A Cloak Worthy of Worship

    Over lunch one day I was having a conversation with a friend about the church.  They told me that they really didn’t have a reference to what the Church in America was because they did not attend one of those typical huge churches that so define Amercian Christianity.  The church they attend is small and very different. From their persepctive, its more communal and intimate.  This is a church that prides itself in not being like those other churches and in being more new testament in its outlook.

    It seems quite en vogue to discuss and debate how we should do church in America.  The questions revolve around how the church should look, how its members should act in relation to the church, and how the church should express its influence in the surrounding society.  Discussions of strengths and weaknesses abound, but what is our purpose?  These discussions have, of late, come to make me unsettled.

    Church should not and needs to stop being a show.  It is not a production, it is not entertainment.  That doesn’t meant that it shouldn’t be engaging to the mind, spirit, or emotion.  There is nothing wrong with beautiful music, language, or architecture.  If anything, Churches are sliding away from these high forms of worship.  In new church plants, the model regarding collective worship seems to be one that appeals not to our higher forms, but to our base passions.  The concern is for ease of entry into worship and ease of mantaining worshipfullness.  Thus, litergies are reduced to simplistic improvised benedictions, worship has come to soley mean singing and such commanded rememberances such as Communion are relegated to once a quarter if at all.  Does the modern protestant church equal the death of reverence?  

   Individualism is killing the church.  The more, it seems, we talk about community, the more individualistic we become.  This is illistrated with two examples.  If a person is looking for a church, for the sake argument lets say that they are already a Christian, and they are taken two different churches.  The first Church is a litergical church, say Episcopal/Anglican (or Catholic, even), and the second a non-litergical non-denominational/community Church.  Regardless of the fact that a whopping 90% of the litergical worship service of the Epicopal/Anglican (Catholic) is straight out of scripture, that person is more than likely going to choose the non-denominational, non-litergical church.  An unscientific, rough estimation would be 1:20 will choose the litergical church.  The reasons for this range from the service being to stuffy to the worship style being too hard to follow.  Or, is it that it is too hard to learn?  Learn worship?  Learn in Worship?

  In Exodus Chapters 26-27 God gives the specific details of how the Isrealites should build the Tabernacle.  Exodus Chapters 35-39 depict the Israelites building the Tabernacle to God’s specifications along with God’s instructions for how the Tabernacle and its worship impliments should be used.  In Chapter 40, God tells Moses how he shall go about erecting the Tebernacle, including how he should anoint the instruments of worship according to God’s design.  In verse 34 the glory of God fills the tabernacle.  In Leviticus chapter fifteen God speaks Moses and Aaron about what will make a person unclean, and in verse 31 states, that they should keep those who are unclean separated so that they will not defile His tabernacle.   

  Matthew 5:23-24 Christ tells us that if we are offering our sacrifice and we remember that we have wronged someone, that someone has something against us, we should first go and be reconciled to them and then come back and complete our offering.  Paul spends a significant portion of 1 Corinthians decribing proper, thoughtful worship.  Prescription of worship found in scripture pains our societally influenced individual focus.  

   One can survive, strictly speaking, on a diet comprised of foods produced by the Mars and Lays companies.  However, beyond the shorter life expectancy, the quality of life erodes into a heavy, lack-luster, and tired muddle of agony which only seems to be amiliorated by more of the same junky cause.  If one lives one a balanced diet of good wholesome food, though at times it may not satisfy the impetuous stomachs craving, the whole body will be stronger, lighter, and overall better joy because it was given what it needed, not what it wanted.

  Eventually we have to heed the biblical advice that we allow ourselves to be weaned from the milk which nourished us when we first came to faith and begin to eat solid food.  Surely Peter admonishes us to nourish ourselves on spiritual milk, but even he must have said so with the organic sense that we would grow in our faith and not remain spiritual infants forever.  Yet, this seems to be where we have gone.  Far from allowing the intellect to be a driving force in our growth, we have turned it to rationalize our lack of growth. Knowledge of scripture and moral living is not maturity in Christ.  Looking like a Christian, being a part of the Christian subculture is not maturity in Christ.  Maturity in Christ is submission to Him who alone can bring it about, the Holy Spirit.

  While this is reflected in all our life, it is most reflected in our worship. Hence, why scripture speaks to the subject of worship prescriptively so often. Insofar as worship is not about us, we should not seek to worship in such a way that makes us feel good, for that is the same logic the hedonist uses to excuse his fornicating lifestyle.  Rather we should seek to always remember that worship is about God.  In order to feed at the banquet table, we must first die to ourselves.  Moreover, when we come before Him to feast, we must shed the clothing of our common days and don the special coat the is befitting the ocasion, lest we find ourselves cast into the darkness.  Let us never forget that fearless “worship” is pretentious and repugnant.