Campbell's thoughts on worship as an act of resistance ...

Have spent today reading (slowly) more for my Creative Homiletics assignment. Re-read this in Campbell's The Word Before The Powers: An Ethic of Preaching to do with worship and the church as a community of resistance. Perhaps, just perhaps, my concience has been awakened enough from its slumber in the tomb where the stone has been rolled away, for this to affect how I view our church gathered tomorrow.

"In the context of the principalities and powers, Christian worship is fundamentally an act of resistance. As I have noted, what the powers desire most from human beings is our worship; they claim to be the divine regents of the world and to offer us life if we will only serve them... There is no more subversive an act where the powers are concerned than praising the God of Jesus Christ, who has exposed and overcome them...

... By it's very nature, however, Christian worship, even when distorted, involves some level of resistance to the claims of the principalities and powers. In gathering for worship, even contemporary mainline, privileged Christians join this tradition of resistance. Believers not only resist the countless diversions the powers offer up to keep us away from worship on Sunday mornings ... but they also embody their loyalty to the living God, rather than the lesser powers that seek to become idols. While the motives for participating in this practice are varied, and while participating in worship is often routine for many people, preachers can redescribe this practice and remind the church of the life of resistance in which worship implicates them... such redescribed worship becomes the context for nurturing the virtue of hope, which enables the church to resist the powers beyond the liturgy through its life in and for the world."
(Page 142-143)

Bring on the worship of the gathered community tomorrow! What are the words of that song we often sing at EM ... oh yeah ... satan is vanqueshed and Jesus is King. So come let us sing a song, a song declaring we belong to Jesus; He's all we need. Lift up a heart of praise, sing now with voices raised to Jesus; sing to the King.