The Distillery Church

Authentic Worship

“To worship is to change.” Richard Foster

“An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer”.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

Tonight we asked the question, what is worship and what could it or should it look like in our community? Can the things we value as a community, such as authenticity and honesty, inform our worship and what can we learn from the worship we see in the Bible? Surely it must be more than the handful of songs we sing each week, so what does it look like both on the outside and, perhaps more importantly, on the inside?

We took as our starting point, two passages of worship in scripture. Jesus’ mother Mary’s song of worship in Luke 1: 46-55 and John 12:1-8, where Jesus is anointed with costly perfume. We thought about what characterizes these outpourings of worship and what is taking place in that moment.

Some of our responses to Luke 1: 46-55
- Mary’s first reaction is to worship God.
- Her worship is spontaneous but infused with the psalms and scriptures that she has been surrounded with all her life.
- She is aware of the greatness of God and at the same time is aware that she has been seen and is known and valued by him.
- She declares who he is, what he has done, what he is like and therefore why she can trust him.
- We were struck once again at God’s choice of someone so young, so socially insignificant and so ordinary

Some of our responses to John 12:1-8
- As far as we know, Mary doesn’t even speak – she just acts
- It was an act of sacrificial giving
- It was very intimate, personal, physical. She was not concerned with what others thought. Nor was she concerned to remain within the confines of what was considered socially acceptable. She had no thoughts for her own dignity or pride.
- It was extravagant, costly
- Whether or not she was aware of it she was also allowing God to speak through her prophetically, anointing Jesus for his death. A symbolic act can have a much greater impact than words.
- Jesus accepts the worship and affirms the priority that worship has to take in our lives.

Examining these two acts of worship, led us on to a discussion about whether our expressions of worship come cheap. Whether we push the difficult stuff aside resulting in a superficial act of worship. For both of these women, it was a sacrifice to worship and it was borne out of difficulty. We should not gloss over the struggle in order to present an superficially acceptable face. Worship should also change us as we are look beyond ourselves and encounter God.

My closing thoughts are further questions.

In being authentic and not hiding the struggles, do we run the risk of underselling God? In the example of Mary, there is not even a hint of fear or uncertainty. Is that because she didn’t have any fear or uncertainty or because she was choosing to fix her eyes on God and his faithfulness? If we spend all our time focusing on doubt and uncertainty, do we become doubtful and uncertain?

In wanting always to find new and authentic ways of expressing our worship, do we lose the importance of repeating and rehearsing who God is and what he has done? I know this can be as tedious and meaningless as chanting times tables but it doesn’t have to be. Mary didn’t even appear to struggle for words. What flowed out of her sounded like an infusion of psalms and scriptures that she had been surrounded by all her life but I don’t doubt she meant every word. We are even commanded to worship in this way through Communion – a regular symbolic reminder of our peace with God. When it comes down to it, is the problem just in our heart?

Oh, and one for the worship leaders out there…by which I mean anyone who leads any kind of gathering or Bible Study. How do we balance out being honest and authentic with the desire to build and encourage those who we are leading? Can we distract others from God by focusing on the foreground…?

Interested in your thoughts…

Diversity not disunity

We began our discussion this week by watching an interview blogged on Kathy Escobar’s website, titled “Christian“.  This interview was with John, a member of Kathy’s community, who was so disillusioned with the established church and felt so at odds with the views of conservative Christianity, that he felt compelled to stop calling himself a Christian.  He made the comment that Christians are not following Christ but Paul’s interpretation of Christ.

As a community, we could understand his sentiments, we could sympathize with his discomfort over some of Paul’s teachings or, at least, at the way some of them are applied but it seemed to us that John had just given up on the church, that for him the church was broken beyond fixing and that all he could do was start over.

We have seen this pattern before.  Much renewal in the church has been driven by dissatisfaction with the establishment of the day but as in the case of John, this results in division.  Is this God’s desire for his church?

We read Ephesians 4: 1-16 and considered what God’s desire for his church might be.  We should be “bearing with another in love” and aiming to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace”.  The passage reflects on the many different parts there are to the body of Christ, the church.  The church is characterized by diversity but should not be marked by disunity.  This is a struggle when we find ourselves in opposition to other Christians but always we need to keep our eyes on Jesus as the unifying force for the church.  God does not give up on his church, nor should we.