Worship Is Boring

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Worship is boring.

And then it isn’t.

Perhaps I should explain.

My daughter-in-law Amy sang as a part of her church’s worship team a few Sundays ago and told me that the congregation wept as she sang the final song of the service. The tears were partly stimulated by her gifted vocal leadership, and partly linked to the content of the sermon, delivered with sincerity and conviction by the pastor, and partly connected to the power of the entire liturgy from beginning to end.

I say partly because we live and move and have our being in life and in the church in the presence of and with dependence upon the Holy Spirit. What was partly the result of human giftedness and effort, was wholly the fruit of the Spirit showing up. The Holy Spirit refuses to be corralled but delights in surprise. He does as he wills when and where he wills. God, who is not a genie in a lantern to be summoned at will, shows up when he deems it good.

In 2 Chronicles, a book with pastoral implications galore, God shows up in a spectacular way in chapter 5.

. . . the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God. (2 Chronicles 5:13, 14)

I like to picture a scene, years after this event, when an aged grandfather sitting with his grandchildren around him tells them about the day that the glory of the LORD filled the temple. It is a story because of its power and its rarity. The children around him are filled with a desire to experience something similar, as we who read such stories in the Bible and from history long for them as well. They are God’s to give, not ours to grab. When we try to manipulate God to show up, we demean him.

The appearance of God cannot be programmed, bottled, scripted, or confidently reprised. What happened when the Israelites dedicated the temple and what happened when Amy sang were not the responses to some formulaic stimuli. He is God. The Holy Spirit showing up, whether in a place of privacy, in the midst of conflict, or in the singing of a final hymn in the public worship of God, can be prayed for, but it cannot be planned.

To hunger for such an encounter, for such an experience, is good. Such longing is proper. We hunger and thirst for Jesus, for a sense of the presence of the living God. We all do. And it is unfair to say that the experience of God is dampened by or unimportant to those who seek theological precision. Theological insight opens our eyes to God, it does not sever us from the Spirit’s warmth. I have no doubt that Isaiah the prophet was thoroughly versed in the stories of the patriarchs and their theological significance. How else could he have processed the stunning vision he writes about in Isaiah 6. When God shows up, it is a surprise, but a surprise we can hope and long for.

But we need not do anything special to tease God into “stopping by.” The dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles 5 was not a manipulative set up, but an act of faith, just like any public worship service of the church, or any act of private devotion. These are valid in their own right. And they are the places, the rituals, the practices where God has been known to show up.

We can neither manipulate the Spirit, nor deny his work. Sometimes I suspect that beneath the thoroughly produced “worship sets” in some worship services, enhanced with light shows and smoke machines, is a desire to produce an emotional experience that might mimic the Spirit’s presence. God may show up in such settings, but he is under no obligation to do so. If there ever was a heavily produced worship experience, it was here in 2 Chronicles 5. It included trumpets and singers, it involved a parade, a long procession, and it involved sacrifices and shouts. And in the end, God did show up. But we cannot make the mistake of assuming that he showed up because the right stimuli were put in place. God was under no obligation. That he did appear was greatly impactful. But the events of worship were not that which produced his presence. He can just as easily show up when a lonely Christian is crying out to him from a cave. Or a bedroom. Or when two or three saints meet for prayer.

Believe me, I want to experience God’s presence. I want to know the direct, engaging ministry of the Holy Spirit. And I have, on occasion. We can only put ourselves where he has been known to show up: in his word, in the company of his people, in public worship. We can be there for the intrinsic value of the thing itself: to grow in the understanding of his word, to nurture the saints, to celebrate the steadfast love of God which endures forever. Such practices may on many occasions be uneventful. Boring, even.

And then they are not.

Joe Posnanski, one of today’s best sports writers, and a great fan of baseball, once wrote,

I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.

The same thing is true in our Christian life. Worship, prayer, the daily reading of scripture, can be uneventful. Boring, even. And then it is not. Then our hearts are lifted up, then grace becomes dizzying in its overwhelming grandeur, then we are both humbled and enthralled, then we are stunned anew to realize that God loves us, and then we realize that his steadfast love will endure forever.

Posnanski was writing about the final night of the 2011 MLB regular season, a Wednesday night filled with improbabilities. I had gone to sleep expecting my Tampa Bay Rays to lose, they were down by seven runs entering the eighth inning. I was awakened by a friend as the game entered the twelfth inning. “Are you watching this?” she texted. Then Evan Longoria homered in the 12^th inning. My team won. I went to sleep happy.

Posnanski concludes,

Funny, if I was trying to explain baseball to someone who had never heard of it, I wouldn’t tell them about Wednesday night. No, it seems to me that it isn’t Wednesday night that makes baseball great. It’s all the years you spend waiting for Wednesday night that makes baseball great.

I’ve had many conversations with people who are stuck in the doldrums of the Christian life. They want an experience. They know there should be more to settle their restless hearts. They aren’t finding it in their prayer time. They aren’t finding it in worship. The books they read don’t help. They try various ancient practices. They try silence, solitude, prayer circles, and retreats.

I don’t want to stand in anyone’s way. I, too, can have a restless heart that can grow impatient. But I also know that God did not have to show up on that day in ancient Israel, despite the trumpets and sacrifices. The celebration was an act of faith, an act of worship offered to God in faith.

But he did show up.

And he does. Probably more often than we imagine. And perhaps if we were not so busy trying to produce the experience, or so adamant about the experience’s impossibility, we would notice. And so we wait for it.