I (Joel) grew up in a church where flag waving, people convulsing on the floor, bouts of supposedly ecstatic and unprompted laughter and a great many other oddities were a normal part of the Sunday evening service I often attended. Aidan however, was raised in a church where worship was a far more reflective exercise and physical expression was more often than not limited to bowed heads and ‘praying hands’.
For those of you who have experiences in different churches before Gracelife, I am sure, at the very least, that they differ in some way from what things look and feel like currently on a Sunday. As those opening sentences highlight, here are two elders in our church that come from very different experiences of gathered worship. All of this can raise the question for us, what should our gathered worship look like? How should we express ourselves? As we grow into a deeper and richer understanding of God, with a greater reverence for Him and His word, should we raise our hands in worship? This is a challenging question to answer honestly, and I think that is because it is the wrong question. In fact, I must admit, the title of this letter was just to get you reading! The point isn’t just about raising your hands, the point is to get you thinking about whether you are responding appropriately to the goodness and the glory of God with your whole being.
Here is the argument I want to propose: redeemed people ought to respond to their glorious redeemer with reverent joy.
Let me begin with the end of this statement:
Responding to the Goodness and the Glory of the Redeemer
We are sinful rebels who have wronged the holy and just God and are entirely deserving of his judgment. Yet, through the redeeming work of God’s grace in Christ, we have been forgiven and adopted as beloved children, and so we have access to his presence with boldness and confidence (Eph 3:12). In Christ there is now no condemnation for us (Rom 8:1). This means that you can worship by faith, the one true living God with joyful reverence.
Reverence is appropriate because He is holy and entirely other, so we should serve with fear and rejoice with trembling before the Lord (Psalm 2:11)! Joy is appropriate because he has forgiven us greatly, and he who has been forgiven much, loves much! ‘Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!’ (Psalm 100:1–2)
Our worship ought to be our response to the goodness and the glory of God our redeemer. Psalm 145:1–3 says
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
Is your God great? Then worship him greatly!
If your God isn’t great, then repent and burn your idol and come and find infinite wonder and majesty in Christ the King our saviour. Then worship him greatly!
Is your worship the appropriate response to the goodness and the weightiness of God?
If you are like me, considering my background I certainly remember coming to a greater understanding of God and his word, leading me to want to swing away from the ‘practices’ I was raised around. Rightly so considering their extra-biblical nature. Yet I wrongly assumed that my understanding of God should also lead me to a folded hands sort of conservatism. As a result my worship said… “Come, make a sombre noise to the Lord with me!” I wasn’t responding to the goodness and glory of God, I was reacting to some unhelpful experiences from my past.
This goes both ways, I fear that some of you have come into Gracelife and assumed some form of conservatism… ‘oh, we mustn’t express ourselves in worship here.’ If that has been your experience, we see it, and this letter aims to correct that if possible.
Brothers and sisters, God is worthy of more praise than we could ever give him (Ps. 106:2), with all of our lives, and with all of our being (Ps. 16:9). So if you come to gather with the church to praise God giving little attention to the saints you sing with and to, and little thought to the majesty of God, and little weight to the abundance of grace poured out for you – then let me challenge you: redeemed people ought to respond to their glorious redeemer with reverent joy.
Great… but Joel, you can’t tell me how I ought to physically express myself.
No, but I can show you what God says. First, let us make sure we understand what it means to be redeemed people.
Embodied People
You are an image bearer of God, fallen in Adam, redeemed in Christ. Your body experiences the corruption of sin, yet in his body, Christ bore the penalty you deserve, and one day, he will raise your body to new life, and make it new entirely.
Your body is not evil, your body is not separate from you. God is intimately aware of you, of the number of hairs on your head, of when you sit and when you stand (Ps. 139) – all embodied realities. Sure, it might not work as you would like it to all the time, and you may even feel uncomfortable in your body, but when God created you, he made you as an embodied person!
In Psalm 16:9 David says with reverent joy
‘Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.’
My whole being rejoices! As embodied people we express ourselves, our feelings, our responses – with our bodies. When your favourite sporting team wins on the buzzer, you jump and shout in victory. You express love with words yes, but also with a hug, a squeeze on the shoulder or even just a drawing near physically. When you are grieving, you wear that grief. When your spouse is grumpy, you can feel it, why? Because it is written all over them. Embodied people, express themselves bodily.
Reverent joy in response to the goodness and glory of God ought to be an activity of our whole being! How about some examples:
- Psalm 47:1, Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
- 1 Timothy 2:8, I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
- Daniel 6:10, Daniel bravely knelt to pray three times a day, even when a law made it illegal.
- Luke 22:4, Jesus knelt down to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest
- Psalm 134:2, Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!
I am not saying you must always lift your hands when you sing, or always kneel when you pray. I am saying that you ought to consider how you are responding to your redeemer with your whole being? As an embodied person are you responding with reverent joy?
Don’t get me wrong, some of us are more naturally physically expressive than others, some more reserved. Both are great! The aim isn’t that we respond in uniformity. In the same way that some of you sing in beautiful baritones, and others in wonderful soprano’s (and then I join in) – yet together in diversity we sing unified to the Lord. Likewise we all, should respond to God our redeemer as embodied people with reverent joy as is natural to us.
Certainly our worship ought to be orderly (1 Cor. 14:26-33), and we should be mindful of our brothers and sisters worshipping around us, so that our physical expression wouldn’t become a distraction to them. We must be careful to not make ourselves the subject of attention, and instead help one another to focus all our attention on the glory of Christ to whom we sing!
Is He worthy?
Our posture at times can speak louder than our voices. When we kneel, we do so before our sovereign, because he is worthy, and we trust him. When we close our eyes and bow our heads, we neglect the distractions to consider our place before the holy one who is worthy of all our attention. When we lift our hands, we are forced to let go of what otherwise steals our hands, and we give them in praise to the one who is worthy. When we clap, and sing with gladness, we join in the triumphant procession of the saints (2 Cor. 2:14) who follow the crucified and resurrected king, all the way to the gates of Zion. He is worthy.
So, should you raise your hands in worship? If you have them, yeah, but not because I say so, because God is worthy, and we ought to respond accordingly (turns out that could have been a far shorter letter).
Grace to you, Glory to God.