Untitled Sermon (4)

1 Corinthians 11:29 NKJV

For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

Perhaps, as Paul says here (vs.2-29), one reason congregations are sick, one reason that our worship does not hurt or help and rarely heals, is that we do not worship the Wholly Other but only a limp, idealized image of ourselves.

too much modern worship has degenerated into a personality cult for the adoration of the preacher or a shallow narcissistic subjectivity that builds on the latest pop psychologies and fads.

We desperately need to recover the objective, transcendent, mysterious, prophetic focus in our worship. We need to turn again and worship God.

Let God be God in the Church! Barth thundered in an earlier day.

The theological norm reminds us that it is not important how we worship as whom we worship

The historical norm reminds us that one of the best ways to arrive where we want to be today in worship is to first know where the church’s worship has been before. Historical norm affirms that the manner in which our forebears in the faith spoke to God and were spoken to by God is of relevance for us today.

Karl Barth -- “what matters most in church’s worship is not up-to-date-ness but reformation. This does not mean to go with the time or let the spirit of the age determined what is true or fake.

It means: To carry out better than yesterday the task of singing a new song unto the Lord.

Neve to grow tired of returning not to the origin in time but to the origin in substance of community”