The effectiveness of a liturgy lies in its humility, in the absence of self-proclamation—”I am the liturgy, notice me.” The Word of God is the gathering point for all the content and all the action. If there is a high point or seasonal emphasis in a liturgy, this is...
Worship should be one avenue for God’s Spirit to generate a new unity and communion. Blending or weaving varied music and rites is preferred to occasional services designed for one pattern. Don’t just have spirituals on race relations Sunday or when you have an...
This season is not just for us but for the reconciliation and communion of the whole world. These forty days are for becoming the very holiness of God, for radical alterations in the society and life we dwell within. We all become fellow workers receiving grace and...
Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven, but few who bear his cross. He has many who desire comfort, but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share his feast, but few his fasting. All desire to rejoice with him, but few are willing to suffer for his sake....
First, the point of Jesus’ meals—from the loaves-and-fishes ones to the bread-and-wine one—is to insist on shared meals as the mandate of divine justice in a world not our own. If, as God asserts in Leviticus 25:23, “The land is mine; with me you are but aliens and...
The idea of “sacred space” is important [for worship]. The word “sanctuary” implies safety, shelter, and protection. A worship space communicates an otherness, but also a haven where individuals can come into acceptance, reflection, and space. A congregation is in...
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors...
Lent has begun, and we need to live in this dark place between the ashes and the bread and wine, between the declaration of our mortality and the declaration of Christ’s redeeming work. Lent is a time to reckon with the reality of the darkness. We do so with hope,...
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus...
With the lingering taste of bread and wine, broken bread and empty cup, Jesus stared into the depths of the cup before him, the cup filled to the brim with suffering and death, even more, dereliction and abandonment. Agony filled Gethsemane. from A Scandalous...