Desiring the Kingdom (): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies Book 1)

by James K. A. Smith

This intensity is suggested in the very words of institution of the Eucharist: “This is my body.” Jesus didn’t look around the room or out the window and abstractly announce, “Behold, the goodness of all creation. Look, remember, believe. These are the gifts of God for the people of God.” Such a statement would be perfectly true; creation is just such a mediation of God’s presence. But in addition to that truth, we also need to note that Jesus takes up particular things from creation and endues them with a sense of special presence, an especially intense presence. In this way Jesus seems to establish particular hot spots of sacramentality within a good creation, while also ordaining particularly packed practices. This selective intensity suggests that the affirmation that all the world is a sacrament is not meant to thereby level “the sacraments.” In the same way, the affirmation that all of life is worship—that all things can be done to the glory of God—should not level the particular intensity of worship as the “work of the people” that especially praises God and forms us in unique, particularly intense ways.