Every time you gather to worship, you’re remembering something amazing God did. The mystery of our faith is that Christ has died. Christ is risen. And Christ will come again.
No one took Jesus’ life from him. He gave it freely to demonstrate the loving-kindness of God. Jesus made the decision to follow God and to seek God’s kingdom. He kept Satan in the rearview mirror and set his mind to the cross. It was there that Christ, willingly, died. That was both his sacrifice for and his example to us.
Of course, we are resurrection people. We believe God raised Jesus from the dead after the cross. And not only for a moment. “He is risen” is not a part of an old story. It is our reality. Scripture affirms to us that because he lives we live, too. How amazing!
But we don’t only worship to remember what God has done. You know there are many details to fill in that great story of Jesus. They are birthed in the words of the beginning and go through the vivid imagery of Revelation. But they don’t stop there because we anticipate a future feature. Christ will come again.
We worship to also profess what we trust God will do in the future. Our anticipation is that Christ will come again in final judgment, making all things new. All tears and pain will be redeemed. God’s justice will prevail forever and ever.
As a response to all this, we live in Christ to the glory of God with the help of the Holy Spirit.
And because we believe in what God has done and trust in what God will do, we worship. God is worthy of our praise. All the earth knows this. You can sense both what God has done and what God will do in Psalm 98. The psalmist says the Lord “has done marvelous things” and “is coming to judge the earth.” As a response, Creation knows to sing a new song, make a joyful noise and sing praises with instruments. The earth is paying attention and cannot help but break out in praise!
May we pay just as much attention to God’s work as the earth does and do the same.
Stay blessed…john
