Worship, Mission, and the Church Year

How Union with Christ Forms Worshipers for Mission in Every Season

Nicholas W. Monsma

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781532618697, 9781498286077
• eBook ISBN: 9781498244473
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

How many ways can your church's worship equip the congregation for its mission? Worship changes through the seasons, from Christmas, through Lent and Easter, and beyond. The way worship relates to your church's mission should change, too. This book explores those seasonal changes by examining both worship and mission as aspects of union with Christ. Just as we are to follow Christ through the various stages of his life and work in worship during the church year, we can follow him in our mission through these same stages of his life and work.

one

The Birth of Jesus

It was Christmas Eve, and one church had decorated the front of their worship space with a Christmas scene—a scene complete with a fireplace, stockings, and wrapped gifts underneath a tree. When visitors showed up later that evening, perhaps they would feel at home with the familiar sights of the Christmas holiday. In that comfortable setting, perhaps they would be better able to consider the true meaning of Christmas. In that same neighborhood, each home had received a postcard from another congregation. “Come and join us on Christmas Eve,” the mailing read, with lines from familiar Christmas carols. Half of the neighbors hadn’t been to church since they were children, except for the occasional baptism or wedding. Perhaps some of them would be drawn by the nostalgia of those Christmas carols. Perhaps they would venture out to hear the classic Christmas sounds of their childhood, the pipe organ swelling with “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Down the street, the windows of another church rattled with the sounds of “Happy Birthday,” as children practiced to lead the congregation in singing birthday greetings to Jesus later that evening. It might seem like a strange musical choice—certainly not traditional. The hope was that visitors who heard this out-of-place song would find themselves doing more than smiling softly at the sweet songs. Perhaps if they heard a strange musical selection, they would think more deeply about what this holiday was all about. The leadership in these fictional churches planned worship with the mission of God in mind. They hoped that their Christmas Eve worship, with its comfortable décor and familiar hymns or curious song choices, would help their church do its part in the church’s mission.

Christmas does offer opportunities to present the gospel to visitors who otherwise would be quite unlikely to step foot in a church. For the past few years, our church has adopted that second strategy. We’ve made sure that the Christmas Eve service is full of familiar Christmas carols; we’ve sent postcards out to our neighborhood (or placed ads on social media) inviting our neighbors; I’ve written the sermon with unbelievers in mind, as though I’m speaking directly to those who are unlikely to hear the gospel any other time of the year. Every year there are a handful of visitors who join us for worship on Christmas Eve, and they hear the gospel.

If we want our churches to bring together Christmas worship and the mission of God, more can be done than simply presenting the gospel to the Christmas-and-Easter worshipers we cajole into our sanctuary. Worship is the spiritual union of the church with Jesus Christ, and Christmas worship becomes union between the Son of God born as a human being and we the human beings who share his human nature. Christmas worship is about being brought into that “marvelous exchange,” in which God took on our humanity so that he could bestow his divine gifts on us.44 Christmas worship is a missional event because the incarnation and the “marvelous exchange” are key pieces of God’s mission—that mission of which we are the beneficiaries and that mission in which we are participants. In this chapter, we’re going to explore how carefully-prepared liturgies during the Christmas season can help worshipers learn their parts in the mission through union with the Christ who was born in a manger.

United to the Incarnate Christ

The real meaning of Christmas is not the gifts wrapped up under the tree and the filling of stockings hanging by the fireplace, nor is Christmas simply the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the founder of the Christian religion. Christmas is a key event in God’s mission and our salvation. It’s about the incarnation and that wondrous exchange. To be united to the incarnate Jesus Christ is to have God with you and God for you. Here’s what that means:

Matthew and Luke write about the birth of Jesus Christ, and each seems to know that God is with us in the person of Jesus Christ. Matthew looks back at the Old Testament as he begins his gospel. He begins with a genealogy from Abraham to Jesus. He then quotes the Old Testament every few verses, showing that the events of Jesus’ birth were fulfilling the Old Testament. Matthew does this to emphasize that the birth of Jesus is all about God’s mission and his faithfulness to his Old Testament promises. To a people who might wonder whether the God of the Old Testament is still with them, the birth of Jesus Christ is a resounding, “Yes!” This presence of the God of the Old Testament, faithful to his promises, is not just for the blood descendants of Abraham. Paul tells us, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29). Matthew tells us that to be with the Savior born in a manger is to have the God-of-the-past with us.

Luke seems to tell us that to be united to that Savior is to have the God-of-the-future with us. As he begins the story of Jesus Christ, Luke seems focused on God’s solutions to injustice. It’s as though he is longing for a future when things will be put right. He draws the reader’s attention to the politics, powers, and socio-economics of first-century Palestine. The birth of Jesus is an act of peace and justice in the world.45 For those of us who wonder whether God cares about our oppressed, impoverished, suffering world, Luke seems to be assuring us that because the Savior born in a manger is with us, God is with us.

Rather than telling us the story of the birth of Jesus, John tells us the theology of the incarnation. God is not with us in a mere metaphorical sense. God is not with us just in terms of the themes of a story. Because the Savior born in a manger is with us, God himself is with us in the flesh:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–5, 14)

One of the themes that will develop later in John’s Gospel is the theme of being united to Jesus Christ (especially in chapters 14–16). That theme begins in the very first verses of the Gospel. Before we are united to God, God is united to us. Matthew and Luke hint at it as they look backward and forward, respectively. John makes it clear: to be united to the Jesus Christ who was born in a manger is to have God present with you. That is what it means to have union with an incarnate Jesus Christ: God is with you.

Union with the Savior born in a manger is not just about God being with us. It is also about God being for us. The “marvelous exchange” shows how God is for us in Jesus Christ. God took upon himself the humility that belongs to us so that we can receive the glory that belongs to God. The apostle Paul teaches us this. Paul writes about the incarnation as a matter of Jesus taking our humility upon himself: Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself . . .” (Phil 2:6–8). Paul also states the doctrine of the “marvelous exchange” in simple language: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). In Galatians 4:4, he brings together both the humiliation of Christ in the incarnation and the subsequent exaltation of those who belong to him: “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Gal 4:4). God sent his son to us, taking on our humility and the consequences of our sin, so that he might bring us to God to become his children. Union with the Savior born in a manger means not just that God is with us, it also means that God is for us.

I wonder how many of us have worshiped entire Christmas seasons focusing so much on the fact that God is with us that we have neglected to focus on how God is for us. Jesus Christ took on human flesh not just so that God would we be with us. He took on human flesh as the first act in a two-part exchange. The incarnation is incomplete without that second part. The reformer John Calvin argued this: “the only reason given in Scripture that the Son of God willed to take our flesh, and accepted this commandment from the Father, is that he would be a sacrifice to appease the Father on our behalf.”46 Calvin expressed this early on in a catechism:

For he has put on our flesh in order that, being made Son of man,

he would make us children of God together with himself;

and, having received on himself our poverty,

he would transfer his riches to us,

having taken on himself our weakness,

he would confirm us by his power;

having accepted our mortality,

he would give us his immortality;

and being descended to earth,

he would raise us to heaven.47

The mission of God is not complete with the incarnation. The mission of God, as God reveals it to us in the birth of Jesus Christ, involves both the incarnation and the “marvelous exchange.” Likewise, worship in union with our Christmas Christ means two things for us: it means that God the Son dwelt among us, and it means that God took on our humility so that he could give us the riches of his glory. To be united to the incarnate Jesus Christ is to have God with us and God for us.

Mission in Union with the Incarnate Christ

Through this union with the God who is with us and for us, we are empowered for our part in the church’s mission. This empowerment is related both to the incarnation and to the transaction Calvin called “the marvelous exchange.” In fact, in the missional-church mo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Birth of Jesus
• Chapter 2: The Peripatetic Ministry of Jesus
• Chapter 3: The Suffering, Crucifixion, and Death of Jesus
• Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus
• Chapter 5: The Ascension of Jesus
• Chapter 6: The Return of Jesus
• Epilogue
• Bibliography