On Defining Worship

JD Walt, the Vice President of Community Life and Dean of the Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary, has been posting recently on his FARMStrong blog about the deeper meaning of Christian worship.  I wanted to make a comment on his most recent post "Marcus Green weighs in on 'Defining Worship'," and it started to become too long, so I am posting my thoughts here instead.  Check out his posts and the thought provoking comments to them all if you want to do your own deep thinking!

 

---

 

The question was originally posed as "what is the job description of a worship leader."  Discussion soon moved to the defining worship, as common definitions frequently play on the idea of response and submission to God.  But this was also set against the Trinity, and what role each part plays in a worship service.  JD tagged onto a quote from James Torrance for this:

 

"Worship is the gift of participating by the power of the Spirit in the incarnate Son's communion with the Father."

 

This sparked further discussion as to the exact role of the spirit in worship, i. e. the Spirit as a medium to the Father (no pun intended) and the Spirit as God's indwelling in the worshipper.

 

I personally thought it was summed up nicely in another quote from Torrance:

 

"It is he [Jesus] who leads our worship, bears our sorrows on his heart and intercedes for us, presenting us to the Father in himself as God's dear children, and uniting us with himself in his life in the Spirit."

 

So, yesterday, JD further stirred the pot with the response from Marcus Green that took a different tack on defining worship, and that it defining worship as Jesus himself would have done.  He discusses how to a First Century Jew, worship was deeply intertwined with the idea of sacrifice, and that this concept may be lacking in modern worship.

 

I am led to two thoughts on this sense of sacrifice in worship.  First, is the fact that we have the ultimate sacrifice to celebrate in worship: Jesus.  As Torrance said (continuing from the previous quotation):

 

"...God has already provided for us that response which alone is acceptable to him--the offering made for the whole human race in the life, obedience and passion of Jesus Christ."

 

I look at this sacrifice in similar fashion to the way I look at the Jewish Passover - Jesus came and gave us a new covenant, the covenant of his blood.  We are freed from the old practices so that we can celebrate the new.  So I see a paradigm shift required in the idea of sacrifice as worship.  We no longer bring our finest animals and best grain to give to God.  Jesus settled the debt we have with God.  His was the ultimate sacrifice, anything additional we can physically give would be relatively meaningless.

 

The result of this, though, leads directly to my second thought on sacrifice in worship.  I think it was best summed by Paul, "For I am crucified with Christ."  If we are to truly worship God, we must accept the Holy Spirit into our lives.  And that true acceptance means also acknowledging that we, as humans, do not know the plan or the future for the world (although we have an idea of the ultimate end result).  We accept the Holy Spirit to guide us, trusting that regardless of what we encounter on the way, God will not lead us astray from His bigger picture.  We give our lives to God and believe that, even if it costs us physically, God will reward our obedience.  That is our sacrifice!

 

Where the previous discussion was centered around submission versus communion with the Holy Spirit, I propose that the correct answer is not the dichotomy of the two, but instead their union.  We welcome the Holy Spirit to bring us to Jesus and the Father.  To fully do so, we must submit to the Holy Spirit and thereby God.

 

To complete the circle, this leads me back to the job description of the worship leader.  The job of the worship leader then has to include joyfully reminding and reinforcing that we, the worshippers, are the sacrifice to God.  We come to worship to dedicating our entire being to God, not just for the hour or so we are in worship, but for all of our life.  And our weekly church worship service is our rededication to that effort!

 

No that's not a big goal, is it?