Yea, I know it’s been a long time, but I finally am getting around to writing another blog post. I’ve had a lot of good inspirations for posts, but have just found it hard to find the time since September. Anyway, I have a little time this morning so here goes.
Yesterday, as I sat working in my office, Pastor Trisha and Marzette, a Fuller Seminary student who is doing an internship at MCF sat across the room in conversation (Pastor Trisha and I share a large office space). Trisha asked Marzette, an African American woman, about her impressions of the MCF community. This led to them being engaged in an interesting conversation about church and culture. Marzette spoke of the relaxed and comfortable feel at MCF and how it took some getting used to that people dress so casually. Although she found this nicely refreshing, she also explained that she understood and appreciated the African American tradition of getting dressed up for church. I thought about how it wasn’t long ago when everyone dressed in their Sunday best before they went to Sunday service. As a child I usually had to wear nice slacks, dress shoes, a stiff uncomfortable button down shirt, and sometimes even a clip on tie. This slowly changed as informality became the norm in contemporary style churches.
Trisha and Marzette’s conversation drifted into the topic of inward states of the heart as opposed to outward displays. As I worked at my computer on this week’s worship service, I looked down at the familiar advent words, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” It was one of those interesting moments of synchronicity for me as I began to think about preparation; preparation of our hearts and lives.
Corporate worship at its best should be an encounter with the God of the universe. I began to wonder if we take that too lightly as we often just approach going to church as another duty to check off of our weekly “to do” list. Have we become too casual as we approach God? Does the fact that we often meander into service late with coffee and donut in hand signal something deeper? Have we become so comfortable with God as some sort of loving, gentle, cuddly grandpa who we visit on Sunday mornings, that we forget that He is a Majestic King who is to be approached with a sense of awe and reverence? How do we prepare to meet this Awesome King of glory?
As I thought about this, I began to understand why people have demanded, and in some quarters still demand that we dress to impress when going to worship. I am not suggesting that we suddenly must all dress in our finest when we go to church. Jesus exposed the Pharisees who were concerned with outward displays as “Whitewashed tombs.” But our rituals tend to have meaning behind them even if we don’t think about it. Whether we dress up or down and how we prepare ourselves for church is a ritual. I think what is important is that we begin to connect with our rituals. What do they mean to us? If we dress down, we are expressing a comfort in the fact that by God’s grace, He accepts us as we are. That is a wonderful thing as long as we don’t get too comfortable and forget that God is righteous and just and does not want to leave us as we are but wants to make us holy. If we dress up for church we are expressing that God is the King of Kings and that He is worthy of our best as we come into His courts. That is also a good expression as long as we don’t become self-righteous in the process forgetting that even our best is but filthy rags compared with the perfection of God. If we get caught up in outward displays of worship; the right clothes, acceptable behavior, postures of worship, and so on, we can easily become prideful and begin to look down on others who do not approach God in the same manner. In so doing we can forget that we constantly need to expose our hearts to God, to allow Him to uncover the sin that we may be covering up with our religious displays, and to approach God in a spirit of humility and repentance.
Whatever our particular rituals in preparing for worship may be, we need to make sure that we attend to preparing our hearts for an encounter with our Awesome God. If you have a casual approach, prepare your heart by praising God for His love and acceptance, but also be cautious not to get too comfortable. Ready your heart to be open to the unexpected challenge you will always receive in the presence of God. If you have a dress your best approach, don’t forget to be mindful of grooming your heart before you get to church. Don’t allow the fact that you look like a religious church lady or man cause you to become complacent about the state of your heart. Don’t just go through the motions of doing the “church thing” and miss out on a real encounter with God.
An encounter with God is what corporate worship is about. Let’s begin to “prepare the way” for the Lord to work in our hearts. When that happens, the response will always be authentic worship. As our hearts and lives are transformed in the presence of God, we are made ready to go out of the worship service to love and serve Him in this world. Our hearts beat more in sync with the heart of God and we are truly able to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Once again our mission is connected to our worship.
This Sunday's Lectionary Passages:
