Get Out and Worship God in the Desert - N.T. Wright Online

Revelation comes in hypostatic union, and Jesus promises to be present in the resonant connection of receiving (ministering to) persons. Resonance is dependent on efficacy, and when we approach children in this spirit of efficacy, when we take responsibility for them, we encounter the living Christ.

If we Jews seek closeness to God in covenant, small surprise that we count the ways of living the love in the hundreds of mitzvot that make our lives holy and link our way to those of our ancestors and the wisdom of our tradition. “God so loved Israel that God surrounded them with mitzvot: tefillin on their arms and heads, tzitzit on their garments

is easy to find God in total seclusion and escape from responsibility. It is hard to find God in the office, in business, in farms and fields and factories and finance. But it is that challenge to which we are summoned: to create a space for God in the midst of this physical world that He created and seven times pronounced good.

But if we recover a sense of the primacy of God’s action in worship—that worship is a site of gracious, divine initiative—then we might better understand how and why worship is the center of discipleship. We should approach the sanctuary with a different set of expectations—that we will be met and remade by a living, active Lord.