The Idol of Safe Worship
The writer of the book of Hebrews is quite explicit about the dangers of worship, when he said, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28–29). This is the same fire that greeted Nadab and Abihu when they offered strange fire before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1-2). God is not someone we approach any old way we please, but today the evangelical church has made every effort to ensure that worship is safe and approachable for whoever desires to come. How have we done this?
Safe Communion
I never had wine at communion until early adulthood, when I attended an Anglican service as part of my seminary education. For most of my life, grape juice was the normative element in communion. Not only did we avoid wine, but I was taught by some that “wine” in the Bible was actually a reference to unfermented grape juice. I remember the funny and disapproving look from my Greek professor when I asked if the word “oinos” (the Greek term for wine) could ever refer to grape juice. She just said straightforwardly, “Wine means wine…the New Testament authors knew what wine was.”
If wine means wine, then why do so many churches opt for grape juice instead? This can be a complex biblical, ecclesiological, and sociological question, but I believe the answer is simple. Grape juice is just safer.
For almost 2,000 years, the normative practice for communion was to serve wine. But about a hundred years ago, that practice changed as wine was substituted for grape juice. The single greatest reason for the adoption of grape juice over wine in communion was due, not to biblical or theological influence, but to cultural changes and the shifting sensibilities of many Americans during prohibition. In the 1920s, Pietism allied itself with the Temperance movement, causing holiness to be identified with abstinence from alcohol altogether, not just sobriety. As a result, culture, rather than the Bible, informed church practice.
There is no doubt that the Bible’s teaching against drunkenness is clear, but some still refuse to acknowledge that Scripture actually speaks positively about alcohol, especially wine. For example, Psalm 104 states, “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man.” Jesus made wine (oinos) at the wedding in Cana and offered it as a blessing.
When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper (Matt. 26:29, Mark 14:25, and Luke 22:18), the gospel writers used the phrase “fruit of the vine,” which Jews used to designate the wine partaken of on sacred occasions. Wine in scripture is categorically different than grape juice, just like bread is different than flour. Communion bread may be leavened or unleavened but it is always bread at the table; we don’t receive a substitute product like dough or pasta. Similarly, Jesus offered wine at the supper, not grape juice or jelly.
The scriptural witness is clear about the goodness of wine and, however, even though prohibition is over, many still continue to advocate for the use of grape juice at communion. Their reasons are often admirable and are usually out of concern for “the weaker brother” (Romans 14). The claim is that we should avoid wine altogether out of deference to alcoholics who may be in worship. Yes, Paul teaches us to care for the weaker brother, but he never instructs us to leave them in their weakness; rather we are to strengthen them.
Paul commands us to build up our weaker brothers, not by abstaining from alcohol, but by strengthening their faith. Therefore, weakness should not be a defining limitation that informs the Lord’s Supper. We eat by faith, and we encourage the church to eat by faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
When we come to the table to receive the cup, we receive the blood of Christ and with it, a means of grace to believe, to be strong, and to overcome. We come to the table not to celebrate our weaknesses but our savior, Jesus Christ. We come to humbly receive what He has given, and what He has given us is His body and blood, the bread and the wine. We need not fear what God has ordained.
Bread is food, first and foremost, but within scripture, bread is also a metaphor. Jesus made bread a metaphor, connecting bread with salvation.
I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. . . .
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh. . . .“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. . . . This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (John 6:35–36; 48– 51; 53–56; 58)
Jesus identifies himself and his work of salvation with food. Jesus is the bread of life. This is not only true symbolically; it is true sacramentally. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and said, “‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins'” (Matt. 26:26–28). Food is a sign that points to Jesus, a symbol that reveals Jesus, and a sacrament that mediates the grace of Jesus.
Paul also used bread metaphorically when instructing the church in Corinth when he wrote, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16–17 ESV). According to Jesus, He is the bread of heaven sent down to feed us. For Paul, bread is the symbol of the church and of our unity together as a body under Christ. 1
The scriptures do not explicitly prohibit gluten-free bread or grape juice so there is room for some liberty in practice. In fact, John Calvin recognized this liberty within communion when he wrote,
But as for the outward ceremony of the action — whether or not the believers take it in their hands, or divide it among themselves, or severally eat what has been given to each; whether they hand the cup back to the deacon or give it to the next person; whether the bread is leavened or unleavened; the wine red or white — it makes no difference. These things are indifferent, and left at the church’s discretion.2
However, we should be quick to note that even though there is a measure of liberty, we should not neglect the command of scripture nor the sacramental, symbolic, and metaphorical power of normal bread and wine. Neither should we be afraid of them. These normative staples of life are God’s good signs of provision and salvation in the church and we should not be too quick to abandon them even though they are considered to be risky by some.
Safe Music
The war on food in worship is matched only by the war on music in the church over the last fifty years. Music in worship is now a consumable, every bit as much as bread and wine. And if it is a consumable, then it must be safe, which means it must be familiar and easily digestible. Music and hymns that are unfamiliar, challenging, or robust have increasingly been removed from the evangelical church. But should our hymnody and psalmody be safe? Must our music be familiar and easily digestible? Why has music in worship become so banal, so pedestrian, so safe, and easy to consume?
Michael Ward is a C.S. Lewis scholar who famously cracked “the Narnia code” in his study of the Chronicles of Narnia suggesting that there are parallels between the Chronicles and the symbolism of medieval cosmology. In a paper entitled “Narnia’s Secrete” Ward describes Lewis’s concern for humanity’s tendency to be oblivious to the obvious but also insensitive to the cryptic.
In the paper, Ward reminds us of a paper Lewis wrote in 1940 entitled “The Kappa Element in Romance.” “Kappa” is the initial letter of the Greek word meaning “cryptic” or “hidden.” In the paper, Lewis shared his belief that the best stories convey a quality or atmosphere, and are more than just a plot. Lewis believed that James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans was an excellent example of the kappa element because it gave the reader a state or quality of “redskinnery.” Ward writes,
When the hero of the story is half-sleeping by his bivouac fire in the woods while a Redskin with a tomahawk is silently creeping up on him from behind, what makes for the essence of the scene is not simply peril, but the whole world to which this kind of peril belongs: the snow and snow-shoes, the canoes, the wigwams, the feathered headdresses, the war-paint, the Hiawatha names. A crook with a revolver would have conveyed a significantly different experience to the reader, even though the danger he represented might have been greater.
Ward argues with Lewis that stories earn our allegiance by conveying a “distinct and coherent qualitative atmosphere.” As Lewis writes, in his essay “On Stories,”
To be stories at all stories must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series—the plot, as we call it—is only really a net whereby to catch something else. The real theme may be, and perhaps usually is, something that has no sequence in it, something other than a process and much more like a state or a quality.
Good stories bring you into something as they immerse your imagination in a world. Lewis believed that Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers offered no such kappa element, no atmosphere, no spirit. His story is merely plot, and was in Lewis’ view a failure.
In the same way that Lewis observed a kappa element in good writing, I believe we can also find a kappa element in good worship. In worship, the kappa element is provided through the liturgy and through the music. Unlike Dumas, modern evangelicals have not failed to provide a kappa in worship, rather they have subtly replaced it with a weak one. The great liturgies and music of the past are now the “discarded image” of the church today.
Once upon a time, when a worshiper entered worship, they entered into a vast and rich atmosphere; they entered into the numinous as they sensed the presence of the Holy, because the Holy was indeed present. It may have been unseen but it was nevertheless felt through the architecture of the church, through a coherent and robust liturgy, and through the power of the pipe organ, sacred music, and masculine congregational singing.
I suspect that even the most modern of evangelicals would be deeply moved if they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a congregation singing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” accompanied by a skilled brass quintet and loud organ. When the worshiper comes face to face with this type of kappa element, they are confronted by the holy, and with this holiness, they sense the danger of approaching a God who is a consuming fire. Such worship is a little like the experience of Rat and Mole who came face to face with the god Pan in The Wind and the Willows.
“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,” whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. “Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!” Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror — indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy — but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side, cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew. Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. “Rat!” he found breath to whisper, shaking. “Are you afraid?” “Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!” Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.3
Worship that is holy is good but it’s not safe because it lets you know who is in charge, and that is precisely the problem. Modern evangelicals came to believe that “awe-full” worship had to be domesticated for easier consumption and control. It wasn’t church leaders alone who made this decision, it was also the Contemporary Christian Music industry that rewrote the church’s hymnbook to make it more marketable and easily consumable by the paying customer.4
Personal Safety
Nothing revealed the idol of safe worship within evangelicalism as much as COVID-19. Some churches remained open during the pandemic but the vast majority shut down for several weeks or more, sometimes much more. The decision to return to regular worship often hinged on one or two considerations. First was the legal hurdle as churches wrestled to understand the limits placed upon them by the state, and secondly, churches had to evaluate the health risks and physical safety of their members.
As churches wrestled with such questions, many church leaders evaluated the situation with legal and medical insight, but not with much biblical or theological reflection. Even if a pastor could come around to embrace the command of scripture to not neglect the assembly of the church (Hebrews 10:25), there were still scant reasons offered as to why we should gather for worship. Obeying scripture should be reason enough, and standing on principle is a benefit to the congregation.
I again found C.S. Lewis a helpful tutor in the development of my own convictions, which I shared with our church during the pandemic. I was reminded of his essay, “Learning in Wartime.” The essay was originally a sermon delivered on Sunday, October 22, 1939. On this date, Lewis climbed the stairs to the pulpit of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford University to share remarks he entitled “None Other Gods: Culture in Wartime.” This sermon was later reprinted as “Christian in Danger”and lastly as “Learning in Wartime.”
Today this essay can be found in the book The Weight of Glory. On the same Sunday that Lewis preached his sermon, the Soviet army was clamping down on occupied Poland, closing schools and churches, banning the Polish language and typewriters, and replacing Polish currency with Soviet rubles. Seven weeks had passed since the start of WWII and the ravages of war were beginning to show throughout Europe.
Lewis understood his moment in time and so decided to use his sermon to address the university students by answering their unspoken question, “What in the world are we doing studying at university when all of Europe is embroiled in war?” As I read the essay again, the parallels between Oxford in wartime and life amid COVID-19 were obvious. The question this generation faced was, “Why attend worship in the midst of COVID-19?” Why take the risk? Lewis offered helpful insights,
The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself…We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life”. Life has never been normal…Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.
During COVID, I came to see that life was pretty much the same as it was before the shutdowns in March 2020. Before COVID, there were many dangers, toils, and snares; today we’re just more keenly aware of them. Lewis affirms the same. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Care should be taken not to incur unnecessary harm, but we cannot avoid the risk of living, learning, or loving one another today.
Lewis further points out that God graciously called these students to learn, so they must pursue the life God has granted, even in wartime. The same is true for us. God made us learners, but also lovers of Him and others, and we are called to express that love in fellowship. Above all, He made us worshipers and our lives are truly restless until they find their rest through worship of Him. This is the true purpose of every life.
Since we are made in the image of a triune God, we are made for fellowship and worship, even amid danger. At the end of the sermon, Lewis suggests that there are three enemies that war raises against the scholar. I’d discovered that in the pandemic, these same three enemies presented themselves against the worshiper.
The first enemy is excitement, “the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work.” Lewis goes on to share that excitement is actually an old enemy. Excitement produces and empowers rivals to our thinking and our affections.
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
During the pandemic, there was a lot of excitement, about the virus strain, infection numbers, death count, vaccines, and the political dimensions of our health and safety. To the extent that these things draw our attention away from our true purpose, Lewis would call them distractions. As important as these things might be, they should not and cannot keep us from worship.
The second enemy is frustration, “the feeling that we shall not have time to finish.” The temptation here is twofold, 1) that we might not finish what we begin, so why even start and 2), we may become preoccupied with trying to control the future before we proceed. Neither are faithful options and they keep us from living fully in the present. Lewis writes,
A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God’s hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord”. It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
The final enemy is fear, for “war threatens us with death and pain.” But here, Lewis leverages the power that death tries to exert against us and uses it as a learning opportunity.
But there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that—of a machine gun bullet now or cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. It puts several deaths earlier; but I hardly suppose that that is what we fear. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us…Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it…War makes death real to us: and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right.
Even in wartime, there is reason for learning. Even amid health restrictions, there is reason for celebration. Even amid pandemics, there are reasons for worship. There are reasons, in spite of all that is said and heard and seen in the news because the gospel is that Jesus is Lord. This is the confession of the church; it has not changed and it will not change. To own this confession is to possess certainty and to have good reasons to face risk, to live life, and to worship.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
- For more on the necessity of preserving physical and spiritual nourishment, see my article That Hideous Food. ↩︎
- Calvin Jean John T McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles. 20061960. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press. ↩︎
- Grahame, Kenneth. 1999. The Wind and the Willows. United Kingdom: Dover. ↩︎
- For a fuller treatment the market forced behind the domestication of worship, see Warren Cole Smith’s book, A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church. Smith does an excellent job detailing how the Christian Industrial Complex displaced the church’s hymnbook. ↩︎
The Parrhesians 