What is worship? Why does it matter?
Where’s the line between true worship of God and false worship—idolatry?
How does liturgy, style and preference factor into how we worship God?
These are the questions that I've been wrestling with through the scriptures lately.
For most of us, worship is a noun. Some people tend to think and speak of worship as referring only to that portion of the service when we have extended singing. Most of us define worship in light of our personal preferences or emotional responses to the elements meant to lead us into worship. If my preference, my evaluation and my critique are the limits of what defines worship then worship becomes something that is done for me, rather than something that is done for God.
Ironically, worship is primarily a verb – something that we do! As a word, “worship” has its origins in Old English. The original word essentially was “worth-ship”. Worship is about affording worth or value to something or someone. The object of our worship is worth or deserving of our focus, our adoration and our allegiance. In essence, when we worship we are responding to the worth or value of that which
holds our attention.
But worship is more than this--the act of worship is ultimately an act of submission. When we worship something or someone we are surrendering before that object or person. We are bowing down or lowering our will and our value before the will and value of that object or person. As Christians, our worship is a response to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to the grace, love and truth of the Gospel. Worship is about our engagement with this God, our participation in this Gospel.
While there can be no denying that we all have various tastes in terms of how we worship, we must not allow those preferences to obstruct or deny the object and subject of our worship, which is the Triune God. Liturgy (“the work of the people”) is a long-standing word in the vocabulary of the Church. The notion of liturgy reminds us that our worship is response to God’s revelation and not a product of our own initiative. As a concept, liturgy affirms that we have to taught how to worship by God—just as our lives are ordered by God, so is our worship.
Our exploration of the experience and meaning of worship has implications that reverberate beyond what we do together on Sundays. Each and every day we live our lives before the face of God. We seek to live in response to God's grace--to live in Jesus Christ ought of the conviction that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ lives in us. The larger message therefore that I believe that God has for us is that worship isn’t one of things that we do as Christians.
As followers of Jesus, worship is to be our way of life, of engaging God, each other and the world. We are made for worship. We exist first and foremost as worshipers. We are created for worship—to give glory to that which is greater than ourselves, to the one who created us. We are compelled to worship in order to find wholeness, to be complete as human beings. Worship then ought to shape and inform how we approach our lives out in the world between the Sundays.
Regular church attendance does not make us worshipers, just as getting up in the morning doesn’t mean that we really face the day and live the life we have been given. The questions we ought to ask ourselves every weekend at church are the same questions that we ought to ask ourselves every day of our lives.
“Did you worship while you were there—in the time that was given to you?”
“Did you seek to encounter God or to just be part of a gathering—to observe but not participate?”
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