And God Saw that It Was Very Good: Toward a Theology of Good Worship

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Notes

Notes

Biblical scholars, when looking at the development, history, and use of the Genesis 1 creation narrative, link it with worship. Walter Brueggemann states that Genesis 1 is a “poetic narrative that likely was formed for liturgical usage” (Genesis: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Interpretation [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982], 22). Eugene Roop states that “we have found no other narrative or poem organized like this ‘hymn’ about God, the Creator” (Genesis: Believers Church Bible Commentary, eds. Elmer A. Martens and Howard H. Charles [Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1987], 24).

Brueggemann, Genesis, 30.

Evelyn Underhill, Worship (New York: Crossroad, 1982; original 1936), 3.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, trans. Douglas Stephen Bax (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 46.

“The Book of Genesis” in The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 344.

Ibid., 321.

Ibid., 322.

Thomas Long, in his essay, “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam: Good and Bad Taste in Worship,” says it this way, “Good taste in worship always seeks expressions that promote growth in faith.” The Living Pulpit (July–September 2003), 23.

Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 46.

Pilgram Marpeck, “Response to Caspar Schwenckfeld,” in Later Writings by Pilgram Marpeck and His Circle, trans. Walter Klaassen, Werner Packull, and John Rempel (Kitchner: Pandora Press, 1999), 82.

See John 4:1–45; 5:1–9; 8:1–11; 9:1–40; 13:1–20.

Thomas Troeger, Imagining a Sermon (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 55–56.

Debra Dean Murphy, “Worship as Catechesis: Knowledge, Desire, and Christian Formation,” Theology Today 58, no. 3 (2004): 325.

St. Augustine on Genesis, trans. Roland J. Teske, vol. 4, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 80.

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Heidi Miller

Heidi Miller is an assistant professor of Christian worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. She is an Anabaptist who has served as a Mennonite pastor.