How the Worship of God is Like a Family Reunion

Is the worship of God for Christians a family reunion?

It depends. There are some differences: not all of the family is here, at least not literally; worship here is weekly; and worship here is fraught with the challenges of sanctified people who are yet still sinners attempting to give proper praise to a holy God.

None of those things will be true in heaven, the eternal state: all of those resurrected in Christ will be present, it will be constant, and it will be perfect.

Even so, in many ways and in the truest sense Christian worship is a reunion, of sorts, though it is more appropriately characterized as "pre-union." With reunions, the family time together has passed, and its members reconvene to remember what once was. With "pre-unions," members of a body who never previously lived together convene in anticipation of a future time when all members will be permanently united.

Typically, earthly family reunions are scheduled together with the birthday celebration of the patriarch. Frequently that elderly relative is, well, elderly, and may be confined to the indoors or to a particular seat while the younger, more mobile and less arthritic members of the clan supervise the toddlers, tell spouses childhood war stories and secrets, and generally ignore the matriarch.

The patriarch, then, was a convenient excuse for all the others to socialize and enjoy the really interesting stuff.

If we are not very careful, our weekly episodes of Christian worship will resemble this family reunion, in which we gather ostensibly to celebrate the Patriarch, but find that our lateral, horizontal relationships and conversations are much more interesting than paying much attention to the old guy in the corner, who we think smells of moth balls, tells the same stories over and over, and is hard of hearing.

Orderly or 'Dead Asleep'?

I frequently lament that much of what passes for worship in church services, of what substitutes for prayer by believers, of what masquerades as preaching in our pulpits must be seriously devoid of whatever fueled the New Testament examples of those things.

I also frequently lament that all the ‘great ideas’ that come across my synapses get taken by others before I can broadcast them. To wit, I thought about a preaching series on the significance of the gospel long before David Platt ever preached it (see the Church at Brook Hills sermon archives). Now, if I preach what I originally intended, people might think that I took it from him. This is, I am painfully aware, a mini-lesson in humility, and how the body of Christ should work together when credit is not at issue.

But chalk up yet another pre-empting at the hands of no less a figure than J.I. Packer, who said this about power:

“First Corinthians 12-14 is a passage of Scripture which makes painful reading for thoughtful evangelical believers. … These chapters make painful reading because, whatever evils they confront in us, they do at least show us a local church in which the Holy Spirit was working in power. So reading the passage makes one painfully aware of the impoverishment, inertia, dryness and deadness of so many churches at the present time.

“If our only reaction to these chapters is to preen ourselves and feel glad because our churches are free from Corinthian disorders, we are fools indeed and ought to think again. I fear that many of our churches today are orderly because they are asleep. And in many cases I fear it is the sleep of death. It is no great thing, is it, to have perfect order in a cemetery?”

(J.I. Packer, Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer, Volume 2, Paternoster, 1988, p10.)

PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE AND TAKE THE OFFERING

I'm as big a patriot as the next guy. (I know...anyone who has to say that...)

But I've always been a bit wary of incorporating patriotic elements or themes in the church. Do we really need to have a US flag in all of them? And what about the 'Christian Flag'? At one time it was popular in Vacation Bible School and other settings to 'pledge allegiance to the Bible.' Does anyone else have concerns?

Yesterday our church began the service (it was an ordination service for a ministry candidate, by the way) with a medley of patriotic tunes which was more a call to light the fireworks than a call to worship. Right in the middle the congregation was invited to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag and to sing the National Anthem (can you send 'Regrets' to such an invite?).

This seemed a bit much.

Certainly Christians are to be the best citizens possible. It is definitely appropriate for Christians to be involved in government, civic matters and politics. And it would be a shame for Christians not to enjoy 'baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.' Watching the city's 4th of July fireworks display, accompanied by all the familiar Sousa tunes, is a favorite of the Faircloth clan.

But left unanswered are serious questions about 1) how the Christian, honoring God, appropriately demonstrates love of country and 2) how he keeps bold the line between patriotism and worship of the God who claims our total allegiance.

Don't look for all the answers here...supply some if you have them.

WATCHING THE PAINT DRY

Why does watching song and dance bring such pleasure, such pleasure and enjoyment that we might even pay to see others do it well?

Why don't we consider other things -- performed just as well -- worth watching? Would we pay to see a carpenter build a bookcase? To watch the baker mix batter for a cake? To see the cleaners iron our shirts? No, we simply want the result of those things: the bookcase, the cake, and pressed shirt.

This must have significance in the area of worshiping God, who we don't see but whose results we do see.

PRAISING EXCELLENCE

If praise is, as C S Lewis proposed, the natural expression of one's pleasure in an object -- if expression of delight is necessary for the completion of delight -- then the ease with which we praise earthly things is an indictment on our reticence -- or feigned inability -- to praise God in worship.

We express appreciation to one another, with relative ease, in many earthly contexts:

--sports fans over an athlete's monster slam dunk, game-winning grand slam home run, or touchdown bomb;

--music afficianodos over the driving beat or haunting melody of the latest relase;

--investors about a great stock acquisition or windfall real estate profit;

--comedy buffs over that well-timed punchline;

--a crowd's collective 'oohs' and 'ahs' at the city fireworks display;

Even schoolboys know how communicate praise to one another when they marvel at the velocity of a burp or the pungency of a fart (for more about the spiritual ramifications of passing gas, check out Martin Luther, whose gastro-intestinal problems provided him great insight in this area).

And acknowledgment of an object's excellence is more than mere academic assessment. Some critics might assess a work of art at the museum as follows: "The composition is good, subject matter inspiring, use of color apt, and attention to detail superior." But that observer is much more impoverished in the face of excellence than the less well-heeled onlooker who, nudging the patron next to him, says "Wow! Dude, that's awesome!"

Many professing Christians and habitual churchgoers can recite the technical specifications of the God we claim to worship (doctrine and theology), but one has to wonder whether delight is at all a relevant description of our worship. Many regularly attend to the worship of God without ever having said to himself, much less to anyone else, "Wow! Dude, God is awesome!"