What is Worship?
What is worship?
Really. That’s a serious question.
You see, I think worship is one of those things that we all know so well – or at least assume we know – that we don’t always think about it. And so, as I jump into an occasional series on worship, I’m interested in what you think about it. So three questions:
What, for you, constitutes meaningful worship?
When you go, what are you hoping for?
Why do we go at all? What, that is, is the purpose of worship?
Just to prime the pump: I’ve always found it interesting that at the root of our word “worship” is the Old English weorthscipe – which means “worthiness” or “to be of worth.” My hunch, then, is that the origin of worship was to come together to ascribe worthiness to one’s deity. But I wonder, post Reformation, if it still means that. Or, perhaps to put it more provocatively, does the God we know in Jesus need our worship. Or might worship be the place where we gather to hear God call us worthy, to ascribe worthiness to our lives, loves, hopes, and struggles?
I don’t know. But I do know I’d covet your reflections in the comments below. Thank you! I’m looking forward to exploring and learning more about worship – no matter how you define it 🙂 – together!
I know what I don’t like more than what I do! I dislike the “routine” and finding the same thing each Sunday. Everything’s “programmed” and nothing is a surprise. Boring.
Jesus is not boring, so why are so many “worship services” boring? Sigh.
Jesus was and is ever-so-interesting and never approved of dead, religious practices. He led His followers through a field of grain and encouraged them to satisfy their hunger on the Sabbath. He didn’t care if they hadn’t first washed their hands. He overturned the money changers tables in the Temple. He healed sick people on the Sabbath. He encouraged the unorthodox and celebrated life! Eating, drinking, healing, working…until people labeled him as a drunk and in league with the devil! LOL.
I expect to see and hear and experience the “all things made new” Spirit of Christ. Something fresh, inspiring and wonderful…just like Jesus! But, I rarely find that.
Worship needs to be reverent. It needs music and words, tied together somehow in a thoughtful and perhaps surprising way. It needs to be directed to God. It is not a ‘show’ for the congregation.
I have been pondering this same thing as I get accumstomed to this new state called retirement.
Hate to be too predictable but I have indeed found worship is a gathering of the faithful…or the wish-I-were-faithful. It is a time for intentionally quieting myself in the expectation that I will hear read and sung words of and from God.
I will experience silence( not often enough).
I will receive the means of grace (at least some of them…baptism or symbol thereof–font,Holy Communion,Word preached, Word read, Word sung, community even it I know no one’s name and don’t speak to any of them….a community of believers…a community of children of God.
I expect something to happen…a reminder of who I have been, or who I long to be, or where I have come from.
I always expect to be reminded that I am worthy because God said so….and to be encouraged, sustained, strengthened by that simple truth too often forgotten in my daily life.
I have found that missing weekly worship is not the worst thing in the world. I am always glad to return to a worship service whenever and wherever I can.
I find it a more quietly private experience than I believed it would ever be for me. Not needing the social aspect of it as much as the private devotion.
God is certainly worthy of – and delights in – our worship, but I don’t believe God “needs” it as much as God knows we need to give it. We need to be reminded again and again that we are not the end-all and be-all of our universe (I guess that might be considered the “law” of worship). But I can’t help thinking that at least a part of what calls us back again and again each week is a deep need within ourselves to hear again the good news of the worth God places on each of us; that God values each of us so much, that God became incarnate in Christ Jesus. That is truly good news and it is not only proclaimed but enacted as we gather each week for “worship”.
For me the communal aspect of worship is foundational. It is the reminder that God so loved the world and I am a part of that brokenness and beauty. Together we become the body of Christ. Worship then is praise and thanksgiving for all that God has given us, prayers and listening to God’s Word, and sustenance for the time apart from the community.
What a great question David! While this is not all I think about worship, in part I take my cue from CS Lewis “Reflections on the Psalms”. He asks the question, “Why does God command us to praise?” He suggests that it’s not because God has a problem with an ego which needs to be gratified, or because God needs to be stroked this way consistently.
Rather, Lewis suggests that the command to praise is to enhance our enjoyment. When we see a sunset, or a beautiful painting, or anything else which takes our breath away, it is so much better than if we enjoy it alone. The command to communal praise (which for me is at the heart of worship) is that it encourages and enhances our own faith journey, our own enjoyment of God, our own sense of working at God’s ministry in the world.
That, by the way, is also how I understand that wonderful line in Hebrews 10 about “provoking one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some”, coupling that together with the line about entertaining angels unawares as we welcome the stranger in Hebrews 13. Enhancing our enjoyment of God … surely that is a matter of entertaining angels, and even more so as we share that with a stranger to us.
Of course there is more … but that’s where I start with this
Those are provocative questions!
Does God need our worship? What could God possibly need? God is perfectly complete. We are the ones that benefit and are completed by worship. Yme and CS Lewis have said it well.
As to hearing God call us worthy, doesn’t the communion liturgy sing the “new song” of Revelation 5 so wonderfully, “Worthy is Christ…whose blood set us free to be people of God…” I try to imagine singing that new song with the ten thousand times ten thousand angels!
What am I hoping for? We rely on our pastor to read, explain and apply the Biblical text so that we will be encouraged to read the Bible and pray daily, and grow in our walk with the Lord. And we love to sing our worship too.
Just some thoughts..
For me, meaningful worship has a rhythm to it…we come to receive God’s gracious gifts (forgiveness of sins, the Word, Sacraments, blessings, etc) and we respond with thankfulness and praise (songs/hymns, offering, confessing the Creed). In our worship, it’s a back and forth exchange – God gives, we respond, God gives, we respond.
I think worship is essential; we need to be connected to the body of believers and be reminded of God’s forgiveness and promises from the pastor. I need to say, out loud, that I’m a sinner…and I need to hear, out loud, that I’m forgiven. For me, acknowledging that I’m a sinner alongside others is more convicting than if I’m at home on the couch by myself. And too, hearing the pronouncement that I’m covered by the blood of Christ is powerful stuff.
God did not create us to be separated from the body of believers. We are called together to remind each other of God’s character, to encourage one another, to correct and admonish and support each other in God’s Word. Satan would have us be separate from this support – tell us we don’t really need it. But what happens to the animal that is left on its own? The one that’s separated from the pack? It’s usually the first picked off! To some degree, when we leave the body (don’t worship/go to church), we lose a whole group of people God has given us to support/encourage/convict us. Who’d wanna miss out on something so essential to God?!
An old post, I know, but I’m preparing a sermon on worship for this coming Sunday. You write that, perhaps God doesn’t ‘need’ our worship. That may be so. But I’d say that God ‘deserves’ our worship whether God needs it or not.