The Issue of Direct and Indirect Service to God

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THE CALL TO RESTORE THE LOST UNITY

BETWEEN WORSHIP AND WORK Calhoun released a study in 1935, God and the Common Life, in which, dealing with the problem of the divorce between work and worship, he affirms: “A secularized, self- centred daily life on the one hand, and formalized pious occasions, on the other, become scarred fragments which neither taken separately nor added together can be a living whole” (:12). Then he noted that “in our day it is precisely with such disjoined members, secularized work and detached worship, that we have mostly to deal” (:13). And that “one may share acutely in the ancient prophets’ disquiet over the separation of religion from everyday life, and of worship from everyday work” (:14). He believed that if we are to recover the lacking “real and effective sense of day-to-day urgency, opportunity, and obligation,” we need to be possessed by a unifying and living conviction, one way to which “was rediscovered and rightly marked, though far from fully reopened, by the much-discussed Protestant teaching about vocation” (:17).

THE QUEST FOR A “RELIGIONLESS”

AND WORLDLY CHRISTIANITY In his letters from prison, written until his execution in 1945, Bonhoeffer spoke about a “religionless Christianity,” inaugurating a via of thought that represented a major protest (not without problems) against the prevailing “other-worldliness” and religious formality of the Christian faith, with the consequent indifference towards this world. Bonhoeffer (1967:161) contended: “Our Church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.” He told of his thinking on how we can reinterpret in a “worldly” sense, by which he meant the sense of the Old Testament and John 1:14, the 24 concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth and sanctification (:145). Also, he spoke of a secular discourse about God: “When we speak of God in a ‘non-religious’ way, we must speak of him in such a way that the godlessness of the world is not in some way concealed [as it seems to be logical to occur] but for that very reason revealed rather in, and thus exposed to, an unexpected light” (:191).

From Cultic Holiness to Holiness of Love in Christ

God is absolutely holy. Human holiness is derivative and relative. Someone becomes holy or is sanctified “when placed in relation to the divine being. Holy and holiness in this connection do not denote a quality but a relationship . . .” (Davies 1973:46). Sanctification is “offering to God” or “separating to God.” In the Old Testament, holiness pertained especially to the tent or temple, the cult and, more generally, to God’s presence. We have reference, for instance, to the holy ground in the “mountain of God” (Ex 3:1, 5) or the holy mount of God (Eze 28:14); the condition that the camp for war be kept holy that God may move about in it and protect His people (Dt 23:9-14); the consecrated tabernacle with everything in it, made thus holy (Ex 40:9-11; Nu 7:1); the consecrated priests wearing sacred garments for ministering in the holy place (e.g., Ex 40:12:15); the sacred assembly (e.g., Ex 12:16).

MERCY: A SUBSTANCE OF THE NEW WORSHIP

Throughout His ministry, Jesus had already demonstrated that the holiness of the space is replaced by the holiness of love and mercy. Jesus’ “holy place” was there where suffering (and humble) people could be found – just those who were excluded of the sacred functions and places: the paralytic (Mt 9:1f.), the sinner (Mt 9:9ff.), the dead (Mt 9:18f., 23ff.; Mk 5:35ff.), the bleeding (Mt 9:20ff.; Mk 5:25ff.; cf. Lev 15:25ff.), the blind (Mt 9:27ff.; Mk 8:22ff.), the demon-possessed (Mt 9:32f.; Mk 7:26ff.), the stranger (Mk 7:24ff.). Israel had to put out of the camp every leper (Nu 5:2), but he ate at a leper’s house (Mk 14:3). A Jew could not touch dead people. The high priest was not allowed even to enter “a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean .

THE CONSECRATION OF EVERYTHING:

WORSHIP FOR, IN AND WITH ANYTHING In the New Testament the cultic language of temple worship is largely used to refer to holy behavior in the world and, as the highest point of it, their witness of God’s Son. The holiness that pertained (derivatively, didactically, provisionally) to the temple extended to embrace the whole reality (alongside the cultic time that extended to embrace all moments of life). The place of the priests’ service is no longer the temple, but the roads of the world. Priesthood is now defined in terms of world mission. And the “priestly” nature of mission makes it worship of God.10 As the temple “extended” to include all reality (let me insist on this image), everything was made susceptible of being consecrated, with which or for the sake of which the believer worships God. Things that had no cultic dignity are, in the passage from the Old to the New Testament, no longer considered “unclear” in themselves and are ascribed now a “potential holiness.” There is no longer separation between sacred and profane spheres. Only sin and its consequences remain profane.

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CORPORATE WORSHIP AND LITURGY OF WITNESS:

HEART AND BODY Käsemann, as quoted previously, affirmed that the Christians stand at all times and in all places before the face of Christ, making from this position before God “the everyday round of so-called secular life into the arena of the unlimited and unceasing glorification of the divine will.” Wainwright (1984:404) is of opinion that Käsemann “feels obliged to set up, at least 52 implicitly, an opposition between the service of God in daily living and the service of God in the liturgy.” He goes on: “Certainly Käsemann cannot abide a special holiness of times and places, what he pejoratively calls ‘the cult’” (:404f.). He comments elsewhere, not without some reason: “The invigorated exercise of the universal priesthood in the secular sphere was, however, accompanied by the general impoverishment of ritual sense in Protestantism. In some cases there even occurs an ideological opposition to ‘the cult’” (:407f.).

Content :

  • Introduction,
  • Worship in the Early Church,
  • The Problem,
  • Models of Relationship between Worship and Mission,
  • What should be done?
  • Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Rediscovery of the Cultic Significance of Witness to the World,
    • 1.1. Luther: The Priesthood of All Believers,
    • 1.2. The Enlightenment and “Ethical Religion”,
    • 1.2.1. Kant: Service to God as He wills, by a good moral life,
    • 1.2.2. Ritschl: Piety-controlled Ethical Commitment as Service to God,
    • 1.2.3. Rauschenbusch: Non-Ethical(ly Concerned) Religious Performances Ended,
    • 1.3. The Call to Restore the Lost Unity between Worship and Work,
    • 1.4. The Quest for a “Religionless” and Worldly Christianity,
    • 1.5. Ethics/Witness as Worship: From the 1960s, the Key Decade, Onwards,
    • 1.6. The Future,
  • Chapter 2: From Cultic Holiness to Holiness of Love in Christ,
    • 2.1. The Universalization of the “Holy Place”,
    • 2.1.1. No Christian temple: circumstances or doctrine?
    • 2.2. Mercy: A Substance of the New Worship,
    • 2.3. The Priests of the New and Greater Way of Worship,
    • 2.4. The Consecration of Everything: Worship for, in and with Anything,
    • 2.5. Corporate Worship and the Liturgy of Witness: Heart and Body,
    • 2.6. From the Law of the Tithes to the Joyful Freedom of Love to Give,
    • 2.7. Conclusion,
  • Chapter 3: Ethical-Missionary Worship in the New Testament,
    • 3.1. The Importance of the Cultic Terminology as Used in the New Testament,
    • 3.2. Explicit Teaching, Not Terminological Evidences Alone,
    • 3.3. A Survey of Terminological Evidences,
    • 3.3.1. Paul,
    • 3.3.2. Peter,
    • 3.3.3. James,
  • Chapter 4: The Logic of Service to People as Worship of God,
    • 4.1. An Exploration of Reasons,
    • 4.1.1. The fundamental principle: God is served as He wills (“God’s will” as a liturgical category),
    • 4.1.2. The conditio sine qua non: faith in God’s Son (No works without faith),
    • 4.1.3. Objective Faith (No faith without works),
    • 4.1.4. Love to God implies loving everything He loves (Love to humans as part of love to God),
    • 4.1.4.1. The Issue of Direct and Indirect Service to God,
    • 4.1.4.2. The Relation between Evangelization and Social Aid/Political Engagement,
    • 4.1.5. The Proclamation of the Gospel as (Missionary) Doxology and Priesthood,
    • 4.1.5.1. The “proclaiming God’s praise/glory among the nations” motif,
    • 4.1.5.2. The priestly/sacrificial motif,
  • Chapter 5: The Christian Meaning of Sabbath and the Theological Status of Sunday,
    • 5.1. Sunday in Apostolical Times,
    • 5.2. Sunday Becomes a “Christian Sabbath”,
    • 5.3. Towards Recovering the Early Status of Sunday,
    • 5.4. A Missiological Approach to Sabbath,
    • Conclusion,
    • Bibliography,
    • Index of Authors,

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