kingdom travelin'

One of the voices that I have been listening to since I began my journey a few years ago has been that of Robert Webber. Robert E. Webber went to worship in the presence of the Lord on 27th April.

My first reading of Webber was in 1989 when I was at L.B.T.S. and was fascinated by, what was then called by some, the liturgical renewal movement. At that time I was intrigued by the ideas in Worship is a Verb (Word, 1985). At that point I was encouraged by words like these… “…I am not suggesting that we deny either our convictions or roots.” (p. 12)

I had not heard of post-modernism in 1989 but the answers that Webber puts forth in Divine Embrace and The Younger Evangelicals were on his mind when he emphasized what today we call the emphasis on the Gospel story throughout the Bible with these words… “The parallels between what God did in the Exodus-event and what he did in the Christ-event are striking.” (p.34) The whole Bible is full of the gospel and it would seem that the church has taught this since the beginning. I grabbed Common Roots (Zondervan, 1978) from my shelf and look again at Webber’s insistence on our looking back to the early church fathers, from Webber I gained an appreciation of the roots of the church in the writings of the fathers. So, when I was reintroduced to Webber last year, I was not surprised to see the early fathers being referred to in my latest learning from the pen of Robbert Webber.

I’ve got some meaningful quotes posted elsewhere from The Divine Embrace and The Younger Evangelicals. I always found Webber’s writing compelling. I guess the reason is that he, while by all accounts a true intellectual, wrote with humility. He wrote so that I could feel his heart for the church and for worship and for the church living in and growing out from worship to the world. Because worship is so important. Indeed, isn’t it everything? Thanks be to God for the way He used the pen of Robert Webber.

Northern Seminary has posted about his work, click here (there are additional links). From there you can access much more thoughtful reading.

Last night three fellow teachers and I went to VT to have dinner with some friends who used to be our students and are now students at Tech. Our hope was to be encouraging to them… One of these folks asked two of my fellow travellers if we had seen the memorials… So on the way home we drove through campus, stopped and pondered some of the memorials. Here are some pix from in front of Burris Hall. It was late dusk when we arrived, the darkness of the photos somehow seems appropriate.

the flowers surrounding the VT logo…

Around campus there were numerous banners from other schools… the message is that we are all Hokies now as we stand in unity with the Va Tech community, this is a sample that was in front of Burris from Anderson College.

After a few minutes looking at the remembrances, it was time for the long drive to C’ville… I took one more look at the scene…

I was moved by this scene… its like I could feel the loss… the grief… may God bring peace to these who hurt and have suffered so great a loss…

The Divine Embrace is a book that was recommended to me by a friend in the ministry. Thanks Bill. I found it to be amazingly helpful in my own journey. There are some quotes that I’d like to think more about and even have some conversation about that will be posted soon. I chose to make any possible conversation part of this blog because I think it has to do with how we need to think about following Christ in this postmodern era… This spurred me on to another Robert Webber work that I had begun and now finished… The Younger Evangelicals…

“The current focus on worship originating in self is probably a reaction against truth without passion and is what happened to me as a result of the Enlightenment and what happened to me when my learning of Scripture through the scientific method left me dry.” (Embrace p.233)

“Worship needs both truth and passion. Truth without passion is dry. Passion without truth is empty. Where do we go to find both truth and passion? I suggest recovering worship as the proclamation and enactment of God’s story. (Robert Webber, Worship Old and New 2nd ed.)” (Embrace p. 233)