As T. F. Torrance puts it [“The Mind of Christ,” 142], the whole life of faith is nothing less than “an abiding in and a living by Christ as He abides in and lives by the Father.”
—Graham Redding, Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ, 208
Abiding
And every priest stands daily at this service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:11-14)
Priests do not sit. Throughout Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, we never find a time when the priests sit during their service. They must always stand. As long as there is work to do, as long as there is a sacrifice to offer or a prayer to be said, they stand. But Jesus sits. The author makes this comparison and uses it to show that Jesus’ sanctifying work is finished. They stand, but he sits. Why? Because his work is done.
—Daniel Stevens, Songs of the Son: Reading the Psalms with the Author of Hebrews, 124-125
A Singing Faith
The older I get, the more I want to sing my faith and get others singing it with me. Theology, as I constantly tell my students, is for doxology: the first thing to do with it is to turn it into praise and thus honour the God who is its subject, the God in whose presence and by whose help it was worked out. Paul’s summons to sing and make music in one’s heart to the Lord is a word for theologians no less than for other people (Eph. 5:19). Theologies that cannot be sung (or prayed for that matter) are certainly wrong at a deep level, and such theologies leave me, in both senses, cold: cold-hearted and uninterested. I would think it tragic if this present book affected anyone like that.
J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken : Revelation and the Bible, 7
Being the Church
I take Schmemann’s point to be the following. Many members of the church think of it as a service organization catering to their religious or spiritual needs and desires. The clergy enact the liturgy for the benefit of those who find it spiritually nourishing and edifying. It is to this functional understanding of the church that Schmemann is deeply opposed—as is von Allmen. Both insist that the liturgy is not something enacted by the clergy for the purpose of satisfying the needs and desires of the congregants, be those needs and desires spiritual, emotional, aesthetic, or whatever. It’s the church that enacts the liturgy, not the clergy. hough the church does so under the leadership of the clergy, the liturgy is not something that clerics do. And the church enacts the liturgy not to satisfy the needs and desires of individual congregants but to worship God. The church blesses God, praises God, thanks God, confesses her sins to God, petitions God, listens to God’s Word, celebrates the Eucharist. It’s not the individual members who do these things simultaneously; it’s the assembled body that does these things.
—Nicholas Wolterstorff, The God We Worship, 10-11
Facing God
Christians do not enact the liturgy in order to placate God, they do not enact the liturgy in order to keep themselves in God’s good graces, they do not enact the liturgy in order to keep their ledgers on the positive side, they do not enact the liturgy in order to center themselves. They assemble to worship God. Facing God, they acknowledge God’s unsurpassable greatness in a stance of awed, reverential, and grateful adoration.
—Nicholas Wolterstorff, The God We Worship, 26
Humble Thanks
Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all whom You have made. We bless You for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth Your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to Your service, and by walking before You in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
—”A Prayer of General Thanksgiving,” Book of Common Prayer
All of Grace
All ministry must be understood as a response to God’s grace and not in any sense a cultivation of his favour.
—David G. Peterson, Encountering God Together: Leading Worship Services that Honor God, Minister to His People, and Build His Church, 41
Foundation and Capstone
The Christian doctrine of God is constructed on the foundation and capstone of Christian existence enacted in praise and worship. It is in this doxological event and context as the source and summit of Christian vision and understanding that the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is known, proclaimed and adored.
—Ralph del Colle, “The Triune God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, 138
Hymn for the New Year
Sing to the great Jehovah’s praise!
All praise to Him belongs:
Who kindly lengthens out our days
Demands our choicest songs.
His providence hath brought us through
Another various year:
We all with vows and anthems new
Before our God appear.
Father, Thy mercies past we own;
Thy still continued care;
To Thee presenting, through Thy Son,
Whate’er we have or own.
Our lips and lives shall gladly show
The wonders of Thy love,
While on in Jesu’s steps we go
To see Thy face above.
Our residue of days or hours
Thine, wholly Thine, shall be;
And all our consecrated powers
A sacrifice to be:
Till Jesus in the clouds appear
To saints on earth forgiven,
And bring the grand Sabbatic year,
The jubilee of Heav’n.
—Charles Wesley, Hymns for New Year’s Day, 1750
Prayer for the New year
Length of days does not profit me except the days are passed
in Thy presence,
in Thy service,
to Thy glory.
Give me a grace that
precedes,
follows,
guides,
sustains,
sanctifies,
aids every hour,
that I may not be one moment apart from Thee,
but may rely on Thy Spirit
to supply every thought,
speak in every word,
direct every step,
prosper every work,
build up every mote of faith;
and give me a desire
to show forth Thy praise,
testify Thy love,
advance Thy kingdom.
I launch my boat on the unknown waters of this year,
with Thee, O Father, as my harbour;
Thee, O Son, at my helm;
Thee, O Holy Spirit, filling my sails.
Give me Thy grace to sanctify me,
Thy comforts to cheer,
Thy wisdom to teach,
Thy right hand to guide,
Thy presence to stabilize.
—from Valley of Vision
Hark!
Come, Desire of nations come, fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the Woman’s conquering Seed, bruise in us the Serpent’s head.
Adam’s likeness, Lord efface: stamp Thy image in its place;
Second Adam, from above, reinstate us in Thy love.
—Charles Wesley (last verse of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”)
Our Brother
Jesus, the one who makes us holy, and we, the ones He makes holy, are bonded as family. Literally, Hebrews [2:11] says we are “all out of one.” We are cut from the same piece of cloth, the humanity we have in common with the incarnate Son of God. We are all of one family now, all of one Father. Jesus has come in the flesh so that He is now our brother. And He claims us as his own kin. The text says that He is not ashamed to call us His sisters and brothers. He has been made like us, so we might be made like Him, so we might become part of His family. He came down so He could lift us up and bring us back to God.
—Gerrit S. Dawson, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Chris’s Continuing Incarnation, 135
High Dignity
The very possibility of the incarnation of the Son of God itself rests on our possession of the image. It is because man fundamentally reflects the personal character of God that God himself can take on flesh and blood. We can make sense of incarnation only in the light of what we know already about the constitution of man as the highest of all the creatures of God, whom God has made for fellowship with himself. The high dignity which this confers upon human existence is radically underscored by the union of divine and human natures in Jesus Christ. God commits himself to us forever by clothing his own Son with human nature.
—Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Complete in Christ, 27
To Us, For Us
God has wholly and unconditionally committed Himself to us in the Incarnation of His dear Son in Jesus Christ, so that all that He eternally is and will be as God Almighty is pledged in Jesus Christ for us in our salvation.
—Thomas F. Torrance, “The Christ Who Loves Us” in A Passion for Christ, 18
The Middle of Time
The coming of Christ=”die Mitte der Zeit” (the middle of time)
—Hans Conzelmann (1954)
More Grandeur
Though Creation may be a majestic organ of praise,
it cannot reach the compass of the golden canticle—Incarnation!
There is more grandeur in the song that heralds the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem than there is in the worlds on worlds rolling in silent grandeur around the throne of the Most High.
—Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Set Free!
Gaze on that helpless object
Of endless adoration!
Those infant-hands
Shall burst our bands,
And work out our salvation.
Strangle the crooked serpent,
Destroy his works forever,
And open set
The heavenly gate
To every true believer
—Charles Wesley
If Christ Be Not God
There is no Gospel at all if Christ be not God.
It is no news to me to tell me that a great prophet is born.
There have been great prophets before;
but the world has never been redeemed from evil by mere testimony to the truth, and it never will be.
But tell me that God is born,
that God Himself has espoused our nature,
and taken it into union with Himself,
then the bells of my heart ring merry peals,
for now may I come to God since God has come to me.
—Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Christ’s Incarnation
The Ultimate Paradox
Traditional worship, with its emphasis on hymns, creeds, and stained-glass windows, makes God remote. Contemporary worship, with its casual “bring your coffee to worship and slap your neighbor on the back as you sing, shout and sway with your hands in the air,” makes God too common.
Remote does not make God transcendent. Familiarity does not make God present. Have we demystified both transcendence and immanence? . . .
Consider this theological thought: Christianity is a faith of paradox.
The key paradox to all paradoxes is the Incarnation. We confess Jesus to be the God-Man. Both. Not one or the other, but both. We can stress his deity to the point of forgetting his humanity. We can focus on his humanity to the point of denying his divinity.
The truth of the Incarnation is not an either/or but a both/and. The same is true for transcendence and immanence. When transcendence and immanence are brought together, God is present; it’s a true divine-human encounter.
Throughout biblical history, God’s immanence is always known together with God’s transcendence. Consider Moses and the burning bush, the Exodus, the Annunciation, the Incarnation, the Transfiguration, and Pentecost.
The experience of God’s transcendent immanence never provokes a “Golly, gee-wiz! Hi there, God” response. Rather it incites awe, wonder, and an overwhelming sense of the mysterium tremendum. The believer, engulfed by the numinous and moved by the reality of an encounter with the divine, experiences speechlessness.
—Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Worship (email) 10/29/03
Incarnation and Trinity
Christian doctrines are so often set out in “systematic” form . . . where each doctrine is defined on its own in some kind of sequence—e.g. Doctrine of God: Trinity: Creation: Man and Sin: Incarnation: Atonement: Resurrection: Spirit: Church: Sacraments: Eschatology. The result of this is a failure to see (a) that every doctrine should be interpreted in the light of the Incarnation, . . and (b) that the Trinity is the “grammar” of every doctrine.
—James Torrance, “The Doctrine of the Trinity in our Contemporary Situation” in The Forgotten Trinity: The BCC Study Commission on Trinitarian Doctrine Today (emphasis added)
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