The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, who lived perfectly, was crucified, and resurrected so that the final sacrifice would be made on our behalf and the light of the grace of God could overcome the darkness of man. Just in case you were wondering why we worship. The question isn’t why; the question is what we proclaim when we worship. So, just as Paul del Signore did in his reflections on worship, I’m going to quote a passage from NT Wright’s For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church. Enjoy.
The only role John will accept, as we saw at the beginning, is that of the Voice: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the LORD. That is almost all he knows.
It is enough. Enough to create around him a community of the true Israel, on tiptoe with expectation for God to come and save and judge; a community among whom were people called Peter and Andrew, a community in whose midst there was one whose sandal-strap John was not worthy to untie. Enough to make Herod tremble on his throne at the thought that the old rumours of Israel’s God coming might after all be true, or at least that enough people might believe them to make life very difficult for his own shaky kingdom. Enough to challenge those who lived by the love of power with the old message, half-forgotten but never quite obliterated, of the power of love.
Enough, too, to challenge us in our own little kingdoms, and our own responsibilities. We, too, live on and live by the promised coming of God. We who live on the farther side of Christmas, Calvary, Easter, and Pentecost stake our lives on the belief that, in the man Jesus, Isaiah’s promise about the coming of the bridegroom to woo and win his people came true in literal human history. But if we believe that, we are also committed to the belief that this same God comes to us again week by week, in bread and wine, to carry the lambs in his bosom, gently to lead the mother sheep. And we are committed to the belief that he will come again, finally, to judge and save his weary old world once and for all.
And our calling, therefore, as those who celebrate his strange and beautiful coming, is once again to be a voice. The church is here to be the Voice to the world; the Voice that does not claim great things for itself, but simply urges the world to get ready for the God who comes in the power and judgment of love. We are to live, and we are to speak, in such a way as to do for our generation, more or less, what John did for his: to demonstrate and to announce that there is a different way of being human, the way of love, the way of God, and so to bring the world the news (good news for the weary, bad news for the bullies) that the creator of the world is also the comforter of the world.
We worship God because of John 1:1-18, and our lives of worship must, without question, reflect love. I’ll post it again.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. -John 1:1-18
This is our message. And just as the light shines through Christ, Christ should and must shine through his followers to the world through love, even to the point of death- to ourselves in a spiritual sense, to the world in a physical sense. Worship, it seems, is more than a love song. It’s life.
