What Do We Mean By Worship?

I know the question of what it means to worship gets repeated over and over again, but I thought this article I read this morning had an interesting spin on it where lifestyle and social justice was concerned.  Click here to read it.  The rest of this post won't make much sense if you don't read the article first.

One of the other questions posed in this article is "Could we re-imagine worship as a prayer for justice? A prayer for peace? A prayer for hope?" Yes, of course, and in fact God has really been impressing this upon me personally, to not only bring self-focused prayer requests, but to lift the world up in prayer in our worship gatherings. Its not a new idea though, just look in the book of common prayer (used by Episcopalians and others) or some of the prayers from Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox writings.  But the challenge is that the prayers ought to result in action.  I believe that God will be faithful to respond to our prayers for peace and justice and deliverance in the world, according to His will.  I also think that those prayers are only a part of the role we have to play in bringing Christ's healing and hope to this broken world.  Action must follow.  

The writer says, "Our prayers, our worship, our praxis of living a simple spirituality and a grounded theology are all, in a sense, attempts to tend to Christ’s open wounds. Unless we have the courage to put our hands into the hurting places of Christ’s body—the hurting places of the world—the world will have no reason to trust that God is truly alive." I really get the issue he's addressing throughout the article about a need to show those with no hope that God is real and that He is good, and that actually touching their wounds will help reveal that Jesus is alive today and worthy of adoration.  I'm not sure I would try to group that kind of action in with being "worship" though.  

I think that worship for us in a specific sense really is more of an "event" right now in our life on earth.  But it is that event of worship, which is not a one time occurrence, like a rock concert, but a repeated experience that is a regular part of our lives that leads us in adoration, remembrance and a conscious surrendering to the work of sanctification that the Holy spirit wants to do in us.  Worship is where we give of ourselves and participate in corporate song, prayer, Word reading, communion, etc., but it is also where God can work Christ into us, or plant seeds that He can continue to water after we leave from the worship gathering.  The fruit of that work that God does is that we find ourselves as part of His mission, in His story, and our lives become Christ living His life through us.  

So instead of looking at bringing hope and healing to child soldiers or desperate prostitutes as part of our act of "worship," I think that it will be more powerful if we view it as Christ doing His work in that person's life, through us, and revealing Himself to them as the One worthy of worship, instead of us trying to help these people by our own act of worship and then hopefully convince them that God is present and good.  Its not just how you think about it that I'm getting at here, but the way we approach it.  To treat it as our act of worship could cause us to try and do it in our own strength, where as recognizing it as letting Christ live through us will tend to lead us to rely upon the Holy spirit to be in the lead.  

Don't know if my commentary makes any sense or not, it is still Monday morning after all and my brain may not be on yet.  Either way, I think the article makes some great points about the need for our worship to be accompanied by the kind of actions that will reveal that God really is the One who sets the captives free and binds up the broken hearted, and really is worthy of worship regardless of how bad our circumstances are.