One of the sessions on my schedule today was Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld teaching on lament in corporate worship. The highlight of the session for me was this sentence: “All true worship begins in the wilderness.” We don’t tend to think that way—we tend to treat our worship services as oases, as if we could shut out the wilderness and pretend it isn’t there; but it’s the truth. All true worship begins with God calling us in the wilderness—in the midst of our struggles and pains and difficulties—and us bringing ourselves to God in response to his call. All of ourselves; God wants nothing less. If we try to begin our worship anywhere else, if we try to leave the wilderness out (or keep it out) of our worship, then to a greater or lesser extent, we’re being fake with God—and that’s false worship.
Scott Hoezee (that’s pronounced “José,” for those unfamiliar with Dutch names) made a similar point in the worship service yesterday morning, preaching on Hebrews 2. The author of Hebrews draws on Psalm 8 to make his claim that everything has been placed in subjection to Jesus, and that “everything” means everything; Jesus Christ is Lord of everything and everybody, no ifs, ands, or buts, and has authority over all of it. And then, just when you might expect another round statement about the power and greatness of Jesus, you get instead this honest confession, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” As Scott put it, “And the people of God said, ‘No kidding.’ . . . It’s the sort of statement where you don’t know whether to say ‘Amen’ or ‘Duh!'”
When we look around, we most definitely don’t see everything in subjection to Jesus; we see a cracked, fallen, messed up, evil-infected world. “But,” continues Hebrews, “we see Jesus.” Though we don’t see him reigning unchallenged as Lord, we nevertheless see him “crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone”; we see him who entered into our world, and into our suffering, and bore it with us, and for us. And we see that it’s because of that that all things have been placed in subjection to him—and that until that is fully realized, we see him in it with us. Which means that if we deny the reality of our fallen world in our worship—if we fail to begin in the wilderness—then we do him no honor, for we are in effect denying his work and his presence.