Leisure and Worship

Chapter 5 ends out section 1 of Leisure, the Basis of Culture. Part II is called The Philosophical Act. Not too encouraging :) But Part 1 ends on a high note: worship.

If ever a concept can help us zero in on what Pieper means by leisure, it is the concept of worship. For my own part I have been trying to make connections between the concepts of worship, leisure and utility. Is worship the ultimate anti-utilitarian concept or is it utilitarian in its essence?
It is certainly in our best interest to worship and yet there is a sense in which we come naked and empty to worship. On the other hand Christ does redeem and give us back our humanity.

I like Pieper's assertion that "worship is to time what temple is to space."

Agrarianism is a way of looking at the land, farming and occupation apart from utility.
Classical education is a way of looking at education removed from utility.

It is very, very hard for us to do this because utilitarianism is bred in our bones. We just can't figure out what is so wrong with something being useful. When someone tells us we should get a good education to get a good job, we all go, "duh!" Utility has become the lowest common denominator of all our philosophy and sadly our theology. When someone points out the folly of this sort of utility we just can't see it. This is one reason we have massive church movements based on the word relevance. We have some Christian groups trying to utilize worship.

But the Sabbath was made for man. The Sabbath is a day of worship. It is the day when we acknowledge that apart from God we are nothing; not apart from our education and occupation, our grade point average, our appearance, our bank account, rather apart from God. Without the Sabbath we are just dust in the wind. With it we are redeemed to work and play, eat and drink, dress up and dress down, live and learn.