Obedience as worship..

More from the Paul Minear readings of a couple of blog postings ago

"When one looks at the Gospel records themselves it is clear that “…Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience. He always had much more to lose from his friends than from his enemies. Admiration has always blunted his sword. It serves to dull the original outrage of his mission. Veneration assumes that we know what kind of man he really was and that we approve of his demands. It blinds us to their radicalism and inoculates us against being wounded by them. In fact, our well-speaking makes him vulnerable to his own curse: ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is what their fathers did to the false prophets.’” (Paul Minear, Commands of Christ: Authority and Implications.) I think what he is pointing to here is true. Nowhere does Jesus call us to worship him in the Gospels…what is clear is that he does demand obedience. Obedience is the worship we should render him. And when we merely approve of him, as Minear suggests, the can easily domesticate his demands, making them into sayings and aphorisms."