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8bd4ff2
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The Supper is a gracious communion with a forgiving God; but it is also a supper we eat with one another, and that too will require forgiveness.
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James K.A. Smith |
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452df65
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the postmodern critique is not aimed at metanarratives because they are really grounded in narratives; on the contrary, the problem with metanarratives is that they do not own up to their own mythic ground.
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James K.A. Smith |
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c6ec4b2
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Indeed, the for a Christian Christ: Jesus Christ is the very embodiment of what we're made for, of the end to which we are called....and how does this happen? By being regularly immersed in the drama of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, which is precisely the point of Christian worship--to invite us into that story over and over again, 'character-izing' us as we rehearse the gospel drama over and over.
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James K.A. Smith |
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f762718
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Derrida. Deconstruction's claim that there is "nothing outside the text" [il n'y a pas de hors-texte] can be considered a radical translation of the Reformation principle sola scrip-tura. In particular, Derrida's insight should push us to recover two key emphases of the church: (a) the centrality of Scripture for mediating our understanding of the world as a whole and (b) the role of community in the interpretation of Scripture."
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James K.A. Smith |
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5522b71
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Lyotard. The assertion that postmodernity is "incredulity toward metanarratives" is ultimately a claim to be affirmed by the church, pushing us to recover (a) the narrative character of Christian faith, rather than understanding it as a collection of ideas, and (b) the confessional nature of our narrative and the way in which we find ourselves in a world of competing narratives."
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James K.A. Smith |
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b149c3c
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Foucault. The seemingly disturbing, even Nietzschean claim that "power is knowledge" should push us to realize what MTV learned long ago: (a) the cultural power of formation and discipline, and hence (b) the necessity of the church to enact counterformation by counterdisciplines. In other words, we need to think about discipline as a creational structure that needs proper direction. Foucault has something to tell us about what it means to b..
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James K.A. Smith |
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c2490ed
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It's not "meaning," and it's certainly not meaning in general, he says. "Indeed, there is something absurd about the idea that our lives could be focused on meaning as such, rather than on some specific good or value. One might die for God, or the Revolution, or the classless society, but not for meaning"
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James K.A. Smith |
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388c3e9
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Our sanctification is more like a Weight Watchers program than listening to a book on tape.
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James K.A. Smith |
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f1c9400
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Pascal knew that Montaigne was cheating: to most humans, curiosity about higher things comes naturally, it's indifference to them that must be learned.
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James K.A. Smith |
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aae8737
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In strange, often unintended ways, the pursuit of "justice," shalom, and a "holistic" gospel can have its own secularizing effect. What begins as a gospel-motivated concern for justice can turn into a naturalized fixation on justice in which God never appears. And when that happens, "justice" becomes something else altogether--an idol, a way to effectively naturalize the gospel, flattening it to a social amelioration project in which the pa..
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James K.A. Smith |
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0c10071
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The Scriptures function as the script of the worshiping community, the story that narrates the identity of the people of God, the constitution of this baptismal city, and the fuel of the Christian imagination.
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James K.A. Smith |
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5568821
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When the Scriptures are read in the context of gathered worship, they are, in a sense, enacted at the same time.
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James K.A. Smith |
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fa32314
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Scripture also functions as something like the constitution of the baptismal city.
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James K.A. Smith |
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08869ea
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we should emphasize that the narrative of Scripture is a primary fund for the Christian imagination.
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James K.A. Smith |
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319c206
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The tangible display and performance of the gospel in the Lord's Supper is a deeply affecting practice.
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James K.A. Smith |
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a1a11be
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First, lest we pass too quickly over the mundane and obvious, we should appreciate that the stuff of the Lord's Supper--the "elements" as they're sometimes called--are rather ho-hum stuff: bread and wine, staples of any daily diet in many parts of the world and across history."
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James K.A. Smith |
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6c9c0df
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These are not naturally occurring phenomena; they are the fruit of culture, the products of human making. In blessing the bread and giving thanks for it, Jesus not only hallows the stuff of the earth, but he also hallows the stuff of our hands.
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James K.A. Smith |
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72f1067
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For every week that we celebrate the Eucharist is another week that the kingdom and its feast have not yet fully arrived.
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James K.A. Smith |
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2e1f3f3
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The Eucharist is our model of the eschatological order, a microcosm of the way things really ought to be."[105] Thus it is a normative meal: by showing us a foretaste of how things ought to be, the practice of the Lord's Supper carries norms in it, and these norms constitute both a basis of critique for the present order, as well as hints as to how the church should order itself as a polis that is"
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James K.A. Smith |
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1fe1b2b
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The eucharistic feast is a tiny normative picture of the justice that characterizes the coming kingdom of God, where none go hungry because of poverty or alienated labor
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James K.A. Smith |
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bbd1e7e
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First, with apologies for repeating the obvious, it is worth noting that the practice of Christian worship takes up and involves something mundane, common, and even "dirty" (as in "filthy lucre"): the nitty-gritty reality of money."
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James K.A. Smith |
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cddad72
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Rather, the offering is an expression of gratitude. It is a symbolic but concrete indication that the "commerce" between God and humanity is not a contract but a covenant, which traffics not in commodities but gifts."
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James K.A. Smith |
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ade38c0
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hoping to find a language for death. In his hands, the language of death is democratic -- which makes good sense since death is quite impartial (talk about e pluribus unum!).
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James K.A. Smith |
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c002e26
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Not many people can confront the truth about themselves. If they did they'd run a mile, would take an immediate and profound dislike to the person in whose skin they'd learned to sit quite tolerably all these years.
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James K.A. Smith |
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a1fec8a
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Things which are not in their intended position are restless. Once they are in their ordered position, they are at rest.9
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James K.A. Smith |
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70a31c2
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This is why Luther and Calvin still understood themselves to be "catholics." While they might have been railing against the abuses of Roman Catholicism, they also understood themselves to be heirs of the catholic, universal, orthodox faith. In fact, I think we can best understand the Reformation as an Augustinian renewal movement within the church catholic. So, in a way that might be surprising, to be Reformed is to be catholic. Traditional..
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James K.A. Smith |
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211c7b9
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too often we look for the Spirit in the extraordinary when God has promised to be present in the ordinary.
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James K.A. Smith |
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2c2094b
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One of the functions of Revelation [or of worship] was to purge and to refurbish the Christian imagination. It tackles people's imaginative response to the world, which is at least as deep and influential as their intellectual convictions. It recognizes the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms. Moreover, it unmasks this dominant constructio..
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James K.A. Smith |
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9e22df7
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Unlike sermon-centric congregations that profess "high views of Scripture" but leave the reading of the Bible to the preacher's whim and circumscribe it within "sermon time," in catholic Christian worship the Bible isn't just the focus of preaching; it is the lexicon of the entire service of worship."
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James K.A. Smith |
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5735966
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Worship again and again interrupts the course of the world. Through worship the Christian community testifies that the world is not on its own. And this also means that it is not kept alive by politics, as the business of politics, which knows no Sabbath, would have us believe.
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James K.A. Smith |
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6645e7d
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A biblical passion for justice as shalom might be precisely what pushes us to refuse this merely procedural standard of justice. That is not license to confuse the state with kingdom come, but it is an impetus to bear witness to--and lobby for--substantive visions of the good for the sake of our neighbors.
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James K.A. Smith |
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e4af332
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Worship isn't political only to the extent that it can be marshaled and invoked in contemporary partisan debates; it is always already political insofar as liturgy is the rite of citizens of the heavenly city.
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James K.A. Smith |
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826b688
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The state isn't just the guardian of rights; it is also a nexus of rites that are bent on shaping what is most fundamental: my loves. The state doesn't just ask me to make a decision; it asks me to pledge allegiance.
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James K.A. Smith |
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054b523
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Your love or desire--aimed at a vision of the good life that shapes how you see the world while also moving and motivating you--is operative on a largely nonconscious level. Your love is a kind of automaticity. That's why we need to be aware of how it is acquired.
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James K.A. Smith |
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4c22fd0
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Jennings cites Jean-Francois Lyotard: "Contemporary society no longer speaks of fraternity at all, whether Christian or republican. It only speaks of the sharing of the wealth and benefits of 'development.' Anything is permissible, within the limits of what is defined as distributive justice. We owe nothing other than services, and only among ourselves. We are socioeconomic partners in a very large business, that of development."8 A just an..
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James K.A. Smith |
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092dc13
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The body of Christ is that unique community of practice whose members own up to the fact that we don't always love what we say we do--that the "devices and desires" of our hearts outstrip our best intentions. The practices of Christian worship are a tangible, practiced, re-formative way to address this tension and gap."
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James K.A. Smith |
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03df002
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if you are what you love and if love is a virtue, then love is a habit. This means that our most fundamental orientation to the world--the longings and desires that orient us toward some version of the good life--is shaped and configured by imitation and practice. This has important implications for how we approach Christian formation and discipleship.
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James K.A. Smith |
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f94f609
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We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.
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James K.A. Smith |
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8361f01
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Third, following from this, the liturgical practice of the offering indicates that Christian worship--which is a foretaste of the new creation--embodies a new economy, an alternative economy.
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James K.A. Smith |
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d36e616
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What makes them religious is not just that they are informed by beliefs and worldviews but that they have formative pretensions that are nothing short of liturgical. It shouldn't be surprising when an institution that wants you to "pledge allegiance" is not happy with anything less than your heart."
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James K.A. Smith |
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748fa42
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Too much of our cultural analysis is rooted in thinking-thingism: we scan culture, listening for "messages," bent on rooting out "false" teachings. But if we are first and foremost lovers, and if our action is overwhelmingly governed by our unconscious habits, then intellectual threats might not be the most important. Indeed, we could be so fixated on intellectual temptations that we don't realize our hearts are being liturgically co-opted ..
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James K.A. Smith |
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260f03a
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Focusing on the intellectual artifacts of the earthly polis, we miss the formative power of its rituals. This is the inconvenient truth that is pressed upon us by the new black theology of Willie Jennings, J. Kameron Carter, and Brian Bantum, for example.38 The church's capitulation to ideologies of race will be a case study of our assimilation by earthly-city liturgies despite our best arguments and convictions.
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James K.A. Smith |
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a74e6b9
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To be human is to be on a quest. To live is to be embarked on a kind of unconscious journey toward a destination of your dreams. As Blaise Pascal put it in his famous wager: "You have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed."7 You can't not bet your life on something. You can't not be headed somewhere. We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for."
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James K.A. Smith |
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edd3019
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The place we unconsciously strive toward is what ancient philosophers of habit called our telos--our goal, our end. But the telos we live toward is not something that we primarily know or believe or think about; rather, our telos is what we want, what we long for, what we crave. It is less an ideal that we have ideas about and more a vision of "the good life" that we desire."
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James K.A. Smith |