Can traditional forms of worship communicate to contemporary people? The critics of these forms react to them by so emphasizing human understanding and the human situation that the importance of God and His activity in worship is practically forgotten. Edward T. Horn describes the curious practices such a false, human-centered approach develops:
"There is, for instance, a tendency abroad in certain quarters to provide Christian worship with an 'atmosphere' which is almost theatrical in its techniques. Worship is 'built' around a theme. . . . Sentimental music, . . . spotlights, . . . sentimental poetry . . . all are carefully planned to make the worshiper feel as though he were drifting in a gondola along the lagoons of the river of the City of God! . . .
"Other services, rather than try to 'create a mood,' attempt to capitalize upon the mood of the moment a mood which already exists. .,. . Overnight, the service of the church becomes a peace rally or a political platform." 1
A false preoccupation with the human element may also lead to the neglect of the importance of God's presence by making worship an occasion for theoretical instruction. Those who take this approach view the sermon as the "be-all" and "end-all" of worship, lightly dismissing all else as preliminaries.
But if a false preoccupation with human beings threatens true worship in one way, then an unbalanced concern with God and His presence threatens it in another--by leading us to neglect people and their, needs. After all, God is present because He is concerned about people.
Raymond Abba suggests four guiding principles that will help us to maintain a balance between these antithetical preoccupations:2
First, Christian worship is founded on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Worship is God-centered. "The basis of Christian worship is not utilitarian but theological." Abba affirms that worship "begins not from our end but God's. . . . We come to God because God, in Jesus Christ, has come to us; we love Him because He first loved us; we ascribe to Him supreme worth because He has showed Himself to be worthy of our complete homage, gratitude, and trust. Worship is essentially a response, man's response to God's Word of grace, to what He has done for us."
Second, true worship can spring only from the activity of the Holy Spirit. A recital of God's saving acts through liturgical forms will evoke a response by the "inward testimony of the Holy Spirit." These liturgical forms, he says, need not restrict charismatic expression, for worship that is "truly prompted by the Spirit will be ... restricted as well as evoked by the Christian revelation." "The reality of worship depends, not upon the presence or absence of liturgy, but upon the union of the worshipers, through the power of the Spirit, with the self-oblation of Christ."
Third, worship is a corporate activity; it is not the act of isolated individuals, but of the whole church. While our personal communion with God is founded on our union with Christ, yet "to be 'in Christ' is to be incorporated into His Body, which is the obedient, worshiping church." '' Christian worship is the corporate approach to God of the people of God. It is a family activity. 'When ye pray,' said Jesus, 'say, Our Father . . .' "
Finally, worship is the only adequate preparation of the church for its work and witness in the world as the body of Christ. Abba cites a German mystic as saying: "What we be come in the presence of God, that we can be all day long." He suggests that the church can only become the instrument of Christ's saving activity in the world as the Holy Spirit unites it to Christ. So "effective witness depends upon sustained worship."
Abba then quotes Archdeacon Harrison as saying: ''What matters is not whether worship makes us feel good or happy; what matters is whether it makes us Christlike, whether men take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus."
Taking God's presence seriously will put us on guard against eliminating God from worship by placing undue emphasis on humanity. The so-called mood type of worship that focuses only on what people feel or think or do misses the point by forgetting that it is the almighty and transcendent God who is the ground of worship. Worship cannot be real or relevant if it is a monologue of human creation with no reference to the hidden God who addresses His Word to humanity.
But on the other hand, if we take God's presence seriously, we must consider His whole design--which is to reveal Himself in Christ to humanity, to open up and mark out that two-way passage down which His grace flows and up which our faithful and fruitful response can move. We miss the point if we let our worship become a mechanical affair in which God may live and move and have His being, but which does not vitally touch people to change and renew them.
Certainly we need to subject our ways of worship to continual reformation, but the reformation required is not that of a creative mastermind, nor one shaped by aesthetic principles or popular taste, but reformation according to the Word of God. It is not our business here to be inventive. The example of Jeroboam "who made Israel to sin" (1 Kings 14:16) should discourage us from trying to devise novelties in this field.
If we were to set about refashioning our worship according to our own inventiveness, we might indeed conceivably succeed in producing a religious masterpiece, but as Karl Barth has pointed out, "religion with its master pieces is one thing, Christian faith with its obedience is another." 3
1 Edward T. Horn III, Altar and Pew
(Philadelphia: Board of Publication of the United
Lutheran Church of America, 1951), pp. 18, 19.
2 The four principles that follow and the
quotations that support them come from chapter 1,
"Basic Principles," of Raymond Abba, Principles
of Christian Worship (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960), pp. 1-14.
3 Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the
Service of God (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1978), p. 206.
