The Practice of Worship

From Worship Old & New, by Robert E. Webber:

We must always remember that worship has a horizontal as well as a vertical dimension. It is important for us to enact the work of Christ as an offering of praise and thanksgiving to the Father. But is is equally important that we act on what we have enacted ... the pattern of the world is one of injustice, inequality, discrimination, war, hate, immorality and all those human abuses that the New Testament and the early church fathers described as the way of death. The true worship of God inevitably leads the people of God into positive social action. Our calling is to worship God not only with our lips but with our lives.

NT Wright on Onesimus

"That is why, finally, [Paul] does not refer to Onesimus as a "fugitive." That is not the category in which he wants Philemon to see his former slave, even for a moment. No: he is Paul's beloved son and therefore Philemon's beloved brother. Those who have read this letter without seeing the profound, and profoundly revolutionary, theology it contains should ponder the social and cultural earthquake which Paul is attempting to precipitate."