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It calls us to gratitude and worship in the midst of the most undignified parts of our day.
these small tasks of caring for our bodies, as quotidian as they are, act as an embodied confession that our Creator, who mysteriously became flesh, has made our bodies well and deserves worship in and through our very cells, muscles, tissues, and teeth.
What would it mean to believe the gospel, not just in my brain, but also in my body?
trained to offer my body as a living sacrifice through my body.
We learn how our bodies are sites of worship, not as an abstract idea, but through the practice of worshiping with our bodies.
The way we use our bodies teaches us what our bodies are for. There are plenty of messages in our culture about this. The proliferation of pornography and sexually driven advertising trains us to understand bodies (ours and other people’s) primarily as a means of conquest or pleasure.
If the church does not teach us what our bodies are for, our culture certainly will.
If we don’t learn to live the Christian life as embodied beings, worshiping God and stewarding the good gift of our bodies, we will learn a false gospel, an alternative liturgy of the body.
Instead of temples of the Holy Spirit, we will come to see our bodies primarily as a tool for me...
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eating and drinking what we will, with no regard for the way our choices violate a call to steward our bodies as gifts.
Through the practice of an embodied liturgy we learn the true telos of embodiment: Our bodies are instruments of worship.
Ignoring Scripture’s teaching about the proper use of the body and using our bodies for our own false worship is a misuse of the sacred
when we use our bodies for their intended purpose—in gathered worship, raising our hands or singing or kneeling, or, in our average day, sleeping or savoring a meal or jumping or hiking or running or having sex with our spouse or kneeling in prayer or nursing a baby or digging a garden—it is glorious, as glorious as a great cathedral being used just as its architect had dreamt it would be.
In the midst of this, though words failed me, prayer without words—prayer in and through my body—became a lifeline.
learn the habit of beholding our bodies as a gift, and learn to delight in the body God has made for us, that God loves, and that God will one day redeem and make whole.
reflections in their bathroom mirror to be a reflection of their belovedness and freedom in Christ.
The bodies we use in our worship service each week are the same bodies we take to our kitchen table, into our bathtubs, and under our covers at night.
Because of the embodied work of Jesus, my body is destined for redemption and for eternal worship—for
When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us—through our lips and teeth—his very breath.
fight against my body’s fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I’ll hold on to the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious.
Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that c...
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Apocalypse literally means an unveiling or uncovering.
how tightly I cling to control and how little control I actually have.
The neediness and sinfulness, neurosis and weakness that I try to pretty up and manage through control, ease, and privilege are suddenly on display.
These moments are an opportunity for formation, for sanctification. Underneath these overreactions and aggravations lie true fears.
Today my lost keys provide a moment of revelation, revealing the lostness inside me and my misplaced reliance.
But little things gone wrong and interrupted plans reveal who I really am; my cracks show and I see that I am profoundly in need of grace.
pretty good people do not need Jesus. He came for the lost. He came for the broken. In his love for us he came to usher us into his foundness and wholeness.
The call to contentment is a call amidst the concrete circumstances I find myself in today.
theodicy, that names the painful mystery of how God can be powerful
and good and still allow bad things to happen.
cultivate the practice of meeting Christ in these small moments of grief, frustration, and anger, of encountering Christ’s death and resurrection—this big story of brokenness and redemption—in a small, gray, stir-crazy Tuesday morning.
repentance and faith are the constant, daily rhythms of the Christian life, our breathing out and breathing in.
admitting the truth of who I am—not running to justify myself or minimize my sin. And yet, in my brokenness and lostness, I also need to form the habit of letting God love me, trusting again in his mercy, and receiving again his words of forgiveness and absolution over me.
Repentance is not usually a moment wrought in high drama. It is the steady drumbeat of a life in Christ and, therefore, a day in Christ.
church each week, we repent together. We confess that we have sinned “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone,” that we have neglected to love God with our whole hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves.4 This practice of communal confession is a vital way to enact the habit of confession that marks our daily lives. Through it we learn together the language of repentance and faith.
Confession reminds us that none of us gather for worship because we are “pretty good people.” But we are new people, people marked by grace in spite of ourselves because of the work of Christ. Our communal practice of confessi...
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Our failures or successes in the Christian life are not what define us or determine our worth before God or God’s people. Instead, we are defined by Christ’s life and work on our behalf. We kneel. We humble ourselves together. We admit the truth. We confess and repent.
Together, we practice the posture that we embrace each day—that of a broken and needy people who receive abundant mercy.
Over time, through the daily practices of confession and absolution, I learn to look for God in the cracks of my day, to notice what these moments of failure reveal about who I am—my false hopes and false gods.
learn to invite the true God into the reality of my lostness and brokenness, to agree with him about my sin and to hear again his words of blessing, acceptance, and love.
God searches more earnestly for me than I do for my keys. He is zealous to find his people and to make them whole.
Christian worship is arranged around two things: Word and sacrament.
And both Word and sacrament are profoundly related to food. These two central acts of worship, Scripture and Communion, are compared to my bowl of taco soup, my daily bread.
In his temptation in the wilderness Christ says that we are not only nourished by bread but by “every word that comes from the mouth of God”
At the Last Supper Jesus tells his disciples to eat in remembrance of him. Of all the things he could’ve chosen to be done “in remembrance” of him, Jesus chose a meal.
he picks the most ordinary of acts, eating, through which to be present to his people. He says that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. He chooses the unremarkable and plain, average and abundant, bread and wine.
“he gave them an act to perform. Specifically, he gave them a meal to share. It is a meal that speaks more volumes than any theory.”2
Christ is our bread and gives us bread. He is the gift and the giver. God gives us every meal we eat, and every meal we eat is ultimately partial and inadequate, pointing to him who is our true food, our eternal nourishment.
Here, around the table and before witnesses, we testify to the experience of life as a precious gift to be received and given again. We acknowledge that we do not and cannot live alone but are the beneficiaries of the kindness and mysteries of grace upon grace.”
