Category: Worship

Joy Comes in the Morning

When I was in college, my friend Eric and I came up with a worship leader comedy routine. Eric would stand with his guitar. I’d pick up my Bible and turn to the page I had bookmarked so I could read the way worship leader’s sometimes read Bible passages between songs. Eric would tilt his chin upward, eyes closed, a pious smile on his face.

I would inhale and in one breath read:

ThewordoftheLordthatcametoZephaniahsonofCushi-thesonofGedaliahthesonofAmariah-
thesonofHezekiahduringthereignofJosiah
-sonofAmonkingofJudah:

Eric would nod and smile,  and occasionally he’d interject with a yes Lord or an Amen as I continued to read, only slower now, pausing for emphasis:

“I will sweep away everything
    from the face of the earth,”
declares the Lord.
 “I will sweep away both man and beast;
    I will sweep away the birds in the sky
    and the fish in the sea—
    and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble.”

“When I destroy all mankind
    on the face of the earth,”
declares the Lord,
 “I will stretch out my hand against Judah
    and against all who live in Jerusalem.
I will destroy every remnant of Baal worship in this place,
    the very names of the idolatrous priests—
 those who bow down on the roofs
    to worship the starry host,
those who bow down and swear by the Lord
    and who also swear by Molek,
 those who turn back from following the Lord
    and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him.

 

Then I would close my Bible and bow my head in silence. After about 10 or 15 seconds Eric would launch into song, ” ♪ ♫ There is joy in the Lord, there is love in His Spirit, there is hope in the knowledge of Him . . .”

 

I don’t think we ever finished the song. The juxtaposition of one of the judgiest Bible passages (Zephaniah 1) with happy-clappy, contemporary worship made us laugh. We enjoyed the joke more anyone else did.  Everyone thought we were irreverent.

The joke was better than Eric and I realized. The Joy of the Lord came as a happy surprise to those who only heard words of judgment and destruction. As goofy and impious as we were, we managed to touch on and demonstrate something of the joy that came with Jesus.

Christ’s Advent was the start of a great reversal. Though the world dwelt in darkness, full of wounded and dying people, living fragmented life, the promise of Christ opened up new possibilities: hope, shalom, wholeness, well-being, healing, deliverance, salvation.  Though “weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

✧

J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy coined a word to describe this sort of reversal, eucatastrophe. In his essay, On Fairy Stories, he described a cataclysmic shift in a story where certain destruction is averted by a joyful sudden turn of events—the consolation of a happy ending:

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

Anyone who has read the Lord of Rings knows these eucatastrophic turnarounds (think Gandalf’s return or the eagles). But of course, eucatastrophe is not just an element in fairy stories. We see it Romantic Comedies where the despised jerks (Mr. Darcy!) turn out, in the end, to be truly quite wonderful. Good jokes, too, have this kind of joyful surprise. The eucatastrophe is written into the fabric of reality:

[I]n the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite

So, the gospel of Jesus Christ is eucatastrophe!  Tolkien called the “Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history (and the Resurrection of Christ the eucatastrophe of the Incarnation). Jesus’ return and the New Heaven and Earth will be the eucatastrophe for which all creation groans (Romans 8:22).

✧

So here we are, the third week of Advent. The world is still dark and days short (in the Northern hemisphere). Suffering, struggle, and sorrow is what we know. Our only experience of peace is a tenuous armistice of mutually-assured-destruction. We await eucatastrophic turnaround. Though weeping may last through the night, Joy comes in the morning.

Singing Songs in a Strange Land

Last night, for Holocaust Memorial Day, I attended a remembrance service at Havurah Shir Hadash, a Reconstructionist Synagogue in nearby Ashland.  I had noted the service was happening when I posted a recent review for Rabbi David Zaslow’s Exodus (he leads the congregation). The service was jointly held with Temple Emek Shalom, the other Jewish congregation in town.  I knew that Rabbi Zaslow wouldn’t be there. He marked the day in a different way, spending the day at Auschwitz on a trip with thousands of youth.

5116a2dd8cff4_71360bThe theme for the service was the ‘righteous Gentiles’—those who hid Jews and aided their escape from the Shoah. I don’t know what age to introduce the horrors of holocaust to children, but  my girls recently read a book of notable biographies of ‘girls who changed the world,’ and one of the women profiled was Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian survivor of the Holocaust, who’s family was active in helping Jews escape.  Both girls were interested, so the plan was to take my daughters, ages seven and nine with me. Unfortunately, my older daughter was running a fever, so it was just me and my seven-year-old. She was by far the youngest person there.

It was a solemn service, recounting dark days, though not without hope. Some teenage girls lit candles remembering the names of victims that were assigned to them as part of their mitzvah project, children whose life was cut short by the Shoah. A few brief sentences recounted their names and ages. These were children as young as four, and a couple of them were seven-year-olds. I wondered how my own seven-year-old was processing this, but we still haven’t talked together about that part of the service.

After this, a sole holocaust survivor lit a candle remembering the fallen. and we were all invited to do the same. My little girl burnt her finger on the match while trying to get the candle lit. She later recalled that burning her finger was the part of the service she didn’t like.

Throughout the evening we sang Hebrew songs, and listened to chants, and prayed along with the Mourners’ Kaddish, but most of the evening was about hearing the stories of gentiles, some of whom sacrificed their lives to rescue Jews.  Several people read or shared accounts. A strange and unplanned confluence was that the first gentile profiled, Irena Sendler—a woman who had saved 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto—was responsible for rescuing the sole survivor who was with us last night. Some of the stories shared were of famous people. Other stories came from personal recollections and family stories of righteous Gentiles, names that are not well known beyond small circles.

The systematic extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis, as well as the death of five million sympathizers, Slavs, LGBT folk, and the disabled, is a vivid reminder of our human capacity for evil. Against those who would deny the Holocaust, or minimize its significance, remembering is important.  I am a Christian, not Jewish. Attending a synagogue on a day like yesterday feels a bit like singing the Lord’s song in a strange land, but the chorus and the cadence call us to compassion and solidarity.

It is over seventy years later and there is still so much hate in the world.  If it happened again would we be among the righteous? I want to say yes, but I am humbled when I consider that many European Christians participated in the Shoah and few who resisted cited faith as a determining factor in giving aid.

U is for Upending (an alphabet for penitents)

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” -Matthew 21:12-13

Until Jesus entered the temple courts he was hailed as Israel’s Messianic hope—the Anointed One who would return to save people from their oppression.  His first act after to riding into town, shouts of Hosanna still ringing in his ears, was to fashion a makeshift whip, overturn the tables of money changers in the temple courts.

The Passion Conference and Maranatha weren’t the first to turn worship into big business. In the 1st century, worshippers came to the temple and sacrificed animals to God. The offering of the poor was a dove. Doves were available to them if they would just pay a fee plus a surplus tax. Money changers exchanged the coins of diaspora Jews for the temple coin, the Tyrian shekel (a coin without a graven image on it). This exchange was not in their favor.

Temple economics were the antithesis of care for the poor, widowed, orphaned and foreigners (Zechariah 7:10). It was a system of exploitation and it made a mockery out of the worship of God that was supposed to be happening there. A den of robbers, not a house of prayer.

Overturning the tables (or destruction of property during a protest) did not and does not bring about immediate change. However, this wasn’t just a one-time thing. Jesus entire ministry involved upending our expectations and socio-political systems. In The Upside-Down Kingdom (Herald Press, Updated Edition, 2011), Donald Kraybill writes, “From beginning to end, from start to finish, the thread of inversion and irony weaves its ways through the gospel”(211).  He began his public ministry reading these words from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isaiah 61:1,2).

All throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged systems of oppression, spiritual elitism, gender roles, structures, and Empire. By the necessity, the Kingdom of God upends all other contenders to the throne and welcomes a new way of life where the poor, the prisoners, the blind and lame find love and welcome.  Yet it was Jesus’ symbolic act, upending of tables in the temple courts, which very well be the act which got him killed.

If you follow the story through, you know the upending was not done. Jesus would take a cross, the symbol of Roman dominance over any would-be revolutionary, and turned it into a symbol of how far God would go to welcome us home. The first witnesses to his resurrection (women) defied cultural expectations. And Jesus’ surprising upending still happens whenever people choose to live by the values of upside-down kingdom instead of the American dream.

A decade ago, a craze hit the Christian world—rubber bracelets stamped with the letters “WWJD?” There was other Kitsch as well: t-shirts, necklaces, hats, temporary tattoos, pencils, travel mugs, etc. The letters stood for “What Would Jesus Do?” and were drawn from the ninteenth century novel by Charles Sheldon, In His Steps. The idea behind the slogan (and the novel) was that as we go about our daily life, in whatever sphere we find ourselves, we ask “what would Jesus do right now if he were in our shoes?” My sarcastic reply whenever I saw WWJD bling on the wrist of a friend was, “Jesus wouldn’t buy that.” And it’s true because he already would know what he’d do.

We live in a world where the rich profit off the poor, “a livable wage” is fodder for political debate, bombing another country is framed as humanitarian relief, and refugees and immigrants are regarded with suspicion, minorities still suffer discrimination. I think it is  now time for us to stand with Jesus in the temple courts, fashion our makeshift whips and ask, “What Would Jesus Upend?”

 

Lessons from Bad Religion (Hosea 9)

Marriage vows presume that both spouses know, with all that biblical innuendo, and love the other; however Hosea described God as a jilted lover—unloved by the people He covenanted to be with, Israel. There was no knowledge of God in the land (cf. Hosea 4:1c). Hosea named the people’s wanton abandonment of God as the root of their problems, though clearly Israel had other sins (e.g. violence, injustice). Derek Kidner observes”Sin can be against oneself (1 Cor. 6:18) and against one’s neighbour; but the flouting of God is always the length and breadth of it.”1 The big sin of Israel was their bad religion: the worship of idols.

Politics and religion weren’t easily divided in the Ancient world. Kings were masters of coopting religious language to effect their imperial aims (not much changed there). Priests—purveyors of religious devotion—called afternoon showers signs of God’s blessing instead of speaking truth-to-power and naming where things went amiss. But kings and priests were not alone in rejecting their covenant God. The people of Israel likewise rejected YAHWEH and chased after the gods of the nations.

N.T. Wright writes, “You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.”2 One of the problems with idolatry is that we become bad versions of ourselves. Bad religion makes us bad people. We are as in danger of spiritual malformation as Israel was. Hosea 9 begins with this snapshot of religion gone bad:

Do not rejoice, O Israel!
Do not exult as other nations do;
for you have played the whore, departing from your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s pay
on all threshing floors. (Hosea 9:1)
Threshing floors were large communal properties, flat ground, where the farmers gathered to thresh and winnow the grain. Because of the economic importance of agriculture, these threshing floors doubled as open-air facilities for religious rituals, business transactions, and public gatherings. The Ancient Near East worship of the surrounding neighbors took the shape of fertility cults. Temple prostitutes were employed for their services—drunken orgies of delight were meant to appease Baal and ensure the fertility  and prosperity of the land.
Israel was simultaneously obsessed with sex and their own economic security. Imitating the nations, their worship employed sex with prostitutes as a technique to ensure a good harvest and prosperity for the nation. But economic security was meant to be a byproduct of faithfulness to Yahweh, and not a result of religious technique and ritual. False worship led to using people (in this case, prostitutes) to achieve economic growth. The unhappy result for Israel was crop failure and famine (9:2), military defeat and exile (9:3-7, 15-17). Hosea warned of the coming judgment but Israel decried this prophet as a mad fool (9:7).
We may cringe at the particulars of ANE religion, but are we really that far removed?  Are we not, as a nation, likewise obsessed with sex and economic security? We just elected a president who promises to fix our economy and bragged on video about sexually assaulting women. But Trump’s presidency is merely symptomatic of our American idolatry.   One curious feature of our democracy is that our government of the people, by the people and for people elects a leader every four years, which reflects the soul of the nation. We may decry Trump’s orange glow, petulance and his tiny hands forming a Vitarka Mudra, but he is a mirror to us of our own inner life. Like our president, we are fearful and angry at the world, worried about the economy, distrusting both the media and the establishment, and we prefer our own alternative facts to the true truthiness of truth.
If Wright is right and we are becoming like what we worship, what does this say about us? Israel’s worship of idols caused them to forgot their God which also caused them to forget the image of God in their women. They used them for sexual pleasure (and to procure financial gain). What is the god envisioned in America’s cultural landscape? Is it the god of the prosperity gospel, promises riches to those where to sow the right seeds? Is it the hedonist god of celebrities—narcissistic and decadent? Does the god of our nation value the dignity of all human persons as co-bearers of God’s image? Or are some humans viewed as less worthy than others? Does our god thwart justice for women, orphans and aliens dwelling in our land?
It is not enough for us to assert we are a Christian nation. In the years leading up to Israel’s exile, when they were an Assyrian vassal state, Yahweh was still nominally Israel’s God.3 In reality the people (and their leaders) were worshipping at a different altar. If the God who is revealed to us in Scripture was at the center of our national life, our priorities (political or otherwise) would look vastly different. Like Israel of old, bad religion has poisoned the well and there will be reckoning.

God break down our idols that we who are made in your image, can represent you and be your Presence on the earth. In our hearts and in our land, let us make You great again.

1. Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 15, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 208
2. N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 148.
3. Interesting to note that the oracle of Hosea 9, never mentions Baal worship, just bad religion.

Hosea: An Introduction

Jeroboam II was king in Israel. His  purpose as leader was to “Make The Northern Kingdom Great Again!™” His own name hearkened back to Jeroboam, the leader who had wrested control of the ten tribes from the oppression from Solomon’s son, Rehoboam  (1 Kings 12).  Like all the northern leaders, the book of Kings describes Jeroboam II as evil. Listen to his-reign-adapted-refrain, “He did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin” (2 Kings 14:24). But in terms of his aim at Making Israel Great Again™ he was a great success. It is too bad his restoration project never took him beyond the flawed leadership of his nation’s past.

Jeroboam II reigned for 41 years (though some of his reign may be a co-regency with his father Joash). He was able to restore, through war, land which had previously been taken from it—territory from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Arabah (2 Kings 14:25). Jeroboam’s success came because God saw Israel’s suffering, and saved them by through his hand (2 Kings 14:26-27). It was still some decades before the nation of Israel would succumb to Assyrian might and Jeroboam II’s reign was a prosperous one.

Enter the prophet.

hosea
18th Century  Russian Icon of Hosea, source: Wikimedia commons

Hosea son of Beeri, father of three and married to  a prostitute, arose sometime in Jeroboam II’s reign and called the nation to task for their sin. What were Israel’s sins? Unlike his contemporary Amos, Hosea did not single out the rich for their oppression of the poor (Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, 13).  Hosea issues sweeping allegations against the entire nation; however while it is possible to distinguish the sins of Israel from those of the common man, the state—its institutions and political and religious leaders—are explicitly critiqued in Hosea’s condemnations. He exposes the violence of kings, the lack of knowledge of God, idolatry, and Israel’s dishonest dealings.

Prophets warn of judgement, but as Abraham Heschel notes, doom and destruction are never the point. “The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind this austerity is love and compassion for mankind” (The Prophets Vol. 1 , 12):

The prominent theme is exhortation, not mere prediction. While it is true that foretelling is an important ingredient and may serve as a sign for the prophet’s authority, his essential task is to declare the word of God to the here and now; to disclose the future in order to illumine what is involved in the present. (ibid.)

In other words, the prophets articulated judgement, but the hope was that their words lead to the people’s repentance. As we’ll see, hope has the final word in Hosea’s presentation.

What does Hosea have to teach us?

He is a voice from the past with a troubled family life. He comes across as a jerk. He married a prostitute to teach the nation a lesson and then shamed her for being a prostitute. He purposely named his kids awful things which caused them to be made fun of on the playground. Total jerkface.

And yet, Hosea exposed the lies of the culture. He spoke truth to power and exposed the dangers of systemic violence, injustice and idolatry. We, like Hosea, have a leader committed to making our nation great again.™ Perhaps the parallels end there. But if we too are a nation marked by violence, idolatry, injustice and exceptionalism, then the prophet has a lot to teach us. . .

The Sour-Faced Evangelists of Lent?

It is Ash Wednesday. Today many us will attend a service to receive the imposition of ashes–a dark smudge across our foreheads. This is just the first thing imposed on us in Lent, a season of self-imposed discipline. We give up chocolate, meat, coffee, alcohol, smoking–or anything that makes us happy.  Jesus suffered in the wilderness and on his long, winding road to Calvary. The Church has deemed that appropriately, we should suffer too. We wander through today our faces marked with soot and scowls. Fasting makes us hangry. Our head throbs from caffeine withdrawal. We snap at others because all our go-to-coping mechanisms are declared off limits.

Is this what Lent is about? Here are excerpts for the top three Google hits answering the question, “What is Lent?”:

What is Lent? Lent is a season of the Christian Year where Christians focus on simple living, prayer, and fasting in order to grow closer to God. (from UpperRoom.org -Lent 101)

Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. Lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, which means “spring.” The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. (from umc.org- “What is Lent and Why does it Last Forty Days?”)

Lent is a period of fasting, moderation, and self-denial traditionally observed by Catholics and some Protestant denominations. It begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter Sunday. The length of the Lenten fast was established in the 4th century as 46 days (40 days, not counting Sundays). During Lent, participants eat sparingly or give up a particular food or habit. It’s not uncommon for people to give up smoking during Lent, or to swear off watching television or eating candy or telling lies. It’s six weeks of self-discipline. ( from gotquestions.org – “What is the meaning of Lent?)

These definitions augment one another. Lent is a season of self-denial leading up Easter for the purpose of our growing close to God.  Lent is one of the two great preparatory seasons of the church. But whereas Advent is full of announcement of the in-breaking of the Kingdom, Lent reminds us that on Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem  suffering and death await.

I am guided by the conviction that Christianity is Good News.  Christians are God’s Good News People.  We believe that this good news culminates at Calvary where Jesus set us free from sin, death and spiritual oppression. This isn’t just a season of self-imposed suffering, self denial and sour-faces. Here we mark Christ’s confrontation and ultimate victory over the Powers.

So we can take up our cross and follow Jesus because this isn’t just a death march. Jesus wins and on his way to be crucified, he exposes the lies that propped up the political and religious hegemony of his day. Jesus died for us so that we would die to ourselves and rise again with our life in him.  We participate in Lent because we know despite the hard road Jesus walked, the brokenness and violence he suffered, he would bring wholeness and shalom to all who trust in him.

Give up coffee. Give up meat. Give up pleasure and lay aside vice. But don’t do it with a sour face. Don’t do it with the shallow hope of becoming a better you. Do so in the strong confidence that Jesus suffered every shame, every pain, every hurt at Calvary because he had something better for you–abundant life, peace with God, reconciliation and justice for all. Fasting is an appropriate response both to prepare and to mark the sacred moment of what Jesus may be doing in you. He didn’t avoid pain, we shouldn’t either. But in the midst of sorrow we have joy because our salvation awaits.

Jesus is on the road, his face like a flint toward Jerusalem. Whatever holds you in bondage Christ has come to set you free. This is good news.

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Worship Calvinist Style: a book review

I am not a Calvinist by conviction or by my ecclessial membership. The church I attend, the Evangelical Covenant Church, is self consciously rooted in the Lutheran Pietist tradition. Yet, John Calvin remains one of my favorite theologians. I remember reading on my first trek through the Institutes these words, though the translation I first read it in, varied in wording:

My meaning is: we must be persuaded not only that as he once formed the world, so he sustains it by his boundless power, governs it by his wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, in particular, rules the human race with justice and judgment, bears with them in mercy, shields them by his protection; but also that not a particle of light, or wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause; in this way we must learn to expect and ask all things from him, and thankfully ascribe to him whatever we receive. (I, ii, 1, Beveridge translation).

When I read these words, I see Calvin’s peculiar understanding of God’s providence as based in worship.  He did not want to take credit for, or give glory to human agency, when all glory and honor are due the Sovereign God. Calvin sings praise to the glory and grandness of God.

So when I had an opportunity to review a book entitled Worshiping With Calvin, I was excited to dip back into a theologian who has helped me enlarge my vision of God. The subtitle of the book, Recovering the Historic Ministry and Worshop of Reformed Protestantism also intrigued me. My mother is an organist and choirmaster with a masters in church music. She has bemoaned the poor theology and shallowness of contemporary Evangelical worship since the 1980’s ‘worship wars.’  She has since taken cover in the Episcopal church (a denomination that still uses organs); though she bucks against the goads of the denomination’s theological liberalism, she has an enduring appreciation for the liturgy. Like my mom, I also want to recover ‘the good’ in traditional practice and I wonder how well contemporary songs and liturgical formats have served us.

Terry Johnson, is a minister in an Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia. He wrote Worshiping with Calvin to help his fellow Calvinists recover some of the gifts of the Reformed understanding of worship. As such, he wrote this book examining the broad ‘Reformed tradition’ but does not engage with the theology of Calvin in a focused manner. He does however have an interest in helping us recover some of the gifts that the Reformation gave us for our understanding and practice of public worship.

Johnson has three sections to his book. Part one discusses the contemporary worship scene and historic practice. Part two examines the importance of reformed worship through the lens of the historic and exegetical lens, and the theological lens. The Reformation was a recovery movement which called Christians to return to ‘the source’ (ad fontes) by examining the Bible and patristic practice. It also precipitated a theological and liturgical revolution which reshaped medieval worship practices. This is fleshed out in part three which explores how Reformed worship was God-centered, Bible filled, gospel structured, church-aware, and Spirit dependent.

As my mother’s son, I appreciate how paltry contemporary worship can be and I like how Johnson calls us to return to worship which is theologically and biblically rooted. I did wish for more theological engagement with Calvinism’s principle theologian (Calvin). However Johnson’s eye’s were trained on the way the Reformed tradition practices its liturgical theology. He seems only incidentally interested in the theology itself. Calvin is evoked and pointed at (as are Zwingli and other reformers, Puritans and Calvinists), but his sacramental and  liturgical theology is never unpacked. For a book that argues for ‘a recovery’ I wished that this book was more Calvin than Calvinist. Still Johnson had many cogent and helpful things to say about keeping worship centered on God, rooted in the Bible and Christ’s work and dependent on the work of the Spirit. In the end, I found this book challenging, even if it was not exactly what I had hoped for. I give it 3.5 stars.

Thank you to Evangelical Press and Cross Focused Reviews for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.