the Pitt 39: Prophetic Worship in the Face of Static Religion

Continuing in this vein of the missional-orientation of worship, there is a prophetic aspect to this trajectory that God has called us into, which counters the static religion of our time.  Say what?  Static what, you ask?  Static religion is something God can't stand, as the prophet Amos points out:

"I can't stand your religious meetings.
   I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
   your pretentious slogans and goals.
I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,
   your public relations and image making.
I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
   When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
   I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
   That's what I want. That's all I want."

In Walter Brueggemann's insightful book The Prophetic Imagination, he clearly states the fact of static religion.  Static religion has fallen out of the radical middle.  What 'radical middle' are we talking about?  The radical middle between the Freedom of God and the Accessibility of God.  It happens when we don't acknowledge the 'both/and' of the 'now-and-not-yet'.  It happens where relationship with God has become a memory, whether we live in denial or not.  As Brueggemann points out, the freedom of God is always in considerable tension with the accessibility of God.  For myself, God is the most Free Person I know, but this tension should be inherent in our worship practices.  Static religion was seen as the establishment of a controlled set of worship practices that sort of put God in a box.  

The sovereignty and freedom of God is all but gone in static religion and too easily nation-states and leaders seek to fully subordinate static religion to their own purposes, whether legitimating their military, economic or political agendas.  This is where God is made accessible through the right way or the right person like a candy machine, put in the right amount of money, press the right button (or maybe we should say rub the lamp), and whoosh, the domesticated God is at your command, ready for your wish-fulfillment. Carol Wimber actually does a wonderful job of describing the issue nowadays like this: 

"When we look back and see Gods presence moving on us; forming us; worship had such an intricate part through all this. Over the years we’ve seen things change-shift, but from the very beginning we understood that worship wasn’t “for” anything, except for the Lord. Sometimes I get the feeling that we’ve shifted a bit too, “We worship in order for this to happen.” Whatever “this” is —a great move of the Spirit perhaps. But that truthfully is the opposite of what we’re doing in those early days. We were worshipping simply because God is worthy of worship. The wonderful things that happened were as a result of his presence. But we didn’t worship so that his presence would come; we just worshipped!  We didn't even really know about trying to 'make' things happen, or "we'll worship until the 'big' thing happens, or when the Spirit begins to move.  That wasn't why we were meeting together..."

To wrestle with a genuine alternative to this situation, we must admit: we all have deep committments to this in one way or another, and thus how can we seek to worship otherwise?  As in all things the issue with worship isn't worship...the issue with worship is God.  Perhaps our consciousness and imagination have been so co-opted that real courage must be asked for to enter into the wrestling match of what else might be possible.  The questions involved here are - I believe - where the missional-orientation of worship is taking us.  As R.D. Laing supposed, people are simply so busy, so drained, so unable to care or suffer or be truly joy-filled that they go through the motions and manage proper behaviour in whatever situation they find themselves; they have become so numb and are no longer able to experience their own experience.  Thus, given the situation we find ourselves in, how do we prophetically pique them, rouse them, awaken them to experience the Redeemer?

So, a few more questions: Have we fallen into the rut of static religion?  Have we fallen for worshiping in order to make God appear (like rubbing a lamp for a genie??)?  How do we change our minds and change our direction and get back to the radical middle?  Increasingly, this generations experiences are vicarious, ethereal and do not touch their everyday living...in such a context, how can we help people have experiences, so that they experience their own real experience?  What would prophetic worship in the face of this static religion look like today?  How can we help people to experience God and rouse them from the numbness that binds and blinds them? 

[to be continued...]