The Elements of Worship: Encountering God’s Glory
Sycamore Creek Church
November 28, 2010
Tom Arthur
Isaiah 6:1-8
Peace, Friends!
Today we begin a new four week series called The Elements of Worship: An Encounter with God. We’re going to be looking at four different elements of what it means to worship. This series falls at a particularly good time because today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is the beginning of the church calendar when Christians prepare their hearts and minds for Christmas. As we explore worship in this series, we’re really preparing to be able to worship Jesus Christ better at the celebration of his birth, Christmas.
But there is also a second reason for this series, and that has to do with the fact that this congregation itself said that teaching around worship was something we needed more of. This came out of a process we entered into last November in which dialogue groups were put together around seven different areas of focus. Each of those dialogue groups created a list of “must dos.” One of those areas of focus was “worship” and one of the must dos that came out of that worship dialogue group was teaching on worship. So, because it’s always good to understand worship better, and also because you asked for it, here we are: The Elements of Worship: An Encounter with God!
Take a moment and fill in the blank:
Worship is _______________________
I’m serious. Don’t continue reading until you at least mentally have finished that sentence.
Ok, now that you’ve finished that sentence here are some ways that others have finished that sentence. My worship professor at seminary, Ed Phillips, said, “Worship is the way God forms the Church through the story of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in the practice of living according to the Truth.” Pope Pius X said “Worship is the glorification of God and the sanctification [the process of making holy or righteous] of humanity.” Some big words there.
Soren Kierkegaard said that worship is performance. Performance? If it’s a performance who are the performers and who is the audience? We tend to think of the musicians and the pastor as the performers in worship and the congregation as the audience but Kierkegaard had a different idea. He said you, the congregation ,are the performers and God is the audience!
An old word for worship is “liturgy.” What exactly does that mean anyway? Well, “liturgy” is actually simply Latin for “the work of the people.” In this sense when you participate in liturgy you are doing the work of the people as compared to God’s work.
I like a lot about all of these definitions of worship. I’ve taken my own stab at providing a definition of worship. It’s the tag line for this series. Here it is:
Worship happens most fully when the community gathers to encounter the living God and respond with everything we’ve got.
First of all, worship is about God. It’s less about you than you may think. It’s not so much about you coming and getting filled up or coming and hearing what you need to hear. That’s not to say that worship has nothing to do with those things, but they are mostly by-products of worship, not the goal of worship. What we get out of worship has more to do with our response which always follows an encounter with God. Worship is first and foremost about God.
Worship is also most full when it is communal. That’s not to say that worship can’t happen individually, but rather that an encounter with God is most full when the community gathers together. We’re using a kind of science theme for this series. Maybe one way to think about this communal aspect of worship is the way that most science happens: communally. I recently read an article in Time magazine about Thomas Edison. The amazing thing about Edison and all his inventions is that he invented all these amazing things not by himself but with a kind of “research park” similar to today’s Silicon Valley or more close to home, MSU and all the labs that work together to learn and create and invent.
Lastly, worship is about our response. When we encounter God, we respond with everything we’ve got. Everything we’ve got? Yep. Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength. Time. Talent. Treasure. Testimony. Prayers. Presence. Gifts. Service. EVERYthing.
Worship happens most fully when the community gathers to encounter the living God and respond with everything we’ve got.
To help us explore this idea about worship more fully, we’re going to go back to high school chemistry. I hear groans already. Yeah. I hated chemistry, personally. Some people dig it, but it was probably my weakest subject. Nonetheless, the periodic table will provide us some helpful guidance along the way. We’re going to use four different elements on the periodic table to help us understand four characteristics of God and our response to that particular character of God:
Carbon = God’s glory and our praise and awe.
Hydrogen = God’s holiness and our conviction and confession.
Copper = God’s mercy and forgiveness and our thankfulness.
Lithium = God’s love and our mission.
So today we begin with Carbon. Carbon is a pretty cool element. It’s cool for many reasons. In a helpful book about the elements called, well, The Elements, we read that “Carbon is the most important element of life, period. Sure, there are many others without which life would not exist, but from the spiral backbone of DNA to the intricate rings and streamers of the steroids and proteins, carbon is the element whose unique properties tie it all together” (The Elements, 25). In other words, carbon is all around us and is the basis of life.
We’ve found these awesome little videos that we’re going to use each week in which Martin Poliakoff, professor at University of Nottingham, will bring us all up to speed on each element. Here’s the video about carbon.
I love that guy’s hair. Wow! So that’s carbon. Let’s go to God’s Word which will inform us about worship. We’re going to use each week a passage from Isaiah chapter six where the prophet Isaiah encounters God.
Isaiah 6:1-8 (NLT)
In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Hovering around him were mighty seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with the remaining two they flew. In a great chorus they sang, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” The glorious singing shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire sanctuary was filled with smoke.
Then I said, “My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of a sinful race. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD Almighty!”
Then one of the seraphim flew over to the altar, and he picked up a burning coal with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”
Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
So carbon is about beauty. Beauty because one of the key ways we know carbon is in its form as a diamond. Now diamonds have been in the news a lot lately thanks to a little engagement that happened recently between Prince William and Kate Middleton. The big talk has been how William gave Kate his mother, Princess Diana’s, engagement ring. It’s a blue sapphire with diamonds arranged all around it. The demand for this kind of ring has in the last week skyrocketed.
Apparently I am a little ahead of the fashion curve. When I proposed to Sarah I went around to my family and asked if there was a ring in the family that I could have or buy to use. I came to find out that there wasn’t a ring, but my mom had a blue sapphire ring that my dad had given her before they were divorced, and my dad had his wedding ring from his marriage with my mom, and my grandma had the diamonds from her wedding ring that she had taken out at one point, and all three of these people gave me these different rings or diamonds so that I could make a ring to propose to Sarah. So Sarah and I made a ring that used the blue sapphire from my mom’s ring, the gold from dad’s ring, and the diamonds from my grandma’s ring, and that’s Sarah’s engagement ring. Actually, did you know that diamond engagement rings are a fairly new “tradition”? They were invented in the 1940s by a marketing campaign! But today we recognize diamonds as a symbol of beauty and diamonds are simply made out of carbon.
When we worship God we encounter God’s Glory. We read back in Isaiah 6:1, “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple.” Here is this wonderful picture of God’s glory as beauty which is symbolized by a robe filling a temple. I imagine a kind of kingly ornate robe with incredible hand-stitched embroidery made out of strands of silver and gold thread.
The psalms are full of declarations of God’s beauty. One well known psalm is Psalm 8 which says, “O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth! Your glory is higher than the heavens.” The beauty of creation becomes a symbol of the beauty of the creator.
When we worship God we encounter God’s glory in God’s beauty.
Another aspect of God’s glory is God’s power. Consider again carbon. Carbon is the hardest of all the elements. We hear about all kinds of diamond tipped tools: diamond-tipped drill bits, diamond-tipped saw blades, and so on. Have you heard about the diamond-tipped razor blade? Here’s a video of a diamond-tipped razor blade showing off by slicing a thread of hair!
Carbon has strength and power. So does God. We read again in Isaiah that “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple” (Isaiah 6:1). Here is an image of God’s kingly majesty and power. God’s glory is thus seen in God’s power.
Power makes me think of tornados. Have you ever seen up close the mind-blowing power of a tornado? I grew up in Indianapolis and tornados were a regular occurrence in that city. One tornado touched down about 500 yards from my house. It hit a two-story apartment building and left a pile of splinters. It jumped up in the air and landed in the sports complex of my high school where it picked up some bleachers, mangled them like they were a twist tie, and dropped them in the outfield of the baseball diamond. That’s power! But God’s glory in God’s power is even greater!
When we worship we encounter God’s glory in God’s power.
We also encounter God’s glory in God’s mystery. Back to carbon. Carbon is all around us. It makes up practically everything in our world. And yet it is hidden. It is behind the scenes. God is similar. God’s glory is seen in God’s mystery.
We read in Isaiah that “hovering around [God] were mighty seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with the remaining two they flew” (Isaiah 6:2). I wonder if they were covering up because they couldn’t bear to look at God’s mystery. God was right there but the seraphim, a kind of angelic being, covered their eyes because God is ultimately a kind of mystery.
There is a kind of theology or study of God called “apophatic” theology. Not “apathetic” theology but “apophatic.” “Apophatic” comes from the Greek words which means “to say no.” Thus, apophatic theology understands that it is easier to say what God is not than to say what God is. God’s glory is wrapped in God’s mystery.
Many Christians have written about this aspect of God’s glory. Thomas A Kempis, the 15th century writer of the Imitation of Christ, said, “If you think you know many things and understand them well enough, realize at the same time that there is much you do not know.” St. Augustine, a 4th and 5th century church leader said, “God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.” Blaise Pascal, a 17th century mathematician and philosopher said, “Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.” God’s glory is encountered in God’s mystery.
Paul speaks of this mystery as well. He says, “Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now” (1 Corinthians 13:12). God’s glory is in God’s mystery. If we go back to Psalm 8 we read, “What are mortals that you should think of us, mere humans that you should care for us? For you made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:4-5). The psalmist is having a hard time wrapping his mind around what God is up to in humanity. I too have this experience. People can be known but they are also a mystery. Consider a spouse. I have been married for thirteen years. I know Sarah pretty well. One thing that I was sure I knew was that Sarah doesn’t like cooking. For almost all of those thirteen years, I did all the cooking, but about a year ago Sarah all of a sudden started enjoying cooking! She remains a mystery to me.
When we worship we encounter God’s glory in God’s mystery.
Worship is about encountering God’s glory in God’s beauty, power, and mystery.
So what’s left? Our response. The most natural response is praise. We along with psalms declare the glory of God! When we see it we name it out loud. One way we see it is by living in a disposition of awe and wonder. This is a kind of child-like approach to the world.
Wow!
Did you see that?!
Did you know that?!
Do it again! Again! Again!
Wow!
Like carbon, God’s glory in beauty is all around us. We need only look for it. Like carbon, God’s glory is powerful. Like carbon, which is all around us but hidden, God’s glory is mystery. When we gather with the community to worship God, we encounter God’s glory and we respond with praise living in awe and wonder.
Here are some ways your response can bleed over into this week:
1. Be Creative. Take time to create something. When you create you participate with God’s beauty, power, and mystery.
2. Enjoy Creation. Get outside even if it is cold. Put on your warm clothes and go for a hike. Be in awe about God’s creation. Ask “I wonder” questions.
3. Slow Down. We run our lives so quickly and so jam packed that we barely take the time to stop and notice God’s glory all around us. When you’re out and about, stop doing whatever you’re doing and just people watch. Enjoy the mystery of the image of God in each person. Look and see.
4. Sing. We sing together in worship and that’s a fairly obvious place to sing. We sing praise because we can’t help ourselves. We’re wired to sing. So sing a little this week. If you’re like me and you can’t carry a tune, turn the music up loud so that you can sing at the top of your lungs and can’t even hear yourself. Do that in our communal worship too. Put your whole self into singing. Don’t just sag your shoulders and mumble the words. Belt it out. God hears the tune of the intent of your praise whether the actual praise is off-tune or not.
Worship happens most fully when the community gathers to encounter God and respond with everything we’ve got.
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