Acceptable Worship

Over the past few decades, we evangelicals have made much of corporate worship. For many of us, if we weren’t fighting over worship styles, we were pouring tremendous time and resources into crafting worship services for specific demographics. Then, last year, corporate worship became for many evangelicals a hill to die on as they flouted public health guidelines for the sake of gathering.

In all of this, we have often asked what kind of worship is acceptable and compelling to us and/or our target audiences. Less often have we asked what kind of worship is acceptable to God. Having said that, I should note that personal holiness is often assumed in the background of our corporate worship pursuits. The idea here is that individual congregants are responsible for their own personal devotion, and we try to help them grow in that arena. An area that we focus on less has to do with the communal characters of our worshiping bodies. Here, we are focusing on the hallmarks of a community that offers acceptable worship to God.

One scripture passage that deals with worship on a more communal level can be found in Isaiah 1. Here’s part of what God has to say through his prophet:

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood! (Isaiah 1:13-15, NIV)

Here, we have a picture of a community that devoutly and seriously pursues corporate worship. And, we hear God expressing disdain at their efforts. Offerings are meaningless. Incense is detestable. God hates their feasts and festivals. God, we find here, doesn’t automatically accept worship, even if it is devout and well-meaning. Indeed, sometimes he rejects it outright. Why was this the case in Isaiah 1? In short, it was because the worshiping community failed to enact justice and care for the vulnerable in society. That’s what the text means when it says that the people’s hands are full of blood.

Notice the overtones of justice and care in God’s instructions for rectifying the situation:

Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17, NIV)

As we read these words, we need to be careful to heed what they actually say. I once heard a pastor link all of this to a vague notion of “holiness,” which in evangelical circles most often refers to personal devotion and lifestyle choices. While those topics are indeed important, they are not the focus here. If we want to talk about holiness in the context of Isaiah 1, we have to talk about social holiness. When God tells his people to wash and make themselves clean, he is talking specifically about dealing with oppression and caring for the vulnerable (widows and orphans were vulnerable demographics in ancient Israel). The issue is that the worshiping community isn’t committed to these social goods.

Jumping now to the present day, I think it is fair to view evangelical worship through Isaiah’s lens. Anyone who has paid attention to worship trends knows that evangelicals, especially those in the more “contemporary” space, have grown by leaps and bounds in past years. In many settings, our worship is glorious.

But, does our commitment to the social goods of justice and care for the vulnerable match our commitment to the worship service itself?

If we look at the past year and a half, the answer would have to be no. Regarding justice, many white evangelicals have turned a deaf ear to the calls for justice from communities of color. Importantly, these calls are often coming from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet, we display a commitment to the status quo rather than a commitment to justice. Rather than entering the conversation in good faith, we disregard critique and even posture against those who offer it.

As for care for the vulnerable, COVID has actually intensified Isaiah’s critique. Whereas the problem addressed in Isaiah 1 had to do with worshipers failing to care for the vulnerable outside of the worship setting, an airborne pandemic has made the act of gathering for worship itself a display of our care or disregard for the vulnerable. When some evangelicals have flouted public health guidelines - whether or not they abided by the guidelines of the state in doing so - they have displayed a commitment to themselves rather than care for the communities and individuals most vulnerable to the virus. 

For many of us, these are the very issues that gave us pause in 2020 as we reconsidered our faith commitments.

Often, our discomfort was instinctual - we knew something was wrong but didn’t have the religious words to describe it.

Isaiah confirms these instincts in concrete language by telling us that God cares deeply about matters of justice and care for the vulnerable and that he expects his people to display the same commitments. If we are to reconstruct evangelical theology, justice and care must be central to who we are as a people. Historically this has not been the case, especially in matters of justice, and 2020 put our shortcomings on full display. May God give us strength and grace to wash and make ourselves clean by dealing with oppression and caring for the vulnerable. Only then will our worship, which we value so deeply, be acceptable to God.

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Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash