Authentic Worship

Don: How can we know that our worship, corporate or individual, is authentic? We know from the story of Cain and Abel that true worship centers on God and his creative works while false worship centers on our own efforts. But, since God extended his grace to the murderer and false worshipper (Cain) anyway, does it matter whether or not our worship is true? Cain did not get what we assume he deserved. Worship can be the cause, as it was in the case of Cain, of murder and lesser forms of destruction.

Jesus told the woman at the well that worship was to be conducted in spirit and truth.

Worship rituals and symbols which themselves become the object of worship and veneration are not authentic. Jesus had little to say about the Sabbath beyond that the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath. We know that he taught on the Sabbath, though he said it was a day to set aside normal business; a day to do good to others; and a day of worship. God rested after six days of creation not because he needed rest but because we do. He set an example for us.

Similarly, Jesus had no need of baptism but he underwent it anyway to set an example for us. The significance of the Sabbath is as a recurring, perpetual, and everlasting symbol of God’s Grace. It is ironic that we have turned it into a symbol of legalism and a setting for our own work.

Setting aside work for ourselves while we labor for others is a recognition that we cannot work our way to salvation, because it is a free gift of God. Jesus invites us into that rest:

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

This is spiritual rest symbolized by the Sabbath. It’s an invitation to grace, to accept the gift without striving to pay for it.

Of all the symbols in ritual and worship, time is the most inflexible. Stone and gold can be worked and felt. Time cannot be captured and it cannot be controlled. Like grace, the Sabbath comes whether we want it to or not, whether we think we need it or not. LIke grace, it cannot be postponed, rescheduled, controlled, contained, manipulated, moved, removed, advanced, retreated. Like grace, it comes regularly, ritually, and lovingly, and our only choice is to accept it and rest in it or not.

We objectify the Sabbath, perhaps in a vain attempt to make it more manipulable. We place ourselves at its center instead of God, emphasizing what we do—our own work, our own worship—while missing out on the significance of rest for the soul, the ultimate symbol of God’s grace. He specifically warned us to avoid this danger:

“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)

The heritage of Jacob here can be seen as the intimacy of the wrestling match between Jacob and God, the willfulness of premeditated sin, and the establishment of a new identity for Jacob in a lavish display of God’s graciousness. But what is “doing my own pleasure” if it is not focused on me and what I do on the Sabbath, emphasizing my work, my self-denial, and my abstinence, rather than emphasizing the work of God in his graciousness?

There was a time when Adventists believed that only Sabbath-keepers would get into Heaven. This was never an official stance of the church, but was commonly understood when I was a boy. When this understanding was abandoned and we started letting non-Sabbath-keepers into Heaven, we demoted the Sabbath’s importance. We need to re-think our theology of the Sabbath and Sabbath worship—their true meaning and symbolic value as a downpayment of God’s grace and as a perpetual reminder that to accept God’s grace is to set aside our own effort, our own work, and to enter into his rest—if we are to contribute to today’s religious dialog, particularly concerning the meaningfulness of the Sabbath.

Paul presented (in Romans 12:1-28) a new paradigm for worship, in which we are a living sacrifice—but, like Isaac about to be sacrificed by his father Abraham, as a lamb; not unblemished but nevertheless worthy, as the handiwork of God, to worship God through his mercy and grace. This was and remains a radical notion of worship. When we pray alone, the outcome should be to recognize ourselves as God’s handiwork, and that we have been allotted a measure of faith (Romans 3) and that our bodies are living if imperfect vessels that enable God not only to show us his will but also to prove it to its perfection.

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

Our personal worship should be seen as an opportunity to be filled with God’s grace and as an experience of humility. Worship thus becomes something that God does for us, not something we do for God, but this is not what we practice ritually or symbolically. The focus of personal worship should be on what God does for us individually, enabling us to become a vessel to transmit his goodness, his love, and his mercy in a corporate, communal setting.

We’ve also discussed the role of the senses, and how the physical senses parallel the spiritual senses, in worship. Some relevant scripture:

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (Hebrews 5:13-14)

Clearly, Paul is alluding to the spiritual senses here, and in the following verses, to the spiritual equivalent to the sense of sight:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. (Hebrews 11:27)

The spiritual equivalent of hearing is mentioned, too:

Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me,…” (Hebrews 3:7-8)

(This quote from Psalm 95 is repeated in Hebrews 3:15 and 4:7. The dulled sense of hearing is also referred to in Hebrews 5:11: “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”)

Taste and touch (“drawing near”) are mentioned, too:

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

Finally, there is a clear reference to the spiritual sense of smell:

But I have received everything in full and have an abundance; I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. (Philippians 4:18)

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. (2 Corinthians 2:14)

Today, we seem reluctant to embrace the senses in worship. Can we reliably do so, or is there too much risk? Is our reluctance based on a sense of inauthenticiy of sensory worship? How could we tell? Is there an objective, data-drive, intellectual standard by which to judge? Or is there an emotional standard? If we could tell, would it apply only to personal or corporate worship, or to both? Is it even necessary?—Cain’s worship was inauthentic but it doesn’t seem to have mattered: God loved him anyway and extended his grace to him. In Amos, God told the Israelites he hated their worship. Can worship be so wrong as to be fatal? How do symbols, rituals, and culture affect our view of authenticity of worship?

David: Scripture doesn’t make it any easier to answer these questions. Jesus told the woman at the well that worship was to be conducted in spirit and truth, but so many other verses in scripture suggest quite the contrary: That is is very much a physical business. The Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, but helping other people is hardly resting without spinning the definition of “rest”. I think we can no more authenticate worship than we can authenticate God. Worship and faith are deeply intertwined and intensely personal, and can only be authenticated at the innermost personal level through meditation and enlightenment. Spiritual worship itself can at least seem to be affected by the physical senses: Music, for example, has been described as a device to inflate the soul, and the same description might be applied to the grand cathedral.

Donald: If authentic worship is individual, then who defines it? The Bible can be consulted, but as David says, that can confuse. God is the only one that knows our heart, but what does that mean for corporate worship?

Dr. Andreasen: My impression is that the Bible defines worship as service. Service is a worship response that we make to God’s presence in our lives. It is directed towards others. If our worship does not make others feel good, then it is not authentic. When Adventist and San Francisco symphony conductor Herbet Blomstedt visited Andrews University some years ago and was asked for his views on genuine worship, he replied that it had to do with spirituality. When pressed for more, he would only add that it had to do with our inner being. Everything else, he said, was frivolous and pointless unless it strengthened the inner being. Thus, authentic worship is other-directed and spiritually driven, and it strengthens the worshipper’s inner being.

Don: The “new” (to us, or to me at least) Paulian (Romans 12) paradigm of worship as service just does not seem very often to be the paradigm we follow. We seem to be missing the mark, perhaps substantially.

David: Americans seem uniquely preoccupied with authenticity. Hong Kong sweatshops made a tidy business out of manufacturing Chinese trinkets with “authentic” stamped on them, or printed on the label, for sale to American tourists. If we want to see authentic worship in action, it seems to me we need look no further than the Good Samaritan. But he—I would venture to say—cared a fig neither for authenticity nor for worship. He cared only for a fellow child of God in need of help. When religions have to debate points of order in their rules and regulations to determine what is authentic or not, then they are indeed missing the mark, and that is indeed worthy of discussion within a religion. But authenticity and points of order are of no concern to the true worshipper.

Dr. Andreasen: It is the same for people who tell the truth. They do not question it—they just practice it. It is what it is, and the question of authenticity does not arise. They simply gladly get on with their practice.

Donald: What might trouble those of us brought up as Adventists is that we hold “service” Sabbaths only once every quarter; perhaps visiting a soup kitchen or some similar venue. One wonders, then, where is service on the other Sabbaths? Where does corporate worship fit into the idea of service?

Jay: Authenticity in relation to an omniscient and omnipresent God is not a time- or culture-bound attribute. That God resonates with everyone, no matter who they are or when or where they were born. Worshiping God by serving Man is something of which every human being is capable, and the true “Big W” worshiper does it without thought of authenticity. Authenticity is only important in relation to corporate worship structures, so it is worth examining from that perspective, to see whether the inauthentic, time- and culture-bound worship we practice at the corporate level can lead us in the end to authentic worship. If we can define an authentic relationship, then we can examine and adjust our corporate structures and even our corporate identities (for example, as Adventists, Christians, etc.) accordingly. I believe we all want to let our inner light shine. Can our corporate structures and identities—which, so far, seem to be a hindrance—be re-defined and modified to help us to achieve that?

Dr. Andreasen: Most Christian worshippers begin their worship with an invocation and generally conclude with a benediction. The invocation is a response to something, and that is the recognition of God’s presence, so worship is an orderly response to the presence of God in our time. God’s presence is by his own initiative; our invocation acknowledges that and responds with an attitude of service. The invocation is important not for what we say but for what we acknowledge. [Sound was garbled—I missed some phrases—DE]

Don: Is there such a thing as bad worship?

Dr. Andreasen: If we have a worship experience that does not begin with the spirit of an invocation, then I wonder if God is present in our worship? But if he isn’t, it will turn out bad no matter what form it takes.

Jay: Bad worship, as we saw in the case of Cain, does not remove one from God’s grace, but it distracts from God’s grace. An inauthentic worship experience has the potential to distract me from the relationship or the worship experience that is supposed to happen. That is “bad” in the sense of being contrary to the desired output of worship, which is to help me become more enlightened. It does not necessarily separate one from God, but it distracts one from the relationship with God.

Dr. Andreasen: The story of Cain and Able is a story about jealousy that became so bad that one brother killed his brother instead of taking him by the hand. So that would be the opposite of reaching out to the other person in service.  It seems to destroy worship.

Donald: The Good Samaritan reached out for no other reason than to serve an “other”. I don’t see that as worship but it was certainly an expression of selflessness. Anyone reading the story would not question its genuineness. It gives us pause to consider whether we have done anything like it recently.

Dr. Andreasen: So the Samaritan woman [at the well] asked how to worship, and the Samaritan man showed us how to do it!

David: And in showing how to do it, he was showing how to do the Great Commission—how to spread the word. Pope Francis recently gave a wonderful TED talk about worship. In so doing, he too was spreading the word, undertaking the Great Commission. In that case, why should not Adventist and all other churches relay this Catholic’s message on the Internet-connected screens so may have in their sanctuaries? If authentic worship is about spreading the word and fulfilling the Great Commission, surely it would not be inauthentic for an Adventist church to relay the voice of a Catholic pope?

Robin: For some it might be authentic. But some of us, lacking the ability to look at the heart of Pope Francis or anyone else (including ourselves), might demur. Authentication of worship is a virtue, and virtues are identified, authenticated, and originated by God. We can’t do it, or earn it. We can only ask for it, and desire it, and that has to come from humility, when one is not worried about how one appears to others. An example (I think) of corporate worship gone wrong is in the following passage:

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’” (Matthew 15)

Jay: I share Donald’s belief that the actions of the Good Samaritan do not constitute worship, but I worry that this may be the result of corporate bias induced in generations of Christians that prevents our recognizing authentic worship when we see it. If so, it shows by how far we have missed the mark. I don’t know if that is the case, but I am glad of the opportunity to discuss it and potentially be enriched by it.

Don: The issue is that corporately, we are ever ready to authenticate (or not) someone else’s form of worship. It creates great dissension in the church, and is thus more than a theoretical issue. It has profound practical ramifications for changing the corporate worship structure.

Kiran: Cain’s fruit was not accepted by God, but God gave him advice and made a plan to change him. Good or bad, authentic or not, his worship at least mattered insofar as it involved God and God’s care for him. Those accepted into the kingdom in the judgment scene were bewildered that they should have been “authenticated.” All that matters is not identity or form of worship: It is simply helping others whenever the need arises. This is very difficult to accept because it implies that one’s identity (as, say, an Adventist, or as a Christian, or as a spiritual person) is of no matter.

Dr. Andreasen: We could agree with scripture that worship is an essential part of the life of a Christian. We have reduced the part down to one day a week in church, but really it should be an everyday part of an entire life of worship in which we respond to God’s presence in our midst by reaching out and drawing people in to experience it as well. This is a genuine attitude of worship that should accompany each of us through the week then be shared with one another once a week in church.

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