BLOG 12/6/15. “COME AND WORSHIP CHRIST THE NEWBORN KING” WHEN AND HOW?

BLOG 12/6/15. “COME AND WORSHIP CHRIST” … WHEN? … AND HOW?

Okay, here’s a question: We’re bombarded in this period of the year with all of the images of the birth of Christ, and piped music everywhere extolling us to come and adore the Christ child, etc. There are those drive-thru manger scenes at the local church on the boulevard, and on and on … One of the hymns so familiar speaks of the angels from the realms of glory proclaiming the birth of the Messiah, and calling upon us to: “Come and worship Christ the newborn king.”

My questions are quite basic:  Where do we really worship Christ? and, how do we worship Christ? The word worship has to do with giving honor to worth. It’s a big word that has to do with some kind of a life response to awesome reality. So, to worship Christ the king has to do with more than some passing rite, some singing of familiar Christmas songs, or attending the Christmas Eve service at a church. True worship has got to be transformational, i.e., has got to be a holistic response that cannot be contained in some aesthetic service with candlelight and carols.

No, the true worship of Christ the king, if it is to have any believability, has got to be expressed in the totality of our 24/7 lives. It has to be to expressed in all of the pleasant and unpleasant, the harmonious and conflicted, the enigmatic and the simple, the pleasant and the really crappy involvements of our lives—otherwise it is not true worship.

True worship would be something like the ancient Isaiah being in the temple and having an awesome vision of the holy God, high and lifted up (Isaiah 6). It so overwhelmed and humbled him that he fell on his face in contrition and confessed how unclean he was.  God then lifted him up and performed an act of absolution on Isaiah, and then asked if he was ready to respond. When Isaiah’s response to to the vision of God was positive, then God sent him on a mission to communicate God’s message to a stubborn Jewish people. Lesson: true worship results in a transformed life, and a life of obedience to the will of God as an instrument of truth and justice.

Or take another clue: After Paul has spelled out that God has raised Jesus from the dead and declared him to be the Son of God with power, … then then spelled out (in his letter to the Roman Christians) what this meant in their calling to be conformed to the image of that same Son, i.e., to be by the dynamic working of the Spirit the veritable incarnations of that which Jesus came to inaugurate in this present rebellious world. Where? Right where in the midst of the daily stuff which was their daily context. Note: not in church meetings—though it should and could be intensified and informed there—but in the associations, choices, engagements, conflicts, disciplines, and responsibilities of daily life.

To that end, Paul will say: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God …” (Romans 12: 1-2). This give us clues as to the where and how of true worship. If what I experienced today in our worship service does not transform how I operate tomorrow (Monday) then it serves no purpose in the mission of God.

Our calling to be conformed to the image of God’s Son is not simply a theological maxim, it is our calling and is to be visible and demonstrable in our daily lives. Each week as I operate I will encounter neighbors, or the public sanitation workers, or medical personnel, or special education administrators, or lawyers, or store clerks—some very gifted and stylish, some of more modest gifts and abilities. I live in a community with all the political and social demands. I live in a world full of uncertainties and insecurities. But it is in such a context that my Christmas faith is to lived out, that I incarnate true worship. Merry Christmas!

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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