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Jan 15-21, 2023
Marco Ambriz & "Joey" Alan Le, Ph.D.
We Are Worshipers - 20230114.pdfIntroduction
Introduction
Essentially, worship is an attitude and activity that recognizes and describes the worth of a person (Ryken et al. 969). In a broad sense, worship is a way of life (Rom 12:1). All of life can be an act of worship or service before God (1 Cor 10:31; Col 3:17). And in a narrow sense, worship is act of the people of God assembled together (Brand et al. 1687). In the Bible, worship is highly active and participatory. The acts of worship include bowing down, lifting hands, clapping hands, dancing, processions and singing (Ryken et al. 970).
How does worship take form in your way of life? Why do you think worship in the Bible is so physical?
At the heart of Christian worship is God himself. True worship requires two things: revelation and response. God reveals the divine self to us, and we respond in awe to God. In Martin Luther’s words, “to know God is to worship him” (Ferguson and Packer 730). How would you translate Luther’s claim in your own words?
Therefore, the people of God must continue to seek to know God more and more, and to increasingly adore God in ways that correspond to this growing knowledge (Staniloae 160). How do you learn more about God? How has your worship of God increased accordingly?
Scripture Reading
Scripture Reading
2 Chronicles 20:1-30
2 Chronicles 20:1-30
As Pastor Marco shared in his Advent devotional on Nov 28, 2022, it is reasonable to prepare for war by assessing our enemy and strategizing how to meet them in battle. But it makes little sense to send the worship team to the front lines. Yet, maybe worship at the front lines is where God wants us to grow.
As you face everyday struggles, try reciting Scripture about God’s love, or singing a song of God’s goodness, or spend a moment declaring God’s faithfulness. Listen to a worship song in God’s presence, and gather with other Christians to nurture your soul. Our best strategy when facing challenges, opposition, bad news, or heartbreak, is to worship God at the front lines. How has worshiping God helped you to face and overcome crises?
John 4:23-24
John 4:23-24
4:21 YOU WILL WORSHIP THE FATHER NEITHER ON THIS MOUNTAIN NOR IN JERUSALEM. This Samaritan woman asked Jesus about religious rituals. Where should true worship take place? Jesus’ reply changed the whole paradigm. Many cultures developed religious rituals to help them feel closer to God. Religions had sacred cults, geographies, temples, artifacts, and pilgrimages. But the early Christians had no interest in that. In fact, the early church was so free from “religion” that the pagans accused Christians of atheism. The old religion had a thousand sacred places and temples, but Christians had no need for temples built of stone. Christ’s Body, the Church itself, was the only real temple (Schmemann For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy 20). Does Jesus’ answer comfort you, or frighten you? Do you prefer to meet God in specific times and places and rituals; or anytime, anywhere, any way?
4:24 GOD IS SPIRIT. Jesus is not simply saying that God is bodiless or immaterial. Rather, as in Jn 3:8, God cannot be apprehended, but God’s effects cannot be denied. Therefore, true worship is to be animated by God’s Holy Spirit (Burge 62236). In other words, worship is impossible without the enablement of the Spirit, for only with the Spirit can one experience God. Even though God is not detectable by our senses, how have you experienced the reality, the presence, the love of God in the past? What signs do you look for?
4:24 What do you think worshiping IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH means?
Simply said, God wants us to be “grounded in the truth of Jesus and open to the Spirit who takes us more deeply into it” (Pinnock 215). The Spirit leads us to truth.
The proper function of the Holy Spirit is to actually be the ability to praise and adore. It is the Spirit who instills in us the desire for God, who frees us from our earthly bondages and leads us to Christ (Cunningham and Theokritoff 53). Likewise, the Spirit is the one who inspires us with the language and the songs to worship God. In what ways has the Spirit inspired you to worship in the past?
Significantly, the fact that the Spirit enables true worship allows us to be real with where we are in the moment rather than having to pretend something we are not. How do you sense the Spirit leading you to be vulnerable and honest about yourself?
Thus, it is the Spirit who leads the body of Christ toward truth. Those who listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, can be hopeful about receiving fresh insight and, at the same time, be sober about the possibility of being mistaken (Pinnock 219). How do these two potentials – of new insight and of being wrong – make you feel?
Worshiping in truth can be challenging because grasping profound matters is not easy. In the most critical areas, one discovers treasures without completely possessing them. Because of our limitations and shortcomings, we must ever seek the Spirit's help in perceiving the truth more thoroughly (Pinnock 219). Is it true that we never completely possess the truth, and that we can penetrate the truth more and more?
But seeking truth is exciting and promising. God has so much more to tell us than we have grasped thus far. Humility must be the order of the day. This is how we learn and grow. Let us cast aside rigidity and that know-it-all attitude and open ourselves to more light that God can shed on his Word and the human situation (Pinnock 219). How would your closest friends and family describe the way you lean: as a humble person or a know-it-all?
How exactly does the Spirit operate to bring us closer to truth? The Spirit guides not individuals in isolation but the church as a whole. Additionally, the Spirit leads us not merely in theory but always in the context of worship and obedience. Finally, the truth is tested not by experts but by the people, the body of Christ (Pinnock 232). Why is the search for truth best done in the community and in worship?
Discerning the Goodness of All
Discerning the Goodness of All
We are worshipers. Our need to worship is from God and is good. But we so often misdirect our worship. So, worshiping God in spirit and truth involves an ability to discern the goodness of all that exists, despite the brokenness of the world. Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) offers a guide to discern truth from false, and good from evil:
Man misuses his vocation, and in this horrible misuse he mutilates himself and the world; but his vocation itself is good. In his dealings with the world, nature and other men, man misuses his power; but his power itself is good. The misuse of his creativity in art, in science, in the whole of life leads him to dark and demonic dead ends; but his creativity itself, his need for beauty and knowledge, for meaning and fulfillment, is good. He satisfies his spiritual thirst and hunger with poison and lies, but the thirst and hunger themselves are good. He worships idols, but his need to worship is good. He gives wrong names to things and misinterprets reality, but his gift for naming and understanding is good. His very passions, which ultimately destroy him and life itself, are but deviated, misused and misdirected gifts of power. And thus, mutilated and deformed, bleeding and enslaved, blind and deaf, man remains the abdicated king of creation, still the object of God's infinite love and respect. And to see this, to detect this, to rejoice in this while weeping about the fall, to render thanks for this, is indeed the essential act of genuine Christian spirituality, of the “new life” in us (Schmemann Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism 85).
How do Schmemann’s thoughts help you understand the nature of worship, the difference between what is true and what is false, and the difference between good and evil? Which statements speak to you?
Works Cited
Works Cited
Brand, Chad et al. Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Holman Bible Publishers, 2003.
Burge, Gary M. John. Kindle edition, Zondervan, 2000. The NIV Application Commentary.
Cunningham, Mary B. and Elizabeth Theokritoff. The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology. Reprint edition, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Ferguson, Sinclair B. and J. I. Packer. New Dictionary of Theology, InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Pinnock, Clark H. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Intervarsity Press, 1996.
Ryken, Leland et al. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1998.
---. Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974.
Staniloae, Dumitru. Theology and the Church. translated by Robert Barringer, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1980.
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