BLOG 1/31/2016. WELCOME TO WORSHIP … WOW! WHAT IF …?
A couple of times a week I pass a big, handsome Georgian colonial church building with its sign out front which says: “Welcome to Worship,” and that right across the street from another church building which invites: “Join Us for Worship.” I began musing on what it would mean if those responding really, really had an encounter with the God whom they profess to believe and worship (and who has made himself known through the fathers and the prophets, but most perfectly in Jesus Christ). It would never call forth a: ‘Wasn’t that a sweet service?’ response.
Remember that when Moses encountered God in the burning bush it launched him on one of the most humanly impossible, unimaginable, and demanding new directions he never expected.
Later, when he again encountered the transcendent God on Mt. Sinai it was such a traumatic and transforming encounter that his faced glowed such that he had to cover it with a vail before he could communicate with the frightened Israelites at the foot of the mountain.
When Isaiah unexpectedly encountered God in the temple, high and lifted up, what with seraphim circling about, … it reduced Isaiah to a trembling, frightened figure on the ground asking the Lord to depart from him. He was never the same after that. So it was whenever there are accounts of men and women encountering God. It is awesome, overwhelming, totally humbling and calling for contrition, humility, and profound repentance.
Annie Dillard laments: Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful tourists on a package tour of the Absolute? The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C. … On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear [fashionable hats] to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers … (Teaching a Stone to Talk. 1982. p. 40).
Yes, the purpose of New Testament worship is unmistakably … not inspiration but transformation. “I appeal to you … to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind … that you may prove what is the will of God…” (Romans 12:1-2). In that same letter, Paul lets us know that the very purpose of our being called to God is in order to conform us to the image of his Son. God is in the process of creating a New Humanity, so that our encounters with him are for the purpose of refining that process. It is not to make us more orthodox, or to inspire us, but to bring us into harmony with the mind of God, the will of God, and the praxis (or lifestyle) of God’s New Creation people.
The huge deluge of god-talk in the current presidential campaign is frighteningly revealing about how wearing labels of religious interest groups seldom looks at the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus Christ, … seldom seems to assess political platforms with the radical social teachings of Jesus. Authentic worship will overwhelm us with the glory of God and conform us to the radically new and unselfish servant-role of those with the mind of Christ. Christ’s followers are not conforming themselves to the political platforms of the parties, but to the teachings of Christ, and to those (whatever their religion, or lack thereof) running for office whose planks reflect those teachings.
Welcome to Worship! Beware, it could utterly redirect your whole life, and redefine all of your dreams and values and career goals. It is not something to engage in mindlessly.
