From Mystery to Worship

Don: We have been discussing whether, and if so how, we might share our understanding and/or experience of the mystery of God. It was suggested that we might do so through worship, and that worship is all that is left to us after we have exhausted all means of understanding God.

We can help to define worship by looking at some examples. Here’s one, from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It is the first recorded instance of the worship of Jesus:

When they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.” This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold your King is coming to you,
Gentle, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David;
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest!”

When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.” (Matthew 21:1-11)

The questions we shall explore in coming weeks are: Who and/or what do we worship? Why? How? When? Where? Is there a difference between individual and “corporate” worship? What are the tools of worship, including liturgy, and how important are they? What is the end-product of worship—what do we hope to gain? What are our motives? On what do we base our worship—on our knowledge of God, or on our ignorance of him—on mystery? What is the difference between true and false worship? Do people in different stages of faith worship differently? Who should lead worship—what about women? What is the meaning and value of the Sabbath in relation to worship? Does worship change in scripture (such as before and after Moses, after Jesus, and after the creation of the new earth)?

In his commencement address, “This Is Water”, given at Kenyon College in 2005, the philosopher David Foster Wallace said that everybody worships something—we have no choice. But we do have a choice, he said, of what to worship, whether it be money, power, atheism, a God we know, or a God we don’t. And that can make life difficult for us and those around us, especially in a civilization that teaches us to believe and act as though we are the center of the universe. The real goal of worship—to see ourselves as we really are, as sinners in need of God’s grace, and to see our relationship with God and each other—is antithetical to this idea.

The truth is that our free will is intended to allow us to decide how we perceive the interface between earth and heaven. We may consciously decide what has meaning and what does not—what is worthy of worship, and what is not. But some things, such as power and money, fame, physical beauty, intellect, and honor, we worship naturally, “by default” as it were. This we do without resort to the will—it is “will-less worship.”

In contrast, willful, energized, worship takes us outside of ourselves to focus on the needs of others. Scripture shows a tension between worship centered around the individual and worship centered around God. When we place ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings, our efforts, and our pleasure, rather than those of God, at the center of worship, then we make idols of ourselves and violate the 2nd Commandment, which prohibits the worship of idols. The Sabbath serves as a reminder to worship righteously by putting God at the center:

“If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, And honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure And speaking your own word, Then you will take delight in the Lord, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13-14)

Religious conflict often arises from differences in worship. We seldom fight or argue over whose is the better God; rather, we argue about the mechanics—the time, frequency, location, liturgical content, hymns, etc.—of worship, and about who has legitimacy to lead worship. These controversial and contradictory aspects of worship have everything to do with us and nothing to do with God. This is nothing less than idolatrous religion. Is it the norm?

Donald: Our group gathers to inspire one another on our individual spiritual journeys. Is that a form of worship? Worship is defined as an expression of reverence and adoration, yet scripture tells us so often that it is God who loves us.

Chad: The publican and the Pharisee both came to worship at the temple, but in different ways. Cain worshiped from a position of feeling good and offering thanks for it, whereas Abel offered a sacrifice, recognizing that he needed God. Is the worship of the heavenly chorus of perfect beings called by a self-interested God, or is it the spontaneous expression of need by these beings?

Don: What God gets out of worship is something we need to think about.

David: It is questionable that God wants worship. At Judgment he cares only about what we did for our fellow wo/man. Acts of piety don’t count at all on the that day.

Don: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us to abandon worship if we are in conflict with our brother and go instead to make peace. (Matthew 5:23) Worship is a lower priority.

Donald: Why did God need us? Why did our parents need us? Because they valued the unique relationship and bond they knew they would have with us if they created us. Worship is a way of coming together to show how much we value the relationship. Does God need to be in that relationship, or do we need to be in it for God’s sake?

David: The father of the prodigal seemed to worship his son, with little-to-no reciprocity, even when the two were separated (by the son’s willful act) by a great distance.

Bruce: The God of Islam seems to be held in mystery. They don’t put a face on him. They don’t know what to expect from him, whereas we put a face on ours and we know what to expect of him and he knows what to expect of us—which amounts to respect and acceptance. To come to worship is to leave the world behind, to bring the things bothering one from the world, to let God know one’s setbacks. I don’t think God wants us to simply accept setbacks in our lives as just mysteries to be endured. So there has to be communication, and it’s a matter of recognizing and accepting the voice of God and respecting what it tells one.

Today, how many people would accede to a request from a pastor they do not know to give him their car? Most would not. Those who do would need to have a lot of faith and trust. In the time of Moses, church was a matter of organization, and the basic organization was a separation between believers and non-believers.

Don: To what extent is worship cultural?

David: Islam was formed in a desert community and culture, which surely influenced its formation and development. Daoism (religious or philosophical) was formed in the relatively advanced civilization and culture of ancient China. Religious Daoism doesn’t claim a God but hangs onto the coat-tails of the earthy Chinese pantheon and its adherents often go to the temple to ask for divine favors as they would of their emperor or local feudal lord, and to thank them—worship them?—for prayers that appear to have been answered. I think culture must play a huge role in worship.

Donald: Family also has an influence in worship. Different families might approach it differently, though on the other hand probably all families have a similar basic approach to it internally. When one gets to the individual level, the similarities between the worship of two individuals of any faith persuasion seem much stronger than the differences, which seem merely cosmetic in contrast to the sameness of the fundamental principles expressed through worship. One of those fundamentals is our need to have a relationship with God.

Don: Here’s how Judeo–Christian scripture describes worship:

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty expanse.
Praise Him for His mighty deeds;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.

Praise Him with trumpet sound;
Praise Him with harp and lyre.
Praise Him with timbrel and dancing;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe.
Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 150)

That’s a pretty exuberant approach to worship. In some churches and faiths, anyone trying to worship in that way would be in trouble!

David: I still have my doubt that God even wants worship of any sort, exuberant or otherwise. The treatment of women as equal or unequal is a result of religio-socio-cultural factors. Each claims to be, ultimately, more respectful of women than the other. If worship is (inter alia) an expression of respect, and since different religio-cultural traditions “worship” women in ways that generate discord between traditions, then worship itself is the underlying cause for concern. I think (though this is total supposition) that the God I believe in cannot want conflict between us on any basis, so if worship is a basis for conflict, then God cannot want worship. I think I am on firmer scriptural ground in saying that God wants no more—period!—than for us to love one another.

Bruce: God is the God of everyone—he wants all of us to be in his flock, so I think he can cope with our differences. It’s we who have the problem coping.

Dr. Weaver Sr.: The worship of God depends on one’s concept of God. Spirit worshipers and the like may have a multitude of vindictive Gods out to get them, so their worship will be aimed mainly at appeasing them. People who believe in a generous, forgiving, and loving God will be open to, and thankful for, his gifts of grace. So culture does play a tremendous role in how we perceive what kind of God we have to worship, and that affects how we worship.

Chad: Obviously, the angels in heaven worship God. Theirs is the “official” version of worship, which we will adopt when we get to heaven ourselves. In the meantime, it is a relative mystery to us how we should worship now. We do have a few clues that take us towards the official form of worship that satisfies God. They include the Samaritan woman at the well, to whom Jesus says that the Samaritans don’t know who they worship, but that the Jews do. He tells her that they are going to worship in spirit and the truth, so there are two key components of worship: One must worship God in truth, the true God. If you worship on the wrong day, Satan claims that worship as his own. There are certain characteristics that make our worship acceptable to God. Since it has to be in spirit and in truth, it must not be self-motivated or self-aggrandizing in any way.   If we follow these guidelines, I think we get close enough to the kind of worship that takes place in heaven, the kind that is acceptable to God.

Dr. Weaver Sr.: A person who has an abusive father is going to have a different relationship with that father than one who does not. God wants us to recognize that he made each of us, that we would not be here but for him.

Chad: We have to set standards of worship and then people will start moving towards those standards. We don’t judge other people in this, but we want them to see that we are striving to maintain those standards.

Ellen: I think worship is a spontaneous response to the realization of what I am, what God wants to do for me, and what God has already done for me. It’s a natural response, at least to me.

David: Spontaneity may be key. The problem with the notion of an official form of worship is that it introduces uncertainty—“Am I worshiping the right way?”—which then induces fear of being punished for doing it the wrong way. If we feel God around us, near us, then the connection is surely sufficient to cause something in the nature of worship. The conflicts caused by the differences in “official” forms of worship of different religions, sects, and even factions within a small church (“That hymn doesn’t belong in our hymnal!” “Yes, it does!”) cannot be good, cannot be what God wants, cannot reflect true worship.

Bruce: Perhaps spontaneity is one of several facets of the diamond of worship, while formality is another. Either may be rapturous and satisfying.

David: Last week we discussed the rapture, the sense of spirituality, the sense of closeness to God, that comes to some of us at least when we enter a grand cathedral. Perhaps that is a spontaneous form of worship, but might it not just be the same inflation of the soul we get from listening to a Beethoven masterpiece?

Chad: Why would a self-less being even accept worship, let alone command it? At the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, people were told to be quiet, but Jesus retorted that if they were quiet then the rocks would cry out, meaning that in objective reality, God is worthy of worship—not because he has a high opinion of himself but because nature itself demands it; it is simply a natural thing to worship the creator and sustainer of all things.

John: When we receive God’s love we want to share it, not only reciprocally to God but also to others. God’s love flows through us—it needs an outlet as well as an inlet.

Don: We call that hoarding grace, which was one of the key lessons in the Sermon on the Mount and in a number of parables. Grace that is hoarded becomes toxic to the hoarder, just as manna (a metaphor for grace) became rancid and inedible to the Israelites crossing the desert in the Exodus if they did not eat it right away. They did not need to hoard it, because God could be counted on always to supply just enough to meet everyone’s need, when needed.

Dr. Weaver Sr.: It’s like a muscle: It will atrophy and waste away if unused. So with love: If it is not put to active use, it is wasted.

Chad: Do we worship the gifts that God gives us, or do we just worship God?

David: The people given the greatest gift of all time were Adam and Eve. I don’t recall that they were required to worship God before the Fall, though I am not well versed in the Bible so could be wrong.

Don: We will be going into greater depth on this and many other questions regarding worship, in the weeks ahead.

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