Articles

Holy Spirit is at the centre of Eastern liturgical theology. Every celebration in the East is explicitly understood as a positive action of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The entire sacramental liturgy is centred on an appeal to the Holy spirit, who is asked to acquaint believers with the blessing of which Spirit made Christ the bearer at the resurrection (Romans 8: 11), so that it would be handed on by him to many.^[1] St.Basil says, “Participation in liturgy, leads us to communion with the Holy Spirit; it is within the context of worship that Spirit bestows the knowledge of God.”^[2] This Knowledge of God helps the Church to realize the Mission of God in this world. Thus the worshippers are anointed by the Holy Spirit for the work of the Kingdom of God. The Third person in the Trinity is always animating the Church and humanity as a whole.^[3] The Spirit is in many ways the divine person closest to humans in the economy of God’s relations with them. It is only through the presence of the Holy Spirit a human person is able to know God and enter into the saving reality of God. Eduard Schweizer said, “Long before the Spirit was a theme of doctrine, the spirit was a fact in the experience of the Community.”^[4] According to Eastern tradition the Church took its origin on the day of Pentecost.^[5] St.John Chrysostam said, “Without the Spirit, there is no Church”.^[6]          

Epiclesis – Pneumatology of Liturgy

Epiclesis is the prayer which expresses the presence of the Holy Spirit. The literal meaning of epiclesis is calling upon or invocation. The invocation of Holy Spirit is the solemn affirmation that everything in life that which is positive and good is accomplished by the Spirit of God.^[7] It is the prayer addressed to God to send/descend the Holy Spirit.^[8] The Epicletic prayers denotes that Pentecost may be renewed and ever remain in the Church as a present reality and living experience. The work of the Holy Spirit is well explained in the Epicletic Prayers. The main ideas in the West Syrian Epiclesis are; the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son; the Spirit enlightens our minds to understand the depths of the divine Wisdom and by the dwelling of the Spirit we are made places of incessant worship.^[9]

Epiclesis – Recalling Pentecost

Epiclesis is the time when the worshiping community is revivified of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is a sign of the continuous experience in the participation of the divine life of Trinity through Holy Spirit. Thus an extended Pentecost is realized in the life of the Church. It is through the activation of the Holy Spirit that the Church lives and acts in this world.  These prayers in our liturgy are both consecratory and communion epiclesis; consecratory in the sense that it appeals for the transformation of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. Communion in the sense that it appeals for the sanctification of those who receive the mysteries on which Holy Spirit is called upon.  Epicletic prayers are prayers for the re-enactment of Pentecost in the life of the Church. It is to be noted that the first Pentecost was experienced by Mary at the time of annunciation. This Pentecost celebrated in the womb of Mary was incarnative.   Thus Epiclesis is to result in incarnation or deification. In other words the Prayer of Epiclesis is to make us perfect as God (Matt. 5:48). Besides that, by celebrating the Pentecost, the Church celebrates the mission of the Holy Spirit as the communication of new life, life divine to the humankind.

The descent of the Spirit which effects the consecration of the Bread and Wine, is often compared to the descent of fire.  Fire is the symbol of Spirit In early Syriac literature . The aim of consuming fire is sanctification. This sanctification leads to incarnation, in other words deification. The mystery that occurred at the moment of the incarnation and the mystery that occurs at the epiclesis in the Eucharistic Liturgy are seen throughout all Syriac tradition as intimately connected.^[10] Further it leads to the establishment of the church, as the priest prays for the communicants, so that they produce good fruits and deeds for the benefit of the Church, and for the soundness of their body, mind and soul.  This is not for the wellbeing of the faithful and the Church, but to the very being of the church. The Spirit sanctifies the faithful, and thus confirms the Church.

The realization of Salvation in the church is in Holy Spirit.  Jesus already fulfilled the economy of salvation in his earthly life by the salvific events, but the realization of salvation in each person is fulfilled by the coming of the Spirit. Epicletic prayers lead to this realization of salvation in the life of the Church. This salvation is to be made “contemporaneous” to be conceived by the Church. What Christ has once fulfilled and what is to be happened at the second coming of the Christ is made present to help us to experience is by Holy Spirit. Thus Holy Spirit makes “contemporaneous” the Christ event.^[11]  The mission of the Church is done upon this contemporarisation. The Church as a community of the new covenant confidently invokes the spirit, that it may be sanctified and renewed, led into all justice, truth and unity, and empowered to fulfill its mission in the world.^[12]

Pentecost event is the celebration of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. The same Spirit who was active throughout the salvation history was then poured out into the community of new covenant of God. It was the event which triggered the missionary church into action. The ‘Great Commission’ of Jesus derives its meaning and power wholly and exclusively from the Pentecost event. It is said that after Creation and Incarnation the outpouring of the Spirit is the third great work of God. The epiclesis as a prayer denotes that Pentecost may be renewed and may ever remain in the church as a present reality and living experience.

Epiclesis in the daily life of the faithful

The biblical and theological basis of the Epicletic prayers proves that the Epicletic prayers are not static expressions in liturgy. They are vibrant and rich in the potential they pose for the daily activation of the Church. Epicletic prayers are not only the summit of the sacramentaries but also the locus of ‘liturgy after liturgy’. Epicletic prayers are in fact the mission mandate being recalled in the daily life of the Church. Mission of the church is done through the ‘Epicletic life’ of the church. When the Church prays for the coming of the Spirit it is a call for the church to draw near, to open up to and become aware and activated by the Spirit.  When the church prays epiclesis, the church is called back to the sacred duty of interceding for the world as the Spirit intercedes for us according to the will of God (Rom. 8:27) and witnesses with our spirit that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:16). Epicletic life of the church is a movement of the koinonia in vertical and horizontal directions. The church is to move towards God and at the same time to move towards the world. Through the Spirit the pneumatised human becomes a creator of life, justice and beauty and acquires authentic Christian liberty that of a human filled with the Spirit, who does not fear either life or death.

By Rev. Johnson M John

It was during my college days I overcame the illusions created by my 3^rd Grade – Social Science classroom where, Ms. Hema Philip Viswasam, who hails from Tirunelvely in Tamil Nadu taught ‘Indian States’. For us she is a Tamilian, who belong to the Seventh Day Adventist church, a wife of a Naga, who blends saree,’ mullappo’, Idli-Sambar with Western Church music and Pork delicacies.  In her class she taught the Panorama of Indian states where most of us felt awe and wonder towards our ‘Myriad’ India. But the whole effigy was shattered into pieces when one of our room-mates said “ Iam a zou and I belong to Zou-land”. The pieces were later crushed to dust when the other class-mate told me “ We belong to Bodo-land”. Though they are sewn into the fabric of India both identities continue to live with a feeling of ‘illegitimate’ knots in the whole fabric. The quest for national feeling began there. How much Indian Iam?  It was increased when the German wife of my dear friend, a Christian Priest epitomized the ethos of a ‘Syrian Christian Kochamma’. It haunted me when the ‘Lebanese Muslim’ husband of my cousin started enjoying ‘Red-Fish curry’ with tears in his eyes.

Is there anything called Indianness? How much Indian am I? What makes me an Indian? What are the factors that determine my Indianness? – The questions at the base of our national feeling go on.

Nationalism and National Feeling – National feeling is closely related to ideology. An ideology can be defined as a comprehensive and mutually consistent set of ideas by which a social group makes sense of the world^[i]. The concept of national feeling and interests emerged with the evolution and arrival of nation states in the world scene during the modern period of world history. National feeling draws its ethos from the cultural history and moral heritage of the state. National feeling helped in the evolution of nationalist movements which often targeted the foreign elements in its vicinity. Indian nationalist movements got accelerated impetus at the colonial canon. Nationalism in India has come as an activity opposed to the colonial rule and it moved towards the expulsion of the colonial power and gaining independence.

Nationalism implies the coalescing of smaller groups into a larger inclusive identity that incorporates the lesser ones. The coalescing includes that of the territories of the smaller groups. It refers itself back to a shared history of all those that constitute the nation^[ii]. Indian national feeling gave birth to the ‘Secular Democratic Nationalism’ at the dawn of our Independence. It was ideologically inclusive of castes, color, gender, creed etc. Thus Aryan blended with Dravidian; Saurashtrian sat with Angami in the Parliament; Topo studied with Aiyengar; Kaur shared the same meal of Masih from Indian Railways Catering Services; Ms. Cherian nursed Choudhary in AIIMS. The credentials of our “Secular Democratic Nationalism” continue.

But India has been described as a land of stark contradictions. There is a rich India and the poor India; urban India and rural India. But perhaps nothing beats the schizophrenic dissonance between ‘ideating’ India and ‘implementation’ India^[iii]. Though our secular democratic credentials loom large before our eyes, the erosion that has happened to these values is at an alarming phase.  The recent decades of Indian history has witnessed an array of events that has been doing large scale damage to our democratic and secular ideals. Those events pose the real challenges in defining our ‘Indianness’. A deeper understanding of these challenges and our timely response to these is the need of the hour.

1. Legitimization of communalism – The recent demand by the communal forces for scraping the word ‘secular’ from the preamble of Constitution of India reminds us how communal we have become over the years. Over the years the electoral politics and other forces in India succeeded in making our localities and spheres communal than ever before. Religious communal organizations have appropriated the label of nationalisms – thus gave birth to Hindu, Muslim and Sikh nationalisms. Though they are not nationalisms, but fundamentalist exclusive religious identities, they are now referred to as nationalisms. Thus Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League have been masqueraded as nationalist movements. When nationalism is reduced to identity politics and priority is given to a religious community, those who are outside the ‘community’ become the ‘other’ and consequently discarded from the society.
2. Pandora’s box of Electoral Politics – Individual and factional ambition and the greed and calculated fickleness that it engenders, has played its part in colouring electoral politics in India^[iv]. Electoral politics has been diminished to   populism rather than implementation of democratic principles. Rather than ensuring equality and justice, electoral politics is more concerned in recent years to woo the emotional and popular religious sentiments of people. If we, as a voter, examine the composition of NDA, its ideological coherence becomes evident. BJP, Shiv-sena, Shiromani Akali Dal, Asom Gana Parishad are natural ideological allies as their politics is based on a common premise: the belief that religious minorities should be hegemonic in their home territories.  The two issues that are burning our electoral politics over the past two decades are the building of Ram temple on the ruins of Babri mosque and the extension of reserved quotas to Other Backward Classes on the strength of the recommendation made by the Mandal Commission.
3. Stereotyped Identities – It’s a high time to doubt whether the government apparatuses themselves are stereotyping identities of communities, organizations and religions.  The NGOs that uncover the government failures has been labeled as Anti-national, evident from the concerns raised by MHA against Green Peace India. A couple of years back some terror suspects caught by Mumbai police were taken to the media covering their faces with fresh Keffiyeh – red-white head-gear worn by middle-eastern men was the epitome of stereotyping. Recent years, the vocabulary of illicit, illegal and unauthorized have become synonyms intended to criminalize religious and linguistic minorities. Muslim is used as a synonym to anti-national by the Hindutva forces, as they themselves identify as the ‘majority community’. Worse is the regional minorities’ concern. The typical chauvinist Indian man perceive a North-Eastern girl as the object of his sexual tantrums.
4. Terrorizing the Other – Hostility has grown in our land over the years, whether it is govt sponsored or religion – validated. People of this land live as they are refugees. Voice of dissent is often responded with iron wrists and armed forces. Disagreement is treated as traitorous. Dalits, Adivasis live in no-man’s land. Fake-encounters are on rise than ever before.  Being soft is seen as week. A conscious attempt is made by forces to portray ‘the other’ as anti-national, anti-social, illegal and immoral. The uprising of naxal-movements should be read in these lines. Living cultures of living communities has been hijacked by the dominant systems, though this make no sense at all, as culture relates itself to social groups and their self-expression.
5. Global Players – We cannot close our eyes towards the global changes happening. The changing gender roles, sexual equations, class movements, peoples’ movements, economic contours are to be addressed locally. Our decision makers have become more distracted by the irrelevant and inappropriate.  Indian national interests have been diminished to the interests of a handful of business tycoons. Whether it is FDI or Arms procurement our systems have become puppets in the hand of a few global players.
6. Religiousity Vs. Spirituality. Religiousity is different from religion. The end purpose of religiousity is seldom worship per se, but is more often the means of demonstrating wealth and power. Religiousity binds the gullible with superstitions and ensnares them with the false promises of fake-gurus thriving on media attention and magnanimous donations.  These days ‘entrepreneurial holy men’ have become the stalwarts of our democracy and spirituality. One has only to see what Hindutva and the sangh parivar has done to Hinduism, what the Taliban and ISIS have done to Islam, what the supporters of Khalistan have done to Sikhism, and what the Goa Inquisition has done to the local catholics.

At this juncture,  where a ‘Culture of the Sepulchre’^[v] is propogated, the aam aadmi cannot afford to be silent and numb. We can no-longer afford to ignore the strong symbiotic relationship between the afore-said concerns and our national feeling. We cannot shelter ourselves and our children from the real face of India anymore. We need to be open to the heritage that our nation has owned from the dawn of civilization. Our heritage is not restricted to hidebound relics; rather it is a living history in which we partake everyday of our lives.^[vi] At mid night on 15^th August 1947, independent India was born as its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, proclaimed ‘ a tryst with destiny – a moment which comes but rarely in history, when we pass from the old to the new, when an age ends and the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance’.^[vii] The national identity is born out of a blend of complex concerns and eternal wisdom.

We have to address the paradoxes in our everyday lives by participating and struggling forward. The recent movie ‘piku’ depicts young woman who moves on different planes simultaneously, addressing mundane with the spiritual with equal gusto. Our identity is a complex phenomenon, which has to be evolved consciously and jointly, addressing different issues, confronting a myriad of realities, dreaming the wild-ecstasies and living together with people of living cultures. The recent challenges to my national feeling accelerate me to my greater ‘roles’ in this country.

By Dinoo Anna Mathew

“So then, my brothers, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer”. (Romans 12:1)

The Old Testament word that comes close to worship is ‘stand to face God’.  Worship is an awareness that we are always standing before God in truth and in spirit.  It is a deep consciousness of our God’s presence.   A true Christian worship, irrespective of its form and elements, should be a proclamation that Christ and the word of God direct our lives.

In the book of Amos, Chapter 5: 23&24, we hear the prophet Amos speaking harshly about worship in those days:

“I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Take away from me the noise of your harps; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.  But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

This verse helps us reflect upon and re-visit the concept of worship. It states that justice and righteousness are imperative for true worship. In the New Testament, we find these qualities reflected again in Jesus teaching about faith. This brings to the fore an integral aspect of worship – faith.

How do we celebrate our faith in worship? It is through internalizing and practicing the qualities of faith that Jesus taught us. Three of these qualities are touched upon here – love and compassion, justice, and right relationship with God and our fellow beings.

Faith should be expressed in our love for our Creator and God, love and compassion to our fellow beings and to nature. We are surrounded by people who struggle to come out of their poverty, by people who are victims of substance abuse, human trafficking, by people who are orphaned and lost. In celebrating our faith, how do we discern the will of God for the sort of compassionate service that is required of us individually and as a faithful community?

Second, to celebrate our faith, we need to understand and act upon what is just in God’s sight. The prophet Amos highlights our responsibility towards justice when he talks about worship and faith. “Let justice roll down like waters, And righteousness like an ever flowing stream”.  Does our faith in our Lord and His teachings generate a responsibility within us for our neighbors, for those who are discriminated against, the poor and the marginalized? A sense of justice can grow only through re visiting these aspects.

Third, celebrating faith involves setting our relationship right with God and with our fellow beings. It involves a conscious awareness that God is seeking us always and looking forward to a constant fellowship with Him. In the book of Hosea chapter 6:6, we read ‘I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me’.  Our relationship with our fellow beings, (not just who belong to our own community), is also important for true worship. If our relationships are marked by bitterness, hatred, selfish interests, we cannot offer true worship to God, unless and otherwise there is reconciliation.

Viewed from this perspective, worship cannot be separated from our daily actions whether it be at  home, our work place or any of our other earthly engagements. Worship then should not be confined to symbolic attendance in Church services. It should be integrated with our life and work. We need to evolve an attitude that we are in worship not just in sacred places, but even when we are engaged in our most earthly business.  Worship is work, is a protestant idea that reminds us, that in worship we bring before God what we do. Faith in action thus becomes important if we are to worship in truth and in spirit.

Our faith and worship should evolve within us an attitude that we are always before God not in expectation of rewards for our deeds, but to be drawn closer to God each time.  Each time we worship, we need to keep our hearts and minds open to humbly meet our God and be ever ready to respond to His call for Mission.

By Rev. Johnson M John

It’s been said that this world is a tough place to live. The disasters happening around the world ask us to believe so. And parts of it certainly are. People have become tough and unpredictable day after day. Things have become complex and uncertain as days pass by. But it’s just not extreme places that are hard to live in. The regular parts of the world are tough too. We learn this as children. We start learn to walk and right way what happens? We trip and fall down on the sidewalk and skin our knees and bump our heads on rocks! We bang up against things and it hurts! Ouch!

Yet, God created this world and God said it was good when He created the oceans and the land, and all the rocks and creatures in it and God hopes we’ll love it, care for it, and think it’s good too!

But what God didn’t create and what God doesn’t love is the ways that we tend to run our societies. God doesn’t love it that we’ve created a world where we live by the law of the jungle, where “might makes right,” where we compete and hoard, where powers and domination systems place the overwhelming majority of humanity into abject poverty and misery.

The first major, massive scale, instance of this kind of human created system of power and might was the world’s first territorial empire, the Roman Empire. Rome conquered many nations through the means of military, political, economic, and ideological exploitation and domination.

It’s with this empire that Jesus struggled. He was at war against all powers of destruction and injustice. He didn’t use the world’s ways against the world. He simply said that the worldly powers are impotent – they have no power that the real power is with God and in the Kingdom of God!

Jesus demonstrated that power by reaching out to the people who society had rejected; and He invited people to repent and to change their way of thinking and living so that they could break free from ways which collaborated with the Empire so that they could start living freely and abundantly in deep community and communion with one another – sharing all that they have and turning away from the domination system which sought to oppress them!

Resurrection of Jesus could be said as an act of Civil Dis-obedience against the dominant powers. Against the powers of death and violence. God was breaking Roman law! And Jewish Hypocrisy.

Today we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ amidst of these powers of death and violence. This has permeated everywhere in the society; even within the churches. We celebrate Easter in our struggles.

Jesus puts forward two icons of Easter to fortify our own struggles

1. The angel sitting on the rock.The angels in Matthew’s gospel are to deliver the Good News. The Good News is only ever preceded by one short, preliminary sentence: “Don’t be afraid.””Don’t be afraid, Zechariah, your wife Elizabeth will bear a son and you will name him John.””Don’t be afraid, Mary.”

   “Don’t be afraid, shepherds. I bring you good news of great joy that shall be to all people.”

   “Don’t be afraid, Joseph, take Mary as your wife. Her baby is conceived by the Holy Spirit. Name him Jesus; he’s going to save all people from their sins.”

   “Don’t be afraid,” the angels say. And then they deliver the good news for us.

   Answer the door. It’s an angel at your door with a delivery.

   “Don’t be afraid. He has been raised from the dead and is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him. This is my message for you.” Sign here.

   The angel’s work is done. And now ours begins. Will we sign for the good news, unwrap it, and live by it?

   Will we sign for the good news that your future is a series of situations, whether garden bowers or graveyards, where Christ awaits you to meet defeat with victory, to meet disappointment with hope, to meet death with life?

   He is not here. He has been raised. Come and see the places where he lay.

   Today an angel, yes the same one who delivered the tidings of Easter asks us not to be afraid. Let us proclaim this message to the world. As God unfolds his plan for the history let us abide in God’s providence and rely upon God’s love for the world.

2. The rolled back stone at the entrance of the tomb. The stone symbolized not only the power of the empire, but also the suspicion that the Jewish leaders had.It’s a suspicion from the unbelieving heart. They were worried about the blasphemy that could happen. It was all about the forces which propagate the message of death and violence. In these times of complex life realities we tend to be pessimistic. Our hopes are gone. We rely more on our logics and resources than on the might of God which failed Roman Empire and Jewish conspiracy. God is at work in history. He makes alive history for the people in exile. So it is for us to be at his command to work with God in history. The rolled back stone, encourages us to engage with the powers against our God’s Kingdom.

Today, the living resurrected Christ stands before us with these icons. He knows us and He knows our fears. We’re afraid of economic hardship, we’re afraid of debt, we’re afraid of diminishing resources and environmental destruction. We’re afraid of caste tensions and the growing chasm between the rich and the poor. We’re afraid of the hurt between men and women, between people of different nations, and we’re afraid of a Church that’s become co-opted and corrupted by the ways of Empire. We fear for ourselves and our loved ones.

Like those first disciples, we’re afraid of the power of the systems of the world with their armies, their courts, their prisons, their threats. Like them, we fear our own powerlessness, weakness, and sense of inadequacy. We’re insecure, frightened by our emotions, and wary of trusting one another. We feel both the guilt of our sin and the vulnerability of our broken places. Above all, we fear pain, suffering and death.

We too are hiding behind locked doors and are afraid to come out. Jesus knows our fear and wants us to know His resurrection. He says, “Go, tell my disciples that I have risen and that I’m going before them!” Whether we view that resurrection as a physical one or as a spiritual one, the risen Christ tells us not to doubt but to believe!

Like those first disciples, we need to come out of hiding and see the risen Lord. Seeing is believing, and believing is knowing that we must turn and follow Jesus – not “believe the right things about him” – but follow him.

Yes Christ is risen Indeed… Alleluiah

By Soumya Rachel Thomas

Worship is simply a manifestation of our faith. Only through faith can we whole heartedly participate and engage in meaningful worship. The book of Hebrews not only tells us that we must have faith in order to be pleasing to God, but it also shows us what faith is. Through examples of faithful individuals of the past, the Lord has clothed the concept of faith so that we might see and understand what “FAITH” involves. The story of Cain and Abel serves as a perfect example in this situation. “It was faith that made Abel offer to God a better sacrifice than Cain’s. Through his faith he won God’s approval as a righteous man, because God himself approved of his gifts. By means of his faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead” (HEB 11:4) It is surprising to see that at the very beginning of man’s history, the first thing that man sought to do by faith, was to worship the Almighty God.

In today’s times, people all over the world are looking for a religion that they like. Many go from church to church trying to find the one that appeals to them. When they find the things they want to do and hear the things they want to hear they will worship there. Yet, when we adapt religion to please ourselves, whether it is concerning how we live our lives or what we do in our worship assemblies, God is not pleased. Whatever we teach or practice must be based on the authority of God’s word. Only then can our worship be offered by faith. To worship God acceptably, one must have faith in God and follow his direction. Faith always seeks to worship as God directs. That is when worship becomes a celebration of our faith.

Another problem that acts as a hindrance for ‘Celebrating’ one’s faith, is this new trend where in people identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious”. In other words they have some feeling, some intuition of something greater, but feel allergic to the Church.

All of us can understand the moments when we too get disillusioned by the Church. The Church can be slow, plodding, and dictatorial. Sometimes they may frustrate our desires by asking us to submit to the will of others. But at the same time, Church is the only mechanism human beings know to perpetuate ideologies and actions. If books were enough, why have universities? If guns enough, why have an Army? If self-governance is enough, then let’s get rid of the Parliament. I have found too often that when people say, “I stay away from the Church — too much politics,” what they mean is that they did not get their way. But what beats me is why anyone would miss out on the opportunity to Worship God, just because of something as futile as “Church Politics”? But it is important to notice that things like church politics affect the youth of today. They understand what is happening around them. And it affects them to such a large extent, that they are willing to give up on a chance to worship our God and Savior. This is something that the elders of our Church should think about and address immediately, as it is the need of the hour.

Worship “teaches” us in a powerful way whose we are even as we offer our prayers. We discover a presence before whom the circumstances of life can be laid and through whom we can imagine a sojourn of faithful and hope-filled response to God with the guidance of Jesus. It serves as an essential pathway through which we were nourished and fashioned as a people of God.

Preaching, Prayer, Music and Dance as a pathway in Meaningful Worship

Worship invites us into preaching, prayer, music and dance. These pathways are central means of entering into praise of God, the story of God proclaimed in Scriptures, and our own stories. These same pathways engage us and teach us about celebrations of the high seasons of Christmas and Easter, and special celebrations. Through these pathways, we hear and participate in the announcement of the good news. But we also enter into these pathways with questions like: “So what? What does this mean for my life? Is this something new in the telling of this story? What will these experiences of worship tell me that I don’t already know? What preexistent or new truths borne out by personal experience will be corroborated by the experience of worship?” Through these pathways, worship invites us to address our search for belief. They become avenues not simply of religious expression, but of answers to a quest for religious answers. The best part about these paths is that you don’t need to be the best in whatever you do. As in, you don’t need to be the most melodious singer and the most gracious dancer to be able to praise God. Because the Great God loves you the way you are. Hence, celebrate your faith through a form of worship that you like and that is well pleasing to God. I prefer singing and dancing and I truly believe what Chris Tomlin has to say, “I feel alive; I come alive; I am alive on GOD’S GREAT DANCE FLOOR”!