"Reverence", Silence and Joy

A few years ago, I read the results of an extensive survey of Episcopal parishes that looked for connections between their various characteristics and their growth (or lack of). I was struck that the researcher actually found a negative correlation between parishes that described their worship as “reverent” and membership growth. The researcher, Kirk Hadaway, noted that worship described as “reverent” seemed to be perceived as the opposite of such descriptions as “joyful” and “exciting.”

“Reverence” appears to be another “church” word that needs to be saved, or at least translated so as the remove its unpleasant connotations. To me, reverent worship is joyful and exciting, if we understand just what an awesome thing we’re doing on Sunday morning. That said, I can understand how “reverence” can end up alienating us from God.

A search for the word, “reverence” in the King James Version, and the Greek words translated into the English “reverence,” makes that clear enough. In scripture, reverence is associated with fear, even shame, before God. I’ve heard plenty of stories in this area from disaffected people who were basically taught to be terrified of God. In other cases, some people may have come to associate “reverent” worship with what they considered somber or boring worship.

On the one hand, as Rich Mullins sang, “Our God is an awesome God.” How awesome? As Mullins also sang: And when the sky was starless in the void of the night (Our God is an awesome God), He spoke into the darkness and created the light (Our God is an awesome God).” Should we not be at least a little thoughtful of that when we enter the sanctuary on Sunday morning? The God we worship is truly transcendent. God is beyond all categories of human thought and comprehension. God’s power is infinite, God’s understanding is infinite, but God’s love is also infinite.

Before all this, we should, at the very least, be most respectful of the reality of this awesome God. And even more, we owe God our respect, or reverence, precisely because this transcendent, awesome God, humbled himself to become like us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The very fact of the Incarnation, that God took shape in a human body, brings this awesome God into close contact with us. And I believe that there are tangible ways in which this incarnate God continues to touch us in our worship. Understood in this way, reverence before God should fill us with excitement and joy.

In the weeks ahead, I’ll talk about some of the ways that we come into contact with God in our holy place. But for now, I suggest that the first point of contact is very simple, and very anxious: silence. We are so busy, with our work, our hobbies, our vacations that leave us needing a vacation; that we end up defining ourselves by our activity. It’s not easy to be silent and still when we’re so used to doing things. It leaves a hole that we’re anxious to fill. But God can’t fill us if we keep trying to fill ourselves.

There’s now a sign on the doors to Founders Hall. Before the service, talk to God: During the service, listen to God: After the service, talk to each other. Outside those doors, be in fellowship with each other. At those doors, and inside the hall, let’s practice that discipline of stillness and silence as we stand, bow and kneel before our Awesome God.