Ep #14: How does corporate worship guide our hearts to love Christ's Kingdom?

Episode Transcript

Austin
Welcome back to the Second Half Stewardship podcast. We're glad again that you are here with us. So, as we continue to look into the reality that God owns our time. Last week we considered what does silence and solitude how does that allow us to draw in to a place of work well as we spend time with the Father, if we don't have it, how detrimental that can be.
Today we're going to look into a little bit more deeply the reality that corporate worship is really necessary to help us grow as a steward. So, Spencer, do you want to dive in with just some brief overview what that's going to look like today?

Spencer
Well, I think it comes back in some ways to what James K.A. Smith and Desiring the Kingdom said, and usually he regularly uses this phrase “You are what you love, but you may not love what you think.” And we come back to that because these liturgies, these are rhythms that are so critical to our growth as stewards, to our being disciples of Jesus are really much more critical than even the thoughts that we have sometimes. Because, you know, having that morning cup of coffee.
So, Smith argues that liturgies make a certain kinds of people and what defines us is what we love, actually. And so simple example here that we could go to would be we can rationally say that prioritizing time with the kids, engaging them, is a high priority. If we have our phone with this constantly that's buzzing at messages coming in or if we know that we're working and we've got to be able to pick up the phone and talk to that person it's going to be really difficult to engage with the kids in the same way. So we can rationally say this is important, but our life is set up such that.
We can't really deliver on that in nearly the same way. And we can look at this, the liturgies of our age, some of those have to do with technology. It's a whole lot easier. We talked about this a little bit last time, a whole lot easier to wake up and engage with the Lord if we can slide over and have a prayer list and a Bible in front of us rather than pick up the iPhone. That liturgy, even just the simple act of getting the iPhone out of the bedroom or picking it up and getting it away very quickly can be really, really helpful to us.
So, if Smith is correct, we've got to really look holistically at this. And part of what we'll dive into today is how we do that in a corporate way, how we do that with those that we're walking this path with. I really like what Tim Keller says about where our hearts are with respect to money, and I think we go there with time as well.
Tim says, “Your heart is where your money flows effortlessly.” And so I think we could really say the same about our time, because we could say caring for the poor is really a high priority. But if our lives are set up around youth sports, for instance, that liturgy is going to keep us on that treadmill, in such a way that, you know, we grapple with having four kids.
What their schedules are like and how do we maintain space to be able to engage in some of the things that we say are high priorities. But they can easily get crowded out and that's part of what community does for us. It helps to recenter us. If we're going this path with lots of different people. So Austin, you want to dive in and kind of talk about where culture is in this?

Austin
So, I'm going to pull out some things from Smith's book, Designing the Kingdom. It's rather philosophical, so just buckle up and be prepared. But what he argues is that story is embedded in all of our practices. It's a story of where are our longings drawing us? Where is our heart drawing us? And I love that quote. You are what you love, but you may not love what you think because he often comes back those liturgies do things to us, rituals do things to us, and we may not know what rituals and liturgies we're participating in. So he pulls out three or he pulls out several, but I'm going to reference two of them right now.
And so, the question is, how does this help us envision the good life? And so, the first one is the mall. I realize that the shopping mall is a dying thing in our modern day, but it's consuming transcendence. He calls it worship at the mall. So, what I want you to consider and what Smith wants us to consider is don't look at the mall as a an American in the 2020s.
Look at the mall as if you were a Martian coming in and seeing what you see and so at the mall, you're surrounded by visions of the good life, whether it's the clean stores, whether it's the people dressed in a certain type of clothes, whether it's the mannequins dressed in certain type of clothes or the visions in the images, in the commercials that you see at each of the stores saying, if you want a good life, you will buy this, that or the other. You'll come to Pottery Barn because we have the best kitchen equipment, we have the best bedding, all this stuff.
If you come and shop at this store, it's going to give you this type of life. And so they don't say that Pottery Barn does it right on their window. You'll be a better cook if you have this pot or this pan. They show you the life that you want for the life that they think that they can sell you on.
And so the other piece of the though that's really fascinating is that there's hundreds of other people who are doing the same thing. So, you're not only looking at the stores, you're looking at all of the other shoppers. And so, there's a corporate aspect to the mall. I don't go to the mall alone. There has never been a time in my life where I've ever walked into a mall where there's not been another person in the crowd.
And so, it's a body of people going through these motions looking for what is the good life according to these corporate sources. And it's, it's consumption. We're consuming that transcendence. What is the good life. So that's one. The second one is cathedrals of learning and liturgies of the university. So, this one's a little bit harder to unpack, but you think about the life and the style and the pace of life at a university.
And you think about what happens in the first ten days of anyone coming to a new university. They're bombarded with clubs, groups, fraternities, sororities, any sorts of thing that will draw them into that group.

Spencer
7100 pizza parties to get you involve.

Austin
So, many parties they invite you to. So many T-shirts given away.

Spencer
So many T-shirts. Yes.

Austin
And thankfully, I got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ my freshman year because they were passing out candy and pencils in my dorm room lobby. And I became a Christian about a week later through Cru. So, I'm very thankful for those things. But the reality then is also the more things that I sign up for, the more time that I'm spending every one of those organizations wants you to lead in some capacity.
So, if you're leading in that organization, your lifestyle and the pace of life is now increasing. And what did you actually come to university for your right to study and to get a degree, but if I'm having to be around all these other people and doing all these other things, it creates this frenetic pace where my success is not only my academic pursuits, but it's how well have I done in my club.
What leadership roles have I take on? Essentially, you are being prepared for a corporate world where you're constantly chasing that next level of success. And if it's not in a group, or a club, you've also got sports. And I think about the sporting environment of the university and I love the University of Tennessee. I love the University of Tennessee football.
I did not become a fan of the University of Tennessee at the right time. I came to college in 2006. I'll never forget my first Tennessee game at Neyland Stadium. It was an incredible experience. But even the rhythms and practices that got involved there now in my mid-thirties as I watch sporting events for the University of Tennessee.
If I'm wearing a fitness tracker, they will think I'm doing a high intensity workout because of my heart rate. And so these practices and liturgies, I would say I'm watching 18 to 22 year old kids throw and catch a ball. Like this doesn't add anything to my life other than entertainment. But I'm so ingrained in that practice of in some ways worship.
I mean, it is a practice of worship. We are elevating that from entertainment to I enjoy it, but it affects my body. And so we think about there's all these other rhythms and liturgies and whether they're secular or sacred, they create desire within us. They point us aim us and direct us to certain instances. Any of those rhythms and liturgies we just pulled out to the university in the mall, there's thousands of other rhythms and liturgies that can point at our desire.

Spencer
Well, and if we're honest, I mean, it just strikes me even as we talk, you know, we've got kids that are in athletics right now, and my heart rate will get a lot more elevated when they succeed need or when there's an intense moment for them, even though rationally I know my priority is that they mature as an individual, as my rational priority is that they grow and Christ likeness and patience and kindness. But when they act patient and kind to each other, I might feel warm inside. But I won't, you know, start to, you know, get super excited and, you know, my all of my kind of core engaged right in that.

Austin
And that's where Smith really dives in. And if you want to read his book, it’s wonderful. He also has another one that's called “You Are What You Love”, that's a little bit more distilled and not as philosophical as “Desiring the Kingdom”, but that's what he's getting at. It's that our rational brains think that we can say, Oh, this isn't that important, so I'm not going to get involved.
But once your body gets involved, things change when I'm cheering, whether it's my kids, something changes within me versus when they're just they're peaceful and kind to one another. I don't have an elevated heart rate when my kids are hugging each other.


Spencer
Well, you know, and that's wild. I think back to the time at Auburn, one of the memories that I have is, you know, Florida came to town ranked number one. We beat them on a field goal in the rain. Why do I remember that there were so many other elements of life at Auburn that I'm probably a lot more significant to me but I can remember that time, that game.

Austin
Oh, absolutely.

Spencer
Crystal clear set down for the kick. Kick goes up, we go wild, storm the field, all those thing kinds of things.

Austin
So, okay, so we've heard what happens with cultural liturgies and how is this a little bit different, how do we engage corporate worship and what are we, you know, look at scripturally as we think about engaging a different type of liturgy that can inform us in a different way than these cultural liturgies?

Spencer
Again, we come back to Smith, and he says, “Historic Christian worship is fundamentally formative because it educates our hearts through our bodies.” And so, there is this sense that we're not just thinking creatures but that we can get into the heart a little bit more easily if there are practices that engage all of us.
So we'll be looking at Hebrews 10:23-25. The context again, Hebrews is encouraging the readers to hold fast to Christ and the New Covenant that's been established through Jesus's death and resurrection and so on. In 2:1, he says, “Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it.”
So, there is this sense that we need to recognize that the enemy can pull us away from this walk. Yet Chapter 3:12-13 verses 12 and 13. “Take care brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day as long as this call today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” And it's been said by many, but I think we referenced it here earlier in one of the earlier podcasts that atheism is not replacing Christianity. It's materialism.
It's the mall that's pulling us or it's Amazon or however you want to describe that materialism that is replacing our faith. It is the good life and that vision of the good life. It's not some person that's, you know, arguing that there is no transcendent God that can be backed into for many people after they've already embraced the materialism, you know, of the desire towards, you know, a different lifestyle there. By and large, obviously, some people come to this very rationally, but I think most who fall away as we see here, they're doing so because their liturgies are taking them away.
In chapter 8:7 “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.” So, Christ ushered us into his kingdom through his blood. There is that covenant and we can corporately gather together in pursuit of God as the church. I think that's what we come back to, really needing brothers and sisters around us to normalize and to say this life, to say that that which we see that is that material pull.
We need to resist that and we can do so more easily together. So it says it again, Chapter 10:23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
So, few different things that we want to dive into here first. Christ is the faithful one. We are not the faith for. So, this is not about us just trying harder. We in ourselves are not going to be able to be faithful. We've got to have that posture that depends upon him as open hands and really receives what he's done. He is faithful, not just through his death and resurrection, but through his life as well.
So, the author as well challenges the readers to encourage one another to love and good works. So, this is again, that mutuality that we need as we see a different trajectory within the culture, we need brothers and sisters to help us remind us that no, the path that we're walking, it makes sense. The liturgies that we're embracing.
So, it's a communal practice. And once we have that flywheel moving, once we embrace those practices, it actually gets easier. The first week is the hardest week. The first year is the hardest year, typically, in a lot of these practices. So, you know, and then we see verse 25 again, it's vital to holding fast to Christ. This is not just, hey, I'm going to be a better Christian if I do this.
There is an existential reality to this that this holds us in that trajectory of walking in faith. We need this at a very fundamental level, and it has been from the earliest onset of the Christian faith, you know, gathering together as a body each week, taking the Eucharist, praying, confessing, saying all these different things. You know, and oftentimes the Amish are kind of pilloried in the media or they're just, you know, pushed into a corner intellectually or something. But liturgically, they have a tremendous amount to commend themselves.
Because they figured out that we've got to be able to walk together if we're going to live this lifestyle that diverges from the culture. Now, do we embrace all that they do in terms of those rhythms and in terms of the way that they approach the world? No, but there is a tremendous value to the way that they look at community.

Austin
And I think just like just like all those other practices we mentioned before: the mall, the football stadium, the university. Those are bodily practices as well. So, we need just like Smith says, it's not just our rational brain that needs to be changed. It's fundamentally our body. Worship is a bodily practice, not just the body of Christ, but the communal, I am next to Spencer in worship and I see Spencer every week and Spencer knows when I'm not there and so there's these practices that are formative and rhythmic that allow us to enter that space of worship. And one of the things that we loved when we move back to Knoxville after we spent some time sort of with Cru in Denver was the practices and the worship liturgy of the Anglican Church helped us pray when we didn't know how to pray.
We felt burnt out we felt so tired from ministry there that coming together as the church really allowed us that safe space to pray weekly things that God needed to remind us of the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, the prayers like it helped us come back to center. Corporate bodily worship helped us come back to center when we were exhausted.
And so, Spencer I both worship an Anglican tradition, like we mentioned a few times. And so we're just going to go through a couple of these bodily practices that we do every Sunday to see how they can reshape and reform us. Because you know, Hebrews says walk together and faith and community hold each other together. And as our bodies do that, something happens and we are shaped and formed into a different kind of people for the liturgies of today, they are vast when we think about everything that we do on a daily basis. So we need other counter formation liturgies.
So we're going to start off by talking about the confession of sin, right? So in the Anglican tradition, we're encouraged to kneel. As we kneel, we're reminded that we must come before the feet of the Father. Some people confess their sins aloud, some people do it silently but there's always a time where we say, God, it's not up to me. I can't do this. I have fallen short. You are the Redeemer. You are the faithful one.
I love what our priest says at the end, sometimes at the beginning of confession, he says, “We don't come to God so that we can change God’s mind about who we are, but so that He can change our mind about who He is.” It's a beautiful reminder that in confession, we're not coming to God, being like, I need you to change how you feel about me. He feels the same. We're being reminded about how that feels about us. So, we fall at the feet of Jesus. On our knees we’re reminded that God is faithful. Spencer, what's another one of these practices?

Spencer
I think even they're part of what is beautiful is we're reminded that we are fallen. Because there's so much in the pop psychology that says you're perfect, you don't need anything. And as we come, we confess and then we receive absolution. So, the priest will declare absolution, reminding us again what you talked about, that God has already forgiven us. He loves us, that he's laid down his life for us. So, there's a beauty to that but the posture of kneeling reminds us where we need to be. And I even just love that posture of having our hands lifted and receiving as we receive that absolution, because we need that from the Lord.
So, we talk about, of course, the passing of the piece is another piece of the worship service, and that really that passing of the peace is not just the high five, it's not just the handshake. It's not just, you know, catching up on what happened, you know, in the college football game yesterday. This is time that is set apart for being able to reconcile with brothers and sisters. There's that reminder that we come back to each week. If I'm not in a good space, if I have bitterness towards a brother or sister or I know a brother or sister has bitterness towards me, I need to pause right here and I need to engage with that person. So critical, I think, as a reminder as well, because this sets us up for relationships that are actually mended.

Austin
The passing of a peace then launches us into this Eucharist, where we share the meal that Christ established for us. His body was broken, his blood was spilled. We partake in the communion. But I need to be reconciled with my family in order to come to a family table. There needs to be that reconciliation. But then we come together, and we're reminded Christ is the one that laid down his life. We are not lifted up by our successes. His life was laid down on our behalf, and we participate with Jesus in worship.
And it's this bodily posture that we were reminded we have to partake in Christ through the eating of the bread, in the drinking, the wine. We partake in his sacrifice. It's not our sacrifice that gets us anywhere. It's Christ as he lay down His life.

Spencer
Well, and there's a beautiful reminder as we move through that part of the service of the story of redemption. And we get to also sing in our tradition through that as well, just honoring and praising God in that. So, there's all of these different pieces that engage us there physically, intellectually, vocally. So much there.

Austin
So, as we think about it, kind of in totality, in corporate worship, we join in body and spirit with brothers and sisters. We're reminded that we are part of Christ story, not our own story. We're taught the words of Christ. We feed on the body of Christ. We are sent out and love to serve our neighbor.
It's a constant reminder of that entire story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And without corporate worship, we would fill our minds and our bodies with stories antithetical to Christ. And so these are really important things. And corporate worship helps us escape the cultural milieu of the day that allows us to enter in and be reminded of what is true and beautiful and eternal, set our minds on the eternal.

Spencer
And that's where we have that careful balance in wanting to appeal to people within our culture, but also within the worship context. We actually kind of like that it's quite different from anything that people might experience during the week because it's formative in a very different way. We don't want it to feel like the mall.
There are churches that, you know, they want it to feel, you know, in a certain way that is adapted to our culture. We want it to be a welcoming place and be hospitable but we also want to kind of set some boundaries here, that this is a place where we grow. Those rhythms of corporate worship have been so helpful for our family as we kneel, as we receive, as we make peace. Moving through that entirety is just such a gift because we know that we have brothers and sisters as well who are doing the same thing.

Austin
So, as we finish off today, we're going to read a quote from C.S. Lewis, and he says, “The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones that are being argued, but the ones that are being assumed.” And so, it just reminds me that dangerous ideas in society are assumed ideas. It's what's underneath that cultural current that just draws us and keeps us moving in the same direction.
Ideas that are being argued there on the table. But once they're assumed they've become part of the life of the world. And so, I think as we think about corporate worship, there should be something that's jarring about entering corporate worship. And it's a beautiful jarring. So, as we send you guys out again, if you found value in this, share with a friend. Reach out if you have questions or comments and we will talk to you soon to hear.