Thoughts on Identity

A primary assertion of any worshiping community is that of identity. Our hyper-individualist culture, being thrust ever deeper into the mire of postmodern obscurity, finds the identity of the person in the self. I am myself first, and I may contribute to an idea or philosophy or cause, however shared, so long as the benefit is intrinsically personal. Such a worldview is antithetical to a Christly reality. As participants in the unfolding story of God, we are grafted onto the communion of Jesus (hence the New Testament emphasis on one body). The question, then, for any participant in the worshiping community is from where does my identity flow? Am I firstly a part of this community and only then a person? I would argue that an understanding of Christly identity finds that the person does not exist outside the community. The African principle of ubuntu helps with this: “I am because we are.” So even when an act of worship is devotional, it is inherently tied to community and subject to the community’s discernment.

Likewise, the overtness of naming the Triune God in worship is an extension of identity. The God who reveals in Jesus is a god who is named: purposed, intentional, and present. Making explicit reference to this God is an act of faithfulness, wherein we recognize and affirm the reality of God’s binding to humanity. The transcendence and the imminence of God are held in tension through the present-ness of God in the midst of the assembly: a real, resurrected, and human-divine Jesus who worships with humanity on earth as it is heaven. Our worship must stand against all the gods that vie for our allegiance, whether explicitly spiritual or masked in ambiguity. Because of this prophetic work the creativity of expressing mystery must always live in that tension of known-but-not-fully. It can never obscure the revealed-ness of God-in-Jesus.

Reflective Growth in Worship

One of the great benefits of doctoral work is the structure it provides for reflective growth. In that spirit, I wish to share two larger questions and frameworks that are currently guiding my thoughts and practice, each at varying stages of growth.

How can the intentionality of story structure and posture shape the shared experience of the gathered assembly? Worship rehearses the story of God and the gathered assembly. But as we think about intentional planning and leading the assembly in the ritual actions of worship, can we look at the worship event as structurally representative of that story? Certainly the four-fold order and its implications push the community toward that goal. But a good story is nuanced, generously sprinkled with details that draw the hearer into the smells, sounds, feelings, and sights of the encounters being recalled. A good story neither rushes nor belabors any part, but intentionally paces every detail, carefully develops every character as much as necessary, takes the hand of the hearers and guides them, whether gently or with startling force, into the experience of another time and another place so that the present cannot help but be narratively bound to the shared experience of the past and the yearning curiosity for the future. In other words, how can the nuance of the narrative’s structure influence the art of ritualizing the story? It seems that, in this pattern, the story embodied is a dance that demands much practice, much commitment, and much grace. I now find myself living into these details as I prepare for worship each week.

How do our rituals and aesthetics foster a communal awareness of, and indwelling with, the active and living presence of Christ in our midst? This reality, not new but shaped and delivered in a new and refreshing way, is the great gift from worship practitioner-theologian Constance Cherry (she speaks passionately on this). It caused me to look at our music selections, common prayers, physical postures, architectural design and layout, and even my own work in homiletics through a more critical lens. The work of a people who are mystically and intimately bound to the Christ for the betterment of creation should shape every facet of our communal life together. Even the biblical imagery of the headship of Christ to the bodily reality of the Church, mutually submissive for the benefit of the world, plays into this understanding. I hope to examine more fully in the coming months how our ritual actions and aesthetics will cause the gathered assembly to be formed by this powerful reality.

I invite you to share in the conversation, and to join me on the journey toward worship renewal.

IWS Residency, Part 3: On Convergence

In the cultural setting of the Second Testament writings, Greek philosophy regarding time heavily influenced the rhythms of life. Two understandings of how time operated engaged in a dynamic interplay:

• Chronos – A quantitative measuring of time (hours, days, week, and seasons), chronos is the way that the earth marks time as constituents and partners of the created order. Simply, it is “earth time.”

• Kairos – A qualitative measuring of time, kairos is a moment that is neither defined by boundaries nor limited by the rhythms of linear or cyclical progression. Kairos is the time of the divine; it is “heaven time.”

A healthy understanding of worship represents of a convergence of these two understandings of time. For example, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, his exemplary words bore witness to this divine-human partnership: “God’s will be done on earth as it is heaven.” If we truly understand worship as a conversation between God and humanity, then faithful worship finds its identity in that moment when chronos, the marked time of earth, and kairos, the ineffable moment of heaven-time, meet. Like the God who comes in Jesus, our worship together as the gathered assembly is brought into its fullest form as a communal and ritual embodiment of incarnation: humanity and divinity in loving partnership.

The conversational interplay between the divine and the human, between chronos and kairos time, can also be understood as an exercise in mutual imagination. In worship, God’s imagination (the dream for the world’s potential in Jesus) bursts upon the assembly’s imagination. God’s dream, a world of shalom, is manifest in the community through specific actions: hospitality, submission, songs of story and identity. The ordinary, marked activities of life (chronos) become beautifully transformed by the in-breaking and in-dwelling of God’s magnificence (kairos). Music, art, space, language, movement, bread, and cup all become something better, something greater because of this great partnership of mutual submission. For now, we see that transformation dimly and infrequently. But in the ever-expanding fullness of God’s reign, the great convergence of heaven and earth will be met with resounding praise and celebration. It will be nothing less than worship.

For conversation: In the worship practice of your context, where do you see the in-breaking of God’s kairos onto the assembly’s chronos?

IWS Residency, Part 2: Untamed Hospitality

Dr. Jim Hart’s presidential address this afternoon drew on Elizabeth Newman’s Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and other Strangers. The following is an excerpt:

…we cannot draw a clear line between our receiving and our giving. Even our giving is not “ours” but a sharing in what God is doing. Our worship is possible only because God gathers us and gifts us with the capacity to worship. Even more, God does not give to us only as individuals (for our own sakes) but God gives to the church as a whole. Truly to receive from God is to be made part of a people, called to worship, to give and to receive for and on behalf of the world.

This dynamic of giving and receiving can be seen when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Through this prayer, the disciples learn to enter into the communion that Jesus has with the Father. The disciples are adopted into this communion (what Jesus is by nature, one early theologian said, we are by adoption). In learning to pray in this way and thus receive from Jesus, the disciples participate in the Son’s gift (offering) to the Father. In receiving from Jesus, the disciples learn to give. We know of course from scripture that this dynamic of learning to receive and give is a journey; the disciples at times falter and fall, but nonetheless (minus Judas) they continue on until, as the church later realizes, God had made them holy.

She goes on to quote John Milbank:

Without the virtue of worship, there can be no other virtue, for worship gives everything back up to God, hangs onto nothing and so disallows any finite accumulation which will always engender conflict. Confident worship also knows that in offering it receives back, so here the temporal world is not denied, but its temporality is restored as a gift and thereby rendered eternal.

The ethos and spirit of hospitality is, then, inherently (and creatively) redemptive of human culture and its icons.

For conversation: How does your worship extend the grand hospitality of Jesus by restoring a sense of eternality to the “stuff” of worship?

Second IWS Residency, Part 1

This week, I begin the second residential session of work toward the Doctor of Worship Studies degree at the Webber Institute for Worship Studies in Orange Park, Florida. This session highlights the role of music and the arts in worship and spirituality:

Corporate worship of the triune God is the central, ongoing occupation of the Christian community. Yet worship is always offered in changing times, places and cultural contexts. Therefore worship renewal that is grounded in sound theological reflection is often necessary. This is especially true today as churches seek to take into consideration the shift into a postmodern world.

This course explores how the content, form, and styles of worship are enlivened through intentional worship design and the expression of the arts. Special attention is given to the ministries of music, the performing arts and the fine arts.

As part of this work, I did an assessment of our congregation’s worship planning and leadership practices. The following is an excerpt from that assessment:

The order of our worship gathering serves to orient the assembly around the values of our heritage and the story of God. Emphasis is placed on peace, togetherness, and obedience to the ways and example of Jesus. Our printed order of worship details the work we do together. We utilize written prayer and readings, pay close attention to the flow of the worship events, and delineate the various components of the service (the folds).

The order of our worship has a consistent routine. The prayers, song selections, and Scripture readings change weekly (we partially follow the Revised Common Lectionary). Our thematic emphasis for each liturgical season also determines the placement of certain elements in the service. Usually, the elements in the “gathering” portion have the most fluidity in their internal placement. The pastor (myself) is responsible for week-to-week worship planning, and our team of lay elders (led by the pastor) work to develop the annual and season thematic emphases. The small size of our parish enables us to informally engage in conversation to improve various components of the worship service as needed.

Our worship-style is Anabaptist-ecumenical. We have a highly communal approach to corporate worship with emphasis placed on the work of all the people (Anabaptist). Our various components of worship also reflect the core values of Brethren heritage: peace and obedience to Jesus. Because many in our parish bring a variety of samplings from the Christian traditions from their experience, our worship has ecumenical influence. Our pastor (myself) wears a robe and stole, our meetinghouse is an early 20^th-century stone and stained-glass building, we pray responsively, and we gather at the Table every month. Musically, we use the giftedness of our entire group. Banjo, guitar, mandolin, piano, organ, and keyboard will be used throughout the year, blending songs from the past 30 years with hymnody that is centuries old. In every aspect of worship that is incorporated, we work diligently to ensure it is consistent with our tradition’s core values in peace and obedience to Jesus.

Friends, be in prayer for our studies this week. Though the communal worship and fellowship here are refreshing, the daily grind of doctoral work is mentally and physically draining. It requires thinking in different ways, pressing you to push beyond the limits of your preconceptions to ask probing and transformative questions. It’s taxing, but it’s an environment where I thrive!

More to come this week…

Christopher

On Emerging Church Worship

* The following is an excerpt from a larger paper on the historical development of worship practices. It paints a broad picture of emerging church liturgical practice and its contribution to the greater communion.

The emerging church movement in the 21st century displays for the broader North American church a re-imagination of the Reformation narrative by seeking to immerse existing worship practices into a deeper understanding of religious tradition. This visualization, however, seeks to pursue the early church pattern of world re-ordering through the transformation of existing cultural values, mainly experience. It represents a breaking point with the historical reformative process of Protestantism (which failed to separate itself from the hold of individualism and efficiency). For this reason, the worship practices of the emerging church offer the broader North American church three primary applications: broadened perspectives in liturgical hermeneutics, a narrative approach to liturgical spirituality, and an imaginative embrace of liturgical creativity.

Broadened perspectives in liturgical hermeneutics. The practice of shared hermeneutical responsibility is often neglected in many congregations. The emphasis on positional authority and interpretive efficiency is demonstrated through the design of worship spaces (i.e., forward-facing seating toward a central or near-central pulpit), attempting to articulate a centrality of Scripture. However, the reformative movement of hermeneutical privilege from clergy to laity was distorted. Catechetical and Scriptural apprenticeship became less dominant in many Protestant traditions, while the process of interpretation transitioned back to trained professionals. The emerging church teaching shift from a pulpit- to community-centered approach reflects the reformative intentions of the 16th century. Further, the cultural transition from word- to image-driven communication necessitates a liturgical response. The broader North American church should explore more nuanced approaches to Scriptural communication, such as communal and artistic expression. This demonstrates both a commitment to cultural transformation and a re-imagination of the Reformation ideal for communal responsibility in spiritual development. In this way, the Scriptural narrative becomes a natural expression of the liturgical act rather than its mechanized center. The world re-created in worship is re-created communally, with the story of God expressed in various ways by the empowered people of God.

The narrative approach to liturgical spirituality. The modernist approach to life was characterized by compartmentalization. The division of sacred and secular resulted in a congregational worshiping life on Sunday separated from congregational spirituality during the week. The emerging church emphasis on holistic faith seeks to bind the liturgical practice of the gathered community with the spirituality of the scattered community. Use of common prayer, the liturgical year, and frequent communal meals could draw more Free Church traditions into a broader appreciation of liturgical experience. Praying with the Church in both language and ethos through the liturgical seasons becomes an exercise in remembering the communion of saints. The ritual process of world re-creation is carried beyond the visibly gathered assembly, binding the creative practice of communal devotion to the tasks of everyday life.

Imaginative embrace of liturgical creativity. The emerging church use of various artistic expressions, such as icons, stations, candles, visual art, and worship space design, reflect a commitment to world re-creation. The artifacts of a transformed space are the visualizations of creative potential in the pattern of God (see Genesis 1). By embracing broad artistic creativity in liturgy, the broader North American church both empowers the gathered community to fulfill its creative potential and bears public witness to the transformative impact of ritual expression. The organic nature of emerging church worship allows for both artistic fluidity from gathering to gathering and the ability to nurture communal memory through enhanced interaction. The broader North American church, whose facilities and templates often limit its creative ability, would benefit from space and order design that enables a fuller expression of the community’s work in world re-creation.

© Christopher J. Montgomery, 2011.

Worship Resources for 9/11 Anniversary

The following are two worship resources that you may use as your communities of faith reflect upon the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (be sure to include proper citation). These have also been published by the Church of the Brethren Office of Spiritual Life and Discipleship in “The Way of Peace: Resources for the 10th Anniversary of September 11.” That collection is available in its entirety at brethren.org.

INVOCATION

Remembering and Envisioning God, we reflect this day on the past decade of tragedy. We mourn the dead, both on our soil and in lands we have never seen. Some are angry, some are hurt; all are broken. Guide us on the journey of Jesus, reminding us to discern the difference between worldly feelings of retribution and our call to faithful response. Teach us to be a people of peace in a world of violence, responding to injustice with the same spirit and purpose of Jesus. Color our world with the vision of divine mercy that your kingdom of wholeness may be on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

LITANY

One:    One who remembers, be to us the healer of wounds.

All:      Lord, make us people who heal.

One:    One who renews, be for our enemies the transformation of identity.

All:      Lord, make us people who transform.

One:    One who confronts, be to our perception the reality of grace.

All:      Lord, make us people who forgive.

One:    One who entrusts, be to our mouths the voice of peace.

All:      Lord, make us people who reconcile.

One:    One who nurtures, be in our hearts the wellspring of compassion.

All:      Lord, make us people who love all.

One:    One who envisions, be in our hands the creator of good things.

All:      Lord, make us people who realize your vision of a new earth.

Both resources by Christopher Montgomery
The Ninth Week after Pentecost, 2011

Communion as God’s Intentional Binding to Creation

This entry is the final part in the series on “Recreating the World: A Biblical Theology of Worship,” following the progression of the traditional Brethren Love Feast (feetwashing, fellowship meal, and communion).

The celebration of communion shows Jesus demonstrating the intentional binding of God to creation. It is a tangible rehearsal of union, in which the community of faith celebrates its oneness with God as the very body of Jesus. While Stutzman articulates a Eucharistic understanding that is based primarily in gratitude, I will assert that the Eucharistic tradition in the context of Love Feast represents the relational unity of covenant between God and humanity.[1] Just as the fellowship meal demonstrates economic solidarity, the service of communion demonstrates creational solidarity in the renewed community of faith as the body of Jesus. Order is re-defined and the world re-created. God is intimately and tangibly bound to creation incarnationally, demonstrated ritually through visual symbol.[2] This is evidenced in the Old Testament observance of Sabbath as a mark of intentional binding: God to creation and creation to God.

Sabbath. The progression through Love Feast both begins and ends with creation. The Sabbath day marks the end of the initial period of God’s creative work drawing the boundaries between order and chaos. With an intentional choice to cease from labor on the seventh day, God prepares to give the creative responsibility in expanding the order of God’s realm throughout the earth to humanity. As explored above, this notion of self-limiting finds its roots in Sabbath. The outpouring of God is fully embodied in the faith of God toward humanity in creative partnership. Here, God symbolically places the fate of the expansion of order into the hands of a creature, binding Godself to the result of the human decision. Because of this, Balentine asserts that

Genesis 1 and 2 celebrate the Hebraic vision of a God who moves between the “heavens and the earth” (2:1) so that there might be a reciprocal movement between the “earth and the heavens” (2:4b). In the composite vision that connects God, cosmos, and humankind, the critical intersection occurs on the seventh day (2:1-3), which celebrates the possibility that the grandeur of God’s cosmic designs may be matched by the commitment of creation to live in harmony within God’s world.[3]

The relational interplay between Creator God and creative people extends to the people of Israel through ritual remembrance.

During the Sinai experience, the Israelites are directed to refrain from work on the seventh day and grant similar rest to slaves and animals (Exodus 20:8-11). As God engages in self-limitation by preparing to yield creative responsibility to humanity, so God calls the Israelites to self-limit and recognize their own creative limitations. The creational solidarity that binds God to humanity demands reciprocity: even while humanity creates, it is God that sustains. The boundary of order that is expanded by humanity requires divine initiative and divine support.

The recapitulation of the Decalogue presents this command in a different fashion. Rather than calling for remembrance of the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8), the Deuteronomic directive instructs the Israelites to “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” (Deuteronomy 5:12). It goes on to link this ritual observance with the exodus journey from Egypt: liturgical action will result in memory. In this way, the Deuteronomic tradition presents a form of liturgical exegesis, where ritual interprets the community’s faith. This is clearly demonstrated in the Last Supper enactment of Jesus.

During his final meal with the disciples, Jesus blesses the bread and cup by re-imagining its identity. The bread is the body of Jesus, the cup is the blood of Jesus. This symbolic gesture should be understood as an extension of creational solidarity. By ritualizing a common meal, Jesus liturgically demonstrates that God is “body and blood” in Jesus.[4] “These symbols remind us that Jesus Christ was incarnate, that he too needed food and drink.” [5] Because of this, God desires the theosis of humanity by calling the disciples to “take and eat.” By consuming the ritual substance of Jesus, they bring into themselves the life of God.[6] This solidarity calls the disciples to recognize their dependence upon God’s sustenance in a Sabbath-like fashion, reminding us that “we as human beings require food and drink. Symbols like these communicate with our embodied selves in a way that words alone cannot do.”[7]

The service of communion becomes physical evidence of our oneness with each other and Jesus. When Jesus declares the bread and cup to be his body and blood, given for the forgiveness of sins, he demonstrates that God is both body and blood in creational solidarity and intentional binding. It is covenant-commitment to the pinnacle of creation. The brutal torture and death of Jesus becomes a painful parade of our rejection of unity to God’s humanness in the pursuit of our own individual divinity. The purpose of Sabbath in remembering humanity’s limits and dependence upon God becomes disordered in the passion narratives. It is for this reason that Paul declares to the divisive and immature congregation at Corinth that the service of communion declares the death of Jesus until consummation (1 Corinthians 11:26). It is a pastoral reminder of that very reality.

Jesus’ death, extending from sundown on Friday to sunrise on Sunday (Sabbath) represents an apparent triumph of chaos over order, even in the deceptive order of Jewish religious systems and Roman imperial law. However, with the dawning of the eighth day the resurrection of Jesus emphatically declared that “the eschaton had broken into human history, into space and time, and there was no stopping the coming of the Kingdom now.”[8] The future orientation of perpetual Sabbath began at resurrection. In this way, the eschatological call of the communion service is most clear: the realization of humanity’s full potential cannot be separated from the relational binding of God to creation. The sustenance of mutuality is made apparent in the bread and cup. Thus, the service of communion has both present reminder of Jesus’ humanity and future hope of a fully ordered cosmos.

© 2011 Christopher J. Montgomery

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[1] Stutzman, 235-247.

[2] See Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006). Chan asserts that creation exists to realize the Church. In this way, the pre-existent incarnated God in Jesus is essential to understanding the role of the Church. The Church as the body of Jesus in worship manifests the world the way it was supposed to be. The Church not only envisions a fully restored creation in the eschaton; the Church realizes its identity as central in the created order as the incarnational body of Jesus.

[3] Balentine, 83.

[4] This could also be considered an act of cultural redemption.

[5] Martha L. Moore-Keish, “Eucharist: Eschatology,” ed. Leanne Van Dyke, A More Profound Alleluia: Theology and Worship in Harmony (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 119.

[6] This notion of theosis should be understood broadly as becoming truly human in the way God originally intended. It is complete solidarity between God and humanity.

[7] Keish, 119.

[8] Ben Witherington III, We Have Seen His Glory: A Vision of Kingdom Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 30.

Summary Theology of Worship

I wish to share with you this brief theology of worship, offered by the Association for Reformed and Liturgical Worship. It is an excellent summary statement of worship that is sensitive to culture, heritage, and story.

We envision worship that…

is the work of the people of God gathered in assembly, and is thus communal in outlook even when used as personal devotion;

finds expression in cultural context, but is never bound to or limited by cultural claims;

manifests the love, peace, mercy, generosity, and justice of God by being invitational and welcoming, inclusive and participatory;

demonstrates the startling truth of the Reign of God, and thereby offers a vision that scrutinizes worldly values and human societies;

enunciates the reality of God’s glory and goodness and therefore avoids whatever is artificial and contrived;

holds up the primary symbols of our faith so that they can be seen clearly and can communicate profoundly;

is ordered around the central sacred activities of word, bath, and meal, in which God’s grace is proclaimed and our identity is bestowed and our unity is manifest;

utilizes speech and silence, music and gesture, stillness and movement, time and architecture, to point to that which is invisible, transcendent, and beyond human definition;

takes seriously both human perplexity and the Christian hope by transforming the common and the temporal into lenses of the holy and the eternal;

and prompts us, through the fresh work of the Holy Spirit, to serve others, whatever their status or condition, as Christ has lovingly and compassionately served us.

Fellowship Meal as God’s Broad Inclusiveness within Creation

This entry is part 3 in the series on “Recreating the World: A Biblical Theology of Worship,” following the progression of the traditional Brethren Love Feast (feetwashing, fellowship meal, and communion).

The fellowship meal shows Jesus demonstrating the broad inclusiveness of God within creation. It is a tangible rehearsal of world-creation, in which the community of faith demonstrates its solidarity with the fringes of society. Stutzman rightly asserts that the Last Supper should be understood as a continuation of Jesus’ pattern of meals and feedings with those outside the center of religious and political influence, marking the gracious self-giving nature of God.[1] Referring to these outcasts as “enemies of God,” Stutzman argues that the fellowship meal marks the end of division and conflict.[2] The boundary between order and chaos has been expanded and redefined by God in hospitable invitation. In these actions, the Jesus echoes the Pentateuchal commands and psalmic cries for justice through broad inclusiveness, re-defining a creational order in which shalom (solidarity, wholeness, and restoration) is a mark of identity.

Pentateuchal Commands. As part of the ritual exchange on Sinai, God directs the Israelites to realize the liturgical implications of covenant for communal living. Their charge to broaden the boundary of order beyond the Sinai experience through creative endeavors was to be ritually realized through both renewal and inclusiveness. God self-limits by yielding responsibility for inclusiveness to Israelite community, thus realizing the potential for creative growth. This comes in the form of Levitical and Deuteronomic commands for large festivals which inherently remember the need for expanding shalom in the new world of God. The grandest display of this principle comes in the year of Jubilee.

The year of Jubilee called the Israelites to echo God’s broad sense of inclusiveness, pushing the boundaries of order even further into the disordered realm. This involved unbridled grace for those suffering from economic hardship or legal trouble. Jubilee was to be a ritual of mercy, wherein the accumulation of wealth and prosperity was shared with the community, free from reciprocal expectation.[3] The land and its contents were common assets of an ordered world, shared in partnership between the Creator God and the creative people. The demonstration of broad inclusion in nourishment, wealth, and mercy is celebrated in liturgical ritual.

While the ritual of Jubilee re-created a world of creative inclusion on a grand level, the daily choices of the Israelites in openly sharing resources demonstrated the ritual’s applicability in ordinary time. Leviticus 19 outlines the responsibility of the community in leitourgia, its work in the actions of worship.[4] This dynamic sharing of food with societal fringes is echoed in the feeding stories of Jesus, wherein he “breaks bread” with the crowds of outcasts that follow him. In light of the systemic failure of the Israelite leadership to embody these divine characteristics, there is no spiritualization of Pentateuchal commands toward daily sustenance in Jesus’ actions. Instead, Jesus demonstrates a tangible realization of God’s broadly inclusive nature. Yoder argues, “It is that bread is daily sustenance. Bread eaten together is economic sharing. Not merely symbolically, but also in fact, eating together extends a wider circle the economic solidarity normally obtained in the family.”[5] The simplicity of Jesus’ actions in the feeding narratives does not assert a failure of Jubilee as ritual; it is rather a failure of the people to root ritual action in daily experience.

Psalmic Cries. As liturgical and devotional poetry, the Psalms express the Israelite yearning for divine intervention. The changing shape of the Israelite community, generations removed from the Sinai experience and increasingly acculturated to the disordered practices of the surrounding world, resulted in syncretistic liturgical action. This blend of ordered and disordered ritual resulted in a boundary breach, the effects of which were perverted displays of justice and living.

The psalmist declares the cries of the faithful:

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow (Psalm 146:5-9a).

Here, the psalmist connects the inclusiveness of God toward the societal fringe with the self-giving and self-limiting work of God in the creation narrative: the God that orders the world and marks boundaries is also the God of broad expansion of boundaries. The worship-justice of creative ritual in the community of Israel is “not retribution, but rather the creation of conditions in which the whole cosmos can flourish – in a word, shalom.”[6] This text, as with other examples in the Psalter (see Psalm 72), inherently correlates the ordered realm of God with inclusion. Recalling the unilateral covenant faithfulness, the psalmist liturgically calls God to intervene by expanding the boundaries of order where the people have failed.

This relational interplay between Creator God and creative people demonstrates that powerful language is used to call God to action. Since the people of God serve as the extension of God’s ordered vision for the humanity, the failure of the people necessitates divine intervention. But the same clarion call for such intervention reverberates with the painful need for human responsibility. In this manner, the Lord’s Prayer is grounded in the psalmic tradition: “Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are praying for and committing ourselves to the enactment of God’s world-encompassing justice, righteousness, and shalom.”[7] The divine-human partnership is most fully realized in the realm of God’s kingdom already-but-not-yet, a world re-ordered and re-created, with boundaries ever widening in the creative ritual of worship-justice.

The service of feet-washing ritually demonstrates the renewal of life given to humanity by the outpouring of God. The fellowship meal of Jesus extends through ritual eating the renewed and re-created realm of order, expanding the boundaries of God’s reign to those oppressed by disorder and without the basic necessities of life. The service of communion (coming next) reflects the final component of this cycle.

© 2011 Christopher J. Montgomery.

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[1] While the historic practice of Love Feast involved a closed community (including the fellowship meal), the work in re-imagining the example of Jesus in contemporary context warrants an examination of openness in the services of feet-washing and the fellowship meal. In keeping with the standards of the Pauline epistles and the early Church, the service of communion can be reserved for baptized members of the community.

[2] Stutzman, quoting Walter Wink, 197. Placed within the context of the Last Supper, Jesus’ final meal with the disciples represents his radical solidarity with those members of the intimate community that would betray him. In this way, the meal represents a grace that is given even before disobedience and repentance.

[3] Hobart E. Freeman, “Sabbath and Sabbatical Seasons,” in The Biblical Foundations of Christian Worship, vol. 1 of The Complete Library of Christian Worship, ed. Robert E. Webber (Nashville, TN: Starsong Publishing Group, 1994), 187.

[4] Leviticus 19:9-10 reads, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” All Scripture quotations unless noted otherwise are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the national Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[5] John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2007), 20.

[6] J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Hope of the Poor: The Psalms in Worship and Our Search for Justice” in Touching the Altar: The Old Testament for Christian Worship, ed. Carol M. Bechtel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 167.

[7] Ibid., 163.