Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn

The flames’ red wings soar upward duskily.

This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead

That sparkled so the day I saw it first,

And darkened slowly after. I am she

Who loves all beauty — yet I wither it.

“Helen of Troy,” Sara Teasdale

When it first comes to my mind, worship always seems to me a singularly religious concept. Images of lowered eyebrows and brown cassocks, Rockwell’s classic portrait of the determinedly unaware little old lady praying over her meal amid the hoi polloi of the 50’s diner, frenzied natives dancing around a ubiquitous altar with some forlorn attempt at appeasement tied down to it; all these appear first in my cultural consciousness at the mention of the word. Yet it is precisely our culture which has obscured the idea of worship for us, ever since expressions of faith ceased to be useful for political purposes and began to be a lightning rod for identification as some form of radical who might actually be expected to act upon the tenets of his or her faith.

If worship were only done in the cathedral, or even on the high places and under the spreading trees of paganism which still abound in our tradition, one might concede that it is purely religious. But it is so much more pervasive that it might be easier to identify where we do not worship, than where we do. To worship is to love, Henry Ward Beecher once said, which stands among the (few) meaningful things that ever came out of his mouth. There is an unmistakable tone of urgent appreciation we are all familiar with that emerges from every person when you bring up their favorite topic, an instant correlation of seeming and being that reveals who they really are by unveiling what they are passionate about.

Such an alignment of interest and object does not persist, in my experience at least, without a certain level of continued dedication. As Rick said Sunday, worship is at its essence devoting yourself to something – or someone. If we worship money, it is because an alarming percentage of our life’s allotment of time and energy has gone to totting up the figures in our balance sheet; if our career, to climbing the endless ladder (or leaning it against an endless series of new walls); if sex, to wondering how to extract more meaning from ever-fading sensation; if food, to trying to fill a void with but more emptiness; if power, to moving ever more rapidly from one demonstration to the next in search of that ultimate triumph.

And so the list goes on. As long as God continues to give us things to enjoy, and as long as new generations will suppose that the lessons learned by their forebears need not apply to them, so long will worship be able to take the form of any conceivable pursuit that may present itself in life.

What, then, is attractive about worship? How can God demand, much less be pleased with, such a foolish chasing after the wind? Should he not consign us to a life of penance until, sanctified at the very end, we can offer up a perfect reverence? Here is the power of the Christian gospel, and the point at which it departs from other religions. Were it not for the Incarnation, God could not possibly be pleased with our worship. Our sinful elevation of created things (or created ideas) to a state of adoration points to the most painful betrayal possible. We did not trust that God was for us, and in our madness the Stewards of Creation turned to created things to fulfill the relationship of dependence we were made for. That over which we were supposed to exercise dominion in order to build it into a living, breathing cosmos that would echo the glory of God through the expanse and the aeons of space and time, was instead used to shamelessly prop up our egos so that we could not see the impending judgment we had brought upon our heads. Such a purpose was less than the world was created for, and more than it was capable of delivering.

But the God who formed man out of the dust of the earth, and then entered into that tenuous form himself, also knew what he had intended when he built worship as an intrinsic quality into our souls. It is not only the adoration of man in his limitation gazing on an infinite God; it is God in his limitlessness smiling on those who approach him in faith. That smile for men and women made in his Image and earned by his only Son can never go away, and it is ours even when we have turned aside to offer strange fire to our other loves.

If what pleases God about worship is that he loves to be with us, then, and not any measure of our performance, can it be less true that what ought to inspire us to worship freely is the presence of God himself? And that to the point where we are able to take our eyes off our inabilities and set them on Jesus? It is an impossible task to which we have been set, but what is impossible with man is possible with God. We as sentient beings who have the capacity set within us to love beauty, but also have within us the inescapable bent to wither it through our incessant idolatry: we it is who are empowered by his Spirit to lift up holy hands in worship, seeking the peace of the very city whose funeral pyre of sin and brokenness burns before us daily. And up out of the flames of destruction shall arise that eternal city, with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Brothers and sisters, this is the sacrifice to which we are called; it is the resurrection for which our hearts yearn. Come with me and offer the fruit of lips that confess his name.

JV

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV