Your Kingdom Come
Over the years at the Mission Chattanooga I have seen the ways in which the liturgy we use for worship each week has changed and evolved. The shape of our liturgy and the changes that we have made to the order have always revolved around two dynamics. First, being faithful to the tradition that we are living into. This tradition is encapsulated in the Book of Common Prayer and the order of service it provides. The second is the desire to adapt the liturgy to our current moment in order for the Word of God therein to speak to us. This contextual consideration takes into account that we are humans living in the South, in the 21st century, and that the vast majority of us are stepping into this liturgical stream from a variety of other church traditions. It is, we hope, a humble and honest posture and one that leads us to review and revise in different moments. So I can remember a time in our services when we didn’t process the cross to open our worship services, when our clergy did not wear collars, and when we always, regardless of the season, placed confession at the beginning of the service. These aspects of our worship are all different now as we have prayed and worshipped over the past decade.
But there is one liturgical change that particularly stands out to me that I continue to think about and appreciate. It is our benediction. At the beginning of the Mission, Abbot Chris would bless the congregation with a benediction, the same one that he uses to this day at the end of worship - with one change. He used to say “Go out now, serve your King, build his Kingdom…” Build his kingdom…
In 2013 we did a study on the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew and in the midst of that study we were deeply convicted by the Holy Spirit about this one verb in our service. At that moment we changed the verb “build” to “reveal”, to where the service ends with a sending to “Go out now, serve your King, reveal his Kingdom…”
Take a moment to reflect on this change. What do these two verbs communicate? Is “build” an appropriate word to describe our own agency in the Kingdom? What does the word “reveal” say about our own agency and role as Christ’s ambassadors?
“Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
This week’s petition in the Lord’s Prayer brings the Kingdom of God front and center, a Kingdom that is synonymous with God’s will.
What does this passage reveal about the will of God?
How does this passage further illuminate the Lord’s Prayer and the way in which Jesus invites us, teaches us, to pray?
How do we live as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God?
What are other scriptures that reveal how we are invited by God to participate in his Kingdom?
Close with a time of prayer. Share needs and petitions with one another and then end with either Midday Prayer or Compline.