dirty, twiggy, leafy, rocky worship

hi.


before i start, let me disclaim the fact that some of the posts on this blog will be admittedly superfluous, like all those pithy sports stats (here's another one, by the way: the average wild pitch/passed ball is responsible for .27 runs). but i promise that there will occasionally be some substance.

this post, for instance, is an attempt at that.

much of our song repertoire and liturgy contains lofty concepts such as 'holiness', 'majesty', and 'glory', as well as some well-intentioned-but-seldom-carried-out postures such as bowing, lifting hands, dancing, and kneeling.

can the church allow its worship language to be more earthy? (actually, i would love to avoid that somewhat-hackneyed adjective; perhaps the title of this post suggests some alternatives.) what would that sound/look/feel like? i don't think there should be an abandonment of acknowledging the eternal, unattainable attributes of god (and thus worshipping him because of those things), but i'd love to see us groan for god more often from a place of authentic down-and-dirty humanness.

perhaps you've seen a movie or cartoon in which a servant comes in and ridiculously over-humbles himself in the presence of his authority, groveling and desperately spitting out adulations. we giggle at him because he is not being genuine. i sometimes feel like that when i am "declaring the majesty" or "proclaiming the glory": that i am using overly-biblical or -christianized words and images when i'm not even sure of their meaning.

there's a great scene from my favorite movie of all time where the title character is trying to "sell" to the emperor and his court the idea of composing an opera based on beaumarchais' character of figaro: a very earthy, very human subject. there was considerable objection to this, the court making its own case that this subject is devoid of the "elevated themes" they perceive to be the proper content for such a work. mozart protests, saying, "come on now. be honest! which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than hercules? or horatius, or orpheus -- people so lofty they sound as if they shit marble!" (then from one of the court comes one of my favorite lines: "govern your tongue, mozart. how dare you!")

we live, love, and worship in a tension of brokenness and hope, of time and eternity. indeed, all of worship is a mystery, offered up in faith, but the heaviness of the human burden is undeniably real. while we do have some moments of transcendence and clarity in our lives -- less often than we are willing to admit, yet more often than we think, perhaps? -- 99.44% of the time we are bound to our humanness, usually painfully so. purely based on numbers, this is the place from where the vast percentage of our worship is expressed, both individually and communally. julie miller's broken things expresses this as well as any song i've ever known.

psalm 33:13-15 states well how god knows our hearts -- broken, human, earthen as they are. he made the things, after all. let's offer them to back to him. he wants them. no matter how many times they've been dragged through the dirt, twigs, leaves, and rocks, he accepts them and makes them what they should be.

thanks for reading.