Monday, December 12, 2005
Intro to Christian Worship: The Use of ‘Worship’ in Scripture
[Editor’s Note:Kent Hendricks, a first year M.Div. student at Calvin Theological Seminary and student assistant at CICW, is attending John Witvliet’s seminar class, Introduction to Christian Worship. He will blog periodically about key themes from course lectures, readings, and discussion. For more of Kent’s blogging, see his personal blog.]
We began our quarter together by connecting worship practices with the implicit worldview of local communities. “Worship practices inevitably convey a sense of who God is, what the church is, and what scripture is,” said John Witvliet. “Worship always forms in us a certain way of seeing the world – it forms a certain theology.”
Dr. Witvliet then led us in a discussion about the three uses of the word ‘worship’ as it is found in scripture. First, worship is found in all of life. “Romans 12:1 is the theme song of Reformed Christianity,” said Witvliet. “Not a square inch outside God’s rule. Worship is a life orientation!”
The second use of the word is found in passages such as John 4. Here, Jesus is conversing with the woman at the well about true worship – the kind of worship the Father seeks. Jesus uses the word somewhat differently from Paul; he’s talking about a particular event, a liturgy – “what the people do.”
Witvliet also explained a third kind of worship. We find this kind of worship in the Psalms – “Come let us worship and bow down!” It is an explicit act of praise, and happens both in the ritual event (John 4) and in all of life (Romans 12).
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