The Mysterious Means of Worship
Today is our annual Advent retreat at church, and, as usual, we have different rooms set up in the church for individual meditation and prayer between times of group devotions. The sanctuary and the adjoining prayer room are set up to be rooms of sensory stimulation--sights, sounds and even smells are dominant in these rooms. Our Choir room, on the other hand, is set up to be a quiet room--almost a deprivation of senses.
"What is the point?" you may ask. The answer came out of a desire to help you set aside this retreat time for something different than normal. We asked ourselves, "How can we make this a time of worship?" Without going into the voluminous explanation of what exactly worship is, that begged the question, "How do we experience worship?" (For the sake of the discussion, we'll limit the definition of worship to the corporate, "In church" version.)
So you sit down in the pew or chair, and things happen. Songs are sung, scripture is read, plates are passed, etc. etc. etc. How do you experience worship? How do you perceive what is going on? The answer, like God himself, is both simple and complex.
At the simplest level, we experience worship with our senses. We feel the hardness or softness of the pew. We hear the music. We smell and taste the communion elements. We see the decor of the sanctuary. Simple, right?
But we sit in other soft or hard chairs. We hear other music, smell and taste other bread and wine or juice, and see other styles of decor. What makes these things different? Is it just the cross or Jesus' name metaphorically and/or literally stamped on these things that makes them different? No, the cross and Jesus' name are not magical talismans with which one can simply invoke worship! (See Acts 19:13-17 for what happens when you try this!)
This is the mystery of worship--the Holy Spirit takes the ordinary and sanctifies it--it is circumcised from the mundane, set apart and made significant--holy. It is imbued with extra significance.
The hardness of the pew reminds us of the hardness of the wood of the cross. Or the softness of the upholstery reminds us of the meek Lamb of God or the shepherds and their sheep at Christmastime. The music we hear links us to our heritage and to each other. The bread and wine we taste remind us of the body and blood of our Lord. And the cross we see at the front of the sanctuary, the eight sides of our dome (ask me or Pastor Albert about this one!), the picture of Jesus in the rose window--the things we see and what they remind us of are too numerous to mention!
This symbolism is one of the primary ways God can describe the infinite, unfathomable divine to our finite, tiny minds. God uses it throughout the bible. The two trees in the Garden of Eden symbolized obedience and disobedience. The burning-but-not-consuming bush symbolized God. The Passover lamb symbolized Jesus himself. Note even, how many times Jesus said, "The Kingdom of heaven is like..."!
In their song, "The Love of God," Frederick Martin Lehman and Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai write
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
When language fails us, as it does when trying to describe God, we must resort to a more basic means of communication. Ancient man did it with drawings on cave walls. He may not have known it, but I am sure that he got the idea from God!
So use your senses to engage in worship--but realize, too, that in using your senses to engage in worship, you have unlocked another key to perceiving worship--engagement. We have to participate in worship for it to reach its zenith of meaning. If you don't know what the symbols mean and you're not actively looking for them, you run the risk of dragging yourself through a fruitless, dry, and unproductive church service, and it won't be the church's fault!
"What is the point?" you may ask. The answer came out of a desire to help you set aside this retreat time for something different than normal. We asked ourselves, "How can we make this a time of worship?" Without going into the voluminous explanation of what exactly worship is, that begged the question, "How do we experience worship?" (For the sake of the discussion, we'll limit the definition of worship to the corporate, "In church" version.)
So you sit down in the pew or chair, and things happen. Songs are sung, scripture is read, plates are passed, etc. etc. etc. How do you experience worship? How do you perceive what is going on? The answer, like God himself, is both simple and complex.
At the simplest level, we experience worship with our senses. We feel the hardness or softness of the pew. We hear the music. We smell and taste the communion elements. We see the decor of the sanctuary. Simple, right?
But we sit in other soft or hard chairs. We hear other music, smell and taste other bread and wine or juice, and see other styles of decor. What makes these things different? Is it just the cross or Jesus' name metaphorically and/or literally stamped on these things that makes them different? No, the cross and Jesus' name are not magical talismans with which one can simply invoke worship! (See Acts 19:13-17 for what happens when you try this!)
This is the mystery of worship--the Holy Spirit takes the ordinary and sanctifies it--it is circumcised from the mundane, set apart and made significant--holy. It is imbued with extra significance.
The hardness of the pew reminds us of the hardness of the wood of the cross. Or the softness of the upholstery reminds us of the meek Lamb of God or the shepherds and their sheep at Christmastime. The music we hear links us to our heritage and to each other. The bread and wine we taste remind us of the body and blood of our Lord. And the cross we see at the front of the sanctuary, the eight sides of our dome (ask me or Pastor Albert about this one!), the picture of Jesus in the rose window--the things we see and what they remind us of are too numerous to mention!
This symbolism is one of the primary ways God can describe the infinite, unfathomable divine to our finite, tiny minds. God uses it throughout the bible. The two trees in the Garden of Eden symbolized obedience and disobedience. The burning-but-not-consuming bush symbolized God. The Passover lamb symbolized Jesus himself. Note even, how many times Jesus said, "The Kingdom of heaven is like..."!
In their song, "The Love of God," Frederick Martin Lehman and Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai write
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
When language fails us, as it does when trying to describe God, we must resort to a more basic means of communication. Ancient man did it with drawings on cave walls. He may not have known it, but I am sure that he got the idea from God!
So use your senses to engage in worship--but realize, too, that in using your senses to engage in worship, you have unlocked another key to perceiving worship--engagement. We have to participate in worship for it to reach its zenith of meaning. If you don't know what the symbols mean and you're not actively looking for them, you run the risk of dragging yourself through a fruitless, dry, and unproductive church service, and it won't be the church's fault!
"O come, let us worship and bow down:
Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.
For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture,
And the sheep of his hand."
Psalm 95:6-7a
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