Worship Organic

If you've ever noticed the organic section at the grocer you may have also noted the price difference. Organic stuff costs more than the processed foods and I'm guessing that's because the companies behind the organic foods are generally smaller and because organic foods aren't as popular as the microwavable spaghetti cans. It might just be that the organic growers are really proud of their stuff or that they're greedy, I don't know for sure. For the sake of this blog, though, let's just say that organic foods are more expensive to produce, ship, and position at the local grocer. I'm open to correction by anyone in the know.

The expense of organic foods vs. the chemically-laden-preservative-infused stuff that would still taste "fresh" long into the Great Tribulation serves as a fine metaphor for authentic worship. Real worship costs more than the popular stuff. Real worship bears with it the expense of sacrifice, selflessness, and servitude. Real worship engages the heart, soul, mind, and strength. Real worship has little to do with songs and a lot to do with soul. Authentic worship doesn't have a long shelf life because it is always current, always now, always alive and vital somehow in a way that the imitations can never bear. Real worship is the homemade pasta prima vera and the phony stuff Spaghetti-o's.

There's a great story in 1 Chronicles 21 about King David. He decided to take a census which the LORD had not ordered and it ticked God off. God sent an angel with a big sword (most scholars would say it was probably a theophany, or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ) to smite Israel and this is what happened:

16 David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown.
17 David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people."
18 Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 19 So David went up in obedience to the word that Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.
20 While Araunah was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angel; his four sons who were with him hid themselves. 21 Then David approached, and when Araunah looked and saw him, he left the threshing floor and bowed down before David with his face to the ground.
22 David said to him, "Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped. Sell it to me at the full price."
23 Araunah said to David, "Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this."
24 But King David replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing."
25 So David paid Araunah six hundred shekels [c] of gold for the site. 26 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. [d] He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
27 Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. 28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. 29 The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the desert, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. 30 But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.

My point is in verse 24 where David said I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing. It just seems to me that people in church are happy to "take for the Lord" the offering that the worship leaders have prepared for their own sacrifice to God. In a way it is kind of like eating off of someone else's plate like the blind child Helen Keller did before Anne Sullivan got ahold of her.

Did you ever see in the movie The Miracle Worker how the young Helen would go around the dinner table grabbing peas and corn and whatever off of her family's plates and smashing it into her face like a wild child? That's the one scene I always think of when I think of Keller. Everyone just sat there ignoring her behavior because it was "normal". So what's so normal about people filing into church week after week and feeding off of the platform, grabbing at the praise songs on our plates like blind children starving for a morsel? How are we justified as God's family to ignore this behavior? Are we not the guiltier party for perpetuating such dependency?

Araunah had a good heart. He wanted to give the king what he needed to make God happy but David knew better. He knew that God looks upon the heart. He knew that this issue was personal, something between him and the LORD, and that he had to get jiggy with it and not screw around and make things worse. The sword of an angel makes for a bad hair day. So David insisted on paying full price for Araunah's field and oxen to sacrifice to God. God received his offering and answered with a bolt of fire upon the altar from heaven.

God doesn't get mad at us anymore. Our sins and blunders were placed on Christ at the cross and He was our ultimate sin offering. The point is that we are offering some pretty cheap offerings to Him in return for His amazing offering to us. He gives us eternal life and we give Him an hour on Sundays. He gives us total forgiveness of our sins and we gripe about having to stand up for three songs in a row at church. He pours life into us constantly and we have a hard time being happy about it because gas prices are high.

I'm voting for a return to worship organic. Enough of this performance stuff that is a complete hijacking of the song of the people. Enough of worship-as-church-growth-tool. Enough of pastors who are disengaged with the reality of worship, the reality of lament, and the reality of their people's struggling souls. And enough of worship leaders up on our platforms imitating the latest, greatest "worship star" they've heard on a CD, getting their own artist's itch scratched while we have to stand there and watch. Where is reality? Where is the full-throated song of the people in the ears of God? Who cares if the world is impressed with our worship show?

Worship organic may cost a little more, but in the end it tastes better and we are healthier for it.

Be encouraged. Live. Love. Lead.