Seeking to worship

There are a lot of things I like about the location of our new home in Brussels: we’re across the street from a metro station and one of Brussels’ largest shopping malls; we’re near the highway and the airport; and we can walk to a bakery, a restaurant, a park, and a video store in sixty seconds or less.

But my favorite thing of all is the statue of “The Worshipper.” Okay, I confess, that’s my name for him. He’s also a sixty-second walk away, in the middle of the roundabout that’s next to the bakery and the video store.

“The Worshipper” stands as tall as he can, head thrown back, arms extended to heaven in complete abandonment. He is, at the same time, the picture of desperate need and absolute surrender. If you’re walking out of the video store at just the right time of day (a sunny day, that is), you can see his face lit with the warmth of heaven, as if God Himself is expressing His pleasure. And in the background stands a small church, where fewer and fewer gather for worship.

“The Worshipper” makes me think. Worship is not an action, it is a reaction. God reveals Himself, the Spirit brings conviction, life’s circumstances show us our frailty, and we worship in response. Worship is hard. It is the opposite of everything our sinful hearts want to do. But if we don’t worship, we are in conflict with our very soul, for worshipping God is what we were made for, and where we find our home.

We’ve given a lot of emphasis to the word “seeker” in the last couple decades of evangelicalism. While helpful and handy in many ways, it has always bothered me as a description of people who are not followers of Jesus. Paul quotes Isaiah when he writes, “there is no one righteous, not even one; no one who understands, no one who seeks God” (Rom 3:10-11). We know this to be a description of people without Christ because Paul later refers to a “righteousness from God (that) comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom 3:22).

We call people seekers because they are interested and asking questions, and it’s a lot nicer than calling them “heathen slime-sucking pigs” (although I’m not sure that’s Biblical either). But, actually, God is the seeker. Jesus came to “seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). The Father seeks worshippers (John 4:23). Paul quotes Isaiah quoting God: “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me” (Rom 10:20). We are not seekers before we are believers; we become seekers once we’re found.

We’re commanded many times in Scripture to seek: seek first God’s kingdom (Matt. 6:33); seek instruction from priests (Mal 2:7); seek the Lord, seek righteousness, and seek humility (Zeph 2:3). We can obey these commands, as all others, once we’ve said yes to the One who seeks our soul. Increasingly, it is my feeling that it’s worshippers who seek and seekers who worship.

Take Herod, for instance. The magi from the east came to Jerusalem looking for Jesus, whose star they had seen and followed for some time. Their quest to find the one “born king of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2) disturbed Herod and the entire city (Matt. 2:3). The priests were able to report where the Christ was to be born, so Herod sent the magi to Bethlehem with the following instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him” (Matt. 2:8).

Of course, we know that Herod had no intention of worshipping Jesus. God used dreams to warn the magi to go home another way and Joseph to take his family to Egypt. Herod’s horrific response was to kill every boy two years of age and younger in Bethlehem.

Whatever was on his mind, Herod gave the magi reason to believe that he would worship based on what they found. But we never worship as the result of another’s search. We worship because, compelled by God, we seek Him and find Him to be our Savior and only hope. Worship is the result of a firsthand “careful search for the child.”

It’s easy at Christmas to let others do the hard work of seeking and expect that we will worship the Christ Child on cue somewhere between the pianist’s introduction to “Joy to the World” and final chord (by candlelight) of “Silent Night.” The only seeking done by many is to comb the church bulletin to see when the faithful are expected to turn up. But that doesn’t fit the description of the worshipper the Father seeks: those who “worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).

Here in Brussels, our new church community is so young that we can’t expect someone else to be planning events and activities that will help us celebrate Christmas. From where I sit, this doesn’t feel like a disadvantage. I think it provides us with the opportunity to make a new personal commitment to “go and make a careful search for the child” so that worship would be our response.

And then, sometime on Christmas Day, maybe I’ll take my place near the video store alongside “The Worshipper” – eyes fixed on heaven and enjoying the warmth of God’s pleasure.