It's happened before. We get ready to go to "worship" on Sundays and I get this unsettled feeling when someone says, "Let's get ready to go to worship."
Lately, I've been inclined to say something like, "No. We're going to sing songs of praise and gather with other Christians for prayer, fellowship, and encouragement. It's part of the Christian life, but does not define worship."
Maybe you've thought this. Maybe you have not. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe there's something more to "worship."
As we get into the book Family Worship, it is important that we get our heads around what "worship" is in the first place.
Here's what we don't want. We don't want to begin with just some idea of worship--whether it's from popular Christian culture, the Christian music industry, or our own ideas. Ideally, we want our idea of worship to be shaped by Jesus, Scripture, and the traditions of the historic Christian church. By traditions, I don't mean "liturgy" or something like that. I mean looking into what great saints of the past thought about worship and how they practiced it. We can learn from them.
_________________________________________________
Many of you might know that the general lexical definition of "worship" is: "to show devotion and adoration or reverence for a deity or some object or person; to honor with religious rites."
But even such a definition can be incomplete. Dictionaries are written for and are the product of particular societies. The definition of "worship" in our dictionaries reflects how we practice and think about worship in our world today. When it says "to honor with religious rites"--it will conjure up the religious landscape of our time, practices that take place when a religious community gathers within the walls of a religious sanctuary during a specified time. Our dictionaries don't really speak of "worship" as involving much else than this because our ideas of "worship" are defined by what we know and experience.
Take, for example what came to the mind of Google, which, I think, gives us the pulse of popular thought. Google "worship" and here's what you get:
Hands raised. Great music, we assume. It's done among community, but between the individual and God. In our culture "worship" involves--almost demands--that we have "worship leaders." As a result, we plan and write "worship music." The Christian music industry--and it is just that, an industry, with marketing and all the other stuff that may or may not reflect Jesus' values very well--has marketed and sold "worship" as a genre of music quite effectively. And for the most part, Christians have bought on, for better or worse.
I've even heard some say "I just can't worship with this style of music..." Or "I can't really worship at this or that church" because of how things are said or done.
That makes me sad. Worship is more than something we can or can't do according to place, community, or style of music. We all recognize this. But, how much does this truth actually find its way into the practices of everyday life?
The book, Family Worship, encourages us in a slightly different direction with the idea of worship. The author does not really define worship, but begins with the assumption that worship consists of prayer, reading Scripture, and singing songs. And so the book is a book to help readers make this part of family life. No band. No lights. No liturgy. No church building or sanctuary.
______________________________________________
If you're reading along in the book, here are a couple thoughts (if you're not reading along, skip down to "What is Worship?" below).
The first chapter of the book aims to show where "family worship" consisting of prayer, Scripture reading, and singing songs is found in the Bible. But the examples are hard to come by, for several reasons. One of which is that families did not possess Bibles until after the printing press was created--nearly 2,000 years after much of the Old Testament was written, and 1,500 years after the New Testament. Besides that, the author even states that "there is no direct, explicit commandment about family worship in Scripture." One might think from this way of approaching the topic that "family worship" is not valued in Scripture, or that if you have to struggle to make a case for it, then maybe it's not that important.
Here's where the book might be better had it taken a different approach. Rather than begin with some idea of what worship in families might look like (in this case prayer, Scripture reading, and singing) and then go looking for example of this, it might have been better to see how Scripture even defines worship. Prayer, etc. might be acts of worship, but they do not define it. This is important.
A point of method here is important for us as Bible readers. The Bible is not best used to look for commands to follow or not follow in order to figure out how to live our Christian lives. It's not best used when we ask, "What is family worship?" and then open it to look for examples of family worship to show us that it is important and how to do it. The Bible is best used as a witness to a life-encompassing reality--the reality that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth and it is a witness to how God has moved among his people and how his people have responded in the world to that reality.
__________________________________________
What is Worship?
Worship is giving honor and praise and glory to someone or something. It is devotion. It is something someone gives to someone or something else.
The reality to which the Bible points us is that Jesus is Lord, and that God desires and deserves worship. Not because God has a big ego. It is just what we should do because, well, God is the reason we exist.
In this sense, worship is a life lived in response to the reality that God is the God of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and that Jesus is Lord. We don't need to find examples of families worshiping in the Bible to say, "See! The idea of family worship is important!" The trajectory of Scripture demands and expects that families participate in this reality through a life of worship--a life of devotion and honor to God in all things.
Where is a good passage to give us a starting point for understanding worship?
We can go a-looking for all kinds of Bible verses about worship. Many of them are found in the context of corporate worship and in the context of the temple and all it's rituals. The question, however, is not whether these sufficiently define worship. The question is: does Scripture give us reason to think that worship is ever more than this? If it does, than this should be our starting point. Let's get to what it's all about, and then understand the other stuff in relation to that.
And the answer to the question is "yes." As part of Scripture's witness, Paul says in Romans 12:1:
"Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, (this is) your intentional service of worship."Another way to put this might be: "Present your bodies as a sanctified and acceptable living sacrifice to God--your intentional service of worship."
In this passage, Paul's words contrast with what happened in temples across the landscape of Paul's day. It was a regular experience that people would go to a temple and offer a sacrifice with prayer and song to the god of their choosing--whether in the Jewish synagogue or temple, or the temple to Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, or whomever. This was worship. When people did this they did their acts of worship successfully.
In Romans 12:1, Paul is setting out something different. He's not defining worship as the actions or rituals done on certain occasions in a temple or other religious building. And Paul is talking about more than prayer, reading Scripture, and singing songs. This is where I think the book, Family Worship, actually is a little too restrictive or limiting in its understanding of "worship." Prayer, Scripture reading, and singing songs are certainly good spiritual practices, and they can be part of the life of worship, but they do not define worship.
For Paul, worship is defined by the life lived as an offering; the life lived as a song; the life lived as prayer to God in worshipful response. This includes family life. It includes all of life.
And worship is not something we receive or experience. Worship is something we perform and offer to God.
Daily actions are the rituals of worship. Our lives, indeed our bodies--not just our minds or hearts--are engaged in the offering of worship. The "temple" where we perform worship is the created world and everything in it.
________________________________________________
Now, in chapter one of Family Worship, the author gives several examples of people involved in "family worship" in Scripture: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Job, Asaph (writer of some of the Psalms), Paul, and Peter. These are helpful examples. They're helpful, however, not so much as examples of "family worship" in terms of families praying, reading Scripture, and singing songs in response to God's work among us. And these stories should not be taken as evidence for a mandate or expectation that God wants families to worship together in the home. You'll find no such mandate or expectation.
These stories from Scripture are helpful, rather, as examples of how the Bible witnesses--for our benefit--to saints of the past who devoted all aspects of their lives to God. They are examples of people whose worship of God was all-consuming, infecting the whole of their lives and of the lives of those around them and in their homes.
Some, like Joshua, proclaim that "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). Joshua does not say how they will do this. And Joshua does not say "as for me and my house, we'll make sure we go to the temple every Sabbath." What he says has no clear boundaries, other than it involves the entire household in serving the Lord. It's just their family motto.
Other examples, like Paul in Ephesians 5:25-26 and 6:4, help us see the importance of a life of love, service, and teaching within the family structure as a way of modeling the reality of God's kingdom present among us. It's another way of presenting our bodies as living sacrifices to God. It's another way to perform worship.
________________________________________________
So, how does worship--defined as offering our bodies to God--potentially change daily life in your home?
What ides of "worship" and of "family worship" are too limiting? Do you see "worship" as something you "experience" or something you "perform" and "offer" to God? What needs to change so that it becomes more of something you perform and offer to God?
How is your family and your household--your daily rituals and patterns--set up for a life offered to God intentionally? Beyond the practices of prayer, Scripture reading, and even singing songs, how do you worship as a family and how is your home a place where worship is performed? (If we're thinking of all of life, then we must ask how our leisure time is performing worship, how our finances and spending are directed for worship, how our conversations and arguments in the home are part of worship.)
No comments:
Post a Comment