intersections you are what you love ch4 june 30th 2019

You Are What You Love – June 30th, 2019 Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” You are what you love. 1. To Worship is Hu...

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You Are What You Love – June 30th, 2019

Chapter 4 “What story are you in?”

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 21st) 7. Worship changes everything. (July 28th)

You Are What You Love: Chapter 4 • The story so far. • The real story.

• What are we here for? • The plotline ……. • Ancient wisdom for a modern world

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “The story so far”

Learning to love: A dynamic system needing care

The story so far - Learning to Love Rightly • As “desiring beings” what do you desire? • We think we know our loves but in reality we decide much beneath in the subconscious. • Often, in our spiritual hunger, we have been trained to accept food that will never satisfy

• Worship is the process that retunes us – worship (re)forms our loves desires and satisfies our hunger for God. • The form of our worship, liturgy, and loves come with their own story imbedded within them – perhaps far from the Christian ideal.

FPCH Sanctuary has an embedded story in its architecture.

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “The real story …….”

James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “Christian worship should tell a story that makes us want to set sail for the immense sea that is the triune God, birthing in us a longing for a better country – a heavenly one (Heb. 11:16) that is kingdom come. ……. ….. that vision will captivate us not just because we know its what God wants but because the practices of Christian worship paints the picture as it were – the metaphors of the biblical story, the poetics of the Psalms, the meter of hymns and choruses, the tangible elements of bread and wine …… all of which works on our imagination teaching us to want”. James K. A. Smith

The Real Story: Creation & Shalom F

S

Son

Creation

Humankind

Creation

The Real Story: The Story Line of the Bible “1st coming of Christ”

“2nd coming of Christ”

“The Age to Come”

“Eden”

“This Age” “Fall” “The Already but Not Yet”

“New Jerusalem”

The Real Story: The Time Line of the Bible F

S

Son

Christian "Soul” in Heaven “Eden”

“1st coming of Christ”

“2nd coming of Christ” “Last Judgement” “New Jerusalem”

“Fall” Millennial Reign

The Dead “Sleep”

The Dead “Raised”

The Real Story: Re-Creation & Shalom F

S

Son

Industry, Law, & Film

Humankind

Education, Medicine, & Fashion

St. Augustine City of God “All this was foretold and promised in the scriptures. We see the fulfillment of so many of these promises that we look for the fulfillment of the rest with the confidence of a devotion rightly directed. This is the right road which leads to the vision of God and to eternal union with him; it is proclaimed and asserted in the truth of the holy Scriptures. And all those who do not believe in it, and therefore fail to understand it, may attack it but they cannot overthrow it.” Augustine, City of God, Book X

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “What are you here for”

“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them”.

Hebrews 11

St. Paul – Velazquez (c. 1650)

What are you here for? Worship “characterizes”! • Smith quotes N.T. Wright, “what we’re here for is to become genuine human beings” …… • Becoming “a genuine human being” means – at its most basic - people who worship the one true God. • Our worship produces a complete transformation of our character – i.e. our loves are rightly ordered. • As this happens, we can indeed, “follow our heart” because that heart is a new heart with new loves. • Faith then becomes an exciting pilgrimage of unimagined possibilities – not a life of rule following.

• This is how, in practical terms, over time, we “put on” Christ and are “sanctified”. Not by following rules but reforming ourselves into a new people.

What are you here for? Worship restor(i)es us! • Smith quotes Alasdair Macintyre, “I cannot answer the question, ‘what ought I to do’ unless I first answer the question, “of which story am I a part?’” • What he is saying is once I know the story, I can see my part in that story – and act. • Why are young men and women lost, lonely, often sexless, unmarried, childless? They have no story!

• In the worship liturgy we re-create the grand story of the bible, letting the characters and songs, heroes and villains, seep into our consciousness. • In time we realize this is THE STORY, the story of all stories. Soon I realize I am in the story. I can love, marry, adventure, rejoice - I know how the story ends! • And so I worship and rejoice in confidence!

James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “If our loves can be disordered by secular liturgies it’s also true that our loves need to be reordered (recalibrated) by counter liturgies – embodied, communal practices that are “loaded” with the gospel and indexed to God and his kingdom. ……. ….. The church – the body of Christ – is the place where God invites us to renew our loves, reorientate our desires, and retrain our appetites. The church is that household where the Spirit feeds us what we need and where, by His grace, we become a people who desire him above all else”. James K. A. Smith

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “The plotline …… ”

• Gathering: “unfolds with the call to worship, reminding us that God is the gracious initiator here, echoing our being called into existence”.

The Plotline of Worship

• Listening: “we listen as we hear God’s Word proclaimed, another opportunity to make the biblical story our story”. • Communing: “The Lords Supper ….. Is an existential meal that retrains our deepest, most human hungers”. • Sending: “worship concludes with a benediction that is both a blessing and a charge to go, but to go in and with the presence of the Son – who will never leave us nor forsake us”. James K. A. Smith

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “Ancient wisdom for the modern world”

Ancient wisdom for the modern world • Our modern world: a world with no story.

• Complex: Christians in America today must flourish in a world that is much more complex than the world of the past. • Anxious: Today’s Christian faces a time of rising uncertainty and anxiety coupled with unprecedented levels of societal loneliness. • Uncertain: The certain expectations of the past have been replaced by a shifting sea of religions, lifestyles, and opinions. • So, what should worship look like …….?

Ancient wisdom for the modern world • Our modern world: a world with no story.

• Complex: Christians in America today must flourish in a world that is much more complex than the world of the past. • Anxious: Today’s Christian faces a time of rising uncertainty and anxiety coupled with unprecedented levels of societal loneliness. • Uncertain: The certain expectations of the past have been replaced by a shifting sea of religions, lifestyles, and opinions. • So, what should worship look like …….?

James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “Churches ….. will grow precisely because of their ancient incarnational practice is an answer to the diminishing returns of excarnate spirituality”. ….. ….. What Christian communities need to cultivate in our “secular age” is faithful patience, even receiving a secular age as a gift through which to renew and cultivate an incarnational, embodied, robustly orthodox Christianity that alone will look like a genuine alternative to “the spiritual”. James K. A. Smith

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “Table Questions”

Table Questions • Read Hebrews 11:3-16 • “they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God” What is your “better country”?

• What Story are you are a part of? • “I cannot answer the question, ‘what ought I to do’ unless I first answer the question, “of which story am I a part?’” What does this mean? • Vision 2020 • Given everything you have heard so far in “You are what you love”, what do you appreciate most about worship at FPCH?

You Are What You Love Chapter 4 “What story are you in?” “Takeaways”

You Are What You Love 4: Key Takeaways • Alasdair Macintyre: “I cannot answer the question, ‘what ought I to do’ unless I first answer the question, “of which story am I a part?’”. • Worship (Gathering, Listening, Communing, Sending) produces a total transformation of our character – i.e. our loves are rightly ordered. • On realizing we are part of God’s great story faith becomes an exciting pilgrimage of unimagined possibilities – not a life of rule following. • This is how, in practical terms, we “put on” Christ and are “sanctified” not by rule following but reforming ourselves into a new creation.

You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your Heart”

St. Augustine Pastor & Preacher “Christ as God is the country to which we go, Christ as man is the road by which we go”. “We follow not by walking but by loving” Augustine, Sermons

Guard Your Heart “Our households – our “little kingdoms” – need to be nourished by a constant recentering in the body of Christ. Week after week we bring our little kingdoms into the kingdom of God. Communal, congregational worship locates the family in the sweep of God’s story and in the wider web of the people of God. Form there we are sent back into our households and families, where we then have the opportunity to extend the church’s worship into our “little churches”. James K A Smith