Another Day at Calvin’s Worship Symposium

The day began again with morning worship. Paul Scott Wilson asked the question “why does our ministry so often look like death?” A more counter intuitive question “why does glory so often look like death?” He goes on to observe that there is a connection between between the suffering in ministry and the cross. Paul’s ministry has taken the shape of the cross and bids us to do the same.

One aspect of this helps the conundrum of understanding Paul. Wilson notes that to understand Paul you have to be a saint. But we are saints in the glory and grace of God. Grace and God’s glory provides a new mirror, a mirror in which we are saints, a mirror in which we are glorious. Our ministry looks like death because God is turned death to life. One remembers Plantinga’s sermon where he reminds us that death is an absolute necessity for resurrection.

I went to an interesting workshop on reading Old Testament narratives as theater. The Northwestern College group. It shows real promise for teaching.

Ellen Davis challenged the congregation tonight. She told us that the first referent to th e glory of the LORD occurs in Exodus 16 amidst the whining of the Hebrews. There are two needs are at the heart of the text: food and knowledge of God. These two needs make up the parameters of an economy. The rules of this economy are also two points: no storage of what God has provided and remember that it is God who has provisioned you. Exodus 16 gives us a picture a manna economy according to Davis. All of this is good until we realize that we are enmeshed in a global post-industrial economy. The text especially in light of Luke 12:13-21 invites us to renounce the global food economy for a manna economy. We should begin with God’s glory that builds a new economy, a manna economy, that give rise to a new community. Key practices of this community include eating and praying together.