A New Paradigm for Worship

Don: Paul revealed a new paradigm for worship, stripped of ritual and symbols, when he wrote:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:1-21)

The passage addresses worship from both a personal and a community perspective. The personal perspective is one’s own body, which—through God’s grace and mercy—is a living, holy, pleasing, and humble sacrifice to God. The idea that we are a sacrifice in God’s hands was also highlighted much earlier in scripture:

Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” (Genesis 22:7-14)

So God provides us as a living sacrifice, as a lamb—not unblemished, but nevertheless the handiwork of God—presented for the spiritual worship of God through God’s mercy and by his grace. This was and remains a radical notion of worship. If and when we pray alone, the outcome should be to recognize ourselves as God’s handiwork and that we have all been allotted a measure of faith (Romans 3), and that our bodies are living, if imperfect, vessels that enable God not only to show his will but to prove its perfection:

…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

This is a different concept from the personal fait that we generally seek to develop on our own. We place great emphasis on our own piety, on the development of faith through a better prayer-life, through more study, more meditation, more devotion to God. But Jesus relegated all these elements of worship to the closet, in favor of finishing our faith. This has very practical consequences.

Our personal worship should be seen as an opportunity to be filled with God’s grace, as an experience of humility. Worship then becomes something that God does for us—not something that we do for God. It’s not what we practice ritually or symbolically; rather, it’s how God transforms us by his grace and through his mercy.

Jesus frequently retreated to worship and pray. For example:

In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there. Simon and his companions searched for Him; they found Him, and *said to Him, “Everyone is looking for You.” He *said to them, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.” And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons. (Mark 1:35-39)

When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place; and the crowds were searching for Him, and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them. But He said to them, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.”

So He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. (Luke 4:42-44)

In Matthew 4, we saw him retreat into the wilderness for 40 days and nights for reflection and contemplation, for prayer and renewal. He told us the correct attitude in which to engage in personal worship:

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. (John 5:30)

Successful personal worship results in fulfillment of God’s grace and the ability to pass it on to others. Worship as a way of service contrasts with worship as a means of identity. As Paul said in the passage quoted earlier, the work of God in our living bodies; the merciful, graceful endowment of spiritual gifts, enables us to be vessels of service in worship. This is corporate—communal—worship, and is the end product of personal worship. Each of us has been given a gift; not a mere hobby or skill but a spiritual gift designed to build up the body of Christ.

Romans 12 is a manifest for community worship. What if churches were to adopt it as a set of bylaws?

By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

To repeat: The focus of personal worship is on what God does for the individual congregant, enabling one to become a vessel to transmit his goodness, love, and mercy; corporate/communal worship is about proving the will of God as that which is good and perfect. We are the holy and living sacrifice prepared and provided through the grace and mercy of God to be an object of the worship of God.

Anonymous: The worship described in Romans 12 seems related neither to corporate, communal, church worship nor to personal worship in the form of praying and studying the Bible at home. It seems, rather, a call to good community where we individually display love and respect for one another; a set of bylaws for living in peace and harmony with one another. It is a call to give oneself up to God, to sacrifice the self in one’s life for him—to become selfless. One thus becomes a community exemplar of proper worship and is in a constant state of it.

David: That seems to me to be a quintessentially Daoist statement: Selflessness is The Way, in contrast to trying to impose one’s will to change The Way. Still, the message in Romans is a little more proactive than the passivity encouraged by Daoism. Paul tells us what to do, whereas Lao Tzu tells us what not to do. As well, I am troubled by the “If” statements of Paul and his implication that mercifulness is a gift: If it is, and if we are not so gifted, mercy is not expected of us and we can just ignore it.

Donald: And can we bestow a gift we do not possess? In our church, we test ourselves regularly as to how well we perform with respect to Paul’s admonishments and generally find that our struggles come up short. The fact is we don’t really go out into the community. If strangers turn up in church on Sabbath we welcome them. But we tend not to go seek them out, though there may be a few church members who do so. As a church body we spend a great deal of time trying but failing to follow Paul’s instructions. We seem to expect people to join us, rather than to expect ourselves to join them.

David: This illustrates the similarity between the Pauline and the Daoist approach, but the difference in interpretations of them. The Dao De Jing says just make a sober self-assessment and quietly get on with what you are able to. Don’t struggle over it. People who have no gifts (such as the poor and destitute of the Beatitudes) are indeed truly blessed. Nothing is expected of them. The Daoist would agree with all of Romans 12 including the “If” statements I am a bit confused about, perhaps because again they imply a duty, whereas the Dao (to my probably imperfect understanding) does not.

Donald: We focus on works, and always come up short. Should we instead just go with the flow? Should we focus only on faith as our way to Heaven, as our way to a relationship with God? If we have gifts, should we have faith that we will use them appropriately when they are needed, even if we don’t realize that we are doing so?

Don: Paul’s concept of the end product of personal worship being humble acceptance of God’s grace and submission to his will seems particularly striking to me, because it’s not how we all tend to view it. We tend to view personal worship as a struggle for piety, devotion, prayerfulness, and so on. It is a struggle highly valued by the church and promoted through sermons and seminars and programs designed to empower us in the struggle. Yet the true end product is to be prepared through God’s grace to serve as a living sacrifice, which is quite different from my piety and prayers. Jesus practically dismissed our notion of worship out of hand when he said words to the effect of: “OK, pray and seek piety if you think you must, but do it in the closet.”

Jay: Paul seems to imply that worship is cyclical, when he spoke in Romans 12 of “renewing” the mind. His “If” statements make allowance for the fact that there will be times when our minds are in need of renewal. There is a call to seek to renew the mind and to be active in using our gifts when our minds are fresh. But there is also the recognition that there are times when we are not renewed and not best capable of using our gifts.

There is no doubt that our formal Sabbath worship service bears little resemblance to the worship described by Paul. Yes, there is teaching and prophecy, but there is no feeding of the poor. I think it is important to acknowledge this and to ask whether we can do better. Is it even possible?

Don: Substituting the pious output of our formal worship for the humility and service to others called for by Paul would eliminate many of the doctrinal disputes that divide all worshippers, both within and between communities of faith.

Jay: If God is love, and if love cannot exist without interaction among two or more people, then clearly the manifestation of love ought to be a major component of worship. But this is absent from formal corporate worship, which is concerned more with identity. The worship described by Paul is selfless and universal. It has nothing to do with identity.

Don: Does identity have a fundamentally discriminatory function?

Jay: As a Seventh Day Adventist, I do certain things (which the church consider to be right and good) in order to identify myself as a Seventh Day Adventist. If we could get past issues of right and wrong action to focus instead on feeding the poor, etc., we would be better equipped to worship in the manner prescribed by Paul.

David: To worship a God who is Goodness and Love is to identify with that God and his teaching alone, and not with any man-made entity or set of rules of conduct and membership criteria. It is to worship—to identify with, to live—the life of Jesus as the Good Samaritan did. The Samaritan’s identity as a Samaritan was utterly irrelevant, as I believe Jesus was subtly pointing out by using a Samaritan rather than a Jew.

Donald: You identify yourself as a Daoist.

David: I view the Dao—the Way—as a non-anthropomorphic concept of God. I identify with it, but to me it is a universal concept whether one consciously identifies with it or not! There is no temple and no organizing body for the philosophical Daoism with which I identify. It is simply a way of thinking. It tells us, as I think Paul tells us, that we know the Way and should follow it. The end product is proof of the Way, or as Paul put it, proof of God’s will. I think many—perhaps most—churchgoers don’t come to church just to feel good about themselves. I believe most are genuinely seeking the Way. That is the right and good goal (it seems to me!) but church attendance will not necessarily help them achieve it. I think it could, but it needs to be prodded—which is perhaps just what this small class is doing. Nevertheless, in my opinion the worship Paul prescribes is more likely to arise through the personal prodding of the inner light than through serving strangers at a Sabbath soup kitchen.

Jay: There is a difference between an organization devoted to sustaining and replicating itself and an organization devoted to service alone. Most religious organizations would insist that they exist for service; unfortunately, they don’t seem to act that way. Their way of worship seems designed more to promote and perpetuate the organization than to equip the members for true service. This is the rub between the human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural. Paul’s worship tends to the divine in terms of human capability to achieve it—as were some of Jesus’s sayings (“if you really want to follow me, you have to disown your family, turn the other cheek,…” etc.) Humans cannot achieve divine levels of worship. That being so, are our organizations not bound to be the way they are? Or is their a level of achievement we could realistically aim for? We need both to serve and be served. Is there a happy medium that our organized religions could strive for?

Donald: We talk and feel good about reaching out to others yet our service projects often consist of helping to build another SDA church!

Jay: That is service for replication, not for true worship.

Robin: …Unless, that is, it was requested by people who need a place to meet.

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