Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 05
March 5, 2007
Worshipping rightly
Worship is an action—a verb, not a noun. It is something we do, not something we have.
In fact, it was the act of worshipping together in a certain way that resulted in the birth of the Mennonite Church. In January 1525, a small group of believers met together in Zurich to hold their own worship service. They baptized one another and shared the Lord’s Supper. No longer would they worship as the government or the state church said they should.
“In state churches worship was an act of religious conformity; in Anabaptism it was an act of religious nonconformity,” writes church historian John Rempel. “By offering baptism on profession of faith and refusing to have their infants baptized, the Anabaptists disobeyed the law of the land. Their worship was an act of theological and political dissent.”
In this issue, our Faith&Life section examines ways in which some of the worship practices we have left behind might have new things to offer us in this new time. Depending on the needs of the age, the types of people coming, and so on, the specifics of how we worship should change. However, I’d like to draw attention to the larger issue of what Christian worship should do, no matter how we express it.
Worship is an outgrowing of the relationship we have with God. It is a majestic side-effect of our realization of the difference between us and the one who created us and all things. The origin of the word “worship” comes from the Old English weorthscipe, or “worth-ship.” Worship is the reflex that occurs when we encounter the Holy God.
By the same measure, any action of worship that does not have God at its centre is a way of lying to ourselves about what worship is and about the true nature of God. Nothing we can create or do can in any way equal with what God has done. “Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; worship the Lord in holy splendour” (Psalm 29:2). In this, the widespread use of praise songs in our churches have been a gift to our worship by emphasizing to us the sheer glory and honour due our Lord.
Words translated from Scripture into the word “worship” include “to bow down,” “to serve,” “to honour,” and “to respect.” Each of these is a verb that requires an object. We must bow down to—and serve—something; we must honour and respect someone. Meeting the living God is where worship begins. No other reason for gathering is adequate—even our well-intentioned desire for Christian fellowship, or our need for instruction or encouragement. Unless we encounter God, we have not worshipped.
Worship must also be a witness to the world. Mennonite faith isn’t based on worshipping any particular way. Our emphasis on faithful living as the defining characteristic of membership led us to lower the importance of shared worship practices, as well as to allow for a wide variety of local worship practices to arise. I think this is appropriate. While we certainly want to worship as best as we are able, we are not Mennonites because we worship rightly.
Instead, God-centred worship has the effect of teaching us the right way to live. Right living is the correct outcome of an encounter with God. Far from being a retreat from the real world, worship enables us to see more clearly what the real world is and equips us to live in it.
God-centred worship must continually be the rope that binds us as ambassadors of God’s grace and power to the needs of the world.