the glory, power, and praise receive for thy creating love. Let all the angel throng give thanks to God on high, while earth repeats the joyful song and echoes to the sky.
Although the first human beings were disobedient, thus marring the divine image impressed upon them, God continued to approach humanity in love. God made covenant with Abraham and created a nation, binding them under the law. God was a faithful and constant lover who sought faithfulness and righteousness from an oftentimes-wayward people. When the people’s faith waned, prophets and priests were sent to remind them of the events that had made them God’s own. Those who spoke for God were oftentimes ignored, for many whom God had made preferred to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator of all things (Romans 1:18-25). render in thanks their lives to thee for thy redeeming grace. The grace to sinners showed ye heavenly choirs proclaim, and cry, “Salvation to our God, salvation to the Lamb!” For the sake of God’s creation, the Son entered human history “born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus was the supreme gift of God to humanity, and the exemplar of true obedience. By Jesus’ sacrificial death for the sins of the world, his resurrection from the tomb, and his ascension to the eternal throne, the way was restored for human beings to be created anew in the divine image. Jesus Christ is thereby confessed as Lord, for “he is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3a).
He is the worthy object of Christian worship, but he is simultaneously the mediator of it, for he is our high priest before God the Father (Ephesians 2:18, Hebrews 5:1-10). His death and resurrection model the cruciform life that Christians assume upon their baptism and that is affirmed weekly on Sunday and annually at Easter. Worship and praise are thus the natural response of those who, through Christ, have turned from death to life, who see in him the path to salvation, and through him grow into the divine likeness. thy sacred energy, and bless thine heart-renewing power. Not angel tongues can tell thy love’s ecstatic height, the glorious joy unspeakable, the beatific sight.
Before his death, Jesus promised the ongoing presence of an Advocate, the Spirit of truth, who would guide believers in the truth (John 16:7,
13-14). On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came as tongues of fire upon those gathered together, inspiring them to worship and praise God’s deeds in a multitude of languages. As it was on that long-ago day in Jerusalem, so in the centuries that followed, and up to the present, the Spirit has enabled worship for many nations and peoples: by opening hearts and minds to a true hearing of God’s word; by assisting in the profession and proclamation of faith; by supplying the substance for prayers “with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:15, 26-27); and by making known the presence of the risen Christ through bread and wine. In the power of the Spirit, the faithful are given gifts for their various ministries and are energized as they strive for holiness. The Holy Spirit is thus a worthy recipient of gratitude. Over the ages, adoration of the creating and renewing Spirit has been expressed as part of an ascription of praise to the entire Godhead: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.” let all on earth below record and dwell upon thy love. When heaven and earth are fled before thy glorious face, sing all the saints thy love hath made thine everlasting praise. The Christian history of salvation is the story of God’s people and their vocation to worship God fittingly in spirit and in truth. When the mighty deeds and eternal love of the triune God are recounted in our time, believers in different communities—sadly separated, yet united by one Lord, one faith, one baptism—are moved by the Holy Spirit to express their praise and thanksgiving. The worship of an individual and any given community then becomes a part of the symphony of grateful song that shall continue into time beyond time. Worship thus is central for any that take upon themselves the name ‘Christian’. Worship defines who we are and shapes who we will be. Charles Wesley knew this and expressed it powerfully in the hymn whose stanzas have here been unfurled. 4
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION & DISCUSSION
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-- Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, an Elder in the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, is Assistant Professor of Liturgical Studies at the Divinity School, Duke University. Her book, American Methodist Worship, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Other Millennial Perspective Articles: | The Centrality of Christian Worship | Worship Forming Faith | Hope | The Changing Cultural Look of Worship | Visual Arts | | Advent: Between the Times | Worshiping with Jubilation | Children and 21st Century Worship |
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| Introduction | Preface | Contents | Copyright | | Millennial Perspectives | Worship and Study Resources | | Seven Days of Praise and Prayer |Prayer and Worship for a Jubilee Week | The Last Letter: Revelation’s News | Repairing the World: God's Gift of Jubilee | Hymns | Additional Liturgical Resources | Appendix |
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hristian worship is a response to the God who is the source and sustainer of life, an ascription of worthiness to the One who fashioned man and woman in the divine likeness. From the moment human beings were created, an intimate connection was established between the Creator and the creature. God initiated a relationship, grounded in love, with the expectation of gratitude and obedience. Thanksgiving and adoration thus are what we are made to do: to offer praise and glory with the fullness of our being as long as we live and even thereafter (Psalm 104:33). Yet our voices are but one part of a mighty chorus that ascribes power and dominion to the Maker of all that is, for the entirety of creation visible and invisible joins in songs of praise (Psalm 148).