituality simply reflect “polarity and tension,” in Barth’s words. Here is the source for either a kind of nervousness or anxiety on the one hand or a kind of triumphalism on the other hand. Both create a distortion of worship and spirituality. Who can ever be freed from doubt if one’s spirituality is defined by striving? Christians are found only in Christ, not independently. Will there be struggle, striving, even discipline in the Christian life? Of course, yet never apart from the Son’s own striving, the Son’s own mysticism, the Son’s own spiritual discipline. Our new humanity “no longer has any particularity of its own, but belongs only to Him." This is good news!” (Christian Kettler, The God Who Believes, pp. 184-185)

"Christ receives all that we offer God, in thanksgiving, in worship, and in service, converts it in himself, and presents it as something prefect and wholly acceptable to his Father, who is our Father...The theology of incarnation reminds us that all humanity has been caught up in Christ's ascended and glorified humanity, so making it possible for us to participate by the Spirit in the Son's perfect communion with his Father" (Graham Buxton, Dancing in the Dark, The Privilege of Participating In the Ministry of Christ, pp. 117-118).

“Jesus Christ is himself our prayer and worship. We worship God and pray to him as Father only through the mediation of Christ our High Priest, but since he is both Priest and Sacrifice, Offerer and Offering, made on our behalf, we worship and pray to the Father in such a way that it is Christ himself who is the real content of our worship and prayer: we offer Christ to the Father through our prayers, for in the Spirit the prayer that ascends from us to the Father is a form of the self-offering of Christ himself. We worship God, therefore with nothing of our own, but with Christ as our worship who alone has offered himself to the Father in sacrifice for us and all mankind.

Inasmuch as Christ associates us with himself in his worshipping and praying as those whom he has made his own and for whom he acts before the Face of the Father, we pray, as it were, through the mouth of Christ… Really to pray to God, therefore, is to pray with Christ who prays with us and for us, and to pray with him is to pray his prayer, the prayer of his life which he offered in our place and on our behalf, and in which through union with Christ in the one Spirit we are made continually participant” (Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation, p. 209).

“[A worship awakening] is not a faucet that can be turned on and off; nor is it a secret recipe to be discovered and applied. Books, tapes, and conferences have done their share to give pastors and lay leaders the impression that worship renewal is just a matter of technique and equipment. Pastors and lay leaders have proved to be a gullible market for the impression. But technique and equipment alone do not produce renewal (“Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain”; Psalm 127:1). Without the movement of God’s Spirit, changing the worship service or adding a new service is simply rearranging the liturgical and musical furniture” (Robb Redman, The Great Worship Awakening: singing a new song in the postmodern church, p. 193).

The humanity Christ assumed at conception was not [in his ascension to the Father] cast off like the empty external fuel tank of the space shuttle, only to fall back to earth some minutes after its blast-off fro outer space. No, the incarnation is permanent because, as Paul put it, the man Jesus Christ is and remains to this day our mediator (1 Tim. 2:5). And his perfected humanity remains the only meeting place for God and humanity to meet… As we see throughout the book of Hebrews, we serve a living Lord who continually intercedes for us. He remains the one true apostle, the one true leader of our worship, the one true pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ remains ever vigilant, ever active” (Gary Deddo, An Introduction to Torrance Theology, p. 146).