The Joy of Worship by Matthew Harrison

Here's a little chapter I've written for my "Little Book of Joy: How to Live a Good News Life in a Bad News World." It's been a hoot to write.

Matt H.


The Joy of Worship

“Life is too narrow really, our heart too small, for us to be able to apprehend, let alone comprehend this tremendous joy. For one’s heart really to be able to embrace it would cause it to burst and die.” (Luther, House Postil I.117-8).

What is it that makes Christian joy, and the joy of worship so profound, so expansive, so freeing, so – well - joyful? For me it’s the continued surprise and wonder of not being rejected by Christ. It’s the delight of being invited into his presence not to perform or recount my deeds, but to be forgiven and accepted precisely as a sinner, to hear of the deeds of Christ, recounted for me, and be the recipient of those deeds here and now. My heart and mind are struck ever new, and constructed anew, in ways I can not predict. I come burdened, I leave in joy. Greatest wonder of wonders, the Lord rejoices precisely over sinners! “He will rejoice over thee with joy!” (Zephaniah 3:17)

Jesus illustrates this joy of worship, and counter-joy of Pharisaism.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. (Luke 18:9-14)

The Pharisee found a hollow, prideful joy in himself. He came to the temple to joyfully boast in himself, and left condemned for the very acts of worship he thought were his greatest honor. Braggadocious worship always brings contempt for another sinner. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)

Paul uses a notorious cognate fifty-five times for “joy” or “rejoice” (kauxaomai). It means “joyful boasting.” (Morrace, Joy in the New Testament, Eerdmanns 1984, p. 112-113). It may mean a “joyful boasting” in Christ and his grace, his salvation, his action, his saving, and in whatever glorifies Christ and his mercy (2 Corinthians 11:30). In the negative, the word depicts prideful boasting in “the flesh,” (II Corinthians 12:1,5; Philippians 3:3). “For Paul then, as for the Old Testament… the element of trust is primary… This means that self-confidence is radically excluded from ‘joyfully boasting in God.’ There is only one legitimate ‘joyful boasting in God,’ namely ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ’” (Romans 5:11) (Kittel TDNT 3.649).

Notice the tax collector (notoriously despised “sinners” in ancient Israel; Matthew 9:11). He comes face cast down in shame, pleading for mercy. Yet it is he who goes away “justified.” Like Zachaeus (Luke 19:1), he left forgiven, freed and changed. The secret of living a good news life in a bad news world, the secret to true joy in worship is too see ourselves in the tax collector, but also to recognize full well we are more like the Pharisee than we dare want to admit. How many times I’ve heard after a sermon, “Pastor, I’m glad you made that point. So and so was in church and really needed to hear that.” Most of us would not say that, but we think it. That is a sure fire kill-joy. Real joy has found mercy in CHRIST’s sacrifice! It finds joy in Christ’s forgiveness, and joy in Christ’s mercy for fellow sinners. Prideful boasting against our neighbor is sure proof of prideful boasting against God. Refusing grace to the neighbor, is the sure indicator of a joy-killing refusal of grace from our Savior.

Joy is the glorious snow-capped peak on a mountain founded upon a death, Christ’s. On top of Christ’s death, is ours in Christ (repentance). The road to joy in worship is through death to resurrection, ours and Christ’s. “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). When Christ’s death proclaimed (I Corinthians 1:23) falls out of preaching, joy begins a serious inward death spiral.

The rejoicing over salvation becomes egotistically, factiously, fanatically, zealotically distorted when it detaches itself from the remembrance of Jesus' sacrificial death. (Peter Brunner, Worship in the Name of Jesus).

The divine service is the antidote. It opens with the joyous name “Father, Son and Spirit,” which opens all heaven’s joy for us. The name is spoken again in the absolution, which splashes us parched sinners with baptismal joy all over again. “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3) A word of law (in the confession of sins, and in the lessons and sermon) drums us down hard into hell. But the very same word which raised Lazarus, bespeaks us living and joyous again (John 11 – ‘Lazarus come out!). The Lord’s Supper anchors the gospel in Christ’s sacrifice, recalled (‘on the night when he was betrayed), reclaimed (“given for you”), recounted and, above all, actually applied (“Take and eat”). “In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:11; KJV)

I found in an old musty Lutheran tome, a wonderful definition of joy in the face of suffering (i.e. “attached to the remembrance of Jesus’ sacrificial death.”). All of it applies directly to worship. Unlike the confined, self-aggrandizing, focus of the Pharisee, which narrows the heart toward the neighbor, in true joy, “the heart is broadened.” Broadened to Christ, to grace, to the church, to others in and outside the church. Joy is broad! “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections… widen your hearts!” (2 Corinthians 6:11).

The musty Lutheran writes:

“Rejoice that you suffer with Christ.” (I Peter 4:13) “Rejoice” [Cairete] says the apostle, “let this be for you a true, hearty joy.” Joy is an affect and emotion, where the heart is broadened. Joy accepts the present good and is heartily, completely and delightfully satisfied over it. Future good is expected in heartfelt joy. As now all joy, to which the corrupt nature drives us, is corrupt and impure; so on the contrary a pure and holy joy is a working of the grace of God, when the mere joy of the world becomes ever more bitter. On the contrary the divine things begin to delight and to satisfy us. Here [I Peter 4:3] Peter calls such a spiritual joy of the heart in the cross and trials, a [true] joy, which happens in the Lord Jesus. And reason understands nothing of it. But the faith conceives of such joy, because it does not look to the visible and temporal, rather to the invisible and eternal (2 Corinthians 4.18). Indeed, this appears to be a paradox [paradoxon] and rare matter, to have joy in suffering. Johann Gottfried Palm, Erklaerung der ersten und andern Epistel Petri, Dresden 1731, Palm p. 919f. Translation by M.H.

It is great irony that worship – the foretaste of “future good expected in heartfelt joy” –should be cause for division in the church, that hearts should be narrowed rather than broadened in freedom and love. The problem is as old as the narrowed, self-centered heart revealed in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, as old as the challenge of worship run-a-muck in Corinth (I Corinthians 11-14) or legalism in Galatia. “Now the works of the flesh… enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:19ff.)

There are two simple joyous truths about worship from Scripture. The first truth is that in Christ there is freedom in worship! The second truth: True Christian freedom expresses itself in love. Notice how the apostles combine these two basic bedrock truths of the New Testament! “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13; I Peter 2:16) It’s all profound, but very simple. The Prodigal was all about freedom sans love. He ended a slave to himself. The Judaizers were all about following the law sans freedom, and lost the gospel too! Freedom and love belong together in Christian worship and life.

So Lutheranism always has and always will recognized very broad freedom in worship “It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies, instituted by human beings, should be observed uniformly in all places.”(Augsburg Confession VII) Luther even wrote, “‘Everything in the mass [i.e. “the service”] up to the Creed is ours, free and not prescribed by God.” (AE 53.25) But freedom bereft of love, ends in joyless self-centeredness.

Regarding what in worship is neither commanded or forbidden by the word of God, “’All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.” (I Corinthians 10:23-24) Martin Luther applied his famous dictum in his important reformation tract, The Freedom of the Christian Man, to the issue of worship, and both the Augsburg Confession (VII) and the Formula of Concord (F.C. S.D. X.9) followed.

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. (AE 33.344)

Freedom exercised in love is the hallmark of Lutheran worship. While I prefer the predominant use of a Lutheran hymnal, I recognize the boundaries of acceptable practice are broader than my own preferences. On the other hand, the individual and the individual congregation – in matters of worship – must always acts in ways, which serve the neighbor in love. Nothing that impedes or distorts the gospel can endure in worship.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice (xairei) at wrongdoing, but rejoices (synxairei) with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (I Corinthians 13:4-7).

There’s the joyous secret.