What is Worship? Part 1

I've been thinking and talking about worship lately.  What does it mean to worship God?  What is Christian worship?  What is worship 'in the Spirit?'  What is special about Vineyard-style worship?  I picked a few passages to help me explore these questions.


The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."  
Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father.  You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.  God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
John 4:19-24

This is a story about Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman at a well, in the middle of the day.  This is the last part of their conversation, and it centers around two different modes of worship (Samaritan worship and Hebrew worship) as well as the meaning of true worship.

In this story, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that worship is not about a location.  I think there is a lot to that statement.  Part of our attempt to worship is dependent on the ability to enter into a sacred space, where everyday objects, words and people take on sacramental significance.  A sacrament is a physical event that reflects a spiritual reality, and there are many 'signs' or symbols that we use in worship which are meant to help us access the sacred.  In this way, sacraments and signs are good things.  However, the signs are meant to point to something else--worship is about the practice of God's presence, not about the practice of comforting rituals--and when the signs end up blocking what they are pointing to, they have become problematic.  This is why Jesus points out that true worship is not predicated on location.  The form of our worship does matter but genre, building, sound, books, leaders, or liturgies are not the point.

Worship is about Spirit and Truth.

Spirit (pneuma) is the shared divine essence or energy that was given to me by God, and it is also the mysterious sense of otherworldly power that comes in the presence of God  (IVP New Bible Dictionary, pp. 1125-9).  The phrase 'deep calls out to deep' comes to mind (Psalm 42:7).  There is something in me that cries out to God and responds to God's voice.  It happens especially as I worship God.  Worshipping in Spirit has to do with that "otherwordly power that comes in the presence of God" when the Spirit is there with me.
  

Jesus says that the Father is seeking 'true worshipers' to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.  The Greek word used for truth here is alethinos.  "The adjective alethinos especially sometimes carries the 'Platonic' sense of something real as opposed to mere appearance or copy. [...] The true worshipers are not so much sincere as real.  Their worship is a real approach to God who is spirit, in contrast to the ritual which restricts God to Jerusalem or Mt Gerizim, and which can at best symbolize and at worst distort him." (IVP New Bible Dictionary, p. 1213).

That definition makes a helpful distinction between 'sincere' and 'real' but doesn't really point out the significance of the difference.  As an example, I could sincerely worship the King of England without having any idea of what he is like.  My sincerity is entirely dependent on me.  However, I cannot be a real worshiper of the King of England unless I know him to some extent.  My worship doesn't have any absolute value if I worship a completely unknown person (or worse, a false image I have constructed in my head!).  It seems like my worship becomes more real and more true as I begin to know the object of my worship better.  I am worshipping a person--my Abba, my Father--and in order to be a true worshiper of him I must know him.

In other words, one of the goals of worship is to experience God.  To experience His heart.  To know His love.  To feel His peace.  To sit in His presence.

Your Life is Not About You

I continue to plow through Adam's Return by Richard Rohr.  Message #3 of the ubiquitous male initiation rite is "Your life is not about you."  Rohr starts off the chapter with this explosive quote that I really liked:

"The important religious question is not that of the rich and young man, 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?'  The essential religious question is the one God, in effect, asks Adam, 'Who are you? and Whose are you?'  We like the first question because we think there is something we can do about it, and it gives us control.  We fear the second question because only God can answer it, and his answer seems too good to be true."

He is circling back to that theme that was brought up in the introduction--all true spirituality is about letting go.  About recognizing the cycle of birth and death that God officially introduced with the first passover.

I need control, because in my heart of hearts, I don't really believe that God loves me.  If I really, completely, totally and fully understood the radical love that my Father has for me, I would be a different person.  I would hold the things God has given me with open hands and an open heart, rather than clutching impulsively and fearfully at them.  That knowledge of love--which begins as belief and is transformed into knowledge through experience and then comes full circle back to belief (all the while looking absurd and impossible!)--is the religious question that Rohr is referring to.  My identity is who I am, not what I do.  It doesn't so much matter what I do, compared to who my Father is.  Because we all grow up to be like our dads (or moms).

Like John Wimber said, "I'm a fool for Christ.  Whose fool are you?"

Signs of The Kingdom

Tonight at church we were talking about the Kingdom of God.  The phrase 'Kingdom of God' is very significant for me, which means that I have some rather central philosophical, intellectual and practical commitments in my life that are tied into my understanding of what the Kingdom of God is.  I'm not going to try to elaborate on those right now.  I wanted to write down my thoughts about what it looks like for me as a Christian to participate in God's Kingdom as it comes; particularly one of the first steps of that participation, which I think would be observing the places that God is at work in my world so that I can step into those places.
I asked myself, "Where is God at work in my neighborhood?"  I started listing 'spiritual' signs of God's presence:

• peace
• freedom from bondage
• emotional experiences
• a feeling of being loved
• fruit of the Spirit
• people getting offended
• a reversal of priorities
• wounds being healed

These are definitely signs that God is present.  They are all good things.  But I kept noticing that the places where God's Kingdom is needed most, the places where I know God wants to bring change the most (because He is a Father and a Father's heart is for those who have nothing to offer, who are helpless, lost, confused, and broken beyond repair) are places where most of the above listed phenomena are unknown or, in fact, alien.  People who have been reduced to complete and utter poverty of every kind often have no ability to even conceptualize what peace would feel like.  What it means to be loved.  Not only what a healed wound would feel like, but simply what wounds they have accepted as reality because they have been living with them for many years.
So what are the signs that God's Kingdom is at work among those people in my neighborhood?  I think it might be simply their acknowledgment of need.  In order to be successful in Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12-step program, you must recognize that you have a problem and that you do not have the power to solve it on your own.  It's difficult to help someone who denies their need for help.  It might even be impossible.  Unfortunately, that same denial is a hallmark of American culture.  We have mastered the art of self-sufficiency and in the absence of its reality we have learned to fake it almost perfectly.  We even lie to ourselves about our self-sufficiency.
For God to be free to help me, he must first break through my denial of need.  My next door neighbor might have a deep need for deliverance from addiction to cocaine--and healing from the emotional wounds that led to her addiction in the first place--but if she is perpetually able to see her lifestyle as glamorous, sustainable and good, she will never recognize her dependence or her attempts to hide from her pain.  God has to break through her denial, ostensibly by breaking her: reducing her to a messy and undeniably helpless individual.  Once she admits her brokenness, I know for sure that God is at work.  Once she admits she is hungry for something other than cocaine, I know God is at work.  Once she admits that she is tired of denial and the appearance of self-sufficiency, I know without a doubt that God is working in her life.  And this may be long before any semblance of peace, spiritual fruit, healing or reversal of priorities appears in her life.

Her acknowledgment of need is the first sign of The Kingdom coming in her life.

Manhood in America

These are some quotes and ideas from a good book I am reading: Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation by Richard Rohr.

"The English historian G.M. Trevelyan said that Western education 'has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.'  In other words, we have substituted job preparation for broad education, information for knowledge, facts and statistics for wisdom.  What the primal peoples seem to have known is that mere technology without depth and breadth is dangerous, even destructive to society.  Initiation was on a different plane that mere transference of facts and data."  (p. 16)

"Sacred rituals and sacred words situated life in a bigger frame, so nature, beauty, suffering, work, sexuality, and ordinary humdrum were seen to have transcendent significance.  Basically, they gave life meaning, and that is the one thing the human soul cannot live without.  Heaven and earth have to be put together or this world never becomes home. [...] This was the incarnation before the Incarnation!  Jesus made incarnation particular, concrete, visible, and beautiful, but it has always been God's pattern and it is called creation.  Yet the particular has always been scandalous and unworthy of thinking and sophisticated people. [...]
Union with God, union with what is, that is to say, union with everything, has always been the experiential goal of initiation."  (p. 29)

"The entire process that we call initiation somehow made it possible for a man to experience five essential truths.  They became the five essential messages of initiation:

1. Life is hard.
2. You are not that important.
3. Your life is not about you.
4. You are not in control.
5. You are going to die.

You will perhaps be shocked by the seemingly negative character of these five truths, which probably shows how untraditional we have become, even those who think of themselves as conservatives. At this point in history, we have some major surgery to do; separation from codependency, separation from limited self-image, separation from the autonomous ego, separation from the securities of boyhood and an almost coercive push into the responsibilities of manhood." (pp. 32-33)

"In the spiritual life there is no elsewhere.  First and last, you are your major problem.  My angers and irritations are, first of all, saying something about me, and that is what I must hear before I make any other judgments.  What we have come to call sins are actually the symptoms of sin; in other words, they are the predictable effects of trying to live outside of evident reality, which is the cycle of death and rebirth.  We prefer to feel appropriately guilty about the symptoms instead of doing the hard work of changing the underlying illusion, which is why most people don't grow very much." (pp.41-42)

I find Rohr to be a delightful integration of many other thoughtful authors and perspectives that I have enjoyed in the past few years.  He contains echoes of Lewis, Chesterton, George Ladd, Wendell Berry, Donald Miller and Eugene Peterson.  His commentary on the state of our modern American culture and spirituality are direct, pointed, and very insightful.  His understanding of the Kingdom of God and how it is to be worked out in our individual lives, our church communities and our world is quite refreshing.  His prescriptions (so far) for beginning to deal with the profound and frightening issues confronting healthy masculinity today are powerful.

I'm going to keep reading.

Class and Resources

I was jogging near Bidwell Parkway on a spetacular autumn afternoon and thinking about the ways my friends and my neighbors and I 'classify' people.  I'm talking about socioeconomic classification and how it apparently correlates with crime, political responsibility and emphasis on education.  Somehow we (and most of society) see a 2011 Land Rover in the driveway and we think, "nice family."  A few blocks down the street, the scenery changes drastically, we see (and probably hear first) a 1992 Honda Civic and think, "drug dealers."  And we also think "Peurto Rican" or "Black."

Stereotypes are interesting, because they are often right, but they are so often used to generalize blindly and unfairly.  The truth is, there are many factors that might determine a person's lifestyle and behavior.  Education is important, but so is work ethic.  Genetics are important, but so is environment.  Culture and ethnicity are important, but so are local community and government.

So I decided that my 'classiness' and the classiness of the people around me is least of all dependent on our financial resources.  It is far more dependent on our emotional resources, our intellectual resources, and our spiritual resources.

Don't misinterpret that last statement; I don't think that the resources a person possesses determine his value.  In fact, I think that the truest and most ultimate value comes from God, and he says "blessed are the poor in spirit."  That seems to say that it's the people who have nothing to offer--the ones who are completely devoid of useful resources in this world--are most likely to receive God's presence and His love.  I am talking about 'classiness' in terms of the choices we make, the things we value, the pursuits we invest our time and money into.

As an example, If I spend all my time and money trying to make more money, then that defines me.  I have just stated by my actions that the most important thing in the world--the thing I want my life to be about--is money.  And therefore my 'class,' as in my accepted position in society, is as a money-grubber.  (Whoops...slightly pejorative term there...)  But if I spend my time and money trying to heal my emotional hang-ups and then the emotional hang-ups of the people around me, I have shown by my choices and values that my accepted position in society is as a healer.  A peace-maker.  A community-builder.  Seeking only and ever to improve my own emotional resources might be selfish, but I'm convinced it's still better than pursuing financial resources.

Part of it, then, is where your heart is in the whole thing.  Because someone could spend all their time and money trying to make more money for other people.  But then, it wouldn't be about the money, would it?  It would be about them believing that money is the answer to people's problems, so ultimately it would be about them wanting to fix other people's problems.  Which is awesome.  Can we blame them if their solution to other people's problems is wrong?

I think one of the reasons its risky to have lots of money (God doesn't say money is the root of all evil, he says its the love of money) is that it becomes so easy for us to see that money as 'ours.'  I earned it, I saved it, I used it wisely.  Now it's mine to do what I want with!  Emotional resources, intellectual resources, spiritual resources are often out of our control.  At some point, no matter how hard I may have worked to get through college, I have to admit that my intelligence and ability to learn did not originate with me.

So I want my position in society (class!) to be about improving other people's emotional, intellectual and spiritual resources.  Because Jesus said, "you cannot serve both God and money."  And money isn't the answer to our problems.  Jesus is.