For most of us who go to church, worship is a given: it is what we do at church on a Sunday. We may have all experienced different norms of worship in various traditions but, whatever form it takes, worship is a familiar and established part of our spiritual experience. But we also feel some discomfort with worship. Why does God need so much adulation and affirmation? Does God demand it, and if so why? What are the consequences of not worshipping? Unconditional exaltation, glorification and homage are what humans have paid to monarchs, suzerains, overlords and idols of all kinds for millennia in order to stay in their good books. It has a smack of tyranny and superstition about it. Is that what God is like? Is this why we worship?
TheMagnificat (Mary’s song of worship in Luke 1:46-55) gives a very different way of seeing worship. God is worshipped not as One who needs appeasement but as Love itself, who comes alongside the lowly and down-trodden rather than needing to be elevated to a place of power. Worship is a return to the reality that Love is the greatest; not fear, insecurity or competition for attention. Worship is a human recalibration to the reality of our oneness with God and with one another. As Paul tells us in Romans 12, we worship with our whole lives in every aspect of life. Worship is a renewal of our minds; a new way of seeing in which we discover that God is Love. God is here for us, here for everyone—here for the weak, the poor, the lost and confused. So we embrace as our own those who are least like us, we humbly defer to others, we forgive unceasingly with broken hearts, and find that this is worship.
Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor in 111-112 CE, referred to the gatherings of the early followers of Jesus in this way: “They were in the habit of meeting before dawn on a stated day and singing alternately a hymn to Christ as to a god.” Some of these first hymns—or fragments of them—appear to have survived as quotations in the Bible. Such passages are carefully structured, exhibiting rhythmical patterns, and using vocabulary different from the surrounding verses. But these hymns are much more than historical artifacts: they are windows into the worship of some of the very first followers of Jesus.
Sometimes, when contemplating the mercy of God, the humility of Christ, or the power of love to defeat evil, words are not enough: Our hearts break forth into song. During this three-week series, we will use these ancient songs to offer our worship to God. Through meditation and song, we will celebrate and experience our oneness with God and with one another; surrender our whole selves to our loving creator; and recommit ourselves to living as agents of God’s love, peace and hope in our beautiful but marred world.
