INTRO
Knowing the physics of flight -- how lift, drag, and thrust work to get a body off the ground -- is not the same as watching the ground drop below you as the clouds surround you.
Knowing what musical modes are and being able to tell someone John Coltrane used these in innovative ways to push free jazz forward is not the same as putting an intuition in your soul into notes in the air for anyone with ears to hear.
Knowing the Queens Gambit or what a force out is in baseball is not the same as besting a worthy opponent in Chess or feeling your legs take you somewhere your conscious mind may not even know you need to go so you can feel the ball hit your glove and throw where you should to get an out for your team.
And knowing that Jesus said do not worry, and love your enemies, is not the same as feeling the lightness of trust take root in your gut or feeling bitterness lose its grip on your chest.
Some things, you have to practice to understand.
So in this series, we hope to help you practice your faith so you can know salvation.
This time we look at the story of worship, beginning to end, so the truth of why we need it, and so why God gives it.
STORY
The story of worship in the Bible is quite telling.
In the earliest episodes, the people of God have little to no formal instruction about how to worship. Here and there they build makeshift monuments of stone and burn things on them. Like you might expect.
But there are also episodes where the worship and communion with God, to contemporary ears, wouldn't just seem like "Old Testament ceremonies," that involved sacrifices of more than just time and attention. There are episodes that sound sound outright bizarre and disquieting.
For example: the man who came to be called the Father of the faith, Abram, did not come to be thought of that way because he displayed impeccable worship forms.
The following bit comes from Genesis 15:9-18.
9 (God) said to (Abram), "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14 but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ..."
That little ceremony sounds, pagan? Or to many contemporary Christian ears, more simply, it sounds wrong.
Then, we get to Exodus, when that ominous prophecy that was delivered in some paranormal ceremony had come true and Abraham's descendants were enslaved in Egypt and desperately in need of some help, they had no Scriptures or books of developed doctrines to guide their search for divine aid. They had no liturgies to outline for them what kinds of ceremonial actions and words might please God and win them some attention.
The Hebrew people had, at this point, nothing but groans and cries. Nothing but the outworking of their inner being inarticulately protesting against what they knew was not right.
And that is what God heard and honored.
As a result of God hearing and honoring their groans and cries, the people experienced a power even Greater than Pharaoh's. Day turned to night, water turned to blood, and the wildness of the natural world overtook the stability of human civilization. And when things settled, the people found themselves no longer enslaved, but roaming free in a feral and expansive wilderness.
But then, like anyone whose world had been so shaped by a character that would use their power to exploit and manipulate them for its own wealth and amusement, in that wilderness, the people started to fear that the new power they'd just witnessed might be greater than Pharaoh's in magnitude, but just like Pharaoh's in character.
And they started to wonder, and then whisper, and then actually believe and act like that Power would bring them out of Egypt only to let them die in the wilderness. Just because it could.
The fear got so great, they even began to want to go back to Egypt. They were so unaccustomed to and terrified by the source of their life and freedom that they became convinced the thing to do was to return to the place of slavery and death.
So then ... Notice: after God rescued them from slavery, and after they showed they still could not trust the source of their freedom, then God gives them concrete instructions on how to worship.
We see in this story that God doesn't require a day sacrificed to God's honor. God gives them the Sabbath, to let them know even in the wilderness they could take a day to rest and rely on the one who cares for them without fearing unrelenting demands would lead to the wrath of a whip.
God doesn't need special words and prayers. Our groans and inarticulate longings are more than sufficient as far as God is concerned. For us, though, the words shape how we think, so we need words that will help re-conform our thoughts about God and the world that have been distorted by fear and pain.
It is a vital first step to get the people out of slavery. But the longer work is getting the slavery out of the people. Victims of trauma know something about this.
We live in a broken world. And that breaks us. And that brokenness extends even to our ability to speak and believe and trust true things about God and where our life comes from and how it is sustained.
The truth is people who live in a broken world need worship, and God gives it, to bind us to the source of our life and freedom by our building trust.
It's something like how regular exercise keeps our muscles from atrophying. Regular worship works to strengthen and sustain the ties between our minds and hearts and instincts and the source of our being ... So that our fears and hurts don't take over and direct our life's vitality toward dead ends.
So, in the conversation that follows, Julius and I talk about the genuine goods that come engaging in worship, and then in the meditation we explore the ultimate goal or reason for worship, hoping all of this can help us appreciate that real worship is not a demand. It's a gift.
DISCUSSION
Wilson: All right. So in this series, we're looking at how the idea of a practice as we've defined it and explored it in previous episodes could help us, um, hopefully do other central Christian things well… better. This time we're tackling, um, how practice can help us view worship differently. Uh, but then again, we don't want it to just stay in the, the head spot.
Um, hopefully that will open up some channels for us to do worship better in a fuller way. And by better and fuller way, what we mean—the way we kind of laid out the goal that we're headed for here—is that we would do worship in a way that better aligns us with and prepares us for the kingdom of God.
So to get that whole thing rolling, let's just start with playing with, now, the word worship for a little bit. And so Julius, to kick it over to you to get this started, if you were, you know, just off the top of your head, or imagining, you know, just, just kind of… um, not sabotaging… was just kind of cornering, uh, an average attender, you know, a regular worship attender and say, “Hey, what is worship?” Like under the pressure, without prep, what do you think would come out of people's mouths?
Julius: I, yeah, I, I think that the thing that comes off the top of my head is the music. It's always, there's always… It's a common question when someone shows up late to church and then talks about it afterwards, like, “Hey, how was worship? Sorry. I missed the worship.”
Wilson: I remember, I think a lot of people with an evangelical background, have I remember it somewhat commonly being expressed like as, “Hey, we had such a great service,” like, “the Holy Spirit just fell on the place and we just worshiped. We didn't even,” you know…. “And we didn't even have a sermon, we just worshiped,” because what they're assuming is yeah…
Julius: Yeah. So it's either that's that feels like the default connotation, Especially like you said, for those of us who grew up, um, around the evangelical church. Um, but I feel like even among like my church experience. Um, evangelical churches and I mean, a few other denominations really, there is also this notion that I feel like it was a counter stream to the people who are like, who default to associating the word worship with worship music, that there is, uh, an equally prevalent strain of church folks who would push back against that and be like, “Oh, it's not just the music. Everything is worship.” Like the, "Your whole life is worship,” which is like, which we're not knocking, but the…it’s worth nuancing.
Wilson: Right. Let's make sure we understand that that's an ideal, uh, goal, but not like it. It's just what, you know, when I lost my temper and screamed at my, my friend, “Hey, it's all worship, man. It's okay.”
Julius: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Wilson: “When I wasn't paying attention and like ran my car through your, your lawn and ruined your daisies, but you know what? It's all good.”
Julius: It's actually. Yeah. It's unfortunately it is not just the default when you're a part of the church. It is.
Wilson: I just, sorry, I just want to apologize for that like, really ran, ran my car through your lawn thing. Cause when I first pictured was—
Julius: Yeah. I that didn't even phase me for whatever reason.
Wilson: What was happening to me, in it, because I'm so visual, it was an image first and the first image was a car, like going through a front wall or a dry. And I'm like, ah, but then they would think I was drunk and I don't want people to think that I'd drive drunk. So I like on the fly, shifted it to just tearing up daisies,
Julius: That's funny. Well, I, it didn't phase me because that did happen to me. No, was when I was learning to drive, I like didn't know how to work a steering wheel. I just like pop to the curb and ended up on someone's lawn.
Wilson: Well, I guess what I was really going for was like inattention that caused damage to somebody else.
Julius: There we go.
Wilson: However, that happened to have happened.
Julius: Yeah, there we go. Um, but yeah, I feel like those are the, the two, the two biggest things that are the default answer. And honestly, at this stage in like doing this work in ministry, and having, like, a degree in theology, it still feels like such a daunting question to answer. Um, I was, I was just telling, Wil before this, that reminds me if I was invited to, um, to lead music to other people, to lead worship, to lead me, to lead worship music for, um, a conference—it was a youth conference—and the pastor who, the youth pastor who was in charge, um, told me, “Yeah, just to introduce you, I'll have you up on stage, you'll say a little bit about yourself and then I'll also ask you the question, ‘What is worship?’” and defining the word worship to a bunch of high school and middle schoolers. And I remember like making a making a joke that really bombed, whereas like yeah. You know, worship. Comes from the root words worth, which means like how much we value something and ship, which is a giant boat. And they're like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” And it just didn't land at all. But
Wilson:“I’m tracking with you, man. I'm getting, um, I'm deep too.”
Julius: Like, “Definitely yes…ships. I think it's a metaphor.” Um, where I did end up steering that after the joke bombed terribly was, um, it was another thing that I picked up of, like, uh, I'd heard a lot of sermons of, um… Uh, about that word worship and breaking it down. And how like, it has to do with “worth” and like what, some German word… schippe? S C H I P P E… which is like to, um, basically to recognize something's worth, right.
Or like to, um, to acknowledge or to tout how much we value something. Um, so yeah, that was, that was another kind of definition of like, uh, “Oh, worship is the things that we do to show how much we value God.”
Wilson: So worship for a lot of people can be one of those things that's like, “I know I've participated in it and I'm pretty sure I recognize it when it happens, but I don't know if I could put words to it.” Right. And so in that kind of place, we can easily, you know, reduce it to something like music, or we could then push it to, again, a good ideal, but in such an abstract and idealistic way that’s not super helpful, like, “Oh, it's everything.”
And I feel like towards the end there, you really helped us get some traction. Cause worship is, is the thing that ascribes proper worth or due, but also allows us to recognize, you know, what are the things that are, that are really worth our time, our energy, even our very lives that's getting somewhere.
And, and now here's where practice, um, as we've defined it can come in and really like give us something under our feet to push up on to, to gain some more ground on this. Especially through, you know, thinking about worth and value. So one of the things we talked about in previous episodes, that’s core to, uh, practice, uh, a thing that people do together and seek to do together well, um…
One of the things that practice is all about is seeking internal goods. Now, you didn't hear these internal goods are, are known in contrast to what's been called external goods. So the external goods are, are other things that there could be lots and lots of ways that we could get these things.
There could be several other ways that we could achieve these ends. And it tends to be things like status, power… So when it comes to, to worship, you know, as, as a step towards looking at, at the real value and, and what worship can teach us to value, what are some of the external goods that can get attached to worship and distract us?
Julius, what are some of the most common, external goods you see getting attached to worship?
Julius: Yeah the biggest one that I immediately, when trying to list off examples, was like, feeling good…? And that can cut a few different ways, either like people can approach worship as a time, whether, whether it is just the music or the entire service as like a vehicle for, um, as something therapeutic, you know, of like, “Oh, I'm feeling really sad and so I'm going to go…” and the expectation that this is solely to make me feel better about myself or, um… Sometimes it's even like… I think I've seen it— I've experienced this desire to kind of like go there and even, maybe feel bad for bad for yourself or bad about yourself and how that is.
Like you're seeking in catharsis of like, seeking this moment of like, uh, uh, of, oh, I feel convicted and it's leading me to cry and it's like making this really Mo this real moment of earnestness. And it's like, it's seeking…. catharsis is what it is. So I've seen it cut both ways of feeling something. Um, which once again, I will nuance with, I don't think that those things can't happen when the church comes together to worship, but what- those aren't the things that we pursue. So feeling good, or feeling at all, uh, is one of them. Another one is just like…
Wilson: The feelings, the feelings themselves.
Julius: Exactly. Yeah. An emotional experience.
Wilson: Right. And that, I mean, that makes me think of like relate relationships that really matter. You know, whether it's romantic or deep friendship, if it ends up becoming about the feeling the other person gives, it's probably not going to last. Right. And so at some point, if it's no longer exciting, you don't make me laugh as much as you used to or whatever… Like if, what you're really after— and that's the question which shows is, is it the friendship? Is it the relationship, or was it for you really about the feelings you would get? And so if you're not getting that, you're just willing to abandon. The thing. And so for some people, if they attach to the external good of the feelings to worship, this is how you end up abandoning the whole practice because you know, you're not, you're not getting the whatever emotional response or experience out of it that you were expecting.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: Another one you were about to name was…?
Julius: Yeah. The other one was, um. Ugh, I guess the least charitable way is like upping attendance, just upping attendance for its own sake. Like, maybe a more charitable way would be like building up community or gathering people or whatever, but for, I feel like the external good of, oh, if we do worship well, That means that it is going to inevitably attract more people to be part of our specific congregation or whatever.
And if it's not, if we are not growing in numbers, then we must be doing worship wrong. Uh, that is a huge kind of like external good that I feel like is, has become like a, make-it-or-break-it metric for like how a lot of people do worship.
Wilson: Of course we would, we would say that we would want people to find joy in life in Christ, and we would want our worship to be a place where that does happen. And sure, we would want more and more people to find that, but it's easy for-if, if just the numbers themselves become the thing, then really it's just another way for the external goods of like status, power, influence, uh, even money, you know, just more people in the seats, maybe more people giving to the offering plate, you know.
That's just the way with worship those external goods that you see over and over and over again, latching on to inherently good things and twisting them can get latched on to the practice of worship.
Julius: Yeah. I think one of the other things, and this kind of ties in with the, um, with the feeling-state thing, but I think there's this sense of, um, seeing worship primarily as an arena where we, like, can feel the satisfaction of giving something back to God, or like offering something up to God. Which, um, I mean— I think there is something beautiful about us, like responding to God's faithfulness and like showing gratitude and all that stuff.
But I think that, um, it, it was, it was actually reading an author that I've referenced before James Smith talk about worship and it's like the directionality and how, like so much of it is what the spirit does to us and in us as a people and not just like a unidirectional, like, “Oh, worship is exclusively, what we do or accomplish or perform in order to like give something to God.” Um, I think that's a, that that's a place that can get kind of misconstrued as well.
Wilson: Yeah I mean, good… W-if it is good worship, it'll bring us to a true or better understanding of in relationship with experience of God. And, uh, it's, it's really important that we realize, um, God doesn't need this from us. Uh, it reminds me of when I was like, uh, 18, 19 years old. Some of the best advice I got from a mentor at that time, you know— I'm also, I'm an Enneagram four and so I was looking for the perfect the perfect romantic partner that would, that would get me.
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: And, and one of the best pieces of advice that I got was, “You know, Wil, the best way to prepare for marriage is to work, to become the kind of person that doesn't need to be married.” Um, and I think there's, there's something of a, of a principle there, or an analogy that can be made to what's happening with worship, is, precisely what makes it so good and what it is is linked to the truth that God doesn't need it from us.
Wilson: All right. So those are external goods. Those are, those are things that it's not about. Um, and now to revisit a bit of our conversation, but see how it applies concretely in something like worship, we said in an earlier episode that naming the internal goods can be tough, um, because you, you kinda have to tell a story. Because, um, and you know, we said it's something like in the practice of baseball—
Sure, baseball, like anything else can become about the money. It can become about the fame, the influence, the highs, the feelings, you know… the status. Um, but, but you… to name, like “Why play the game for itself?” you kind of have to start to tell the story about, “Well, here's this club and they went this long without ever winning a championship. And then in this year, and then…” Game of this series, this player, you know, felt what it was to take the ball into his glove, to have his teammate be where they're supposed to be. You know, all that kind of stuff. The internal good tends to be so concrete that you have to tell a story, you have to pick something.
And so in starting to name, “All right, not those external goods— what are internal goods?” the story I think of is what it was, you know, back when I was the pastor of a local congregation week after week. To, um, to facilitate communion or the UK. Um, and there's a handful of things about that, you know? So, um, and we've said this in other episodes, uh, and here's another place where it pops up because it was a very deep, rich practice and experience that I consistently would get complaints about how we practiced Eucharist, because it was clumsy.
Um. We, we would do it by intinction, which means people would come forward and actually dip, you know, take the bread and dip it in the cup. We would have to line up. We would have to wait one by one. You know, it took a long time. Some summer, we were in a non air conditioned building, and in, in some summers here, it would just get hot and stuffy in the place, and so being crammed and waiting, it was, it was uncomfortable, uh, to wait and come up for communion.
I would over and over again, say, but that's part of what it is. And when I think about the internal goods, it's so tied to that story of sitting there, looking at us, like waiting on each other. And learning to value the weighting itself, learning to value the clumsiness and and another piece of it is I always, always found it very, very rich to invite other people, to actually to hold the plate and the cup, and to actually distribute the elements and see what it was for people that I knew, you know?
And I'm not going to, don't worry anybody. I'm not going to betray any stories or anything like that. But I knew, “There's tension here. And I know these people really don't like each other,” and even, you know, truth be told there were times where I had to look like across the bread and the wine at somebody that I was having a really, really hard time that I was, that I had hurt or that I felt they had hurt me.
And to see like, that's what it is. That's the internal good is to come together like that in such a way and have to wait on each other. And. Wait on each other in a way that puts us on the same ground, as we learn to receive the gifts of grace from God. That’s, that's part of what it is about. That's that's what we're chasing. That is the good itself.
Julius: Yeah. Um, um, as far as my context in church ministry, I've spent a good amount of my life leading music in church services and like other, um, like gatherings. But, uh, it's really interesting—I feel like the internal goods of, um, worship-through-music—a word that came to mind and that keeps coming to mind is that there's an aspect of hospitality, um, that has to… that that is involved, and that kind of touches on like something we'll talk about later of like a virtue that is cultivated in, in the practice but, um.
I think of music in church—like to sing, it’s like… part of it is like, these are words that are sung prayers together, and that the act of doing that together feels like, um… a pilgrimage of sorts. Right. If you are, and if you are kind of like leading the way up to, like, the mountain top or something, on a hike. You're not like. If I were to stray from the melody in such a way that would show off what vocal prowess I might have, like if I were doing a runs and improvising from the melody that would be akin to me as someone who's leading a hike to be like, “Hey, check out this trail!” and not waiting for you to catch up, and like run and doing cartwheels and back flips and you can't follow along. Um.
A huge part of it is like. It's a, it's a pilgrimage. And so there's something to singing the same melody together and breathing together and making sure these words are something that are intelligible and that we can all connect with and that isn't throwing anyone off…
That there's no imagery or lyric. That's like, uh, that's weird or theologically untrue, or like, uh, harmful to sing together. Like there's a certain hospitality involved in life. Hey, like we are, we are playing the music, certainly, but it's to invite all of us to be singing these prayers together, to be breathing together, to be part of this together.
And, uh, so… as to naming that internal good, if I were to give that a name, like that’s, it's I guess part of is like, um, It's communion. Like it's, it's the same thing, but through music, Right, It's, uh, it's realizing the internal good of experiencing communion with God and with one another through the vehicle of music.
Julius: So I think this part of the conversation leads well into the aspect of virtues and what that has to do with a practice and how virtues are… that it starts to touch on the kind of person that you are formed to be, um, to, to engage in a practice well, right. Like a virtue is what makes a baseball player, a baseball player… a good baseball player, not, just someone who plays baseball occasionally or like…
Wilson: Not just a show person, not just an incredible athlete, but a ball player.
Julius: Yup. Yeah exactly. And so, um. Looking at it through that lens, as, as we continue to look at worship as a practice, what are some of the virtues that are needed to engage in worship and that are cultivated by engaging in worship as the church?
Wilson: Yeah. That's uh, I guess to ease into it, I kind of want to point out that—again, why these, the, the theory of a practice and the different elements are so compelling is the kind of internal consistency that they hold here. So that when we're, when we talk about the internal goods, learning to, to participate in and to strive for these kinds of goods also like bring out the virtues in us, make us this kind of thing.
And so if we've, if we've named kind of, if we've told this story of what communion for its own internal good— and you know, you can see communion, like anything can be weaponized. Communion can be, um, twisted to power and even money, you know. But when, when you practice it for, you know, this knowing the, the, the kingdom of God, preparing for that experiencing and manifesting the reconciliation of Christ in coming forward together to receive the bread and the wine. You know, chasing that good also brings out certain kind of the virtues.
And so, like we saying, what makes a baseball player, not just a celebrity or a show person, but a baseball player. The question here is how does this, you know, pull out virtues in us that move us from just being a church attender or a religious person to a worshiper.
Julius: Yep.
Wilson: And what I see here is like… it’s forgiveness. It's patience. It's it's compassion, and generosity. These are, these are the virtues that, it’s—and this is what I don't, it, it just kind of depends on where you plant your feet to start out.
It's either the virtue. It's either this practice and chasing this good requires it, or the practice and chasing this good draws it out of you. And I, I think it's both, you know,? It, it draws it out of you, it gives it to you by requiring it, you know? Cause I think about like, I mean, I. I guess I don't have to worry about it because my paycheck does not depend on it anymore,
Julius: Sure.
Wilson: There really were—and, uh, this is one of those things that everyone knows is true, but nobody wants it set out loud— but there are times as a pastor where it's really, really hard not to withhold communion from someone just because you're mad at them.
Julius: Sure.
Wilson: I mean, there are times where it's, it, it kinda hurts to look at someone that's hurt you and say, “The body of Christ broken for you, and the blood of Christ shed for you. And you are just as welcome at this table as I am.”
It takes, it takes forgiveness. Not just tolerance— forgiveness. Not just, “I will tolerate your presence and in this room and in this gathering,” not just, “I won't make it,” but, but it, it pulls out the virtue of forgiveness and compassion because. Especially when you're offering it realizing, “Oh my gosh, look at the bitterness that's trying to take root in me because I know I've done the same thing to other people that you've done to me. And so me too, the body of Christ broken shed for me, and we'll be patient with each other and we'll spread this out.”
You know, that's what I've mentioned. Like I loved, you know, saying the words of institution and then handing them to a, another person to serve it and then handing the cup to another person to distribute the wine and to give them the opportunity to be generous with the grace of God together, to, uh, to allow that, I mean, to receive it in a way that it also, and done in a certain practice in a certain way that receiving it also invites and requires us to extend that to other people, uh, are the, the virtues that make us worshipers in communion.
Julius: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's beautiful. I think of, um, going back to the concrete example of how I've seen music be a part of worship, the virtue that's formed there I touched on earlier was there's hospitality, but also the word that came to mind and the conversation prior was temperance for the sake of hospitality— of being able to, um, like Wil was saying, if it's like, um, a lyric or a melody, that's going to lose someone.
Like being, having the discipline and the temperance or the wisdom to be able to, to say no to that for the sake of, um, being hospitable to the whole of the person. And I think that that touches on, like, if we're talking about virtues of the church as a people, that's, that's something close to what maybe like, justice is. Of like, "I choose to forsake this, um, so that we can all do this. I will, I will not partake in something that lifts me up at the expense of your wellbeing or your ability to participate.”
It's the same thing with communion. of like, I will not withhold this from you and use my position in order to like, um… bar you from your place here at the table.
MEDITATION
One of the key aspects that makes something a practice, and the last aspect we'll look at in this episode, is that it is directed toward some goal.
The cool word for this goal is a "Telos." It means a thing's ultimate aim.
But a telos is not just any benefit or payoff. The telos of baseball is not money or fame. The telos of music is not getting a girlfriend or boyfriend. The telos of worship is not an emotional high or building a bigger congregation. The telos is not just what a practice can get us, it is the reason the thing exists.
And an important part of doing anything well is engaging the question of why we do it. So, what is the goal or telos of worship?
Now, we don't want to be too quick to answer. Because if engaging a practice is going to lead somewhere you haven't already gone, if participating is going to unlock and draw more virtue out of you, you kind of have to acknowledge at the outset that you don't fully know just what the telos is.
So if you want to engage in worship more truly, is there some expectation you've placed on worship that, it might be good to let go of?
Now the true reason a practice exists is always deeply and organically connected to the internal goods and virtues cultivated and experienced along the way.
So, name some of the internal goods of worship ...
With anything we're talking about in this series, we can say the Telos is in some way or another connected to communion with God, or participation in the kingdom of God.
So, what do these internal goods that you've named tell you about what actual communion with God is like ... Or what the Kingdom of God is ...
And now a genuine practice is always communal, and so, taking into account what centuries of voices have said to us through the Tradition, imagine the kingdom of God as what happens when God pours out all of God's mercy and grace on all of humanity ...
And so imagine heaven as looking across the bread and wine, across the broken body and shed blood of Christ ...
And seeing your enemy ...
If the kingdom of God is like that, and if you're holding onto, drawing energy from, and identifying with things like bitterness, or fear, you can imagine heaven as a place you would not enjoy.
What virtues would a worship whose telos is the Kingdom of God, require from you?
What virtues would participating in worship aimed at that kind of Kingdom cultivate in you?
See, engaging in worship as a practice means not just getting something from worship, but becoming a worshipper. And that means becoming a person who can inhabit and enjoy the kingdom of God.
This is why worship is a gift. God's doesn't need it. God knows we need it. To inhabit and enjoy a place like God's kingdom, we need to sacrifice some things. We need have some things challenged and burned away. We need to have some gifts and virtues given to us by having them required of us. So that when we get through the gates of heaven ... It's bliss.