Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host! Psalm 148:1,2.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise him for one hour here below;
Praise him with nickel and with dime,
Praise God we're getting out on time.

'It's dead, a mechanical routine. We do the same things, ritually, week after week. I don't get anything out of it.' 'My friends have voted with their feet and stay away.' 'Our church services are so cold, they're like mournful funerals: everyone is so sombre and distant.' 'Ours are like a fowl-yard: so much chattering and giggling and irreverence.' 'We'll have to rescue ours from show business!' 'Why not cut the preliminaries and have a better sermon?' 'Let's liven it up with happier singing.' 'Let's be more experimental.' 'Our vicar has the liturgical fidgets; you don't know what to expect.' 'Let's give people what they want or we'll lose them.' 'It's people's duty to attend worship, no matter how dull and boring it may be.' Do you 'resonate' with any of these comments?

Lord Jesus Christ, the well is deep and I have nothing with which to draw. In these next few days, help me to understand why I can't really face the world with integrity until I have truly met you. Amen.

GLORIFY GOD AND ENJOY HIM FOREVER!

We will bless the Lord from this time on and forevermore. Praise the Lord! Psalm 114:18.

Something is happening to people's expectations of worship in this television age. They want the stale water of liturgies-as-usual turned into the wine of celebration. Worship services for many are a morose experience. As the Devil says in The Brothers Karamazov, 'Everything would be transformed into a religious service: it would be holy, but a little dull.' But is 'spiritual entertainment' the purpose of worship? Do we worship to make the faithful 'feel good'?

As we begin these meditations on worship we - you the reader as I the writer have done - should pause reverently and pray for wisdom and a teachable spirit. Worship is the sublime and awesome key to everything the church does.

'Worship' is a contraction of the old English word 'worth-ship'. It's recognizing that which is worth most, in the ultimate sense. In the old marriage service a man and a woman promised to 'worship' each other; to accord value and worth to each other. Divine worship is a love affair too!

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks 'What is our chief end?' It's 'to glorify God and enjoy him forever'.

As I worship, may my key question be, 'What can I offer the Lord for all his goodness to me?' (Psalm 116:12). Amen.

WORSHIP IS ALL OF LIFE

What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me? Psalm 116:12.

Worship is the appropriate response to the God who gives everything life, to the Holy One, who inhabits eternity, to the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is God our Saviour. Worship is meeting - God with us, to which we respond with wonder, amazement and awe. 'We worship God because God is to be worshipped'. We worship not because worship benefits us (although it does), not because we need to (although we do), nor because it is relevant to our daily lives (although it is), but because God is.

Saint Benedict founded an order with the motto laborare est orare, 'to work is to pray'. Worship is service (it's the same word in the New Testament): serving the Lord in our praises, praising the Lord in our ministry to others, ministering to the Lord in prayerful solitude - it's all worship. Worship is both individual and corporate, done both in 'the secret place' and in the redeemed community.

Holy Lord, may I become the kind of devout person for whom worship is all of life, and will be life-long. Amen.

THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO WORSHIP

Guard your steps when you go into the house of God. Ecclesiastes 5:1.

Worship isn't something 'observed' or 'attended', it is something we are and do. As 'we are what we eat' so 'we are what we worship' and we become like the God we worship. So we step back from the rush of life and ponder its realities at an ultimate level at a special time each week. But for true worshippers every time and every place is special.

The inward imperative as we 'come to worship' is to 'take the shoes from [our] feet, for the place on which [we] stand is holy ground' (Exodus 3:5). 'Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire' (Hebrews 12:28,29). We had better be careful, then: the way we worship could be hazardous!

Worship in Old Testament times was sometimes liturgical, sometimes free. There we seem to have two worship traditions. One was priestly, cultic, authoritarian and dynastic, the other more congregational, democratic, prophetic and ethical. Worship was both ritual and hearty service (Deuteronomy 11:13, Psalm 40:6-8, 50:12-15, Micah 6:6-8). Christian church history has similarly seen worship move from one extreme to the other. So there may not be just one way to worship!

Thank you, Lord, that your people throughout the earth are diverse, so they worship in different ways. For these many rich traditions, I praise you: help me to worship in many ways too, rather than being stuck in one tradition. Amen.

WORSHIP: DYNAMIC AND LITURGICAL

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind... One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer... Acts 2:1, 3;1.

The New Testament nowhere prescribes a detailed order of worship. The worship of the early church comprised teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers: God meets his people in the Word, in each other, in holy communion, and in prayer (Acts 2:42), and also in the more formal Jewish worship in the Temple (Acts 2:46, 3:1, 5:12). The mission of the early church was the fruit of worship.

Paul, in his regular worship, teaching and missionary work, chose a close fraternity with the synagogue. The synagogue service consisted of an invitation to prayer, the prayer itself, the reading of scriptures, a homily based on the scripture reading and concluded with the benediction.

At the end of the first century there was a move toward a more structured and formal service of worship. Most churches move in this direction over time: but does that mean such 'predictable' worship has to be 'dead'? Not necessarily.

Forgive me, Lord, if I have been too critical of the worship-styles of churches other than my own. Amen.

UNITY WITH ALL GOD'S PEOPLE

You ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation. Revelation 5:9.

Building on the legacy of the New Testament, the Protestant Reformation's worship emphasis was on the Word and inner reality rather than the sacraments and formality. So churches in the Reformation tradition devote about half - or more - of their time to the sermon. The Age of Reason ensured a highly rational content in worship, with eloquent sermons of high literary and intellectual merit.

For Calvin's followers the Sunday service became primarily a preaching service, with communion observed infrequently. One of the most important legacies of the Reformation was that public worship and communion (when held) was based on the strongly penitential and clerical model of the medieval period, rather than upon the joyous community celebration of the preConstantinian church.

When we worship as a congregation, we are united with all of God's people everywhere and at all times. Indeed, we may not realize our affinity with the strict Calvinist when we sing 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me', or with a Unitarian ('Nearer my God to thee'), with a Roman Catholic ('Lead Kindly Light'), with a Quaker ('Dear Lord and Father of mankind'), as well as with ancient psalmists and modern poets.

So as I worship you, Lord, today and on each Sunday, may I experience a wonderful unity with your people everywhere - on earth and in heaven. Amen.

BIBLICAL WORSHIP AND OURS

Praise the Lord! With trumpet sound... lute and harp... tambourine and dance... strings and pipe... clanging cymbals, clashing cymbals! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Psalm 150.

Biblical worship was sometimes active. So we should involve the whole congregation in worship: not just singing hymns, but with responsive readings, litanies, united prayers, times of community sharing, bringing the offerings forward, moving to greet one another etc.

Biblical worship was also sensual: appealing to eye, ear and nose! Do a checklist of your worship-service: what is there for the eyes (form, light, colour, architecture, dress etc.), the ear (besides voices of leader, congregation, musical instruments [see Psalm 150] and choir, recorded music, voices, special effects), taste and smell in the holy communion: what else?

Touch is important: we all have 'contact need' since separation from the womb. In the gospels physical contact was important for Jesus as he ministered to people: so, when it is appropriate, we may hold hands to sing or pray, or clasp arms, or share an embrace as an expression of genuine Christian love. These are opportunities to say with flesh what we feel in our hearts.

May I worship you, Lord, with all that is within me, with all my senses, softly and sometimes loudly, reverently and boisterously, in silence and with music. Amen.

MIND AND SPIRIT

Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15.

Rudolf Otto explored the non-rational in religion and coined the word numinous to describe 'the holy' after words have failed. The numinous cannot be taught; it can only be felt. It is 'thanking God for his unspeakable gift'. The numinous, says Otto, encompasses boundless awe and wonder, fear and fascination.

The raw material of religious humility is the tremenda majestas, or awe-inspiring majesty of God. So we must resist the temptation to 'domesticate the holy', whereby our solemn assemblies become informal, friendly, social gatherings.

Our worship may also be too intellectual, moving exclusively in the realm of thoughts and words and ideas, and addressed to the ears rather than the eyes. Our world is 'word-weary'. We are slaves to the printed word. Perhaps we need printed guidance for worship, - the middle-classes are comfortable reading - but let us not forget less welleducated persons who may not be. For them particularly we should encourage 'folk arts' which open new avenues to express worship and praise, provide new methods of teaching and instruction, and draw people more into an atmosphere of enjoyment and festivity.

In charismatic/pentecostal churches where the Holy Spirit is invited to take over the worshipper, we have moved sometimes from the rational to the mystical. Worship needs to be rational (Romans 12:1-3) and spiritual (John 4:23), both.

My God, I worship you with both my mind and my spirit. Amen.

ENCOUNTER AND ADORATION

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker! For he is our God... Psalm 95:6,7.

We worship as whole beings: our 'self' is psychological, cultural, biological. We worship with mind and heart and will. We involve the emotions, genuine feelings of joy and desolation, exaltation and bereavement. Worship ought to be a living event, to which we bring our human, frail, brokenness. The Spirit helps us in our infirmities... so we can come to God with our fears, joys, guilt, anger, affirmations, tensions and loneliness. In his presence we renew our lives which are mixed up in work, conflict, love and creation. We worship with 'all that is within us' and 'all that is around us' (the wonders of creation too are an incentive to praise the Creator: see Psalm 19).

And we worship with our bodies. However, we need to be careful we don't call more attention to the body than to him who redeemed that body. The essence of Baalism, the worship of local gods in biblical times, was its deification of the sex instinct.

Worship is not just a subjective, ecstatic, 'feeling' experience. It is more than 'self-expression'. Corporate worship ought not to be an emotional tool for producing 'conversions'. The Bible does not use the word 'worship' as simply a description of experience. Worship is something you do, it is a reponse to God's word and God's ways and God's will, however you feel about it (although this does not mean there is no place for feelings and sensory experience).

I lift my heart to you, Lord Christ, and pray for your help to worship the living God in Spirit and in truth. Amen.

LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High. Psalm 92:1.

Christian worship services usually begin with a Call to Worship and Invocation. Here nothing excels the 'Sursum Corda' for feeling and dignity. The leader says: 'Lift up your hearts'. Our response: 'We lift them up unto the Lord'.

Worship is the expression of a love affair between us and our wonderful God. God is not a supreme egoist who needs flattery in order to survive. Wrong ideas about God generate all kinds of evils and heresies. For example if God is thought to be the Author of our social system,

this can lead to injustice perpetrated against those who question this assumption. If God is mostly 'who I need' our worship can be sickly and subjective.

Authentic worship is always Christ-centred. The early Church remained in the apostles' teaching because Christ taught his disciples; they had fellowship because they all belonged to the Church, Christ's body; they celebrated communion because Christ ordained it; they prayed because Christ taught them how to pray.

Lord God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, one God, I worship you in reverence and awe. You are my God. I am your child. I honour you with my words, my praises, my love and my obedience. To you be glory forever and ever. Amen.