Too often culture (our whole way of life) determines cult (churchly worship). We become like the surrounding nations and worship their gods, sometimes without giving up on a type of Yahwistic lip-service. Consciously or unconsciously the minister tries to make himself (or in our culture, herself) attractive, or at least inoffensive to his audience, customers or pay-masters. She tries to be one of the guys and a nice chap, not quite a game show host or a Red Coat entertainer. Even if his chinos and open-necked shirt are a bit dressy compared to most of his clients, its good that he makes an effort – and some of the older folk who have remained in the church wouldn’t like flip flops and shorts, though that’s what the committed core wear for they understand the theology that they’re not doing anything really very special here on a Sunday (and it needn’t be here or on a Sunday, of course). Sometimes this is driven by the mistaken belief that the Sunday morning service is all about being seeker sensitive and then trying to be sensitive to a particular type of seeker. There are times and places and degrees of being all things to all men and the secondary goal of evangelism in worship mustn’t turn us into Cannanites.
Rather, cult is to determine culture. In fact, that’s inevitable. We become like what or whom we worship. The Sunday morning service of covenant renewal is a new start to a new week, even the remaking of a new world. The waters of life flow out from the Garden Sanctuary to renew the land, and their effects are felt even in the far off corners of the world, though most of those who drink them no not whence they came. In God’s temple his people are fed and trained and equipped. We are washed and patched up and after we enjoy fellowship and celebration with our loving heavenly Father. At last we are given our marching orders. As we bring the Eucharistic elements and our tithes and offerings, unworthy as we are, we offer up our ordinary feeble damnation-deserving efforts, done soley by the grace of God alone, to God and he graciously accepts them, and gives them back to us as something he alone can use for his purposes. Here we offer all of our cultural work to God. Our ordinary, daily, individual / family / nation endeavours of worship join with our special corporate public Sabbath sanctuary worship and are transformed as a result.
The whole of life is worship, but not in the same way as special worship and only because it is an outflow of it.
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Mark - these may be the best two paragraphs I've read on this. Utterly superb, and beautifully written.
oops. 3 paragraphs!
Hi Marc,
Forgive me if you've touched on this before, but I'm not a regular reader. Could you explain why you view the Sunday meeting as "special" worship, given that John 4 and Hebrews seem to suggest that worship is now not about a special place or time? My perception is it's that kind of distinction that subconsciously discourages people from worshipping during the week!
Matthew Weston (don't know if you remember me - you were one of my group leaders on camp (Romsey) about eight years ago!)
Good point. Our problem is that in our quest for 'relevance to society', we've jettisoned Sunday Worship. We're so keen to get people to worship God, we often fail to check we're worshipping God in a way that He would like to be worshipped. Hence, our friend Matthew (the comment just above this) asks the question what's so special about Sunday? It's a good question and a common one in Evangelical circles. In our quest to avoid being irrelevant 'religious' Pharisees, we've downgraded every Sunday Service to a get-together; and assumed that all ritual is meaningless. We've thrown out the baby and the bowl with the bathwater. The way to upgrade our congregations understanding of a week-long worship is not to downgrade Sunday worship as no big deal. Hope I haven't sounded to harsh there. (If so, sorry Matthew!)
Also, the pervasiveness of media means that it's very difficult to lead a Sunday Service without sounding like you're presenting a TV magazine show. "After the next hymn, communion, but first, here's a quick message from our vicar."
Oh, I hope I'm never guilty of downgrading what we do on a Sunday! I'm more querying the categorising of it as "special worship". Yes, it's a special and unique time during the week - it's vital and can so easily be downgraded - but I can't see that its specialness is related to its worship, if that makes sense.
Matthew Mason: thanks!
James: yes, I agree.
I have found myself adopting just the tone / style / content you describe. I guess if the minister is dressed correctly that helps. As would a printed order of service that is always the same. There is no need to say: it's Call To Worship, Confession, Consecration, Reading & Sermon, Communion etc if its the same every week and newcomers have a printed guide.
Of course we do need to explain the liturgy to people but not necessarily every week or even by speaking in the service about it.
Matthew Weston: Yes, thanks. You are most welcome. I do indeed remember you. I'd love to hear what you are up to now and so on?
Good questions. I guess many contemporary english conservative evangelicals who have been influenced by Sydney Anglicanism would agree with your concerns.
Some beginning answers / responses:
I guess if all we do in life is worship, Sunday must be worship!
More importantly, I think it is special in the ways I describe: more obviously / fully public, corporate, churchy. There are elders and orders. Famalies assemble together. Also more conscious, verbalized. We have baptisms and the Lord's Supper. Sunday worship is paradigmatic for the rest of life so not completely unlike it.
I do think Sunday is special. It is the Christian Sabbath. Virtually all Christians have always thought that. The Bible calls it the Lord's Day. Jesus rose and habitually met with his disciples on a Sunday.
There is no special place in that we do not go to the Jerusalem Temple. And you can worship in a sitting room or a school or a sports hall etc. But buildings and spaces do matter. I eat mostly in my dinning room, sleep in the bedroom, work in the study etc. I could have supper in the bathroom and relax in the tool shed but it would be wierd, inappropriate.
Church buildings arent magic but they do have special symbolism, memories etc. E.g. they might be cross shaped. They have a Lord's Table that we use for commmunion etc.
The special Sunday worship does not override or devalue the general worship. Wedding anniversaries strengthen marriages etc.
I think better special Sunday worship would lead to better general daily worship. We could even say at the end of the service, "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord". Service is worship. Put in "worship" if you are bothered to make that point even more clearly.
Yes, as I'm sure you agree, certainly teach people to do all things to the glory of God. Also point out that worship is not just singing choruses.
A friend emailed me in response to my post saying, "dont we eat the elements rather than bring or offer them?".
I'd say - both, and. Very anglican, I know. But I do think eating is very much primary. Very narrow, I know.
I want a thick (!) account of the Supper that describes it in its fullness and connections as well as understanding its essence etc.
I replied to my friend as follows and I'd love some discussion of this with conservative Reformed Evangelical (Anglican) types such as what I is.
Dear friend,
Thanks.
Certainly we eat the elements. The key thing in the supper is that we are to do this - eat, participate in faith with thanksgiving.
But we also certainly bring the elements. They don't appear by magic! They are in part the fruit of human hands: God gave the ingredients and the growth but he used man in making the bread etc. God does use us and that is good and happy not works righteousness or contributing merit to our salvation nor any such odious corruption.
I do think we offer the elements (and our other offerings and our thanks and praise and our whole lives etc.). The Supper is in part like some OT sacrifices like the peace offering which were not propitiatory but offered to God to be given back and shared, eaten by the people in God's presence.
Certainly I want to maintain that the primary direction of the Supper is from God to us not from us to him. It is about what he gives and does to us. It is not a and never could be a propitiatory or meritorious sacrifice but that doesn't mean there's nothing offering-ish or sacrifice-ish about it.
Is this not the theology of the BCP Communion service in which the elements, offerings and tithes are ceremonially brought forward and placed on the Holy Table for their special use by God and his people? I can't check very easily as I am on holiday in a Baptistic household!
Hope that makes sense and helps? Please do come back at me.
Best,
Marc
Mark, I think there's something in this - why not post it properly, and encourage a discussion here?
They are in part the fruit of human hands: God gave the ingredients and the growth but he used man in making the bread etc
I have dim memories of Jordan and Leithart making these kinds of observations. It's striking that it's not grain that we eat, but bread, not grape juice, but wine. Both are the products of human culture, and so of cultural maturity. Wine in particular takes great skill to make and so is a produce of a mature culture; so, at this level, it's a fitting thing for a culture that has come to maturity in the Son.
I've a feeling that Jordan may make a link from protology/infancy - Adam is given seed bearing plants (grain) and fruit bearing trees (including grapes) to eat - to eschatology/maturity - in the New Adam we eat the baked produce of grain and the skilfully fermented produce of wine.
Hi Matthew,
Thanks. Yes, I might do that if people don't talk about it here.
I certainly think it makes sense to see the Lord's Supper (and indeed the service of Lord's Day Covenant Renewal) as paragigmatic in all sorts of ways. It is a microcosm and epitomey of the gospel.
I think we could use it to reflect on nature and grace, creation and new creation, faith and works etc.
Leithart / Jordan etc kinda speak of bread as necessary staple prototypical first breakfast food to equip you for work. Wine as luxury celebration eschatological Sabbath rest job done food. The Supper includes both.
Wine may be thought of as resurrected / glorified water? Jn 2 - the third day, the transforming power of Jesus, tied to his hour of death and resurrection?
Bread is wheat brought to maturity but we know from Jesus in John that this also involves a death and resurrection.
The eucharistic elements are the height of the cultural mandate and its fulfillment in the kingdom. The goal of the whole gospel is table fellowship with God.
The grateful obedient eating of the Supper is the opposite of the ungrateful disobedient eating of the fall.
A few beginning thoughts anyway.
I think we need to say loudly and repeatedly to / with our reformed friends that we are not thinking of anything meritorious or propitiatory in these human works and what do we have that we did not recieve? Even nature is gracious.
Thanks Mark. And bread is also lots of wheat, previously dispersed in a field, transformed into one whole: though many, one body...So, at some level is it a symbol of the corporateness of cultural activity?
Yes, I guess so, though perhaps the Bible emphasises more that it is a sign of the corporate nature of the church (though we are many we are one body as we all eat of one loaf)?
Hi Marc,
I don't think I'm querying the uniqueness of Sunday, or the importance of meeting together, or indeed the place of liturgy or the distinction (it being corporate) from the rest of the week. I'm just not convinced that referring to the Sunday meeting as "special worship" is useful or Biblical. Chapter 3 of Vaughan Roberts' book "True Worship" makes the point that the vocabulary of worship is only very rarely used in the context of Christian meetings, and when it is, two of the three times refer to the actions of non-Christians anyway! I won't make his argument all over again, but given that I accept it, I'm not convinced about referring to Sunday as "special worship". "Special", yes; "worship", yes: but not "special worship". Does that make sense?
Basically, I agree with everything you said, I'd just not use the word worship most of the time. I'm saying this as someone who has watched people make too much of meeting together as Christians, to the detriment of the rest of their lives, in large part because of the unhelpful idea that their worship when together is more "special" or pleasing to God than the submission of their whole life, which itself has come from the use of the word. I just think it leads to confusion, just as referring to pastors/elders etc. as "priests" has led to confusion.
That said, I don't want to move to the other extreme, because meeting together is special!
Sorry to siderail this! As to your question, I've just finished my second year at Bristol, studying music, where I'm part of a small but growing Anglican church plant and help organise the music for our CU meetings.
Matthew Weston,
That sounds great. I married a music student!
Thanks. Yep, I've read Vaughan's book and looked at David Peterson, Engaging With God: A Biblical Theology of Worship on which it draws.
Yes, I can see that's an important point. We worship God by offering ourselves as spiritual sacrifices in all of life and not just be signing on a Sunday, absolutely. And what we emphasise may depend on our temptations and context, of course.
I would still call Sunday Special Worship, but I dont want to expend too much energy arguing baout words.
What about how the OT regulates our worship anyway?
May I suggest Jeff Myers, The Lord's Service on covenant renewal worship?
Blessings,
Marc
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