Category Archive: Theology – Liturgical
Baptism & Identity
As a follow-up to my earlier post, here’s some more about identity and “the real me,” this time from Peter Leithart’s very enjoyable Against Christianity:
Many Christians say we cannot be sure that anything has changed once someone is baptized. What are we saying? In baptism, God marks me as His own, with His name. God makes me a member of His household, the Church. If we say nothing important has happened we are suggesting that we have some identity that is more fundamental than God’s name for us, some self that is beyond God’s capacity to claim and name.
“Of course,” we object, “God says I am in His family, a son, but I’m really something else.” That is a most egregious claim to autonomy: I yam who I yam regardless of who God says I yam.
It may turn out, of course, that God’s final name for a baptized person is “prodigal son” (pp. 91-92).
Antiphony
Here’s a quotation I came across yesterday in Thomas Howard’s Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament. Howard here is referring to something he noticed years ago, when he first began to attend an Anglican church:
The vicar would begin with a scriptural bidding, directing our attention to the Most High. So far all was smooth sailing for me. I was familiar with this approach. But then he would say, “The Lord be with you,” and we would respond, “And with thy spirit.” What was this rote formula? I wondered. It was an exchange that occurred again and again during the service. It seemed quaint at best and possibly gratuitous; the Lord is already with both of our spirits. Why this vocal wish for the obvious?
What I did not know was that this was a formula that reaches back certainly to the beginnings of Christian worship and possibly further. It builds into the very structure of the act of worship itself the glorious antiphons of charity that ring back and forth in heaven and all across the cosmos, among all the creatures of God. It is charity, greeting the other and wishing that other one well. In its antiphonal (“responsive”) character it echoes the very rhythms of heaven. Deep calls to deep. Day answers to night. Mountain calls to valley. One angel calls to another. Love greets love. The place of God’s dwelling rings with these joyful antiphons of charity. Hell hates this. It can only hiss, Out of my way, fool. But heaven says, The Lord be with you. This is what was said to us in the Incarnation. This is what the Divine Love always says.
In the act of worship we on earth begin to learn the script of heaven. The phraseology has very little to do with how we may be feeling at the moment. It does not spring from us spontaneously. We must learn to say it. It is unnatural for us, the way learning a polite greeting is unnatural for a child. But to the objection that we should leave the child to express himself in his own way we would all point out the obvious, that that sort of naturalness and spontaneity is a poor, poor thing and that the discipline of learning something else is both an enrichment and a liberation.
Antiphony deepens the shallow pool of our personal resources and sets us free from the prison of our own meager capacity to respond adequately in a given situation. Rather than mumbling fitfully, we learn to say the formula, “How do you do?” or “The Lord be with you,” and having learning it, we have stepped from solipsism into community. We have begun to take our appointed places among other selves.
The Catholic Luther
I’ve recently been reading The Catholicity of the Reformation, edited by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson. The book is a collection of essays, all but one from Lutheran authors, demonstrating that the intention of the early Reformers wasn’t to create a new kind of Christianity but rather was to reform and renew in keeping with the historic catholic (note the lowercase c) Christian tradition.
On Saturday, I read David S. Yeago’s essay, “The Catholic Luther.” Yeago, himself a Lutheran, offers an interesting approach to Luther’s story.
The traditional Luther-story goes like this: Luther was a young priest with a very troubled conscience, which nothing in the Catholicism of his day could help because it kept pointing him to his works. Then he had the famous Tower Experience in which he discovered justification by faith alone. After that, he got into controversy, first with regard to indulgences and then with regard to justification itself.
More recently, scholars have argued (convincingly, says Yeago) that the Tower Experience happened in 1518, which is to say that it happened after the 95 theses (which don’t talk about justification by faith alone) and the beginning of the indulgence controversy.
Yeago agrees that the Tower Experience did take place in 1518. But his read of Luther’s history up to and including that point is quite different from either of those other interpretations.
If we look at his earlier writings (as opposed to his reflections twenty-five to thirty years later), we don’t find Luther wrestling with a troubled conscience or asking how he can find a gracious God. Rather, we find him wrestling with the question of idolatry and how we can find the true God.
The problem, says Luther and much of the catholic tradition at the time, is that people want a god who benefits them. They love God for his gifts and not for himself, which, they say, is a form of idolatry (“I worship the God who makes me feel good”).
So then how can you know that you’re worshipping the true God (who can’t be used) instead of this idol of your own imagination? Luther’s response is the theology of the cross: the true God comes to you in sufferings — the sufferings of Christ but also our own sufferings — such that we are left clinging to him even when he doesn’t seem to benefit us at all. In fact, if we’re clinging to him even though it appears to be his intention to damn us (and we should be willing to be damned if only we have the true God, he says), then we know that we’re not worshipping an idol.
Yeago agrees that Luther did talk about uncertainty of salvation during this point, but Luther didn’t see it as a problem. In fact, Yeago says,
It should be clear that this strategy utterly excludes the sort of confident assurance of God’s favor that Luther later came to teach; on the contrary, for the early theologia crucis our uncertainty of salvation plays an important role in weaning us from self-interested piety: we must learn to cling to God even though it seems most likely he will damn us (p. 23).
There is a marked difference between this early Luther of the “theology of the cross,” whose view leads to and embraces a lack of assurance of salvation, and the later Luther, who proclaims assurance. What made the difference? In 1518, Yeago says, Luther began to study sacramental theology.
To the question “What is the sacrament good for, anyway?” Luther finally responds: the concrete, external, public sacramental act in the church is the concrete, external, public act of Jesus Christ in the church. When we come to the sacrament, we run into Jesus Christ: his word, his act, his authority. The question with which every participant in the sacraments is confronted, therefore, is simply this: Is Jesus Christ telling the truth here? Can he do what he promises? Can we count on what he says? (pp. 25-26).
Luther’s basic question remains the same: How can I find the true God, as opposed to idols of my own imagination? But the answer changes. His earlier answer appears to have been this: “the one who I am to adore and in whom I am to put my trust is precisely the one whom all experience says is bent on destroying me” (p. 27). His new answer would have been different:
“The true possessor of deity is the one whom I encounter here — in the particular flesh of Jesus Christ and in the concrete sacramental sign.” It is the particularity and concreteness of God’s presence that now bear the brunt of the task of foreclosing idolatry; the true God, who by definition cannot be used, is the God who makes himself available as he chooses, here and not there, in the flesh born of Mary and the specificity of his church’s sacramental practice, not in the groves and high places consecrated by our religious speculation and self-interest (p. 27).
The whole theology of the cross changes:
[I]n Luther’s early “theology of the cross,” God hides his saving presence in the torment he visits on his elect; in the mature theology, the gracious hiddenness of God is primarily a matter of his lowliness, his kenosis in the incarnate Son, in his chosen signs, and in his saints. The tribulations of the faithful are no longer identical with the grace that saves them, although they drive them to seek that grace and are the veil under which it is hidden from the proud and mighty of this world (p. 28).
Yeago’s thesis seems quite radical: far from being driven by his troubled conscience to find a new solution for his sins which meant that he had to break from the version of Christianity in which he lived, Luther originally thought that a troubled conscience was a good thing (“theology of the cross”) but then began to study the historic, catholic tradition of sacramental theology and adjusted his thinking so that he now proclaimed the certainty of forgiveness in Christ, a forgiveness received only by faith (“Does Jesus Christ mean what he says?”).
Yeago’s essay is brief (you’ll find a still briefer, earlier version of it here) and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. He admits that in the short compass of this essay (originally a speech) he can only assert, though he plans to offer a more extended argument for this reading of Luther’s history in the future. As he says, “I will, so to speak, describe the shoe; readers may let Luther wear it if they find that it fits him” (p. 13).
Anyone else read this essay? Have any of the other Luther scholars responded to it? Has it caught on in Luther scholarship? Is Yeago coming out with his extended argument anytime soon? At any rate, it’s certainly an interesting and thought-provoking article.
Against the Protestant Gnostics
Last night, I finished reading Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics. It’s a very good book in many ways, in spite of the significant differences between Lee’s theological and political stance and my own.
Lee’s goal is to reveal the gnosticism which lurks in much Protestant thought, but it seems to me that there’s more than a little gnosticism in his own thinking. For instance, it doesn’t seem that Lee believes in a historical fall; he speaks also about those who have “literalized and thereby gnosticized” the “biblical images” such as the Atonement (p. 107). He also indicates that he believes that Scripture, being the words of men, contains errors (p. 219). All the way through the book, I have penciled in question marks, x-es, and even a few comments.
And yet, as I say, in spite of those significant differences between Lee’s view and my own, I appreciated a lot of what Lee says. For instance, he argues that much modern feminism is gnostic in that it attempts to deny the significance of created sexuality. He defends ordinary Christian life as opposed to the spiritual flights of the gnostic elite. He upholds the importance of the church and the sacraments, as well.
Lee, following the early Reformers, argues passionately for weekly communion. He cites Calvin:
All this mass of ceremonies being abandoned, the sacrament might be celebrated in the most becoming manner, if it were dispensed to the Church very frequently, at least once a week…. Thus we ought always to provide that no meeting of the Church is held without the word, prayer, the dispensation of the Supper, and alms (Institutes IV.17.43-44, emphasis Lee’s, though I’ve modified the punctuation).
Later in the book, Lee writes something worth pondering:
The eucharistic feast must be restored to its rightful place if the churches of the Reformation are to be reformed. The account given in the Acts of the Apostles makes it clear that teaching, preaching, prayer and the breaking of bread were from the beginning the essential elements of Christian worship. Indeed, the Church’s teaching, preaching and praying culminate in the breaking of bread with Christ and all his people. “This is the joyful feast of the people of God” where and when the eyes of the faithful are opened and they recognize the Lord. Historically, the simple reenactment of the Last Supper and of the post-Easter meals of Christ and his disciples has been the central act of the Christian community.The irony of Protestant history is that although the sixteenth-century Reformers fought like tigers to restore the wine to the people, their descendents have now deprived the people of both bread and wine. The Protestant celebration, when it is on rare occasions held, has been spiritualized to the extent that it could scarcely be recognized as a meal at all. The purely symbolic wafer of the Roman celebration, which John Knox thundered against as a distortion of Christ’s “common bread,” has in most Protestant churches been replaced by minute, carefully diced pieces of bread unlike any other bread ever eaten by any culture. The common cup which the medieval Church withheld from the faithful is, except among the Anglicans, still the sole possession of the clergy. The unordained are now given thimble-like glasses filled with Welch’s grape juice. The symbolism is quite clear. We all come before God individually; with our individual bits of bread and our individual cups of juice, we are not of one loaf and one chalice. Our relationship to Christ is private and personal. What may be even more significant is that by partaking of this unearthly meal with our unbreadly bread and our unwinely wine we are making a clear statement that the bread and wine of spiritual communion has no connection with earthly communion. It is an unmistakable gnostic witness against the significance of ordinary meals: common bread, wine, the table fellowship of laughter and tears….
Frequent communion, of course, would call for a simple, less elaborate service than the unmeal-like ritual now practiced. The funereal procession of clergy and lay leaders passing the diminutive dishes to the solemnly sitting or kneeling communicants would probably have to be replaced by the crowded gathering of the faithful about the Holy Table for a breaking of the common loaf and the passing of a common cup. Those who argue that the intimacy and the everyday quality of such a celebration would take away the sense of mystery simply do not understand the nature of drama and mystery. It was [French filmmaker] Jean Cocteau who said “vagueness is unsuitable to the fairy world … mystery exists only in precise things.” Concreteness, the preciseness of home-baked bread and earthy red wine, in pottery plates and chalices, received with much chewing and swallowing, witnesses to the mystery of the Word made flesh. The present practice unwittingly undercuts the mystery and leaves us with the vague and unhelpful feeling that some undefined perfunctory act must be taking place (pp. 272-273).
The book is certainly thought-provoking, though it requires a fair bit of discernment. I’ll leave you with this beautiful bit of the French Reformed baptismal liturgy, which Lee quotes. The minister takes the child in his arms and says:
Little child, for you Jesus Christ has come, He has fought, He has suffered. For you He entered into the shadows of Gethsemane and the terror of Calvary; for you He uttered the cry “It is finished.” For you He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and there for you He intercedes. For you, even though you do not know it, little child, but in this way the Word of the Gospel is made true, “We love Him because He first loved us” (cited p. 254).
The Reformers on Worship
Another quotation from James Jordan‘s The Sociology of the Church:
The Bible taught the early church how to worship, but in the later Middle Ages, great corruptions set in. The Protestant Reformers were primarily interested in the restoration of worship, rightly perceiving it as the center of the Kingdom. After all, when God called Israel out of Egypt it was not first and foremost to establish a theocratic nation, but to engage in a third-day worship festival. Unfortunately, within a hundred years, the liturgical dreams of the Reformers were mostly in shambles.The Reformers wanted three things. First, they wanted a return to Biblical regulation of worship. Almost immediately, however, this concern was sidetracked by a minimalist approach. The rule, “we should do in worship only what is actually commanded in Scripture,” was taken in an increasingly restrictive sense. The Reformers had realized that God’s “commands” are found in Scripture in “precept, principle, and example.” Their heirs tended to exchange this wholistic openness to the Word of God for a quest for “explicit commands.” Instead of reading the Bible to see the patterns presented there for our imitation, there was an attempt to find the bare minimum of what is actually “commanded” in the New Testament. The book of Revelation, which shows how worship is conducted in heaven (“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”), was ignored. Anabaptist minimalism soon overwhelmed the Reformed churches.
Second, the Reformers wanted a return to Old Catholic forms, as they understood them. A reading of the liturgies they wrote shows this. Though all of the Reformers tended to over-react against anything that reminded them of Italo-Papal imperial oppression, they were not so “anti-catholic” as to reject the early church. Soon, however, sectarian reaction against anything that “smacks of Rome” overwhelmed their concern.
Third, the Reformers wanted participation in worship from the whole priesthood of all believers. They wrote dialogue liturgies in which the people had many things to say and sing. They had their congregations singing, for instance, the creeds, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. Soon, however, the strength of the Medieval devotional tradition reasserted itself — the “low mass” tradition in which the people only sat and watched and listened, while the minister did everything. This Medieval tradition was the essence of the Puritan view of worship. In worship, the Puritans departed from the desires of the Protestant Reformers.
It is important to understand that although the Puritans did uphold the theology of the Reformers, they rejected the Reformers’ views on worship at some crucial points. After the Puritan Revolution failed and Charles II came to the English throne, there was a conference at Savoy between Puritan Presbyterian churchmen and the newly restored Anglican bishops. It is very interesting to note what the Presbyterians proposed. They wanted “to omit ‘the repetitions and responsals of the clerk and people, and the alternate reading of Psalms and Hymns, which cause a confused murmur in the congregation’: ‘the minister being appointed for the people in all Public Services appertaining to God; and the Holy Scriptures … intimating the people’s part in public prayer to be only with silence and reverence to attend thereunto and to declare their consent in the close, by saying Amen.’ In other words, no dialogue, no responsive readings, no congregational praying of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer. The Anglican bishops replied that “alternate reading and repetitions and responsals are far better than a long tedious prayer.” They also noted that “if the people may take part in Hopkins’ why not David’s psalms, or in a litany?” In other words, if it is all right to sing metrical paraphrases of the psalms, why is it wrong to read responsively the very words of Scripture?
Originally the Puritan movement had not been opposed to prayerbook worship, but in time the combination of state persecution with the continuing strength of the Medieval quietist tradition led the Puritans into wholehearted opposition to congregational participation in worship (pp. 28-30).
Godward Signs
I’ve been reading through Genesis for the last few days, and on Saturday I noticed something in Genesis 9 that I hadn’t spotted before.
We tend to think that God placed the rainbow in the cloud primarily to remind us that God won’t destroy the world with a flood — and, of course, that’s part of the function of the rainbow, which is why God tells Noah about the rainbow. But the rainbow has that man-comforting function because God says that He will look on the rainbow and remember the covenant (Gen. 9:16). The rainbow functions primarily, then, as a memorial for God so that when He sees it He will remember His promises and His people. In fact, that’s the purpose of many of the memorials in Scripture: they are God-appointed reminders to God of His covenant.
All of that was familiar to me already. But what I hadn’t noticed before was that, right after speaking about how He will see the rainbow and remember His covenant, God then says that the rainbow is “the sign of the covenant” (Gen. 9:17).
In our Reformed sacramental theology, we speak of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as “signs” (and “seals”), language we have learned from Scripture. But as we think about the sacraments as “signs,” we ought to take into account what Scripture means when it speaks of something as a “sign of the covenant.” And here in Genesis 9, the “sign of the covenant,” while it does have a man-ward function, serves primarily to remind God of His faithfulness to His covenant.
In this connection, we might think also of the signs God places on men’s foreheads in Ezekiel and Revelation. They are put there so that God will remember these people in grace and so that the people will not be destroyed in God’s judgment.
So too, then, with the sacraments. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as “signs” of the covenant, identify us to God as His people so that He maintains His covenant faithfulness to us. That isn’t their only function, of course, but it does appear to be one of their primary functions.
Perhaps this is old news to you (especially if your name is Mark Horne), but I can’t recall seeing much discussion along these lines — okay, I can’t remember any — in standard Reformed treatments of the sacraments.
Ritual & Orthodoxy
As a follow-up to my Piper quotation, here’s something Jeff Meyers wrote:
I am convinced that we have not even begun to think about the massive influence of ritual(s) (especially those that we unthinkingly adopt in our typical evangelical worship services) in Reformed theological circles. We continue to do seminary without professors of Reformed Liturgy. This is amazing. It is ecclesiastical insanity. Our Reformed seminaries graduate men with little or no liturgical competence. We actively teach silly, sentimental pop worship, not realizing that one day we will, because of our pop worship (lex orandi, lex credendi), abandon the orthodox faith (The Lord’s Service, p. 81).
I’m grateful that at Mid-America Reformed Seminary I wasn’t taught silly pop worship. Still, I wish I’d had more training and done more thinking about liturgy in seminary.
Knox and Horton on Baptism
Barb posted this a while ago, but it might be worth posting again. It’s part of John Knox’s 1560 Scots Confession on baptism:
And so we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls (Ch. 21).
I came across this quotation (again) in an article entitled “Mysteries of God and Means of Grace” in the May/June 1997 issue of Modern Reformation. The article is by Michael Scott Horton. Horton is opposed to the idea that Romans 6, Galatians 3:27, and similar passages refer to some kind of “Spirit baptism” (as opposed to sacramental baptism):
In many conservative Reformed and Presbyterian circles, it is as if the prescribed forms for Baptism and the Supper were too high in their sacramental theology, so the minister feels compelled to counter its strong “means of grace” emphasis. In this way, the Sacraments die the death of a thousand qualifications. The same is true when we read the biblical passages referring to Baptism as “the washing of regeneration” or to the Supper as “the communion of the body and blood of Christ.” Why must we apologize for these passages and attempt to explain them away? Our confessions do not do this. Our liturgical forms (if we still use them) do not do this, but we feel compelled to diminish them these days.We hear quasi-gnostic sentiments even in Reformed circles these days, such as the “real baptism” that is spiritual, as opposed to “merely being sprinkled with water,” or the “real communion” with Christ in moments of private devotion. How can we truly affirm the union of earthly and heavenly realities in the Incarnation? Or how can we regard the Word of God as a means of salvation if it is but ink and paper or human speech? A subtle Docetism (the ancient gnostic heresy that denied Christ’s true humanity) lurks behind our reticence to see these common earthly elements as signs that are linked to the things they signify. Surely the Sacraments can remind us of grace, help us to appreciate grace, and exhort us to walk in grace, but do they actually give us the grace promised in the Gospel? The Reformed and Presbyterian confessions answer “yes” without hesitation: A Sacrament not only consists of the signs (water, bread and wine), but of the things signified (new birth, forgiveness, life everlasting).
Later, Horton comments:
We simply cannot say that we take a literal approach to the text while interpreting these clear passages as allegorical of a spiritual reality detached from the obvious reference to physical sacraments.
At another point in the article, Horton talks about Calvin’s view of infant baptism:
Rather than sharply dividing between an external and internal covenant of grace, as some have done in American theology, Calvin simply concludes that infants “receive now some part of that grace which in a little while they shall enjoy to the full” (Institutes 4.16.19).
And here’s Horton’s summary toward the end of the article:
In Baptism, we have been swept into the new creation and in the Supper we are actually fed with the body and blood of Christ as pilgrims on the way to the Promised Land, and yet, by promise already living there.
God’s Special Presence
That we do in fact enter into God’s special presence in the midst of his gathered congregation must never be slighted or forgotten. True, God is present everywhere. But his omnipresence is not what I am referring to here. God has promised to be present with his people in a special sense when they gather on Sunday.
The one who skips church for the golf course or shopping mall or state park may not argue from God’s omnipresence to justify his not being in church. Sure, God is present on the golf course, just as he is present in hell. But this general presence of God doesn’t do the people in hell much good. God is present in heaven and hell, but he is not present in the same way in each of these locations. That is the difference.
Even if we cannot define it precisely, God is present in a special sense when his people gather as the church on the Lord’s Day. He is present there for us. This is the place, the location where he gathers his people around the Word and Sacraments. He has promised to be there for us when his people gather.
It is not so much that God was not present in, say, Damascus, when the pillar and fire led the people of Israel out of Egypt or when his presence filled the tabernacle upon its completion; rather, the Lord was at these appointed places in a special, life-giving way. Similarly, it is not that God is absent from the food court in the mall on Sunday; rather, he has promised to be present in a special way, the way of salvation and blessing, at the Communion Table in church. He has not promised to be in the mall on Sunday for you. Actually, he may be present there against you so that you could very well experience his judgment and curse, rather than his promise of blessing, life, and salvation.
Moreover, when we are in God’s special presence every week, receiving from him his promise through his Word and Sacraments, we can go forth out of church into the world with the full assurance that God will be with us and for us wherever we may be during the week. Without being in the Lord’s special presence we have no assurance of his omnipresent help in every situation and location. See Gen. 3:8; 4:16; Exod. 33:14-15; Deut. 4:37; Deut. 12:7, 18; 14:23; 15:20; Judges 18:6; 2 Kings 13:23; 17:18-23; Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 5:4; 11:18ff.; etc. (Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service [St. Louis: Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1999], p. 45n8. I’ve added some paragraph divisions for easier reading).
Liturgical and Non-Liturgical
Part of the reason why so many Christian worship services have no logic, no order, no movement, is because those who superintend those services of worship have not paid attention to the Bible’s main instruction in the formation of a worship service because that instruction is found in the Old Testament…. It is this disregard for the importance of what is done in the worship of God and the order or logic with which it is done that has led to the common pejorative use of the words “liturgy” and “liturgical” in many evangelical and even Reformed circles. This is a mistake in more ways than one. Every church service is a liturgy, if it has various elements in some arrangement. That is what liturgy is. Liturgical churches are churches that have thought about those elements and their proper order. Non-liturgical churches are those which have not. It is no compliment to say that a church is a non-liturgical church. It is the same thing as saying it is a church that gives little thought to how it worships God (Robert S. Rayburn, “Worship From the Whole Bible,” The Second Annual Conference on Worship: The Theology and Music of Reformed Worship, February 23-25, 1996 [Nashville: Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1996], pp. 22-23).
No Disinterested Praise
Often the giving of praise or glorifying of God is set over against the worshiper’s expectation of receiving anything from God in church…. Here let me say that not only is the super-spiritual-sounding assertion that “we just gather together to give praise to God, taking no interest in what we might get from him” unbiblical, it may also easily slip into doxological hubris.
For us, as creatures of God, there can be no such thing as “disinterested praise.” We simply cannot love or praise God for who he is apart from what he has given us or what we continue to receive from him. We are not his equals. The notion that pure love and worship of God can only be given when it is unmixed with thoughts of what we receive has no biblical grounding. To be sure, it sounds very spiritual and pious. It even comes across as self-denial. In fact, however, there is no such worship in the Bible for the simple fact that we cannot approach God as disinterested, self-sufficient beings. We are created beings. Dependent creatures. Beings who must continually receive both our life and redemption from God.
Our “worship” of God, for this reason, necessarily involves our passive reception of his gifts as well as our thanksgiving and petitions. We cannot pretend that we do not depend upon him. We will always be receivers and petitioners before God. Our receptive posture is as ineradicable as our nature as dependent creatures.
We must be served by him. Recognizing this is true spirituality. Opening oneself up to this is the first movement in our “worship,” indeed, the presupposition of all corporate worship. It is faith’s posture before our all-sufficient, beneficent Lord. Praise follows after this and alone can never be the exclusive purpose for our gathering together on the Lord’s Day (Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service [St. Louis: Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1999], pp. 7-8. I’ve made a couple of corrections in punctuation and added some paragraph divisions for easier reading).
Public Worship
What happens in our public worship? Frederica Matthews-Green writes:
A little church on Sunday morning is a negligible thing. It may be the meekest, and least conspicuous, thing in America. Someone zipping between Baltimore’s airport and beltway might pass this one, a little stone church drowsing like a hen at the corner of Maple and Camp Meade Road. At dawn all is silent, except for the click every thirty seconds as the oblivious traffic light rotates through its cycle. The building’s bell tower out of proportion, too large and squat and short to match. Other than that, there’s nothing much to catch the eye.In a few hours heaven will strike earth like lightning on this spot. The worshipers in this little building will be swept into a divine worship that proceeds eternally, grand with seraphim and incense and God enthroned, “high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). The foundations of that temple shake with the voice of angels calling “Holy” to each other, and we will be there, lifting fallible voices in the refrain, an outpost of eternity.
If this is true, it is the most astonishing thing that will happen in our city today.
In the latest Credenda/Agenda (which isn’t yet online), Doug Wilson argues that it is true — though it’s not so much that heaven touches down on earth as the other way around: “Christians have the enormous privilege of ascending into heaven in their worship on the Lord’s Day.” Commenting on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Wilson writes,
In our public worship, we do not come to a mountain that can be touched (12:18), but we do come to a mountain, a heavenly Zion. What happens when a small group of saints gathers in a clapboard community church somewhere out in the sticks? At their call to worship, they ascend to the City of God, to the heavenly Jerusalem. They walk into the midst of innumerable angels (12:22). They come to the general assembly of the universal Church, and come into the presence of God Himself (12:23).