So, there’s this great song by a band called the Chariot. One of my teenage hero’s, Josh Scoggin, screams in the song “This is not my first rodeo,” and after that a parade of chaos is unleashed for a solid three minutes.
It’s a pretty fantastic song that leaves you wanting to dropkick someone while jumping out of a plane, and gives you the same sort of feeling that downing a six pack of red bull gives you before the jitters are to much for you to stand. But it’s the line that interests me.
I’m not suggesting I have everything figured out about worship. In fact, it is in the fact that I can say this sunday when I lead Dwell music, ” this is not my first rodeo,” that what I have begun to discover about worship is more profound.
I’ve lead music in the church for ten years, but I’ve been in the church my whole life. What I’ve noticed is that there are two views on what worship really is. Some believe that worship is what we do at sunday gathering. This group of believers consider the music time, share time, teaching, etc. is the definition of what true worship is. They would be very careful not to say that of coarse, and would be quick to quote lyrics from Matt Redmond’s song ” When the Music Fades,” but the proof is in the pudding. This group of Chrisitians live for sunday service.
The other view on worship is held by Christians who put very little value in an intentional corprete gathering, and even downplay its importance. They are those who would say that our worship is to those outside the walls of church, and that the traditional form of gathering is outdated and uneffective at making disciples of Jesus Christ. They believe that the idea of a sunday gathering is slowly being replaced by a more modern form of gathering that is intentionally unintentional in the way that they ingage people. And in this intentionally unintentional way of structuring a community this group would would say that true worship happens.
I’ve played my part over the years in both schools of thought, and have learned from both of them, but I’ve always assumed that I would have to find my place in one camp or the other some day. It wasn’t until I discovered that neither one was right- or nessicarily wrong i suppose- that I finally landed on a definition of what true worship is. I had so long tried to pin one view of worship against the other, that I failed to realize that there was no “one or the other,” only - as in all of creation- a brokeness created by the fall. These two views of worship were flawed in that they existed- not as they were intended to be united- but as two. One view said worship is glorifying the Father through community expression. The other said that worship is obediance rendered to The Father outside of a building or gathering place. But Jesus, who through the resurrection is mending all that is broken and divided, demonstrates that these two views were intended to be one.
They exist together in the form of The Call and The Response.
The Call is what happens when we gather on Sunday. Whether it is in the teaching,the share time, or the music something very foundational to our worship is birted in those moments. That foundational element of our worship is called gratitude. When our emotions are ingaged by truth revealed about the character of our God, a natural gratefullness bursts to life in us.
This gratfullness in The Call is imperative if we intend to properly live out The Response. It is the difference between Dead Obligation and Vibrant -Full- of- Life- Worship. When Jesus came He replaced the old form of what it meant to worship. He said that he would tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days. The religious leaders thought He was crazy, but Jesus was not suggesting that he would tear down some man made structure, and then have an extreme home make over moment. He was suggesting a deconstruction of a form of worship that was represented by The Temple. Jesus was saying that there was a new temple, and that in Him was a new way to worship. It wasn’t found in dead obligation anymore, but it was in grateful obediance that we now worshipped our God, and fulfilled His original intent for humanity.
When we hear from the mouths of our brothers and sisters what and who God has been to them, deep truths are revealed about our God. And because those truths involve God demonstrating them to us as his people, they become less of arbitrary facts, and more of deeply meaningful interactions between God and the world He loves. This becomes the fuel on the fire. Gratitude leads us to respond. We cry out, God what can I do to show you my gratitude! No longer are we attempting to please God in a dead works form of worship, but instead we are responding in gratfullness to his extrodinary love he demonstrated to us while we were His enemy.
The Response is God’s answer to our question ‘what can i do to show my gratitude?’ It is represented in several passages throughout the entirity of the scriptures, but is never more clear than in Luke 4:18-19, Luke 24:46-49, and Acts 1:7-8.
These passages describes to us what Gods mission is for us to the world. It is at the same time the means by which our gratitude finds motion and flesh, and worship is made complete. The beauty, however, in Christ’s commission, is that it comes to us incomplete. That is to say, it comes to us in a skeleton form. God is a God of inspiration, and he desires us to be unique.
The great commission, as laid out in the passages above, are intentionally vauge. Jesus says that we are to declare that the captives are made free, and that the blind can now see, but he doesn’t nessisarily say how we are to proclaim those great truths. He also says that we’ll be His witnesses in all of the world, but he doesn’t expound on in what way we are to relay the information that we have witnessed. This is because the worship of God is to be expressed and made known to a world that is created purposefully unidentical to eachother. The message doesn’t change, but the vehicle by which each person is presented the information is different. Jesus gave us the essential structure, and then it is up to us to uniquely play our part in becoming vehicles of that structure to all of creation. We are like a song whose structure is formed by the key, but within which a plethora of individual expression exists.
There is one more element of worship that exists. That is The Result. It is the fulfillment of God’s intent in the world. It is what happens when God’s character is demonstrated through a unique and inspired people gratefull to be called his friends. It is The Kingdom breaking forth and reaching those who are oppressed and in need. It is heaven and earth becoming two no longer. It is justice for those too weak to fight for it themselves. It is sight to the blind, and freedom to the captive. It is all of creation becoming what it was intended to be by restored relationship with its Glorious Creator.
This is our mission and this is our joy. We have been called to be a community that worships by a God that loves us. He calls us His own, and with gratefull hearts we respond.
