Created to Worship

Again, we find in Scripture proximity to a sea. Last week, the sea, an ancient symbol for chaos and evil, tormented the disciples’ boat. This week, the sea is still, glassy, like crystal. All chaos and evil are no more. This glassy sea surrounding the throne is like a baptismal font, for all creation as it approaches God passes through the water, “leaving an old way of life and entering a new one, miraculously alive and cleansed.” (Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder)

And John describes seeing four creatures that are patterned off a rabbinic tradition in which the lion was noble – the greatest of the wild animals, the ox – strong – the greatest of the domesticated animals, the greatest bird was the swiftly flying eagle, and the greatest of all creatures was man, who was wisest of all. Here, the four represent for us that all of creation is gathered at the throne in worship. (Gonzalez & Gonzalez)

And John describes every creature as being full of eyes; they are seeing fully with no shadows or blemishes between creature and Creator. And he says that they each have six wings. The wings tell us that they can quickly be anywhere, yet they are here at the throne, and day and night they never cease to sing.

All of creation, when there is nothing that blinds us to our Creator, can be anywhere, but chooses to be at the throne worshiping, never ceasing to sing.

Eugene Peterson writes about this passage and the role of singing in worship, “During the act of worship something…happen[s] to the worshipers: minds are cleared; perceptions come into focus; spirits are renewed. As this takes place, ordinary speech, impatient of pedestrian prose, dances – is condensed into poetry and then raised into tune. Worship sings. Singing is speech intensified and expanded. Song takes the natural rhythms and timbre of speech and develops its accents and intonations into music.

There are songs everywhere in Scripture. The people of God sing. They express exuberance in realizing the majesty of God and the mercy of Christ,….Songs proliferate. Hymns gather the voices of men, women, and children into …choirs. Moses sings. Miriam sings. Deborah sings. David sings. Mary sings. Angels sing. Jesus and his disciples sing. Paul and Silas sing. When persons of faith become aware of who God is and what [God] does, they sing. The songs are irrepressible.”

And they cause our spirits to soar.

In March of 1799, the first public performance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation was presented at the Vienna Music Hall. Legend has it that as the majestic work moved along, the audience was caught up with tremendous emotion, and the audience broke into spontaneous applause at the coming of “light” and Haydn, in a typical gesture, pointed upwards and said: “Not from me—from thence comes all!”

Worship causes our spirits to soar, not because it is for us, but because we are for it. We were created to worship. In worship, we offer ourselves to God and realign our self-perception. In worship, we remember that it is God who is holy. It is God who creates. It is Christ who is worthy. It is Christ who redeems. Not us. And as we remember, our minds are cleared, our perceptions come into focus, and our spirits are renewed. It doesn’t all depend upon us. We are called upon to do the next right thing and trust God. We are assured that the Kingdom of God is now – the glassy sea of baptismal waters welcomes us to the throne – and not yet – the chaos of the winds of our world continue to torment us.

When I talk to people who normally worship every week, after they have missed a Sunday or two, they talk about how they missed their weekly “boost.” One of the things that church leaders spend a lot of time talking about is that in America worship attendance is declining and that the gauge for regular attendance has shifted. Regular attendance used to mean that unless you were sick or out of town, you were at church on Sunday morning. Now, the average American churchgoer sees themselves as a regular attendee if they average attending 3 out of 8 Sundays, or about 20 times a year.

The problem is not that church attendance is required to be a good Christian. The problem is that the purpose of our BEING is to worship. And when we don’t come to church regularly, when we do come to church we can’t WORSHIP. We can’t clear our minds so that perceptions come into focus and our spirits are renewed, because we are busy focusing on what comes next and do I stand or sit, and I don’t know this hymn, and we miss out on worship because our minds are busy on what happens next. And our lives are not reset, refocused, and renewed. And we leave wanting something more. Needing something we cannot put our finger on. And even though we hear the unresolved chords of our lives, we don’t know how to resolve them, because we have tried going to church. And our hunger wasn’t satisfied.

It is only when we move beyond the words and the shuffling of the bulletin and the rhythm of standing and sitting and listening and singing that our spirits are able to soar and we realize:

“My life goes on in endless song Above earth´s lamentations, I hear the real, though far-off hymn That hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing, It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?. No storm can shake my inmost calm, While to that rock I´m clinging. Since love is lord of heaven and earth How can I keep from singing?”

And we hear every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing, and honor and glory and might for ever and ever! And Creation says, “Amen!” And the people of God fell down and worshiped.