You Are What You Love – July 7th, 2019
Chapter 5 “Guard your heart”
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 5 • The story so far. • Because he first loved us.
• Learning to love • Guard your hearts • Ancient wisdom for a modern world
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard Your Heart” “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 (re)forms our loves and satisfies our hunger for God. • The form of Christian worship and comes with its own story of redemption imbedded within it. • Christian worship has a “plotline” which rehearses in us the story of God and his people.
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: Re-Creation & Shalom F
S
Son
Industry, Law, & Film
Humankind
Education, Medicine, & Fashion
The story so far – The Plotline of Worship • Gathering: “unfolds with the call to worship, reminding us that God is the gracious initiator here, echoing our being called into existence”. • Confessing: “the body of Christ is a unique community ….. who owns up to the fact that we do not always love what we say we do” • 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”.
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your heart” “Because he first loved us”
1st Epistle of St. John “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also”. St. Paul – Velazquez (c. 1650)
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child’s smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of her child, and as the child awakens to love, it also awakens to knowledge”. (Hans Urs von Balthasar) ….. The smile of the cherishing mother that evokes the smile of the infant is a microcosm of a cosmic truth: that God’s gracious initiative in the incarnation – “he first loved us” – is the provoking smile of a creator who meets us in the flesh ….. Jesus is the smile of God”. James K. A. Smith
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your heart” “Learning to Love – At Home”
The smile of God: Our response • The incarnation of Jesus is the smile of God which awakens in us a yearning for worship. • We respond (at out best!) by building great cathedrals and composing beautiful liturgies.
• But this corporate worship – which does indeed shape our loves and desires – begins at home, where we are taught how to love. • The practices of the home serve both to build a foundation for, and amplify, the practices embodied in corporate worship. • At the same time, the practices of corporate worship teach us how to be families and households of Christians living together. • The sphere of home and church work together to build a strong people of God.
The smile of God: Our response • The incarnation of Jesus is the smile of God which confirms the goodness of our world. • God commands us in Genesis 1:28 to go forward and “fill” the earth – that is, bring creation to its full potential and existence. • The foundation of “this world” – this created world – is marriage, family, and communities. • The home and family have a mission, a grand mission, in God’s economy. • The mission is to create humans formed and shaped by the gospel who are equipped and enabled to reclaim creation for Christ.
• The home is its own cathedral – a construction that brings glory to Christ in spite of its own weakness and folly.
James K. A. Smith: You are what you love “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
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your heart” “Guard you hearts”
Home: A place to Recalibrate our Hearts • A liturgical audit of our home ……. . • The “vibe” or “hum”: What is important in the home – cooking, sports, television, screen time (or not), family devotions. • Prayer: Does the family ever pray together – from thanksgiving at meals to asking for help, to celebration of good things. • Devotions: Is there a devotional calendar to the day, or month or year. • Christian Year: recognizing the rhythm of the Christian year in feast and decoration. • How do the habits of the home re-enchant the world of the Christian household?
Home: A place to Recalibrate our Hearts • A liturgical audit of our home ……. . • The “vibe” or “hum”: What is important in the home – cooking, sports, television, screen time (or not), family devotions. • Prayer: Does the family ever pray together – from thanksgiving at meals to asking for help, to celebration of good things. • Devotions: Is there a devotional calendar to the day, or month or year. • Christian Year: recognizing the rhythm of the Christian year in feast and decoration. • How do the habits of the home re-enchant the world of the Christian household?
Home: A place to Recalibrate our Hearts • A liturgical audit of our home ……. . • The “vibe” or “hum”: What is important in the home – cooking, sports, television, screen time (or not), family devotions. • Prayer: Does the family ever pray together – from thanksgiving at meals to asking for help, to celebration of good things. • Devotions: Is there a devotional calendar to the day, or month or year. • Christian Year: recognizing the rhythm of the Christian year in feast and decoration. • How do the habits of the home re-enchant the world of the Christian household?
Home: A place to Recalibrate our Hearts • Worship: Our priority before all things – especially sports! We (Karen!) organize our weeks and weekends around worship. Every week is special, every service is important. • Learning: The Christian faith is relevant to all things, underlies all things, and informs them. A commitment to see the faith as foundational to every element of life. • Hospitality: Opening our home to visitors from the world and the broader community of church is a practice which communicates the things we have are God’s, not ours. • Giving Thanks: A deep spirit of thankfulness prayed at meals and displayed in a generosity of spirit.
• The Christian Year: Christmas and Easter, celebration and feast, service and worship. • Family: The foundational unit of all things.
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your heart” “Table Questions”
Table Questions • Read 1st John 4:13-21 • We “love God because he first loved us”. Which habits do you have in your life that start from the tact that God has loved us first?
• The rhythm of your home • Describe the “vibe” or “rhythm of your home. What does this rhythm of activity and practice tell about what you really love? • Vision 2020 • After reading this chapter, what do you think the role of the home “the little cathedral” - is in FPCH, especially related to Vision 2020?
You Are What You Love Chapter 5 “Guard your heart” “Takeaways”
You Are What You Love 5: Key Takeaways • The incarnation of Jesus is “the smile of God” which awakens in us a yearning for worship. • The practices of home build a foundation for, and amplify, the practices of corporate worship – at home we learn how to love. • The home is its own cathedral – a faithful construction over time that brings glory to Christ in spite of its own weakness and folly. • Habits in the home re-enchant the world. The habits of home work with the habits of corporate worship to establish our world view.
You Are What You Love Chapter 6 “Teach Your Children Well”
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
Teach Your Children Well “we need to face a sobering reality: keeping young people entertained in our church buildings is not at all synonymous with forming them as dynamic members of the body of Christ. What passes as youth ministry is often not serious modes of Christian formation but instead pragmatic, last ditch efforts to keep young people as card-carrying members of our evangelical club. We have confused keeping young people in the building with keeping them ‘in Christ’ ”. James K A Smith
