Our Senses in Worship

I really loved what Taylor had to offer in these next two chapters of A Body of Praise. He focused on the senses in worship, the ones that are often overlooked, the unifying aspect of these senses, and also how art and imagination can contribute to worship as well. 

Taylor brings to light three overlooked yet powerful senses we have as human beings: sight, sound, and smell. What he noticed from Scripture and Jewish tradition is that God cares about all of these things, so much so he engrained it into rhythms of worship. Taylor points out that God created specific instructions for how the Tabernacle, and later Temple, should smell. God wanted us to be able to smell the familiarity of his presence. Taylor gives the example of the practice of skin-to-skin with newborn babies and their parents. This is a bonding moment where the child learns the smell of the parent, because smell is a quick and powerful sense, so that the child will know that this smell is associated with home and safety. So, Taylor argues, that in the same way God made his scent known to his people so they would know that those places were safe. I think this is a beautiful practice and really shows God’s heart to be our Father. It’s intimate to know how someone smells, and it's an honor that God invites on into that kind of knowledge of each other. It is physical, it is not just a heart posture relationship.The smell lingers in our hearts and our minds, becomes a fond, yet regular, memory, and we grow our history with the LORD. Just like the smell of homemade cookies often makes you think of being a child, with your mom or your dad or maybe a sibling or grandparent, I wish we had this kind of practice still where we find God in the things we smell. 

Taylor, in his discussion on sight, also explained the value of color and color following the Church Calendar to some degree or other. Not all churches follow this calendar, but Taylor still argued that it’s valuable. Color, similar to smell, sends subliminal messages to our brain and heart. Whether it is that a color evokes a certain emotion or memory, or that a color reflects a culture’s practices, the use of color is something that God created and should be intentionally used for worship. While Taylor mostly talked about this concept in regards to the Church Calendar, I considered it in regards to the average non-denominational evangelical church. I spent time interning at a fairly big church, one with lots of production equipment. How they consider color in their services is through the lighting. Usually lighting in these moments are less overarching than in the Church Calendar, but what if they were just as intentional. Picking colors for lighting, not simply based on warm and cool tones and the tempo of a song, but rather what kind of message is the song saying and how can we enhance that through the colors we choose? This just felt like a really practical way that can translate to many church practices of how to implement the importance of color that Taylor describes.  

Lastly, what I found beautiful in all these discussions about using our different senses in worship is not only how that draws us closer to the LORD, but it also creates a unity within the Body. When we sing together, we not only move our mouths together or tap along with the drums together, but we also think and feel together. Taylor mentioned that we might not all be thinking or feeling the same thing, but were thinking and feeling at the same time together, and that is beautiful. Or when we walk into church and a specific smell fills the room, we are all together creating the same sense memory of what the presence of God smells like. Like all these ways of engaging our senses that feel really personal and intimate are actually personal and intimate together in one accord. And I find that to be a really encouraging and unique perspective that I hadn’t considered before. What an honor to be invited into God’s presence through the senses of our physical bodies, and to come not just as our individual body but as the united Body of Christ!