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LOVE

 |E|TERNAL

As children of God, we believe that we belong to someone other than ourselves.  The operative word here is "belong."  Or, in other words, who we are is informed, shaped, and constitutive of whose we are.  We believe we are children of God, but equally important, we believe that we are the people of the crucified and risen Christ.

The act of Reaching Up is an act of worship and praise, and it extends from the cradle to the grave.  Our whole life is one continuous symphony of praise, not because we say all the right words or sing all the right songs; our life is a symphony of praise because God is honored when we bring our whole selves to worship, not just the parts of ourself that we would like others to see.  We Reach Up when offer our most authentic selves before God and one another.

All the maneuvering and posturing in the world will not count for anything in the eyes of God.

Worship may convey information, but worship is not a informational event.  It is transformational, and because it is transformational, regular worship attendance is vital.  The question of whether or not worship constitutes a Christian is old and tired.  

A better approach is to talk about what worship does.  Worship recalls and re-enacts our salvation history as the children of God.  Through the reading and proclamation of scripture not only is the Word heard again, it is also heard for the first time, because it is heard in time.  The power of Scripture is that is stands both outside and inside of lived-time.  Engaging scripture is timely because it both remembers, enacts, and envisions God's new creation being made possible in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Communal worship on Sunday mornings is quite specifically the celebration of the "8th day."  Christians gather for worship on Sunday because that is the day that Jesus was raised from the dead. 

Finally, God is both the object and subject of worship.  God is the object of worship because God alone is worthy of worship of praise.  As subject of worship, God engages us, meets us where we are, consequently unleashing the gospel of Jesus' death and resurrection on, for, and through us.

While the missional gesture of worship could point in any direction, we represent it with hands stretched upward, not because God is "up there", but because the worship and praise of God pulls us upward out of ourselves, even as it requires us to keep our feet firmly planted on the ground.  This leads us to another step in the journey. 

This is the journey to Reach Out - Serve.