{"id":213,"date":"2010-07-06T17:08:03","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T22:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=213"},"modified":"2010-07-19T10:53:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T15:53:29","slug":"renewing-worship-lessons-from-the-prophets-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/renewing-worship-lessons-from-the-prophets-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewing worship: Lessons from the Prophets (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This overly long post — overly long because of too little time to make it shorter — tries to pull together two difference experiences to comment on a third.\u00a0 Perhaps you can make it all make sense.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First an allegory from baseball: Last week, my family and I were sitting in the Ballpark in Arlington during a two and a half hour rain delay.\u00a0 It was misting a little (okay, a lot), but still was enjoyable enough.\u00a0 People played everywhere, with kids and parents enjoying time out together.\u00a0 On the whole, it was a beautiful time, and it reminded us of the grace that meets us everywhere if we are still long enough to notice it.<\/p>\n

But as we sat talking, I started to think about the people around me, and being a theological educator, began to muse a bit about what the experience might say about worship, which after all is a human event (to which the Holy Spirit puts in an appearance, to be sure).\u00a0 The ritual of baseball, with its numerology, focus on proper administration of rules, and appropriate acknowledgment of the keepers of the story (umpires and sportscasters and wise old players) inevitably reminded me of worship.\u00a0 But that’s an old story, and there are lots of books on the theology (or Zen or whatever) of baseball.\u00a0 So that’s not worth pursuing much here.<\/p>\n

What is interesting is how much pleasure we all took in a game that is steeped in ritual and has been performed countless times before.\u00a0 We did not know the precise outcome, though we did know that after nine innings or so, someone would win and would do so in a way that has been done before, maybe many times.\u00a0 There is comfort in that mix of predictability and unpredictability.<\/p>\n

So it is with Christian worship.\u00a0 Some things are expected, and we know that the meaning of what we do lies not in our own volition or desire but in something far older and deeper and more beautiful.\u00a0 And yet within the context of a tradition, a set of practices by a community over time, lies room for the unexpected and even the startling.\u00a0 In worship, we become better people because we learn to care for things that matter, and thus for each other.<\/p>\n

Watching families at the ballpark teaches you something else about worship, the importance of caring for one another.\u00a0 I got to explain to my daughter about triples and infield flies, just as on Sunday I can initiate her in the far deeper and more holy experiences of God’s grace.\u00a0 Care for the other before God figures prominently in Christian worship.\u00a0 It is part of how that experience makes us better.<\/p>\n

Second, a citation from a delightful article:\u00a0 In the current issue of Harvard Magazine<\/em> (www.harvardmagazine.com), the anthropologist Arthur Kleinman talks about his life with his wife Joan, formerly a leading scholar of classical Chinese, now stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.\u00a0 He writes about his experiences, “… caregiving is a foundational component of moral experience.\u00a0 By this I mean that we envision caregiving as an existential quality of what it is to be a human being.\u00a0 We give care as part of the flow of everyday lived values and emotions that make up moral experience.\u00a0 Here collective values and social emotions are as influential as individual ones.\u00a0 Within these local moral worlds — family, network, institution, community — caregiving is one of those things that really matters, but usually not the only thing.”<\/p>\n

For me, this call to give care in order to be fully human (which, for Christians, means made in the image of God) clarifies what worship is about too.\u00a0 It is prayer for those in need, whether Christian or not.\u00a0 It is proclamation of God’s tender care for the least of us.\u00a0 It is celebration of our togetherness.\u00a0 It is defiance of the silences that cripple lives and keep us from each other.\u00a0 Worship knits together the insecure and lonely teenager with the widow who has no one to talk with.\u00a0 Worship humbles the proud and exalts the humble because it allows us to see ourselves, to some extent, as God sees us, neither more nor less.\u00a0 It is thus the ultimate act of caregiving.\u00a0 Often it is painful, often it is difficult, but always it is an experience that pushes us from our comfortable seat and allows us to slow down enough to find grace.<\/p>\n

Next time, worship as a means of grace.\u00a0 Your comments to this post, meandering as it is, would be appreciated!<\/p>\n

Dr. Mark W. Hamilton<\/a>
\nAssociate Professor of Old Testament and
\nAssociate Dean
\nACU Graduate School of Theology<\/a>
\nAbilene, TX 79699
\nEditor, The Transforming Word<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This overly long post — overly long because of too little time to make it shorter — tries to pull together two difference experiences to comment on a third.\u00a0 Perhaps you can make it all make sense. First an allegory from baseball: Last week, my family and I were sitting in the Ballpark in Arlington […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRenewing worship: Lessons from the Prophets (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/renewing-worship-lessons-from-the-prophets-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Renewing worship: Lessons from the Prophets (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This overly long post — overly long because of too little time to make it shorter — tries to pull together two difference experiences to comment on a third.\u00a0 Perhaps you can make it all make sense. 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