Series: Spiritual Disciplines - Worship

Series: Reflections on the Spiritual Disciplines; Disciplines of Engagement.

#2: Worship

I found a quote online from an article by Dr. Michael Williams on the Patheos website, about how the Bible defines worship. He says, “Every decision is an act of worship.” Wow.

Nevertheless, I think it’s useful to go back in memory and revisit my experiences of worship. The very first I can recall was when I was a child vacationing at a little country resort. I quote from my essay for the Lindisfarne Community novitiate: “My parents were not church-goers, and I was never baptized as a child. My only experience with church services came from the time we spent at Lake Shehawken in Pennsylvania. The local Methodist church held summer Sunday services in boats out on the lake, and I can still see the light on the water, and the lucent sky of early morning. I can feel the stillness, and hear the voices raised in song magnified by their reflection from the quiet water.”

My next memory is one that I don’t think I’ve written about. This was soon after I had come to believe that Christianity was true. I went to the Episcopal cathedral in Salt Lake City with a friend of mine who was aware that I wanted to be baptized. It was in Lent, and I had never been to a church service indoors before. I was stunned when they sang the Great Litany in procession, walking around and around the church until the whole thing was done. The Dean had a splendid, resonant voice, and the congregation and choir gave the responses in full voice. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, and it took my breath away. Then, at the Great Thanksgiving, I saw little children go up to receive communion, and I knew, with a deep sense of inner recognition and awe, that this was the church for me.

Another genuine instance of worship came when I climbed an enormous fir tree, over a hundred feet tall, up in the Wasatch Mountains, at a church camp. This is what I wrote then: “I went all the way up, out of the shade, high over the cabin roofs, on and on into the sky. I went as high as I dared, up to where the branches were only an inch or two around. I stopped there and squirmed and adjusted until I had a perch where I could rest my weight and relax. It was then I felt the tree swaying in the wind. It was such a slow sway that it gave me vertigo. I felt its hugeness in the slow rocking; the sunlight lifting the scales on the branches; the silver hair of a spider’s thread curving sideways in thin air; the skidding whistle of a hummingbird’s wings far below; the haze stacked blue and gray in the shape of mountains at the farthest edge of the world. Up here the air is strange. It turns you inside out, and mixes in with your heartbeat; barely shivers against the underside of your skin; gets behind your eyes and bends the light until near and far are the same; rolls under your elbows and knees and lifts you up so you have to tighten your grip to make sure you’re still there; slips between you and the world below until the ground is so far away you only hear faint, meaningless echoes; wraps around the back of your neck and changes you into a creature outside time, content to do nothing but cling motionless to the top of an ancient tree and gaze outward.”

Here’s some of what Jesus has to say about worship: “23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

John 4:23-24

“Spirit and Truth.” Huh. Following my principle of paying attention to the plain sense of the text, first, the simple meaning of those words would be that God wants us to be sincere (spirit) and honest (truth) when we worship. “Sincere,” in that we are actually thinking about God, with open hearts and minds and a receptive and trusting attitude; with no thought of reward. “Honest,” in that we are without guile or self-importance; that we are not trying to impress other people (or ourselves) by being the main actor in a pious stage performance, but that we are to simply be our ordinary selves, and "present ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” (from the Book of Common Prayer)

 

In the overall scheme of things, I believe reverence to be an essential attribute of worship, along with awe, attentiveness, intention, devotion, wonder, and deliberate care. These are qualities I undertake to bring to all my actions, but above all when I take part in shared worship in an assembly gathered for that purpose.

I also believe that worship requires self-forgetfulness, which is the practice of looking outward while remaining grounded in our inmost selves; of observing who and what is around us and recognizing all the countless ways we are connected in this boundless Realm of God.