Today I’d like to explore some thoughts on worship. Worship is praising God for what he has done, is doing, and will do. God has a mission, through Creation, Israel and the Messiah, to save, renew and transform people, and the world. A call to worship. So far, so good. There is no doubt several ways to worship—to perform an act of worship. Can you name some of these ways? What do you think about worship?
Fowl and Jones in their stimulating book Reading in Communion put it this way: “Learning to embody Scripture in our lives, both corporately and personally, requires that we develop specific patterns of acting, feeling and thinking well” (29). And this applies to worship. Worship these days, at least to me, seems to have so little to do with a focus on a close reading of Scripture. Why is that? Does worship in many Christian contexts have more to do with making it up as we go along, a subtle yet radical form of idolatry, than it does with reading Scripture; a reading not only for ourselves, but equally against ourselves? Do we end up too often endorsing, rather than undermining self deception?
Disenchanted worship is de-textualized worship. I don’t mean to say that a biblical text based worship is the only or even the best way, but hopefully for some of us it results in turning our hearts and minds—the whole of our lives to God, and in so doing, bringing us to worship. The aim is to encounter God, not just talk or read about God.
Now this: In text based worship it is crucial to see ourselves as actors in God’s drama of creation, salvation and the renewal of all things—the crucified and risen One with the key role. As we do this, Scripture and its director the Holy Spirit, refreshes our memories, ignites our imaginations and empowers us to live out the community we have with God and each other—worship—in the world.
It is important to remember that Jesus is Lord in the present, and the Empires we live in are not. Even though they pretend to be eternally powerful, Empires stand and fall. Jesus, however, is sitting at the right hand of God having accomplished all that is necessary for redemption and the defeat of cruel and unjust power players. This means our task is to be careful readers of Scripture in worship, but we are also to follow in the footsteps of the crucified and risen One.
As an act of worship, no doubt this comprises, but is not limited to addressing people with the gospel in love and challenging strongholds of evil and oppression, as we live destiny directed and oriented lives caught up in the renewal that God is bringing about in space and time.
