Had this cool and yet strange dream last night! I was walking on a dirt path in the on the side of a road that ran through vast Canola fields!
Anyway, allow me to continue writing about worship.
Three 20- or 30-something men speak about powerful divine encounters on the Bible. Isaiah, Paul, and Peter all tell of their meeting God, or God meeting them, and setting them on their life paths. In Isaiah’s case, it’s clear that this happened in the temple, no doubt while worshiping. And, it’s a pretty dramatic scene that he describes. Of course, the temple was a very impressive space, designed to inspire awe and reverence.
Here’s what happens to Isaiah during worship: he had a great vision; as he says, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings…the one called to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots shook…the house filled with smoke.”[1] Pretty impressive vision, right?
By comparison, imagine something like that happening here, to you, some morning. In Isaiah’s day, the temple had been built as a space to mediate such divine encounter. And, the same might be said for this space as well. Still, have you ever really thought through the implications – that maybe the most important purpose to gathering together and doing the sorts of things we do in here was to mediate an encounter with the sacred order of things? I mean, actually, in real-time, open up a space so that God might speak to us in some form or fashion?
No doubt you’ve heard it said that the reason we worship is to praise God. And so we do offer praise. But over the years, I’ve heard preachers a time or two go on and on how God just loves to be praised. Praise, praise, praise – that’s what God wanted from us and it made him just so happy, which, quite frankly, makes God sound like a narcissistic celebrity who just can’t get enough of his fawning public.
While worship is directed to God, it is in a very important sense, for us. Authentic worship depends upon some understanding, either conscious or intuitive, of what we might call “the unseen order of things.” We function in at least two different realms: the seen and the unseen; the tangible and the intangible. Whenever we start talking about “spiritual matters,” we’re acknowledging the existence of this unseen realm as a simultaneous reality to our physical existence. When Paul says at one point that God is “the one in whom we live and move and have our being,” [2] he’s affirming that God permeates existence. As Marcus Borg puts it, “God is a non-material layer of reality all around us. …There are minimally two layers of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience, and God, the sacred, or Spirit.” [3]
Authentic worship creates a “thin place” [4] between these realms; a time and place where the realms might touch. Of course, it is possible that such a time could be anywhere and everywhere given that this sacred order is everywhere. I’ve certainly had thin places pop up in unexpected moments – in my bed, walking down the street, hiking in the mountains, sharing deeply with another, singing or listening to music, even just sitting quietly in a chair.
Worship is no passive experience. We bring our disciplines of intention and attention; we come not as critics two steps removed waiting for the performance to begin, but as players ourselves, with our roles and responsibilities.
Which then leads to the last thing to be said for now: following their dramatic experience of realms converging, Isaiah, Peter and Paul were changed, and they had revealed to them who they had been all along. Worship is not about a self-indulgent deep experience. We don’t consume worship like customers on the make for a fast pulse. At the end of it, the point is transformed lives sent into the world.
That’s what Isaiah heard in the temple. “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, “’Here am I; send me!’” [5]
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[1] S Bauman, CCNYC 2007 [2] Acts 17:28[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, Harper San Francisco, 2003, p. 155
[4] Ibid.
[5] Isaiah 6:8
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