Brief Thoughts for the Day: What is Worship?

A good theology of worship has as its foundation a theology of the cross.

That is to say, that worship is a place where the unexpected happens—God comes to us in such simple things as words, water, and bread and wine. A theology of the cross always turns convention on its head and reveals God to us in ways that the wider culture would say is impossible.

For example, God comes to us in the ancient words of the creed when we confess with our own lips the same confession from the fourth century—“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and was made man.” Such a confession transgresses all kinds of boundaries—boundaries of culture, boundaries of language, boundaries of geography, and even the boundaries of logic itself. This is just one example of how worship embodies the reality of a theology of the cross.

The cross is at its very heart, at its very center the reversal of logic and expectation. No one expects God to hang on a cross, let alone die for the sinfulness, the brokenness, and all the general vileness of this world and humanity.

But it precisely in the cross that God is revealed for who God is—as the source and fountain of all love, grace, and truth. A truth that reveals all that this world is and all that God is—all the imperfection of this world and its reliance on God’s gracious love for us, a love that is willing even go to the ends of perdition to turn this world’s ways of sin, death, and destruction on their head. In worship, we enter into this mystery as members of God through Christ our Lord, whose death on the cross means life for us and for the world.

-DS