Jason Silver

Tuesday, September 21st, 2004

Stretching the G-o-d out.

Lane Fusilier referred me to a good article on worship which comes at an appropriate time. Here are three points worth highlighting:

(1) Worship "from the Story" means we can't settle to endlessly name and sing of the glorious attributes of God.
Worship can't be about magnifying our conception of perfection, ripped as it were from a few favorite proof texts. Instead we must get our hands dirty in the ambiguous, storied soil of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The big question I bring to worship is, "How are we remembering God here?" Without the texture of the story's context, we unwittingly import an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God into the narcissistic machinations of our own stories.

(2) Worship "to the Trinity" means we begin with a richer understanding of sovereignty.
Our three person-ed God dwells in community. At the heart of the cosmos is not my relationship with God, but the Father's relationship with the Son. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are baptized in the Triune name. It's how Paul says things like, "I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me" and "You have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Though we enter as individuals, worship is about community. And it's not our community "down here" worshipping God's community "up there." In Christ, by the power of the outpoured Holy Spirit, we are ushered into the dwelling place of God the Father Almighty. We do not generate worship in and of ourselves. Jesus Christ makes an offering through us to the Father for the sake of the World.

(3) Worship "for the World" means simply we are not our own.
Herein lies the most subtle temptation of all: To run headlong into the world, making worship an instrumental means to mission. Authentic worship is the end, leading us to a place of being "in Christ" for the World.

If the church's last five years could be summed up in an idea, I think it would be something like, "the time the church started to really understand worship." Yet, reading this article reminds me that we're blissfully arrogant and ignorant of what God really deserves in our worship. Somehow, we always seem to make it about us.

Comments?

~Jason