We started this week by reading a chapter from Robert E. Webber’s The Divine Embrace. The title of this chapter was Life Together, which honestly seems pretty vague but does correlate with the topics of the chapter. The chapter focuses on the problem of churches in America being too formed by culture. Churches have become focused on the physical building, the programs, and the production of what can happen on a Sunday rather than the people, discipleship, and following the way of Jesus. While this doesn’t make all these churches evil, it does leave a void in not only their congregation but also their leadership. He began this chapter with the issue of burnout of leaders between heart and mind. I found it interesting how Webber was able to find that a root source for this burnout is because of how the American church is formed currently. Not only that, but that worship, not American worship of worship, is meant to be spiritually nourishing. That, “Worship needs to be both truth and passion,” as he says later in this chapter.
He explains many different ways worship nourishes our spirits and refreshes our hearts and renews our mind. That it’s not just a high or a general way to feel better, but it is a way for our spirits and souls to feel healthier and stronger. I found all the ways he described to be both beautiful but also realistic to agree with. The first thing he mentioned was the attention of our songs directing what we believe about our roles in worship and really the world. He looked at research that said two out of 72 contemporary worship songs mention all three persons of the Trinity explicitly. This showed the reality that most of these songs are really “me” focused, and that actually burdens the soul rather than feeds it. When we sing songs in worship that are “me” focused, it forms us to believe that what we sing and what we feel has to be good enough for a distant God and that worship is about what you can offer God. But the reality is, God is not just seated on the Throne but also active throughout the world. So, singing songs about that, just about who he is, then lightens the burden of our responsibility. Maybe Jesus was thinking of the 21st century American worship culture when he said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30 ESV)
Other two ways he mentioned worship as a food to nourish our souls is worship as prayer and worship as enacting God’s story. Worship enacts God’s story meaning that worship not only reminds us of God’s history and mission for the world, but it actually mobilizes us to be in it actively. It is us, physically and spiritually, joining in with what God is doing in the world. But, that doesn’t negate the personal beauty of worship as well. We, personally, get to delight in the joy of this story and who God is. The joy of our salvation and the joy of surrender.
Then, worship as prayer is something I have held in my heart as a treasure that I was refreshed to read about. I think this has been my heart, this has been my time with God in the secret place. I’ve tried different ways of making it congregational and those moments have been the most beautiful times of worship for me. What Webber says about worship as prayer is that it is based in our history with God but also in Scripture, it is the heavenly language, and that this language is not just personal with us but it spans throughout Christian history and culture. That this worship as prayer is really a unifying practice. This is when you realize that worship is a conversation that is not one sided. It is a pursuit of conversation by God, then our response, then God’s voice to us in that specific moment in time, then our response to that. Worship as prayer feeds the soul in a deeper, richer, more satisfying way than just “I’m going to sing to God now…”
I feel encouraged to consider how I foster worship now. I feel inspired to consider my culture and how I have morphed to it rather than have worship be the culture that we morph to. Wrestling between the joy of getting to worship in a specific cultural context, but also how to guard the purity and intention of worship well.
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