God’s people are able to pay
homage to him as a result of their union in Christ, who cleanses them by his
blood and leads them in adoration of God. They are enabled to worship God
because God has gathered them together and given them his name. They submit to
him as Lord in listening to his Word and seeking to encounter him there. Their
adoration of the triune Lord is to be reflected in whole-hearted and
sacrificial service of one another – spiritual acts of worship, now in Christ
pleasing to him. In succeeding chapters we will examine in turn the various
components of Christian worship – preaching, prayer, music and the sacraments –
reflect the theological reality of the church as a worshipping community.
For now, I shall take the
opportunity to explore three substantial implications of Christian worship. The
first of these is the edification of God’s
people. In 1 Corinthians 14, which is one of the few passages of the New
Testament in which church meetings are actually discussed, Paul connects the
gifts of the Spirit with the ‘building up’ of the body. The gifts are given for
that particular purpose, such that the gathering of God’s people ought to be
ordered accordingly:
What
should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a
lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done
for building up. (1Co
14:26)
Ephesians 4 is the other passage with
a similar concern. ‘Building up’ has the sense of the maturing and
strengthening of the whole, particularly (in Ephesians 4) in unity. The
leadership offices of apostle, teacher and so on, are (once more) provided for
this purpose. As the believers meet together in the fellowship of the Spirit to
engage with the Father by the blood of the Son they are built up, collectively,
in love for one another (Eph 4:16).
The second consequence is that
Christian corporate worship is a political.
As Professor Bernd Wannenwetsch from the University of Aberdeen puts it:
In the celebration of worship the
congregation is transposed into a particular social order…Christ is the head of
the Church, and the life of the communities of his people follows the law of
his Spirit. In this respect it is inescapably political – aligned towards the
recognition of the good that comes from God, towards the common exploration of
the good in the world and towards the common exploration of that good in shared
action.[1]
Wannenwetsch makes the strong
case that in the celebration of worship Christians become a social order of a
particular kind: the body of the risen Lord. Life in this community is
definitely ruled - that is, by (the word of) its Lord. It then has a pattern of
life that it learns in response to this rule. The Spirit of God gathers the congregation
which then pays homage to Jesus specifically
as Lord in its common activities. It is at this point that the political
dimension in Wannenwetsch’s scheme arises: this particular sharing forms a
specific kind of community in which ‘believers find their basic political existence’.[2]
The gathering of the Christian
community in worship has a specifically political character; it is the
formation of a political form of life. This runs counter, of course to the
contemporary secular view that seeks to privatize faith as ‘spirituality’, and
specifically to de-politicize it. The experience of membership in the church
with all it entails must inevitably (as it has historically) inform the
Christian’s citizenship - over against the totalizing claims of liberal society
if necessary. As Wannenwetsch puts it rather provocatively: ‘if worship is
their form of life, Christians are exemplary citizens’ (p. 359).
Gathering together in the name of
the Son of God, Christians foreshadow the final rule of God in Christ. This
immediately relativizes the absolute claims of worldly powers – and frequently
this is seen by them as a threat. The court tales from the book of Daniel are a
case in point – stories that were frequently cited by the martyrs of the early
Christian era. For example: the great image of gold set up by Nebuchadnezzar in
Daniel 2 is set up as an object of religious worship, but the political
ramifications are clear. This is the tyrant’s statue, and refusal to worship
his statue is not simply blasphemy but treason. When the three young Jewish
men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, refuse to worship the statue because of
their exclusive commitment to worship the God of Israel, the rage of
Nebuchadnezzar reveals how threatened he is. This is a challenge to his supreme
authority because it is a refusal to acknowledge it.
In all kinds of ways, the
practices generated by Christian worship form a new, redeemed way of being a people.
Since Christ is Lord, human authority is seen as derived from him and
ultimately subject to him. Since Christ is Lord, we learn to live a life rich
in thanksgiving and generosity. Since Christ is Lord and we participate together
in him, we learn what suffering for another’s sake means. Since Christ is Lord,
we learn that ethnic and class distinctions do not form the measure of
humankind. These are all directly political lessons that spring from Christian
worship.
The third ramification of
Christian worship is mission. Christian
worship is missional. As I have already
indicated, worship is a communicative or
expressive act. It expresses the
allegiance and submission of the worshipper to the worshipped one. Christian
worship, enabled by God himself and empowered by the Spirit, is not simply for
the sake of God’s pleasure. It exists as a testimony to call those who do not
yet worship. 1 Peter 2:9-10 is instructive:
But
you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in
order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.
(1Pe 2:9)
In this verse, Peter, applying as
he does the categories by which Israel was described at Sinai (‘a kingdom of
priests’ Ex 19:6), casts the new covenant people of God in the role of those whole
who proclaim the mighty acts of God to the world. Just as they had once existed
in darkness and non-identity, so now they speak of the glory of God to those
who are without hope in the world. They are ‘priests’ in the sense that their
form of life mediates God’s character to the outside world, and they become in
their form of life the location at which those far off may now be drawn near. By
observing their form of life the nations are to be led to pay homage to God:
Conduct
yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as
evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to
judge. (1Pe 2:12)
The worship of God’s people,
directed to the God who saved them and made them what they are, takes place in
and before the watching world. It has a secondary audience. The great acts of
God are rehearsed not simply for his sake but for the sake of those who have never
heard them told.
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