The Direction of Worship

"One of the greatest discoveries of my Christian pilgrimage has come with the realization that the primary importance in worship is not what I do but what God is doing. In worship, God is present, speaking to me, and acting upon me. It is in worship that God feeds, nourishes, and cares for me. And it is in worship that he gives me his grace, surrounds me with his love, lifts me up into his arms, affirms me as a member of his community, and sends me forth into the world with a fresh vision of his work and a new concern to live for him."

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation

(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 66.

This quote is awesome for a number of reasons!  I love it because it puts the primacy of worship on God, not me.  It puts the focus of worship on God, not me.  It puts the flow of worship in the proper perspective, and it demonstrates that eternal truth - that it starts with God, it's all for God, and it will end with God.  And it shows that "worship" is not an end in itself - it is for the glorification of God in the moment, and, for the furthering of His worship in the nations of the world. Do I have a part in it?  Yes, of course I have a part to play - I was born to worship!  But lest I forget that somehow it is all about me, the style I like, the instrument I use, the visual or visceral response of the congregation that I can "see" or "get" - the immediate results - Jesus is the High Priest, not me, and it is He Who initiates, sustains, and completes worship - not me! But this line of thinking leads me in to an area of a bit of controversy when played out in real life!  In regard to God being the real worship leader, I have noticed an interesting fact.  For the most part (and there are exceptions to this), in cultures where the Church (body of Christ) has put an "end time" on their "worship services", the church is stagnant - it is not growing in a big way overall.  In cultures where the Church has not put an "end time" on their "worship services", the church is exploding, or has just exploded.  Hmm.  Should we decide when it is over, or should God? Of course I am very familiar with the age old tension between "Does the Holy Spirit work in the planning, or does He work in the spontaneity of the moment?"  The answer is obviously "BOTH", and therefore the previous question sets up a false dichotomy.  The better question might be, "If God is the true worship leader, does He have the 'room', or the 'freedom' to act in congregational worship outside the man-made boundaries that we maybe impose on Him?  And does He have the 'room', or the 'freedom' to act in my personal life of worship in a way that might take me right out of my comfort zone, and transplant me into a place where He sovereignty decides that if I go there, He will get even more glory?"  I am thinking that it is in this sense that worship has a real Director, and His worship has a true relevant direction.

The Journey Into Death

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have always been extremely impressed with the way Jesus Christ turned everything we thought we knew on it's head.  To be exalted, you need to be humbled.  To be great, you need to be a servant.  And in order to live, you need to first die.

I wonder if this was on Abraham's mind as he took Isaac up Mt. Moriah for what he knew would be none less than a human sacrifice.  And I wonder if Isaiah knew that he would be sawn in half when he said those infamous words, "Here am I, send me." 

Friends, I am becoming more and more keenly aware that we have all been invited, pulled inextricably into that crux moment in history where true love and pure wrath met, where unrestricted grace touched unbridled judgment, where beauty and horror embraced, where the vertical and horizontal were nailed together, and salvation and damnation were clearly hung out for the entire world to see.  And we are asked to make a choice:  Who lives?  Who dies? 

"As I contemplated the spiritual journey of Holy Week . . . I knew this was not a week for shopping, vacation, parties, or hilarity. I sensed this was the week that above all weeks was to be set aside for the journey into death. I knew the worship of the church would take me by the hand and lead me step-by-step into the experience of death and rebirth, if I would allow it to do so. I resolved then and there to walk in the way of the cross. I purposed to make this the week God intended it to be for me, a week of intense spiritual struggle--and reward!"

Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Year 

(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 118-119.

I remember being blown away by the Sunday School wall in a persecuted church in Antioch, Turkey.  There they had hung portions of scripture that were to be summarily memorized by their children.  Of course there were the usual verses that we in the west might expect, like "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become Children of God", and "Let the little children come unto me…"  

What I wasn't prepared for was this one:  "For if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."  Not the normal Sunday School verse for little children, unless you realize that training up a child in the way he should go, as followers of Christ, is to experientially understand that unless one is dead to self, one cannot really live.

My friends, Christians do not celebrate Easter.  They celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and should be unembarrassed to say and do so, for it is only here that we can find and have true life.  Neither do we embrace pagan fertility rites (even if we are sometimes, like in our own lives, found ignominiously scrambling around for painted eggs and marshmallow chickies).  Rather, like Jesus Christ, we were born for the life of the cross, the tomb, and of course the power and reality of the Resurrection.  Let us therefore be unashamedly "baptized" into this, for it is in this that we truly "live, and move, and have our being". 

Have an awesome Holy Week, and Resurrection Sunday!

Worship Is Breath In Another Form

Worship is another one of those critical threshold moments where Heaven and Earth intersect, and engage in the same holy activity in time and space, and in eternal presence.  Man I wish I could "live" as if that is true all the time, rather than grind through hours and days "killing" time vs. radically investing it. 

Worship is not a commodity.  Nor is it a style, or a program.  Worship is breath in another form. 

It is life-giving, and life sustaining.  It should be constant, and it is totally necessary.  It is found in obedience, and intimacy.  It can seem so hard to maintain, even though many times it comes in waves and we drown in it. 

We receive worship in the sense that without Jesus' worship, His sacrifice, and even His constant vigilance as our High Priest, we don't stand a chance.  We draw in His grace like a breath of sweet air and as a result, we live. 

We give worship in the sense that in whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we say, and whatever we think, we demonstrate our allegiance, our hope, our love, and our faith, as being given to the Deity or some devil or some idol in between. 

I don't know if we will "breathe" in heaven, but I do know we will worship.  It's one of the few activities here on earth that we are guaranteed to continue there.  Let us worship therefore as we breathe, for in this is the oxygen for our souls.