A body, not a crowd.
A call to worship.
This call to worship1 is all about how the church is a Spirit-created participation in the risen life of Jesus Christ.
We’re not a collection of religious individuals who’ve decided to cooperate. The Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, has made a new people who share in Christ’s own life, communion, and mission.
We’ve become the body of Christ not by some shared enthusiasm, affinity, moral effort, ethnicity, programming, or institutional purpose, but by the Spirit who unites us to the crucified and risen Lord and therefore to one another.
The Apostle Paul described us as a many-membered body. That is the shape of our reality now: every person is placed, honored, needed, and bound to the suffering and rejoicing of the others. And Jesus’ promise of the Advocate gives this reality its inner power: the Spirit teaches, reminds, indwells, animates, and sustains the community until Christ returns.
This call to worship offers a covenantal and resurrection-centered vision: in Christ, God has overcome sin, alienation, ignorance, and death; by the Spirit, we get to participate in this victory, not just receive information about it; and when we gather to worship, we are renewed, and that becomes a concrete sign of the coming kingdom.
We are not on our own; we are being remade, together, into Christ’s earthly body by the Holy Spirit.
Themes
Communion • Body of Christ • New covenant • Union with Christ • New creation • Forgiveness of sins • Human re-creation • Transformation • The indwelling Holy Spirit • Vision • Overcoming alienation • True worship • Newness of life
The Holy Spirit knits us together into particular communities so that we can be the continuing earthly body of the crucified and risen Jesus.
Scripture reading
1 Corinthians 12:12–31 John 14:16–26
This call to worship is about the good news that we are not on our own. God has given us the Holy Spirit to draw us into the life of Jesus and make us, together, into his living body in the world.
In a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a church in the city of Corinth, he said: Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body… God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be… There are many parts but only one body… God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lack it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. Jesus said this about the Holy Spirit: I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth… And this Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Prayer
Brilliantly wise, intensely personal, and intimately knowing Father in Heaven, You made it so that in the life and death and resurrection of Your Son, all Your past promises to us became completely and fully realized. And then You made a new set of promises — a new covenant. One that created a new people who had a new mainspring for life. A covenant that overcame everything that got in the way between You and us. A covenant that overcame the bondage, and the sin, and the ignorance that kept us all from a full and loving communion with You. A covenant that brought complete forgiveness of sins. One that brought newness of life. One that brought Your coming kingdom. How?! How did You do this? You raised Jesus from the tomb, by which You put to death everything that we inherited from the first Adam. And You made available a fresh start for all of humanity through the last Adam, Your much-loved son, Jesus Christ. And when You gave to us this incredibly good news, it came to us, not as new information or a new story written in a book, not as a new good idea, not as a new vision for our lives. It instead came to us with a faith that only Your Holy Spirit could inspire within us, out of which we would be recreated into whole new beings, out of which a whole new creation got established — a creation from which awe-filled joy would be experienced, and true worship would unfold, and new communities of transformed people would be bound together. You gave to us this great news, and it came with Your Holy Spirit, a living instrument that now resides within us — within our very beings — and will reside there until Your Son returns. It came with Your Holy Spirit who knits us together into particular communities so that we can be the continuing earthly body of the crucified and risen Jesus, who is seated at Your right hand. It came with Your Holy Spirit who gives us eyes of faith so that we together as a community can see Jesus Christ, and can be in an intimate and personal relationship with Jesus Christ — not so that we could be a new ethnic group or an association of like-minded individuals or a civic institution or a club, but so that we could be the body of Christ. On our own, we are prone to sin. On our own, we posses no special being, and no special status. On our own, our mission and work are disoriented and corrupted. But we are not on our own. We are animated by Your Holy Spirit, who is grounding our life in Christ, who is growing us up into perfection according to Your very own intentions, who is uniting us and upholding us to be the body of Christ, who is enabling us to enjoy amazing communion with You right now, who is building us up, who is maturing us, and who is empowering us to bear witness to what awaits us at the end of time. In the name of Jesus Christ, in whom we are renewed, and grounded through worship, Amen
A call to worship given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on September 11, 2022.