Years ago, one of my seminary classmates
asked our professor what he thought
he’d be doing in heaven.
“Standing there
with my mouth wide open!”
he mused. More recently, John Ortberg
unpacked what this notion means
for us in his foreword to Mark Labberton’s arresting book,
The Dangerous Act
of Worship (IVP):
The prophet
Micah said a long time ago that the divine requirements for human life are not rocket
science: Do justice, love mercy and
walk humbly before your God. Worship is that humble walk. It’s the knee-buckling, jaw-dropping acknowledgement
of the gap between the creature
and
the Creator, the finite and the infinite, the sinful
and the Holy.
Every time we sing the great hymn Holy, Holy, Holy! or any other song that
affirms the same convictions, we’re echoing Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4. These two reverberating,
thunder- rumbling scenes
of worship in heaven give
us narrow but glorious glimpses
of the One whose presence we purport to enter and whose
blessing we seek. At the sound
of unceasing seraphic antiphony,
the prophet tells us the very doorposts and threshold of God’s envisioned
temple shook to their core as the heavenly throne room filled with
smoke:
“Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
When Isaiah
saw the Lord, high and lifted
up, he said, “Woe is me! I am a man
of unclean lips!” Recapitulating this reaction
at the end of the biblical canon John
says his apocalyptic vision
of the Lord dropped him to
the ground
like a dead man.
We may or may not react the same way when we gather before the Lord on Sundays, but perhaps we should. The Creator of heaven and earth has not changed since the prophet and the apostle recorded their visions. It’s still appropriate to lead God’s people into prayer with the words, “Lord Most High…” The fact that Jesus makes available to us a new and intimate way of access to God has not diminished God. It simply and strikingly means that we can now call him “Papa,” “Daddy,” “Abba Father.”
Worship isn’t a
performance, but it is a drama.
It’s when we tell, re-tell,
and re-tell God’s great story, the wonderful story of the Gospel, the unfolding drama of redemption.
Do
you remember those times way back
in elementary school, maybe on
Friday afternoons, when we put away our
textbooks and our lessons and we gathered
around in a circle on the floor
to hear our teacher read us a
story? We all loved those times most of all. Everyone
loves a good story. And when we tell and
re-tell God’s story, what we
do may not be a performance, but it is a drama with
all the heightened expressive
qualities we can muster and
engage.
We
may be in on the story, we may be part of
the story, but ultimately we’re not the
audience. Worship
finally and truly has an audience of One. God is the audience in worship. This
was Kierkegaard’s observation. It’s God who watches
the drama.
I sang in a men’s chorus in college. My last year we
went on a six-week tour
of Europe. Great concert halls!
Magnificent cathedrals! Historic churches! Forty
concerts in forty-two days. No
wonder we were tired!
Toward
the end of our trip, as a result of winning first prize in an international
choir competition there, we were privileged to sing for Queen
Juliana of The Netherlands. We performed
a full concert for her. But
she wasn’t
perched remotely away in the
royal box in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw . She was sitting in her summer palace on a single chair that looked pretty much like a throne—right in front
of us. She was the only person
there. It was
an audience of one, except for her aides—one at each shoulder—and four soldiers
with machine guns at every
corner of the room. It was
a big room.
As
you might imagine our conductor had our full attention. After all
we were singing for the Queen! Just
the Queen! Her face
was on the money in our wallets!
Through it all she treated us so graciously, like anyone’s kind and doting grandmother. And she created
quite a memory for us. We’ll never
forget being in her presence.
In worship we come into the presence of
the Lord
God of heaven and earth. He is holy. All creation is full of his glory. “Holy” translates a Hebrew word that simply means “set apart, distinct, unique.” It can refer
to something as mundane as cookware. We probably use every day dishes for macaroni and cheese. But for Christmas dinner we use the Royal Wedgewood—“holy” dishes set apart for a special purpose.
The whole idea of “consecration”
emerges from this. When
something or someone is “consecrated,” it’s being “set apart.”
This may help us understand the force of 1 Peter 1:15, “Just as he who called you
is holy, so be holy in all you do.” We’re not
commanded to be everything that God is. We’re called to be set apart to him, even as he is set apart and
distinct.
Old Testament
scholar Allen Ross asserts that when we
say God is holy, “we ascribe a
uniqueness to him that is almost incomprehensible,”[1]
a singularity that characterizes
every divine
attribute. We use words
like omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, righteous, and just to describe
God, not ourselves. Certainly none of
us shares or even fully understands
these qualities. There is
no one like God. God is distinct
and unique—holy.
When we worship—together
on Sunday morning, or in the seclusion of a quiet devotional
moment—we’re given
the privilege of singing for, praying
to, learning from, being changed
by,
and finding true worth
in the Lord God of heaven
and earth.
His face isn’t on the money,
but we do see him in the face of our gracious Savior. Jesus brings us into the presence of
the Father.
He
makes his Father our Father. And
in this tremendous and tender
encounter we discover what true
worship is all about.
Dr. Michael Denham has served over twenty-two years as Director of Music Ministries at The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC.
[1]
Allen P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of
Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Kregel, 2006),
43.
Reverberating Word 