You Are What You Love – June 9th, 2019
Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human”
You are what you love. 1. To Worship is Human: (June 9th) 2. You Might Not Love What You Think: (June 16th) 3. The Spirit Meets You Where You Are: (June 23rd) 4. What Story Are You In? (June 30th) 5. Guard Your Heart: (July 7th) 6. Teach Your Children Well: (July 14th)
7. You make what you want. (July 21st) 8. Worship changes everything. (July 28th)
You Are What You Love: Chapter 1 • What are you searching for? What do you want?
• Thinker, Believer, or Lover? • Love takes practice • You are what you worship • The habits of the heart
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” “What are you searching for?”
The Gospel of John “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him”.
What are you searching for?
"The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God." Saint Irenaeus of Lyon
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” “Thinker, Believer, or Lover”
St. Augustine Confessions “Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly worthy to be praised; great is thy power, and of thy wisdom there is no end. And man who is a part of what you have created, desires to praise thee; ….. For thou hast stirred him up that he may take pleasure in praising thee; for thou made us for thyself, and our heart is restless, until it finds repose in thee”. Augustine, Confessions, Book 1:1
St. Augustine: Thinker, Believer, or Lover
St. Augustine: Our Disordered Loves
God
Citizenship
St. Augustine: Our Loves – ordered by their “telos”
God
Citizenship
St. Augustine: Our Loves – ordered by their “telos”
God
Citizenship
St. Augustine: Christian - Learning to Love Rightly
Sex
Art
Wealth
God
Family
Citizenship
Education
Politics
Church Health
Work
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” “What do you want?”
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “What do you love? …… To be human is to be animated and orientated by some vison of the good life, some picture of what we think counts as “flourishing”. And we want that. We crave it. We desire it. This is why our most fundamental mode of orientation to the world is love. We are orientated by our longings, directed by our desires. ….. It’s a question not of whether you long for some version of the kingdom but which version you long for”. James K. A. Smith
We need to love something – what do you love?
The love of the hunter – an example
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” “Love Takes Practice”
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “Love takes practice …… if you are what you love and if love is a virtue, then love is a habit. This means that our most fundamental orientation to the world – the longings and desires that orientate us towards some version of the good life – is shaped and configured by imitation and practice. ….. It is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned”. James K. A. Smith
We need to love – what & how do you love?
We need to love something – what do you love?
Learning to love: Our loving compass
Learning to love: Worship a compass for life
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “You are what you worship …… to say “you are what you love” is synonymous with saying “you are what you worship”. The great Reformer Martin Luther once said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god”. We become what we worship because what we worship is what we love. ….. We can’t not worship because we can’t not love something as ultimate”. James K. A. Smith
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” Table Questions
Table Questions • Read John 1:38 • Jesus said, “what are you looking for?” – so what are you looking for? What is your vision of a good life, how does it effect life decisions?
• “You made us for thyself, and our heart is restless ……. ” • St. Augustine thinks that humans are made to love God, in fact made to love. What do you think: thinker, believer, or lover? • Vision 2020 • “Discipleship is more a matter of reformation than acquiring new information”. How should this effect our practice in home or church?
You Are What You Love Chapter 1 “To Worship is Human” “The Habits of The Heart”
The habits of faith - Learning to Love Rightly • We first need to understand ourselves as lovers – of God, of families, or other objects we desire. We are not just “thinking beings” we are “desiring beings”.
• This desiring being has an object of ultimate desire – a vision of a flourishing life that is cherished. • This vision of flourishing and peace orders the many competing loves in our lives. Raising the question, what do you love? • We learn what and how to love by watching the practice of others – by reformation not information. • Worship is the process that teaches us what to love and how to love – worship (re)forms our desires. • This worship liturgy competes with other liturgies of the world to form us as Christians.
The habits of faith. “Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather it’s a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly – who loves God and neighbor and is orientated to the world by the primacy of that love”. …..
….. Before Christians had systematic theologies and worldviews, they were singing hymns and psalms, saying prayers, celebrating the Eucharist, sharing their property, and becoming a people marked by a desire for God’s coming Kingdom”.
James K A Smith
You Are What You Love 1: Key Takeaways • St. Augustine gives us a model with which to understand our deepest character – we are lovers – we are born to love. • We are not static containers of ideas we love and desire a vision of our future flourishing. This vision shapes our every action. • Loving is a virtue – as such it is acquired my imitation and practice. Our faith is caught more than taught and we catch it through worship. • Worship acts as a calibration of our loves. When we worship we hear again the call of God on our lives and what he is asking us to do.
You Are What You Love Chapter 2 “You Might Not Love What You Think”
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “You might not love what you think …… by our immersion in this liturgy of consumption, we are being trained to both overvalue and undervalue things: we are being trained to invest them with a meaning and significance as objects of love and desire in which we place disproportionate hopes (Augustine would say we are hoping to enjoy them when we should only be using them) while at the same time treating them (as well as the labor and raw materials that go into them) as easily discarded”. James K. A. Smith
