Category Archives: LitBits

LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on the Lord’ Prayer 1

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Bread and forgiveness, the matters alive at the centre of the Lord’s Prayer, are “practices.” They involve us in enacting the things that we believe God is doing. That enacting is first of all ritual, communal, repetitive: in the prayer itself, but also in ritual acts of mutual forgiveness and in the ritual meal. But then our hearts and lives are invited to follow—in forgiving others, in exercising hospitality at all of our meals, in sending “portions …to those for whom nothing is prepared,” as Nehemiah 8:10 has it. Such practices are nondistancing, nondistinguishing. They still do not separate us from the rest of humanity, the condition of which the prayer so eloquently articulates. On the contrary. They connect us, in bread and forgiveness.

From Gordon Lathrop, The pastor: a spirituality, p.33f

 

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LitBit Commentary – The Eucharist (UIW2) 1

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The centrepiece of this part of the liturgy is The Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. The origins of this central Christian prayer lie in Jewish prayer at Passover and in the grace at every meal. Jesus built on these at the Last Supper. Our present sacrament also derives meaning from other meals hosted by Jesus – e.g. after the resurrection at Emmaus (Luke 24), or by the seashore (John 21). Its essence is thanksgiving for the mighty acts of God. It is a ‘Great’ Prayer because it is the expression of all the gifts of God for our salvation, above all in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Uniting in Worship 2

 

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on the Eucharist 1

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…the meal that we keep, in its intensity and focus, its staple food and festive drink, its ceremonial welcome of a wide circle, might suggest that we are consuming magical food, food of the angels, a heavenly banquet, food that will grant us immortality. Then we hear the content of the feast: “the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, given for you.” A specific, real death is proclaimed, and if “immortality” is given, then this is a new kind of freedom from death, coming in a world-affirming, bounded, palpable, and mortal way, here.

From Gordon Lathrop, The pastor: a spirituality, p.4

 

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Baptism 2

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The basic baptismal paradoxes include these: here, in this bath, we are united with the weak and foolish One who is God’s very wisdom and strength; so, here we are put to death in order to live; here we are identified with the death of Christ in order to be raised with him; here our dry bones take on flesh and are made to breathe with the Spirit; here we are washed in a purity bath that makes us dirtier — that is, here we are joined to Christ who is joined with all the unclean ones of the world. For Christians, life in vocation always involves immersion in these paradoxes.

From Gordon Lathrop, The pastor: a spirituality, p.17

 

 

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LitBit Commentary – The language of worship

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Perhaps the largest challenge for the language of worship is that one set of words…needs somehow to embrace, express, and elicit the worship of a whole group of people. From the perspective of a worshiper, public worship always involves using words that come from someone else. One skill for worshipers to hone is the skill of “learning to mean the words that someone else gives us,” whether those are the words of a songwriter or prayer leader. This skill requires a unique mix of humility (submitting ourselves to words given to us by the community of faith), grace (willingness to offer the benefit of the doubt when those words may not have been well chosen), and intention (actually to appropriate those words as our own).

The Worship Sourcebook (alt)

 

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LitBit Commentary – James Torrance on Worship 4

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“Under the pressures of our culture, and of theological controversy, are we not in danger of losing that living centre – of forgetting that the real agent in the life of the Church is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ?  Then our worship becomes in practice Unitarian and Pelagian, simply what we, religious people, do.”

James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p.107

 

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