Mark Calder says that in our enthusiam to fight against ‘worship’ being reduced to the Sunday service, Anglicans in Sydney have actually made ‘worship’ everything bar the hour on Sunday.
Over much of the history of our Diocese, we have typically reacted to error or perceived danger by swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. Many examples come to mind – and many that concern me – but perhaps none more than a prevalent understanding of worship.
Wind the clock back 20 or 30 years, and the common understanding was that you went to church to worship God. Hence I remember being asked the question, ‘where do you worship?’, meaning ‘where do you go to church?’.
Thankfully that limited understanding of worship was addressed, as we began to understand the significance of Romans 12:1. We began to see and teach that worship involves offering our bodies as living sacrifices. We worship or serve God by living our entire lives in his service and to his honour. This was indeed a helpful and necessary corrective.
Yet in our enthusiasm to address the reduction of worship to the Sunday service, some have shifted in such an extreme direction that you get the impression that worship is all of life, 24/7 – except for that hour on Sunday. We don’t worship then! We gather on Sunday only to ‘fellowship with one another’, ‘build each other up’ and ‘hear the Bible taught’; not to worship.
The pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that we are now in danger of another error. By removing any notion of worship in our gatherings, not only do we fail to give God the honour he so deserves, we rob one another of the obvious joy and delight in him that we see God’s people of old enjoying.
By so emphasising the horizontal aspect of our gatherings, hymns often become ‘fillers’; liturgy is there to (often begrudgingly) fulfil Anglican righteousness; prayers often become doctrinal statements lacking any emotion or connection with people and everything is geared to prepare for that which we have really gathered for, which is to hear the Word.
Of course worship should be all of life and preaching should be central to our services. But we will be better served by a more balanced – biblical – understanding of the place and significance of corporate worship.
Worship in the Old Testament
It was to worship God, that the embryonic nation of Israel was rescued from the slavery of the Egyptians. It was the reason Moses put to Pharaoh as to why his people ought to be allowed to go (eg: Ex 8:1) and it was the reason Pharaoh eventually allowed them to go (Ex 12:31). Doubtless this worship consisted in ‘having no other gods’, but it was also a particular activity engaged in at particular times:
Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to his tent.
Exodus 33:10
What was the nature of this ‘worship’? The collection of Psalms offers a window into the world of worshipping Israel. There we see reverence before God’s holiness, humility before his greatness, delight in his justice, sorrow for sin, relief in forgiveness, security in difficult times and great praise for God’s goodness. Here is public worship. Psalm 22:22 says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.” Psalm 96 is a picture of God’s people singing to the Lord, praising his name, proclaiming his salvation day after day. The reference is to God’s people gathered in the temple (see v8), and the nations – God-fearers and Gentiles in Jerusalem hear the praises of God.
Open the book of Psalms almost anywhere, and you cannot fail to see the nature of Israel’s public worship of God. Why would there be any less significant public worship of God as his people gather today?
A short biblical theology of worship
I am grateful for our Diocese’s emphasis on biblical theology. We are encouraged to think through every aspect of our life together within the framework of biblical theology. Yet in the case of worship, we are in danger of proof-texting – jumping to Romans 12:1 as if that is all the New Testament says about worship and arguing for a complete understanding of the public gathering, almost entirely from this one verse.
I suspect Paul may have seen the offering of our bodies, in the sense outlined in Romans 12, as merely one way of looking at worship. Indeed, the presence of logikos (NIV ‘spiritual worship’) may reveal that this is not a dominant or concrete understanding of ‘worship’ for Paul; rather, it is worship ‘spiritually’, or ‘metaphorically’, understood (see the similar use of logikos in 1 Peter 2:2 – ‘spiritual milk’).
What then is the wider New Testament understanding? From John 4 we learn that worship no longer happens in a particular place, but in spirit and in truth – our spirit responding to his Spirit; our heart and minds responding to him who is the truth (John 4:19ff). We no longer meet in the Temple and God ‘does not live in houses made by men’ (Acts 7:48). Yet we do know that God is present with his people and significantly, we ourselves are his temple (Matthew 18:20, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
So we are now his temple, and he is no less present with us than he was when Israel gathered at the temple of Jerusalem! As we gather now in his presence, surely the same reverence before his holiness, humility before his greatness, delight in his justice, sorrow for our sin, relief in his forgiveness, and praise for his goodness should mark our services. Surely we who now know the fullness of God’s salvation in Jesus have all the more reason to gather in the praise and worship of the one who has so richly met our deepest need?
Like Israel, we have been set apart to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness (1 Peter 2:9). Although often taken as a reference to evangelism, God’s people are to declare not the gospel, but ‘the praises’. The word ‘praises’ expects God or his people as the audience and the word ‘declare’ is associated in the Septuagint with congregational worship, not mission. In fact the Old Testament passages this sentence alludes to (the Septuagint of Isaiah 42:12 and/or 43:20-21) are all about God’s people singing and praising God for his wonderful salvation.
Fundamental to our role as a chosen people, then, is the imperative to declare the praises of God – to God and to one another. We capture a glimpse of this in connection with the Colossian and Ephesian readers, whom Paul urged to, “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16) and to “sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:19-20). These clearly involve God-ward worshipping activities.
The writer to the Hebrews takes up that theme as he speaks in chapter 13 of a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name. Along with doing good and being generous, with such sacrifices, God is well pleased.
In the book of the Revelation, we observe worship as an activity people engage in together, which is more than, and distinct from, living in honour of God. Chapter 4:10-11 is one example: the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” Worship here involves humility before God’s greatness, and declaring both the greatness of God and all he deserves as a result of that greatness.
Conclusions
We are the people of God. We are chosen – sought out by him – to declare his praises. Yes we will worship him by the way we live our entire lives, but we will also worship him when we gather in his name.
This article is a plea to retrieve the baby we have thrown out with the bathwater. To restore the God-ward focus of our services. To restore the balance that has shifted so far towards the horizontal in our gatherings.
Any group it seems to me can have ‘meetings’. Meetings are entirely horizontal. They are for organising things and hearing another’s point of view. They are for listening and interacting with one another.
But as followers of our glorious Lord Jesus, we gather to engage not just with one another, but with God who is present with us by his Spirit. And together we declare his greatness and give him the honour which is his due. We fall in worship before him.
In planning corporate worship so understood, I try to ensure that every facet draws us to truly engage with and honour God. I want people to leave church knowing that they have been in the presence of God with other believers. I want people to see the ‘awesomeness’, the ‘otherness’ of God, and also understand and know the joy of forgiveness and new life. I want us to be reminded of God’s holiness when we come to confession, and moved by his grace and mercy in Christ when we hear assurance of our forgiveness. I want the singing to remind us of God’s work for us in Christ and cause us to rejoice in our hearts at God’s sheer love and grace. I want the prayer time to remind us of the big things we ought to be praying for, and that we come before a God who can do more than either we ask or imagine. In the sermon I want people not only to be informed, but to hear God speak. And I want us to leave with joy in God’s goodness and a desire to live for him at home and work and in all we do in the week ahead and to come back expectantly next week.
Corporate worship so understood, will mean that in every part of our services, God will be honoured as we come in humility, reverence and joyful praise before him. And our services will be so meaningful, so well thought out, so inspirational and so encouraging, that we will actually be fired up to go on worshipping day by day in the week to come!
Reducing one’s entire notion of worship to what happens on Sunday was of course a mistake. But it is also a mistake to remove any notion of worship from what happens at church. It is not biblical, and it is not helpful. Let’s hope the pendulum on this issue can swing back a little until it rests in the centre.
Mark Calder is senior minister of St Andrew’s Roseville.
