This is #42 in Crossing the Threshold series.

I would like to bring this series to a conclusion with a few after thoughts and an invitation. First I would like to make note that this series of notes came from teachings I did numerous times which were recorded and are on the “Teaching” page of this website. In these notes I skipped over one week entitled Sacred Time and Sacred Place; for those interested in what day of the week Sunday is and the church calendar I would recommend listening to that talk. One of the quotes I used that week was by Robert Webber from his book Ancient Future Time:

“I am of personal opinion that the true meaning of Sunday worship has been lost in many of our churches. In some communities Sunday is revival, the day for the seeker, or the day to teach. Historically Sunday is the day of God’s re-creation, the day that promises that God will renew the face of the earth. Historically Sunday worship expresses three truths: It remembers God’s saving action in history; it experiences God’s renewing presence; and it anticipates the consummation of God’s work in the new heavens and the new earth.”

I think this last sentence is the best description of what Christian worship is all about. I believe in the very beginning of the Book of Acts as the first disciples met (Acts 4:12), this is what they were doing…remembering God’s saving action of sending His Son into the world to redeem it, experiencing the renewing presence of the triune God in the Holy Spirit, and anticipating the consummation of God’s work in the new heaven and earth.

In Crossing the Threshold I have laid out the life of Jesus Christ in the story which touches all hearts the Hero Journey, for he is the one true savior of the world. I have taken the stages of Christ’s life and laid them over a traditional Christian worship service to show how the early church was entering into and experiencing the very life of Christ in Sunday worship. They were being gathered out of the ordinary world, crossing the threshold into the special world of his presence, remembering in word his saving action, and experiencing his presence and anticipating his return in sacrament and then returning to the ordinary world with an invitation for all to enter “The Great Dance”.

“The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made….Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? But how is he to be united to God? How is it possible for us to be taken into the three-Personal life?...Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ…The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”(C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity)

My invitation to you is quite simple: go on the hero Journey with Christ next Sunday, enter into the pattern and take your place in the Great Dance for which you were created…Blessed is He. Amen