This article is from Issue 2 of “On The Move,” a publication of new learning possibilities for churches, at one time published by The Joint Board of Christian Education of Australia and New Zealand.
Although some ideas and liturgies may appear somewhat “dated” in style, concept, imagery or language, they may nevertheless offer a spring-board for new ideas among people who find themselves leading worship, perhaps in a new context, and with some trepidation.
Reproduced by permission. May be reprinted for use in local congregations only.
“Grace is insidious. When you think it will come from the right, it comes from the left. When you think it will come from the left it comes from the right.” (Péguy)
That grace should have this quality of surprise is understandable when we look at what can be called the central surprise – the surprising notion that God himself should take flesh and dwell among his children.
That there should have been an incarnation at all is surprising. But that the incarnation should take place as it did is surely more surprising.
We would never have done it the way God did it. If we had been running things, the Son of God would not have been born into a lower-class Jewish carpenter’s family, nor would we have allowed him to live in obscurity and die as a common criminal.
But we are not running things and that is the surprising way God chose to do it.
(Robert McAfee Brown)