Previous posts:
- What's In A Place? - Part 1
- What's In A Place? - Part 2
- What's In A Place? - Part 3
- What's In A Place? - Part 4)
We began with this quote from G. K. Chesterton:
Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, “We must not hit each other in the holy place.” They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found that they were clean.”
God-centered worship will have the effect of changing the worshipper over time. Guarding and promoting God-centered worship motivated Jesus to cleanse the Temple, to honor the widow who gave all she had and to compare the self-absorbed prayer of the Pharisee with the chest-beating prayer of the tax collector.
Another common gripe against planned, formulaic, or liturgical worship is that such worship weeds out the weak, the struggler and the outsider who doesn’t know the routines. In essence, such worship exists as an act of judgement against the “lesser-thans” and the “uninitiated.”
I want to turn this judgement on its head.
- How dare you tell me authentic worship means I must feel what you feel.
- How dare you tell me authentic worship means I must express my emotions to your satisfaction.
- How dare you tell me authentic worship requires me
- to dance when you say, ‘dance’
- to laugh when you say, ‘laugh’
- to yell when you say, ‘yell’
How dare you prevent me from encountering God in worship as I bring before Him
- lament
- silence
- question
- doubt
- fear
Who are you to separate me from ALL of life’s variety lived under the sovereignty of God? What a small “god” you have if your “god” has no place for Job, for Jeremiah, for Peter when he weeps or Paul when he fumes. I believe Christian worship today is judgmental because it censors tears but promotes chuckles, suffocates doubt but elevates pride, honors performance but dismisses stillness.
I began this part of (what will be) the ongoing series on worship by highlighting the sacred place. I believe we need to cultivate a sense of the sacred, a taste for the holy. Pursuing what is glorious about God across a wide Biblical spectrum of worship will, I believe, change us for the better.
To God be the Glory!