the need for celebration

I was asked recently if celebration was really the correct word for worship? Good question. It does seem to fall short if we only embrace the word in it's popular context. We celebrate a birthday or celebrate a touchdown, but is it accurate to call what we do in worship a celebration?

I believe it is a good, not perfect, description of worship. The word "celebrate" is defined by Websters:

1. To perform publically according to certain form.
2. To observe in some special way.
3. To praise; to make known publically.

In the context that we use the word we are saying that to celebrate is to come together as a community of believers and to do together what we cannot do seperately in our public oberservation and praise to God and corporate expression of our joy in His presence.

Worship is the cry of the heart and celebration is the expression. In ancient times, the Israelite living in a theistic community understood this kind of experience in a unique way. In this biblical era society, the small villages dotting the countryside surrounding Jerusalem would participate together in spiritual community day in and day out. They would sing psalms, quote scripture and learn from their elders. But several times a year they would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and experience the feasts among hundreds of thousands of other faithful.

This was the time they would see themselves and the God they served in the greater context. The need for worship is so strong that it will happen wherever communal life emerges. Our need for worship is so profound that God's first great command to us was to avoid worshipping other gods. The opposite of Chrstianity is not unbelief, but idolotry.

The solution to idolotry is worship. The Israelite worshipped not because of stone tablets, but because of what was written in their hearts. God put salt on the tonque so that we thirst for the Living Water.

For the believer and follower of Christ, this is the experience of corporate worship that his heart cries out for. God commands us to seek our joy in Him, to rejoice and be glad, to become what Piper calls "Christian hedonists" passioantely seeking happiness in Him alone. This is what corporate worship becomes. It is a time to celebrate all God has accomplished in your life and His purpose and and to say with others that your joy is found in His presence and in His will. It is a place to come to and be reminded our God is satisfying His purposes in our lives and that we can glory in Him; that life has a center and no matter how hard life becomes or how complex the issues and struggles one deals with, God is in control. It is that place where I confirm in my spirit God is bigger than all of my problems. This is the place where my heart cries out, “the joy of the Lord is my strength!”

But do not fall into the trap of thinking that unless we are always smiling we are not worshipping. Worship involves confession, it involves repentance, it involves falling on our face before a holy God in brokenness and saying with Isaiah "woe is me, I am a man with unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips." But this is not the final state of worship. It is only the bottom floor as we approach Him. It is our longing for Him and our need for Him and our crying out for Him that gives our celebration such resonance.

Suppose you were a soldier deployed Iraq and away from your first born son for most of his first year. Every day you would look at his picture and grieve the loss of time away from him. Now suppose that you get word that you are going home, and that you will be just in time for his first birthday. Now that is a celebration! Your celebration begins not at the time of the birthday, but in the anticipation of seeing him, of being "restored" to him. Your grief leading up to the celebration made the experience more poignant, more important. Our celebration of Him is always preceded by our longing and anticipation of being restored in His presence. It does not make the celebration less, but more.

Someone may say that "yes, but that is not celebration, that is anticipation." And I am saying that anticipation is an important part of it. When we come into a place of worship and we do not celebrate, our worship is not complete. We have anticipated something that was not fulfilled.

But when we truly find our gladness in him after a time of anticipation and longing, we have experienced the essence of corporate worship.

All of this is done in the context of a greater community of faith. I look around me and see my friends and family and many hundreds of others who are in it with me and we lift our voices together in song and praise. We open scripture together and learn together and experience the transforming work of His Word together. The big group experience in the big room is important to my spiritual transformation because it gives me a sense of place and context, it tethers my spirit to the One who is unshaken, to the Word that will never fade and to the Body that will stand in eternity.

And it is in eternity that our celebration will be brought to it's fullness. Is "celebration" a good word for worship? Yes, I think so, because I believe that in a very real sense we were all made for celebration!