Hello Reader,

If your social media feed is anything like mine, you are regularly bombarded with the chaos and suffering of the world. Every other post seems to be filled with outrage and what this or that person said or did. As political tensions rise, culture seems to fracture, and the bulwarks of civilization crack, it all shows up on my Facebook feed. What a lovely way to wake up in the morning.

​As I wrote a couple months ago, I do believe that in a world that seem bent on breaking, I do think Christians are called to be committed to building. I have written "build, not break" on the wall of my study and I glance at it at least a couple times a day. It is a consistent reminder of how I want to inhabit a world in the name of Jesus.

However, I have been thinking recently about what else God has given us to help shape us to live in these times. I want to share with you something I wrote a couple years ago in All Things Hold Together about the shaping force of Christian worship. In short, one of the best ways we can learn to live Christianly in a chaotic and fractured world is to worship the LORD.

Inhabiting a Christian View of the World

We cannot inhabit a Christian worldview simply by thinking the right thoughts or banishing the wrong ideas. Worship is one of the key places where we form our vision of the world. Robust Christian worship can be a place where the fractures of the modern world are mended, where we can see anew the world as it truly is. As James K. A. Smith says, “In short, the practice of Christian worship resists two sorts of reductionism: a dualistic, supernaturalistic gnosticism, on the one hand, and a materialistic, flattened naturalism, on the other.”

In worship, we not only confess, but learn that “from him and through him and to him are all things.” Just as the story of Scripture stretches from creation to new creation and moves through the story of sin and redemption, so does our worship service. When we come in worship and praise, we honor the purpose for which we were made — life before the face of God. We come and acknowledge — not just with words, but in song and action — that our life comes from God. For the Lord has given us life and being and preserved us by his providence. As Alan Noble says, “Your existence is good and right and significant because a loving God intentionally created you and continues to give you your every breath.” All the moments of thanksgiving in worship attest to this wonderful truth. It is not only affirmed, but internalized through worship.

In confession and in corporate prayer, we practice viewing what Al Wolters calls the structure and direction of creation. Structure refers to the substances, essence, or nature of a thing. We acknowledge the goodness of creation and the goodness of our Creator. What he has made is good. However, we also confess that, at our lead and as a result of the sin of our first parents, creation has moved away from the direction God has set for it. We confess not only our personal sins and failings, but the fallenness of creation, which groans for redemption. We confess, as Wolters says, “The distortion or perversion of creation through the fall on the one hand and the redemption and restoration of creation in Christ on the other.”

In baptism, we experience the waters of creation, the waters of judgment at the flood, the rescue through the Red Sea, the washing of cleansing, and the new birth of the kingdom of God. In baptism, we are called back into the story of redemption, recalled to trust in the cleansing and claiming work of Christ. But in baptism, we are also pulled forward into a life in Christ, a life of repentance, a life as one who has been sealed as Christ’s own forever in the waters of baptism. The end and purpose of our life is seen in the baptismal waters.

In the Lord’s Supper, the push and pull of our life are brought together in the bread and the cup. We remember the perfect sacrifice offered once on the cross by our Lord Jesus Christ for the sin of the world. The redemption of God in Christ stands behind us and pushes us forward into union with and imitation of Christ. We are who we are because of what he has done for us. We know the Father because Jesus has made Him known to us. His work stands behind us and propels us forward, which is tasted and enacted at the table. At the table, we also have a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God. We eat the bread and drink the cup in anticipation of the day when Christ will come and set all things right and make all things new. On that day, there will be a great banquet table and Jesus Christ himself will sit at the head with all the saints of all the ages. At the table, we get a taste of the future, a promised future that pulls us forward and enlivens our activity and imagination as we wait. Between the push of the cross and the pull of the kingdom is the communion we have with Christ at the table. In the supper itself, the fractures of our modern world are mended as we eat and drink in joyful remembrance, communion, and hope.

In the offering of our gifts, we acknowledge that all we have comes as a gift from God. In the benediction and sending, we are renewed in our purpose in the world. For Christians today to recover this Christian worldview, to see reality as it is and not the distorted slices modernity presents to us, we need more than lectures, courses, and books. We need a renewal of Christian worship.

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After removing a few things from my plate, I was able to get back into creating videos working through the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism.

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Looking for something to get your child or grandchild as they head off to college this fall? What if you could get them something that would deepen their faith? I wrote a series of daily devotions with brief teaching and reflection on the basics of the Christian faith.

Get it today

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From the desk of

Stephen C. Shaffer

Author, Pastor-Theologian

​www.penielpress.com

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