Why is Reformed Worship so Serious?
© 2004, 2008 by Daniel R. Hyde
Originally published in The Journal of the Church Music National Conference (Winter 2004): 3–6.
Here in San Diego county we have a weekly magazine called The San Diego Reader. It is a magazine primarily concerned with the cultural scene in the county. One aspect of the culture that gets some ink is religion. Until recently, Jewish reporter Mr. Abe Opincar went from house of worship to house of worship every week and would report on that congregation’s history, size, sermon, and worship in his column “Sheep and Goats.” At one point he reviewed a local Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and it’s new “Celebration Service,” which, according to its minister was “not about your personal taste. It’s about outreach. It’s about sharing the Gospel with someone else.” To this Mr. Opincar editorialized:
I wanted to seize Reverend Cansino by his chasuble and rattle him. I wanted to yell at him that PowerPoint displays have already numbed the minds of non-denominational evangelicals. I wanted to drag Reverend Cansino out to Shadow Mountain Community Church, Tim LaHaye’s old roost, to see how hellish and goofy a ‘screen-oriented’ service can be.
As a young, former evangelical myself, these comments resonated with me. In my experience as a Reformed pastor, there are two kinds of people that walk through our doors. There are the primarily baby-boomer evangelicals and there are primarily Gen-X and Net-Gen burned out evangelicals and unbelievers. It’s no surprise, then, that when the former are visitors (or as Michael Horton calls them, “tourists.”1) in our worship services they think we are strange and most never come back; whereas the latter group find us appealing, satisfying mentally and emotionally, precisely because our Lord’s Day liturgy is a 180° difference from what they are accustomed to.
As the only Reformed church in coastal North San Diego County, we revel in our being different than everything else out there, with our Word and Sacrament ministry, historic liturgy, and robe-wearing minister. From the beginning to the end of our worship, we assemble with a marked seriousness, a purpose, a reason why we do what we do. From entering into the presence of God with a time of silent prayer, to corporately confessing our sins and receiving absolution, to reciting the creeds and singing the Psalms, to hearing an Old and New Testament lesson, and culminating in coming forward to receive the bread and wine “from the hand of the minister” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 75), Reformed worship is different—seriously different.
A Meeting With God
The first thing we ourselves must understand in order to communicate to the “tourist” and unbeliever alike, is that worship is a meeting with the Triune God. It is no trivial matter for which we assemble. Worship in the Bible is a meeting between sinful people and a holy God, between servants and a King. As such to be in the presence of this all-holy King is to keep silence: “the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Hab. 2:20). To be in the presence of the one true God is to stand on “holy ground” (Ex. 3:5).
What is happening, in Biblical terms, is that we as the LORD’s “treasures possession among all peoples,” the “kingdom of priests,” the “holy nation,” assemble to “encamp[ed] before the mountain” (Ex. 19:5,6,2). We are meeting with the Creator of the universe and the Redeemer of a people. And in the terms of the New Testament we do not come to a physical mountain, but to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:22-24).
Worship is not a time for “hangin’ out with Jesus,(emphasis mine – Keith)” being a part of a great social event, having our numerous needs met as consumers. Instead, it is time in which the infinite, all-holy God of the universe condescends to us in grace and the power of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace.
We see this illumined for us in the terms the Bible itself uses. First, there is the general Hebrew term ‘abodah (“service”), which comes from the same root as ‘ebed (“slave, servant;” Ex. 3:12, 21:1-6, 23:25; Pss. 89:3, 20, 116:16). This is the more general or broad of the two words in the Hebrew Bible for worship which speaks to us as servants of the great King who come to offer Him the service He desires and deserves. In the New Testament we have the verb latreuo and its noun latria (“service, worship;” Acts 7:42, 24:14, 26:7; Rom. 1:9, 2:37, 9:4, 12:1, 15:16; Phil. 3:3; Heb. 8:5, 9:9, 10:2; Rev. 7:15, 22:3).
Most specific to “worship” are the Hebrew histahawa (“prostrate”) and the Greek proskunein (“to fall on the ground in adoration”). Whereas the Hebrew term ‘ebed is used for “serving” the LORD, histahawa is used of the cultus proper, the worship offered to the LORD in accordance with His Word (Gen. 24:52, 27:29, 49:23; 2 Chron. 7:3, 29:29); while proskunein is used to express the honor given to men, but in a peculiar manner, the honor given to God Himself (Matt. 4:9-10, 14:33; Mark 15:19; John 4:21-24; Acts 10:25).
The most specific word is the Greek verb leitourgein and its corresponding noun, leitourgia. This term is used generally in the ancient world for any “service to the community or state; yet it is the specific word used for the official liturgical acts of worship in the Septuagint (LXX) and New Testament (Ex. 28:35, 43; 1 Sam. 2:11, 18, 3:1; Luke 1:23; Acts 13:2; 2 Cor. 9:12; Phil. 2:30; Heb. 9:21, 10:11).
As the worshipping community, we come to serve the Lord by bowing and kneeling (Ps. 95:6). And it is in that posture that we are to “lift up” our eyes “to the LORD our God till he has mercy upon us” (Ps. 123:1-2); we are to “lift up” our hands “to the holy place” (Ps. 134:2). These postures are the outward way we show our inward attitude of utter dependence upon the LORD in worship. We bow down knowing that we deserve nothing; we lift our eyes because it is from heaven that we seek “grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16); we lift our hands because we embrace the LORD and His promises by faith alone.
We see this especially in the book of Hebrews, where we are to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). This confidence is not arrogance. It is a confidence in which we, with our weaknesses, temptations, and sins (Heb. 4:15), come boldly because “we have a great high priest” (Heb. 4:14). Our boldness is in Christ. Our boldness is that because Christ “was heard because of his reverence” (Heb. 5:7) we too will be heard by the Father. Our boldness is that because Christ “offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb. 9:15) we can now worship. Hebrews therefore says that our attitude is boldness in Christ, not flippancy. As well, our worship is to be done with an attitude of reverence. Our attitude is not to be flippant or the all-too-often “come as you are” casualness of modern worship. Instead, our attitude is to be one of “reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28-29). What Hebrews says about the attitude of our worship is this: recognize that worship is a sacred meeting between you and the Living God.
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