The Liturgy Explained. James W. Farwell

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СКАЧАТЬ Ambo stands in the midst of the people, a symbol of Christian life as marked by responsiveness to God. We are hearers of the Word, listening in our sacred texts for the Word of God to be spoken: calling, coaxing, commanding, instructing, encouraging, judging, renewing. Some Christians—only a few, historically speaking, and restricted largely to the modern era—take the Bible literally. For most Christians the Bible is the Word of God in human words. Strictly speaking, Jesus alone is the Word of God, in whose life we witness the gracious call to a transformed life of gratitude and care for others, and the forgiveness of sin. Yet it is the Bible that speaks of Jesus as the Word, and so the Bible is the Word of God because it bears witness to that Word who is Jesus Christ, and it reveals God’s care and call to us. Christians do not simply direct their own lives and destinies but orient themselves toward God as those who listen, receive, and obey the commands of God as the law of life, the outlines of a life well lived, the path to human flourishing as God intends for us.

      The Font is linked to the Word, as in fact all three of the centers are to each other. The Font is the receptacle that holds the water by which new members of the community of God-followers are initiated. Some are small and off to the side, but increasingly churches have returned to an older pattern in which the font is prominent, linked spatially to Word and Table, or perhaps placed by the door as a reminder to all that it is by their baptism that they have been incorporated into the community that knows itself as the very Body of Christ. In baptism, water is poured over the heads or bodies of initiates, and the rich ambiguity of water is key to the ritual. Water cleanses and waters drowns; water washes the earth clean and, in great amounts, destroys; water refreshes, and renews. The ambiguity of water is an appropriate symbol, then, for Christian initiation: those who enter into a life lived before God through Jesus Christ die to an old life and awaken to new life, true life, by God’s Word; they are refreshed and renewed and made clean not by their own doing, but by God whose radical love and forgiveness is freely offered to all. Being forgiven and reborn, they commence a life in which they promise to celebrate in gratitude the life they have been given; trust in God; be faithful members of the church that testifies to God’s grace by its mission and outreach to the world; care for the dignity of all human beings who are made in God’s image; and return again, with the help of God, whenever they fail to keep these promises.

      The Table, or Altar, is the place where the community of faith, baptized into this life of responsive trust, gratitude, and compassionate care for God’s world is strengthened daily to continue that work by the presence of the risen Lord Jesus, who commanded that his followers share this meal to remember him. At the same time, eating the sacred food, we become what we eat. (Remember Augustine’s teaching at the end of the last chapter.) Since the focus of this book is on the Eucharist, a ritual that culminates in this sacred eating, we will have much more to say on this in subsequent sections.

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