Rational Worship

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Rational Worship


	The Bible calls for “boots and all” responses to the facts of God’s mercy.

	GOD WANTS our rational worship. “I plead with you therefore, brothers, on account of God’s great mercies, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational worship.” (Rom 12:1)

Romans flows from chapter 1’s description of irrational worship -- God-abandoning worship -- through to chapter 12’s establishment of the criteria for rational worship and consequent conduct. Such worship is based in fact and history, and in our inner reality as humans. Rational worship is self-sacrificial, directed to total submission to God through that greatest of all sacrifices, the sacrifice of Christ for us.

Sociologist Emil Durkheim pointed out, from his studies, that the worship he investigated was ultimately self-worship. This is Paul’s point exactly. Most worship is irrational: if you challenge it, you challenge the worshipper’s sense of self, and may provoke a violent reaction. The person may invoke God’s name, but the threat is personal.

By contrast, true worship is ultimately connected with a God who can take care of himself!

Between chapters 1 and 12, Paul sets out God’s mercy to rebels and his undeserved grace to us in Jesus Christ. He shows that, through faith, we are given a new standing with God:

forgiven;
incorporated in to the “Christ tribe” through liberation from the “Adam tribe”;
brought into a process of experiential holiness by the indwelling Spirit;
grafted into the stump of Israel

-- and all this through a simple faith-based submission to Jesus as the risen Lord!

Is it any wonder that Paul begins chapter 12 of Romans with an appeal to enter into all that God has done for us in Christ? This is the essential gospel appeal!


	BUT HOW do we worship in practice? The corporate nature of New Testament Christianity cannot be stressed too highly. It would not be too strong a statement to say that the lone-wolf Christian is no Christian at all. As John Wesley said, “The Bible knows nothing of the solitary Christian.”

So we must discover how to worship together. Amazingly, the New Testament contains very few direct rules for Christian worship. (There must be a verse somewhere about always using the Green Baptist Hymnbook...) Paul’s “decently and in order” dictum in I Cor 14 really permits the church to do what they have always done, as long as they respect each other and don’t turn it into a rabble. He even allows for the use of “tongues” after all he has said: the point is that they now know what “decently and in order” means in various settings.

Paul also assumes (Colossians 3:16ff) that “Psalms, hymns and Spirit-inspired songs” will feature in worship. What a contrast: we use, sometimes uneasily, our choruses and Hillsong music: then, they expected impromptu composition and performance of a “chorus” under the Spirit’s direction!

The late Presbyterian missionary-theologian, Francis Schaeffer, spoke somwhere of “form and freedom” -- that the New Testament provides for a minimal form in which wide freedom is permitted. Acts 2:42ff -- an exemplar for the church -- includes for the baptised believers the following “form” issues:

Apostolic teaching. For us today, the proclamation of the Word,

Fellowship. This is exemplified in their community of property, their genuine and practical care for one another, and their willingness to spend time together

Celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This is in the context of a common meal

Prayer and Praise.

Very little else is prescribed.

The issue of motivation
FOR US today, then, the question is, “How much of what we do in our churches is, in fact, irrational worship?” The answer is not found in vilifying traditional or charismatic worship, or whatever is the current bugbear. At issue is our motivation, the relationship with Christ underlying the surface features.

Years ago, I visited two Canberra churches. One was so formal, so structured, that the Secretary even gave the visiting speaker a schedule for the service which specified the finishing time for the sermon! There were good reasons, of course -- though I could not live long with such a system!

Before you say, “How insufferably stuffy!” let me say that, as soon as I entered, I could sense that this was a worshipping church. There was an eagerness to meet Christ. There was life. The singing of traditional hymns was uplifting. Private conversations with the members only confirmed my corporate impressions.

The second met in a school hall. It was loud, free-wheeling. I have seen more sedate Assemblies of God services! I hasten to point out that they would have disdained the “Charismatic” tag. The introductory choruses went so well that the leader extended this session for about ten more minutes. After the offering, someone requested leave to share something unscheduled (it was actually important.) Several times, the leader changed the program because he felt that it would serve the worship needs of the congregation better, keeping their attention on God. I would not want to go so far with unstructuredness, but here, as much as in the other church, there was a clear sense of worship and of delight in the Lord.

If much of our worship is irrational -- does not really make sense -- this is not revealed by the style. In fact, it is easy to worship the style rather than the Styler.

What happens when we decide that we are the kind of people whose identity is best expressed by

Choruses and hand-waving
A three-hymn sandwich starting with a sung Doxology
Total Quakeresque silence

[Choose One] ?

Isn’t it true that, when that shift happens, we have moved from worshipping the living God through the symbols we use, and have begun worshipping the symbols of ourselves?

Taken to extremes, we find a church splitting into factions, each denouncing the other’s symbols as “satanic”. When this happens, the people show their inability to separate symbol from reality. They think, “Because the modern style of music is not my kind of symbol, it must embody evil, just as my symbols embody God...” There is something wrong when this kind of thinking takes hold!

True worship in heaven
WHAT BETTER account of true worship is there than that in Revelation chapters 4 and 5?

We are brought into the presence of God who rules. God, seated on a throne, surrounded by symbols of splendour, majesty and salvation, in the company of the perfect Spirit, encircled by the seraphim of Isaiah’s vision, and surrounded by the representatives of the whole united people of God. There are twelve for Israel, completed by 12 for the Church. And, in the centre of the throne, a Lamb, as though it were slain.

And the seraphim’s praise forms a foundation on which is built the praise of the elders, as they lay the symbols of their power at the feet of God and of his Christ. They bear the saints’ prayers into God’s presence. Then, upon this edifice of praise is laid a superstructure of the praises of myriad angels, protectively surrounding the throne and the seraphim and the elders, but also further from the direct presence of God.

Finally, upon these praises are the golden decorations of the praises and worship of every creature in the entire creation.

If we can’t become lost in wonder, love and praise at the thought, if we are not moved at least to desire to shout for joy, to raise our hands and clap, if we are not moved to cry, “Amen!” and fall down and worship, unmindful of styles and structures, is it possible that we have hardened our hearts, turned from grace, and become irrational worshippers of the creature -- of ourselves -- and not true worshippers of the creator?


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