Thoughts on Resurrection (ICEWS, eb 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt


This week has helped me to see some places where I am really lacking in my understanding of heaven, resurrection and the New Jerusalem.

Here is one thing I’m guilty of doing: concentrating on Jesus’ death on the cross and not saying a whole lot about His resurrection. But really, without the resurrection, my entire faith is pointless!

In the article “Resurrection, Our Living Hope,” Peter Davids says that:

"Jesus presently reigns (parallel to, and a replacement for “Caesar is Lord”, the patriotic acclamation of good Romans) and in order for this to be meaningful, Paul says, one must be committed to the fact that God raised him from the dead. No resurrection, no reign. No reign, no good news. Paul proclaimed Jesus as resurrected, living Lord as the core of his good news (cf. Acts 17:30-31)” (IW Master All, page 310).

"Jesus' resurrection points to our bodily resurrection when God creates the new heavens and the new earth. Yet we only concentrate on “going to heaven.” This is something of which I am also guilty, mostly because I’d never really questioned it. I just took it for granted as fact. Yes, I believe in heaven but in the book Simply Christian, N. T. Wright notes that after “going to heaven,” and facing a bodily death, we will be resurrected into God’s new Creation (Revelation 21:1). Wright calls resurrection “life after ‘life after death.’” (Simply Christian, page 218)

Here’s an interesting thought: Talk about “going to heaven” is what made me decide to give my heart to Jesus. For the next few years of my childhood I thought Christians were “not-very-good-looking” people who didn’t have great lives now but got to party later on. I was now part of that group, bound to a life of humdrum looks and very little fun but it would be all worth it in the end. Those thoughts from elementary school make me laugh now!

What does this have to do with worship?

If worship is designed for us to connect with God, and the end result of time will be an eternity in God’s presence, and living out His kingdom on earth, then worship gives us a taste of what is to come.

Romans 12:1-2 gives a great picture of what it means to worship with our lives: being living sacrifices

In the article “Worship Fit for a King” by Don Williams, he says that, “In Hebrew, the word “worship” [shakah] means to fall down or bow down: “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God” (Psalm 95:6). To fall down is to surrender, to give up, becoming physically lower than the King.” (IW Master All, page 4). This scene sounds just like Revelation 5 where the elders and 4 creatures fall down in worship and singing before the Lamb who is worthy to open the scroll.

This was a good week for reflection and to open up my heart and mind into areas where I hadn’t put in a whole lot of thought.

Christian Worldview

This week's discussion was to type up a Christian worldview in 250-500. I found it a real struggle because it's such a huge topic so anything I can say would just be inadequate to cover the whole scope of things.

Anyway... That being said... Here's my answer...

God is One with three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each taking on a different role (the Trinity). He is the Creator of everything in the physical and spiritual world. He is Sovereign and reigns over all He has created. He is love; He cares for Creation and wants to make it right again. Humans are the lead worshippers of Creation, made in the Image of God (Imago Dei). We represent God’s reign in Creation and then gather the praises of Creation present them back to God. Humans create from what God has created. We are meant to tell stories of hope in a hurting world and build communities linked together by grace, forgiveness and love.

Although God loves humans, we have a choice of whether or not to love Him back. In order to fully love Him, we must have faith in Him, trust Him and obey Him. However, from Adam and Eve right on through human history we have all struggled with the choice to trust God and have the faith to do what He says or to do something else for some reason or another. Many times we’ve chose the “something else” thus “missing the mark" (sin) of what we were created to be. God, in His mercy, came down in bodily form as His Son Jesus and gave hope of restoration for all humankind. His Kingdom broke into our hurting world and defeated evil so that heaven and earth could unite.

The Kingdom of God is God’s presence and reign and it is very active in this world. It is not completely overlapping with Earth (pantheism: God is everything and everything is God) nor is it far off in a distant place (deism: God created the world but has since remained indifferent to it). The Kingdom is expressed in Creation as living things do what they were created to do (colourful rainbow, sun shining, flower growing, fish swimming, etc.). It is expressed in the human family as we love each other, use wisdom and represent God by showing grace and mercy to each other. The Church expresses the Kingdom of God through worship, service and love.

Jesus helped us to understand what will happen in the end when He prayed: “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” God will judge the living and the dead then after that He will restore the earth that He called “good” when He first created it. Those who chose to have faith in God will be resurrected to live in the New Jerusalem, in God’s presence. Everything will be put right again.

The value of humans created in the Imago Dei (ICEWS, eb 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Dan Wilt discusses in section 3 of his book Essentials in Worship Theology four different characteristics of God and each one is matched with a characteristic of human beings:

1. God as Creator, humans are sub-creators
2. God as King, humans are image-bearers
3. God as Trinity, humans are community-builders
4. God as Saviour, humans are salvific story-tellers

Humans take after God because we are created in His Image (Imago Dei). Each of the four qualities of the human that coincide with God’s characteristics gives meaning and value to human beings.

GOD AS CREATOR, HUMANS ARE SUB-CREATORS

Creativity makes a difference. A photographer takes a shot that captures a heart-breaking event and this moves people to help. A scientist creates a new formula to fight a disease. A parent creates a loving environment in which their child can develop. A cook creates a delicious meal that celebrates that God has provided healthy food for us. A musician composes a song with notes expressing something that can not be said in words. Creativity is essential to making our world function well, solving problems and bringing joy to others. Humans have the privilege of carrying this valuable characteristic.

GOD AS KING, HUMANS ARE IMAGE-BEARERS

God has given us authority over His Creation. This gives human beings the honor and value of being righteous representatives here on Earth. As Ed Gentry says, “righteousness” actually means “right-relatedness”.[1] This gives value to human beings who get to display and experience love as we rule through service as “right-related” representatives of God.

As image-bearers we also represent creation to God. N.T. Wright discusses in his video Scriptural Resources, Creative Integration that Creation is praising God by being what it has been called to be and we as humans are called to gather those praises and present them to God. As lead worshippers we make those praises into a new song.[2]


GOD AS TRINITY, HUMANS ARE COMMUNITY BUILDERS

God has with in Himself a relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Taking after our Creator, we too yearn to be in community, to know someone and be fully known by someone. In Creation, humans have value because of this trait. Animals build “communities” out of instinct whereas we build communities out of love. As human beings we show the “why” of the “what” of community building.

GOD AS SAVIOUR, HUMANS ARE SALVIFIC STORY-TELLERS

God has poured out His grace on His undeserving Creation that doesn’t always have the full capacity to understand or appreciate what was done. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, God runs to us as we shamefully tell Him about some of (often not all) our crap. Now after meeting with God, we have the honor of giving hope to others who are where we once were. As story-tellers of salvation, we are very valuable as messengers of a life-altering message. How will the message of the story be known if someone doesn’t tell it?

I love it that because we humans take after God, our lives are valuable, irreplaceable in Creation!

[1] Wilt/Gentry (Podcast, Two Brothers on Righteousness)
[2] Wilt, Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement

Fully Human - What Does It Mean To Be A Human Being?

In thinking about what it means to be fully human, I want to go back to two beginnings:

1. the beginning of humans on earth: Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

2. the beginning of the church: Matthew 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Each time, humans are sent out with a task, a purpose to fulfill which I believe displays the purpose of humankind.

HUMANS ARE SUB-CREATORS

Human kind starts when God creates Adam from the dust of the earth and then the first command Adam and Eve receive is to create more life. Our sexuality is a big part of what makes us fully human because we get to participate with God in creating life. Likewise, Jesus’ first command to the church is to make disciples. We get to participate with God in the creation of spiritual multiplication.

HUMANS ARE IMAGE BEARERS

Being the Imago Dei here on Earth, authority is bestowed upon humans in Genesis to be God’s royal representatives over everything. In Matthew 28 Jesus reassures His disciples that He has the authority and therefore is able to bestow it on them. Being made in God’s image, we are responsible handle our authority the way Jesus handled His: by becoming a servant. As Dan Wilt pointed out, we are called to be stewards and care-takers. In order to better fulfill our calling to represent God we are called to worship because “You become like what you worship.” (Wright 148)

HUMANS ARE RELATIONAL

By being fruitful and multiplying life spiritually and physically, we are automatically creating community. It has never been all about the individual, the “me”. Dan Wilt points out that it’s a “cosmic salvation.” Christ redeemed the whole created order, not just the individual. This is important to keep in mind since as we just saw, we are created in the Image of God, given authority to be care-takers of the people to whom and the environment to which we relate.

HUMANS ARE SALVIFIC STORY-TELLERS

As image bearers of God, we are given authority to multiply spiritually and physically, thus growing in community. These are all intricately woven together but would not fit right if weren’t for this last attribute. Telling stories of hope and salvation is HOW you multiply spiritually. No one can become a disciple if they don’t hear about Jesus!

Questions about the Kingdom (ICEWS, eb 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This week was a really enlightening week on the Kingdom of God and how big it is, how active it is in our earthly world. Often when I am finding out more about a subject, I always become more and more aware of how much I DON’T know. That was certainly the case as I came up with a couple questions this week.

My first question arose as I was watching the video of Don Williams Who is it that we worship? He talks about how God is not crowned because the lesser is crowned by the greater and there is no one greater than God. I didn’t realize God has no crown so I did a search in the NIV for the word “crown”. I really was not able to find a verse about God having a crown! I found one about God being a crown:

Isaiah 28:5 In that day the LORD Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people.

I am interpreting that to mean that any glory that the remnant of his people has will come from the LORD. He will be their pride and joy.

Then later in Isaiah it talks about Zion being a crown in God’s hand:

Isaiah 62:3 You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

This one makes me think that the crown would mean a prized possession.

In Hebrews I found a verse about Jesus being crowned:

Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

If Jesus is God and there is no one greater than God, then how can he wear a crown? It must have been God the Father that crowned him. Does that mean that Jesus is lesser than the Father? After thinking about this for a bit I thought that maybe the Father crowning the Son has less to do with who is greater and more to do with the different roles of the Three Persons within the Trinity. It would be the role of a father to crown his son king. The son then becomes as great as his father was.

The difference here would be that God is outside of time. While earthly kings reign one at a time from generation to generation, the heavenly Father and Son have no beginning and no end. So perhaps being outside of time is what allows equality within the Trinity?

That brings me to another question: Is God incomplete without all Three Person in the Trinity the way a human is incomplete without body, mind and spirit? The more I think about it the more it makes sense that He would be. This would automatically discount all other gods as being less and therefore not God. These thoughts were spawned from the following quotes from this week’s material:

- “Exclusive focus on the Creator will weaken the church; we need to worship and adore the Redeemer. But focus on the Creator and Redeemer to the exclusion of the Sanctifier will also weaken the church. It is the Spirit who brings New Birth, empowering, revival, gifting and community – conformity to Christ.” (Who is it that we worship? By Don Williams, Brenton Brown)

- “The God we worship is a Trinitarian God. We know no other God than the one revealed in Jesus Christ - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. John Calvin put it well, “Unless we think of God as Trinitarian we have no knowledge of God at all, only the word ‘God’ flutters through our brain naked, and void of meaning” (Quoted by Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine Of The Trinity, p.15).” (The Divine Dance, Berten Waggoner)

- “I would recommend the doctrine of perichoresis for your study. The term means mutual indwelling or, better, mutual interpenetration and refers to the understanding of both the Trinity and Christology. In the divine perichoresis, each person has “being in each other without coalescence” (John of Damascus ca. 650).” (The Divine Dance by Berten Waggoner)

So these are my thoughts and questions for this week. I really don’t think there’s any room for arrogance when studying theology because the more you learn, you realize what little you know!

The Kingdom of God

In the book Simply Christian, N. T. Wright describes three ways in which we would typically think of God’s space interacting with our earthly space.

Option One: Overlap the two spaces completely and say that “God is everything and everything is God.”

Option Two: Hold them completely apart and claim that the two do not interact.

Option Three: The two “overlap and interlock in a number of different ways” (Wright 63)

Wright then proceeds to explain how Option Three is the only one that is consistent with scripture.

My understanding of the theological phrase, the "Kingdom of God" has been challenged by this section of Simply Christian because I realized that although I know that God is living and active in this world, I still have parts of Option Two in my brain. On page 128 Wright says that “people who have assumed a worldview something like Option Two have looked for evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in, not in a quiet growth of moral wisdom, a steady, undramatic lifetime of selfless service, but in spectacular “supernatural” events such as healings, speaking in tongues, wonderful conversations, and so on.”

This is my struggle when I’m praying for something and do not see the results I expected. There have been a couple people in my church who have passed away from cancer after many prayers for healing and I was angry with God for not showing up. Yet according to Option Three, God’s Kingdom was there, He was present through it all.

In Essentials in Worship Theology, Dan Wilt presents four theological ideas on the Nature of God:
1. God as Creator
2. God as King
3. God as Trinity
4. God as Savior

Of these four ideas I believe that the idea of God as King has the most importance for the next 10-20 years. I relate this idea to how it will affect my generation because mine is the next to step up within that time frame to be leaders in society.

Dan says “To know God as King, and to artistically express God as King is to:”

“1. …Acknowledge that actions, and not personal feelings, are the primary indicator that we have chosen to follow God.” This is important because we are taught to think individualistically and do what feels right. The diminishing percentage of successful marriages is evidence that we are making more decisions based on how we feel. As worship leaders we must teach people that we need to put aside feelings and make a conscious decision to follow God.

“2. …Recognize that all national commitments are subordinate and subject to our commitment to follow Jesus and his ways.” This is important because as Christians who are trying to live out the guidelines that God has set for us (since He knows what is good for us), the government will continue to make decisions that do not line up with the Bible. They will call us narrow-minded for believing that something is wrong when the law declares that it is perfectly acceptable.

“3. …Retool the language of worship music and liturgy to terms indicating the foundational actions of the Christian life – namely surrender, allegiance, loyalty and commitment.” I think that we all struggle to varying degrees with selfishness and the words “surrender,” “allegiance,” “loyalty,” and “commitment” can be ugly words. Yet these four words, when put to action, bring about maturity and will bear fruit.

Responsibility (ICEWS, eb 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University,
Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Responsibility is a wonderful thing; a sign of maturity, importance and purpose. Responsibility helps us to care more deeply about the thing for which we are responsible. Being created in the image of God gives us a responsibility to be worship leaders in Creation, and being worship leaders gives us a responsibility to worship in truth (being theologically true). What a privilege it is to have such influence on the world around us!

As human beings we are made in the image of God (Imago Dei, Genesis 1:26-27). In the What is Worship DVD Dan Wilt uses the word “tselem” meaning “image or likeness”. With this is mind, we are called to be what N. T. Wright called the “lead worshippers”. I guess worship leading starts as soon as we come into existence as human beings! Our responsibility according to Wright is to reflect God’s presence into the world and then take Creation’s praises and bring it back to God. I’ve never thought about it this way and it really broadens my definition of a worship leader! If worship truly is a “whole life thing” then this definition makes way more sense than just “it’s what we do on Sunday morning.”

In the material we’ve covered this week, what snatches my attention is the weight of the responsibility we have as worship leaders. Being theologically sound is absolutely necessary! We have such a HUGE influence on people. As we heard this week, people remember songs better sermons.

Bono from U2 is a fabulous example of the power a musician holds. I went to see the U2 concert they were showing in the IMAX theatre and the thing that struck me the most about the show was the way he had the audience in the palm of his hand. His music gave him a platform to fight world hunger and speak at a national prayer meeting!

In the Old Testament musicians were so important that they were exempt from other tasks so that they could continue making music: “Those who were musicians, heads of Levite families, stayed in the rooms of the temple and were exempt from other duties because they were responsible for the work day and night.” (1 Chronicles 9:33)

My downfall in recognizing my responsibility is that I often just trust in the songwriter’s ability to write a theologically sound song without actually stopping and thinking “well, do I REALLY know what the song means?” Then I’m struck by how much I still need to learn. In Hebrews 6:1-3 it says “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.” The passage talks about moving beyond these “elementary” things but do I even fully understand those yet?

I am thankful for the responsibility find out Truth. It was has helped me to ask more questions. Questions lead to wonder and wonder leads to worship. As Tim Hughes quoted of someone, “When wonder is dead the soul becomes like a dry bone.”

A Reflection on "the four echoes of a voice"...

Here is my response to the discussion question of Week 1 of my worship theology course:


In the book Simply Christian N. T. Wright describes four echoes of the voice of God that reflect his heart: our sense of justice, our thirst for spirituality, our need for relationships and our response to beauty. The echo that most resonates with me as evidence of God’s reality is the need for relationships.

On the What is Worship DVD, Brian Doerksen discusses how from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a story about relationship. That is why we seek times of intimate worship, because we are made in God’s image (Imago Dei… Genesis 1:26-27). He is himself an intimate relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are countless times in the Bible where God works through a person to do mighty things (Moses, Abraham, Paul, Esther, etc.). Our amazing God could most certainly accomplish anything on His own (He made the universe, for Pete’s sake!) and yet He is driven by His love for us to include us in the adventure as His plan is worked out through history.

The four echoes mentioned in Simply Christian are shown in the worship songs we sing such as:

“How Great is Our God” by Chris Tomlin – Justice: “Darkness tries to hide and trembles at His voice…”

“Consuming Fire” by Tim Hughes - Spirituality: “There must be more than this…”

“This is Life” by Laura Woodley – Relationship: “Eyes can’t see the way You hold me…”

“Beautiful” by Sam Lane – Beauty: “You are beautiful, beautiful…”

We are made in the image of God and these echoes of the Creator’s voice show a glimpse of who He is. While the need for relationship is one that speaks loudest to me, each one is equally powerful in expressing the heart of God.