"Worship -- interacting with and experiencing God. Knowing that God desires an intimate relationship with us, we are committed to a lifestyle of worship characterized by both individual and corporate expressions of devotion. Our daily worship practices empower us for living an obedient, abundant and joy-filled life in Christ."

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"Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD all the earth. Sing to the LORD, praise his name. Proclaim his salvation day after day."

 

        In preparing for our congregational discussion on worship, the members of the Worship Committee were asked to write statements of their understanding of the purpose of worship.

         Harold Baxter wrote, "Worship is the business of heaven, the present, ongoing and eternal devotion of the saints and angels, and the present and temporary work of the saints on earth in the church. It is what God deserves, solicits, and expects."

         Psalm 96 is an instruction on worship. We see in its structure both direct instructions ("sing to the Lord") and reasons for worshipping God ("for great is the LORD and worthy of praise").

         There is repetition. "Sing to the Lord" and "ascribe to the Lord" are both repeated three times. And it is helpful to see a two-voice dialogue in the Psalm. The first voice sets a theme; the second repeats it and then adds to it. In this conversation we come to see that worship is both praise and proclamation: "Sing to the Lord," and "Proclaim his salvation."    

         The first three verses of the Psalm are direct instruction about what we do in worship. We are to sing to the LORD, praise his name, proclaim his salvation, and declare his glory publicly. These are given in the form of commands. Jesus says we are to love God with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. So worship is loving God with our whole being in praise, thanksgiving, confession of sin, intercession for others, listening and obeying God's Word, and offering our lives to Him. The love of neighbor gets expressed as we build community, commit ourselves to acts of justice, and give ourselves in evangelism and mission. Worship is loving God.

         The next three verses answer the question, "Why do we worship God?" This is the question that is most confusing for our age. The world has no idea why it would worship God. It seems pointless to praise God, when the world desires to be praised itself. So, if we do not know why we worship God, it is easy to tire of it, to lose sight of our reason for meeting together. Sunday worship then becomes for many either a duty to be endured, carefully counting the 60 minutes allotted for it; or it becomes a performance to be critiqued; or it becomes a very low-priority family activity to be chosen at our convenience.

         The Psalm says, first of all, we worship because the LORD is worthy of praise, in the sense that He is to be feared above all gods. Harold Best writes, "We are always worshipping, but what are we worshipping?" The Psalm says that if you do not worship God, you will worship the gods of the nations and they are all idols; that is, they are pieces of wood and stone, deaf and blind. If you worship a piece of stone or wood, and believe its promises, you are going to be disappointed at some point along the way.

        "But the LORD made the heavens." You worship God who is alive and whose word is true. You Worship God who is the creator, who is responsible for your life. If you give your time and energy to something that takes no responsibility for you, you will be very alone when its promises turn out to be false. If you worship God, who loves you and provides for you, you will find grace and hope all along the way, and life eternal when your strength is at its end.

         We worship God because "splendor and majesty are before him," because there is another reality, found in his sanctuary. I have stood with many families as a loved one dies. I have seen repeatedly another reality emerging at the point of death. I have seen dying people experience peace, joy and awe. I have conducted many funerals over the years, and have consistently met the living presence of God in those services, and in proclaiming the resurrection at the graveside. There is another reality, where God is surrounded by splendor and majesty.

When we encounter the majesty of God we come into a new reality. Worship lifts us to an awareness of the eternal. C.M. Youngquist described the worship of the early Covenant church,

"Singing was prominent in these services. The whole congregation would join in the unaffected and beautiful songs which were willingly led by brothers and sisters who had the gift. At the conclusion of the sermon it seemed as if the singing would not end. A verse, or perhaps only a refrain, would be repeated again and again until the words were impressed upon our minds and 'joy stood high on the ceiling.' "

         There is a sense in which worship requires a change of mind, an intentional entering into a new reality. If we remain stuck in our analytical, problem-solving, weighed-down work mode, we can miss the presence of God and the reality of His kingdom. Last spring we attended a Friday evening worship service at Oakdale Covenant Church in Chicago, during the Central Conference annual meeting. They began with a very happy song, one with toe-tapping and hand-clapping, and then moved into very reverent songs, "As the Deer" and "Lord I Lift Your Name on High." I realized that there was in that congregation an intentional coming away from the struggle and hardship of the day, into a new, long-awaited reality. It is not that they were by circumstance or personality happy people, but rather that they intentionally moved into the joy of the Lord, and from there entered into worship. Worship requires a change of mind, in it we enter a new reality.

         This leads us to verses 7 to 9 in the Psalm, which give further instructions in worship. The instructions are "ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, bring an offering, come into his courts, worship the Lord, and tremble before him."

         What happens when we truly meet with God? We have a friend in Mt. Vernon who is a therapist, and she has recently been thinking about worship, and sent me what she has written.

"In order to worship God, I must have a personal relationship with him, and know how to commune, or connect with him. I can admire someone from afar, I can respect them from a distance, but if I am to have a relationship with someone, I must be able to connect with that person in a personal way.

         "In therapy, I spend a lot of time teaching people how to manage their anxieties so that they can live more deliberately. I teach them to stop reacting to circumstances and to start making powerful choices that are consistent with their lives. This is not something that people stop to do very often. Most of the time they are so busy with their lives that they just bounce from one day to the next and never stop to think about what is important. This is where worship can help us. I think it is necessary for each of us to be able to carve out sacred space in the midst of our daily lives so that we can establish and nourish a relationship with God."

         This part of worship, this drawing near to God, creating space in silence, or in song, or in listening to the sermon so that at some point you cease to listen to the preacher's words and begin to attend to the Holy Spirit and the living word, this is where the mystery of worship is. Here we meet God, potter and clay.

But this is also where we want a formula, a method that will work each time. For some this happens in repetitive singing, for others in artistic excellence, for some in the 12^th verse of "Just as I Am" at a revival meeting.

It is precisely at this point where we can hurt each other. One person feels the Holy Spirit in a song and may want to have that song or style sung in worship every week, but another person is unmoved and feels the answer is found in a Bach chorale with choir and orchestra.

I do not know what the answer is here. I have found it helpful to ask myself, "What do I need to meet with God? What setting seems to be most important to me? Why is that? Can I meet God when the setting is different? Can I both respect my brother or sister in their worship, and take opportunities to worship myself? If I feel the song is too long or repetitive, can I close my eyes and enter into prayer while it is being sung? If the written liturgy seems dull, can I focus on the words and draw them into my heart?" The point is, we don't need a formula for worship, we need to meet God in worship.

         The Psalm ends in verse 10-13, by stating that we worship because God reigns over both nations and nature. We worship because he comes to judge the earth. Paul lived a life of worship, enduring hardship, persecution and opposition, with a clear view to God's victory in the end. So when his life appeared to be over, he did not write with bitterness, nor did he recount all his sufferings, but rather wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day -- and not to me only, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." We must always keep in mind that life ends in worship: "They will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth."

         In this current struggle over worship, which is both an issue of how to worship and one of whether to worship, we need to begin by making a commitment to sing to the LORD, to praise his name, to ascribe to the Lord glory, and to proclaim his salvation. We need to commit to do that personally and daily, both alone and with others. We need to meet with God.

          Amen.