No matter how old we are, how often we've worshipped, how much Bible we've absorbed, or how spiritual we may be, we always find ourselves with the disciples, scrambling to keep up with Jesus, humbly asking, "Lord, teach us to pray..." and teach us to worship (Luke 11:1). "We do not know how to pray, or to worship, as we ought" (Romans 8:26). Worship is the place where we do what we do not yet know how to do. We are pupils, getting our legs under us: a glimpse here, a leap forward there, but always amateurs, toddlers.
The barriers that block us from true worship are legion. "You are anxious and distracted about many things" (Luke 10:41)... although a clever worshipper, feeling her mind wafted away toward the afternoon's busy-ness or the evening's worries, simply offers the distractions to God: here is my life, Lord, do something with it! We have to admit we dress ourselves up in a defensive shield, rightly suspecting that if we let ourselves be vulnerable to God in worship, not just a few things, but everything, will be fundamentally different when we exit. If worship is boring, the problem may be me: "Much of our coldness and dryness in prayer may well be a kind of unconscious defence against grace" (Thomas Merton).
Worship is like learning to swim as an adult: you'd strongly prefer to keep your head above water, under control, and your struggle to swim is mere flailing against the water. You have to rest, to trust the water, to trust God's Spirit to be the buoyant power to hold you up, to sweep you along its tide, and then - if you just let yourself go - you begin to delight in its wonders.
Does worship work? is the wrong question. I do not value my wife based on whether I get the desired results when I push her buttons. We are a relationship, we love, listen, serve; we stick with each other, we are getting older together - and we always learn more about each other. So it is with God. Children mature only when they are shaped and molded in ways that may not suit the child's immediate desires. To worship in spirit and truth, we must be wrestled to the ground weekly and taught to lose ourselves in praise, pray for enemies, sing unfamiliar lyrics; to show up, to say "thine" instead of "mine," to hear a word that lashes the heart, to believe when it's easier not to. We submit our innocuous, self-serving notions about God to the rigors of worship: America need this, as crazed brands of Christianity that have little to do with Jesus are wildly popular (as articulated recently by Bill McKibben). Our only hope at getting our faith right is worship with integrity, letting it do its corrective surgery on the soul.
All good learning requires repetition. Annie Dillard was visiting a Church when the priest, kneeling at the altar leading the prayers, stopped suddenly, looked up to the ceiling, and cried out, "Lord, we say these same prayers every week!" Then the service proceeded. Dillard wrote, "Because of this, I like him very much."
James
james@mpumc.org
Coming up:
eWorship10 - Praise
eWorship11 - Giving Thanks
eWorship12 - The Offering
The complete eWorship series may be found on our web site.
