Celebration of Discipline: Worship

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

This week we come to one of the most vis­i­ble cor­po­rate dis­ci­plines in the Chris­t­ian life: wor­ship.

If I had to iden­ti­fy one chal­leng­ing aspect of wor­ship for Stan­ford stu­dents it would be this: wor­ship feels like a waste of time. Time spent in wor­ship is time not spent doing home­work. More altru­is­ti­cal­ly, time spent in wor­ship is time not spent wit­ness­ing to some­one. Fos­ter nails this men­tal­i­ty on page 161:

“The divine pri­or­i­ty is wor­ship first, ser­vice sec­ond…. The pri­ma­ry func­tion of the Levit­i­cal priests was to ‘come near to me to min­is­ter to me’ (Ezek. 44:15). For the Old Tes­ta­ment priest­hood, min­istry to God was to pre­cede all oth­er work. And that is no less true of the uni­ver­sal priest­hood of the New Tes­ta­ment. One grave temp­ta­tion we all face is to run around answer­ing calls to ser­vice with­out min­is­ter­ing to the Lord him­self.”

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, page 161

In Mark 3:14 we see Jesus select­ing the dis­ci­ples. What does it say? “He appoint­ed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach.” They are first to be with him, then they are to serve him. God did not hire us, God adopt­ed us. Wor­ship must come first. In Deut 6:4 we are called to love Him with all our heart before we are called to love Him with all our strength.

While it is true that wor­ship means far more than music, it is also true that the largest book in the Bible is a book of songs. Singing praise to God is an impor­tant part of our spir­i­tu­al health, and often actions accom­pa­ny the singing. If I had to pick a sec­ond chal­leng­ing aspect of wor­ship for Stan­ford stu­dents it would be this: such wor­ship often feels undig­ni­fied.

Through­out Scrip­ture we find a vari­ety of phys­i­cal pos­tures in con­nec­tion with wor­ship: lying pros­trate, stand­ing, kneel­ing, lift­ing the hands, clap­ping the hands, lift­ing the head, bow­ing the head, danc­ing, and wear­ing sack­cloth and ash­es. The point is that we are to offer God our bod­ies as well as all the rest of our being. Wor­ship is appro­pri­ate­ly phys­i­cal. We are to present our bod­ies to God in a pos­ture con­sis­tent with the inner spir­it in wor­ship. Stand­ing, clap­ping, danc­ing, lift­ing the hands, lift­ing the head are pos­tures con­sis­tent with the spir­it of praise. To sit still look­ing dour is sim­ply not appro­pri­ate for praise. Kneel­ing, bow­ing the head, lying pros­trate are pos­tures con­sis­tent with the spir­it of ado­ra­tion and humil­i­ty. We are quick to object to this line of teach­ing. ‘Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ments,’ we argue. ‘That may appeal to emo­tion­al types, but I’m nat­u­ral­ly qui­et and reserved. It isn’t the kind of wor­ship that will meet my need.’ What we must see is that the real ques­tion in wor­ship is not, ‘What will meet my need?’ The real ques­tion is, ‘What kind of wor­ship does God call for?’ It is clear that God calls for whole­heart­ed wor­ship…. Often our ‘reserved tem­pera­ment’ is lit­tle more than fear of what oth­ers will think of us, or per­haps unwill­ing­ness to hum­ble our­selves before God and oth­ers. Of course peo­ple have dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ments, but that must nev­er keep us from wor­ship­ing with our whole being.

Richard Fos­ter, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, pages 169–70.

Fos­ter says it well, but King David says it even bet­ter. In 2 Samuel 6:22, the Psalmist tells a crit­ic of his extrav­a­gant wor­ship, “I will become even more undig­ni­fied than this, and I will be humil­i­at­ed in my own eyes.”

Here are some of the ways we see wor­ship expressed in Scrip­ture. If you strug­gle with expres­sive­ness or self-con­scious­ness in wor­ship, med­i­tate on this list. Many more vers­es could be added along with much com­men­tary — this is far from a com­pre­hen­sive study. It is mere­ly meant to open your eyes to the var­i­ous expres­sions of wor­ship we find in the Bible. Some are com­mand­ed while oth­ers are mod­eled, all of these expres­sions are appro­pri­ate at dif­fer­ent times.

• WE SING because in the Bible we read: “Let the mes­sage of Christ dwell among you rich­ly as you teach and admon­ish one anoth­er with all wis­dom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spir­it, singing to God with grat­i­tude in your hearts.” (Colos­sians 3:16)
• WE PLAY INSTRUMENTS because in the Bible we read: “Praise him with the sound­ing of the trum­pet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with tim­brel and danc­ing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cym­bals, praise him with resound­ing cym­bals.” (Psalm 150:3–5)
• WE RAISE OUR HANDS because in the Bible we read: “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” (Psalm 63:4)
• WE CLAP because in the Bible we read: “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.” (Psalm 47:1)
• WE TESTIFY PUBLICLY because in the Bible we read: “I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your won­der­ful deeds.” (Psalm 9:1)
• WE LAUGH AND REJOICE because in the Bible we read: “Our mouths were filled with laugh­ter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’” (Psalm 126:2)
• WE SHOUT because in the Bible we read: “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubi­lant song with music; make music to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trum­pets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the LORD, the King.” (Psalm 98:4–6)
• WE LAPSE INTO REVERENT SILENCE because in the Bible we read: “The LORD is in his holy tem­ple; let all the earth be silent before him.” (Habakkuk 2:20)
• WE STAND because in the Bible we read: “They [the Levites] were also to stand every morn­ing to thank and praise the LORD. They were to do the same in the evening….” (1 Chron­i­cles 23:30)
• WE BOW AND KNEEL because in the Bible we read: “Come, let us bow down in wor­ship, let us kneel before the LORD our Mak­er.” (Psalm 95:6)
• WE LIE PROSTRATE because in the Bible we read: “Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the peo­ple lift­ed their hands and respond­ed, ‘Amen! Amen!’ Then they bowed down and wor­shiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.” (Nehemi­ah 8:6)
• WE LEAP because in the Bible we read: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heav­en.” (Luke 6:23a)
• WE DANCE because in the Bible we read: “Let them praise his name with danc­ing and make music to him with tim­brel and harp.” (Psalm 149:3)
• WE SPEAK IN TONGUES AND PROPHESY because in the Bible we read: “What then shall we say, broth­ers and sis­ters? When you come togeth­er, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruc­tion, a rev­e­la­tion, a tongue or an inter­pre­ta­tion. Every­thing must be done so that the church may be built up.” (1 Corinthi­ans 14:26)
• WE CREATE ART because in the Bible we read: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have cho­sen Beza­lel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spir­it of God, with wis­dom, with under­stand­ing, with knowl­edge and with all kinds of skills— to make artis­tic designs for work in gold, sil­ver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.… to make every­thing I have com­mand­ed you: the tent of meet­ing, the ark of the covenant law with the atone­ment cov­er on it, and all the oth­er fur­nish­ings of the tent— the table and its arti­cles, the pure gold lamp­stand and all its acces­sories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offer­ing and all its uten­sils, the basin with its stand— and also the woven gar­ments, both the sacred gar­ments for Aaron the priest and the gar­ments for his sons when they serve as priests, and the anoint­ing oil and fra­grant incense for the Holy Place.’ ” (Exo­dus 31:1–11)
• WE PRAY SIMULTANEOUSLY because in the Bible we read: “When they heard this, they raised their voic­es togeth­er in prayer to God.” (Acts 4:24a)
• WE LISTEN TO A SERMON because in the Bible we read: “…devote your­self to the pub­lic read­ing of Scrip­ture, to preach­ing and to teach­ing.” (1 Tim 4:13)