Dr. Robert Webber in Ancient and Future Worship provides a memorable definition, calling to mind the most famous images in the Sistine Chapel ceiling: Adam reaching up to God, and God reaching down to Adam. Worship, says Webber, is in the space between the outstretched fingers of God and man. It is the connection.

As elegant as that definition is, it is still incomplete. That it exists is important. Why it exists is equally important. There is, I think, a purpose, something that compels us to worship.

Then, in the graphic definition, there is the question of who is reaching out to whom. Does man initiate worship? Does God cause man to initiate worship? Or does the worship of God come from God with man as its conduit?

So I will provide a definition of my own, one that I think will satisfy our needs here: Worship is our obeying God’s call to us, continually bending toward and reaching out to Him. And we do that with a purpose.

In the beginning, there was no worship. It wasn’t necessary. There was no distance between God and God’s creations. Although Genesis doesn’t say so, we can imagine that Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, sharing a perfect existence. In the beginning, God did not prescribe sacrifice and offerings, only obedience.

In a matter of a few sentences in Genesis, mankind went from being with God to being naked and ashamed, then being banished from their perfect existence and from their closeness to God. Since that time, we have worshipped, brought offerings, prayed, wept, and begged, all in our continuing attempt to once again achieve the closeness to God that we have lost.

But the practical person who sometimes lives inside my head asks, “Can we do that?” The answer to that question is short and unsatisfying: I don’t know. But I do believe that we can get much closer than we are now, that we can approach a worship that is at the very essence of our being, where our every decision and every act is worship.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the broad definition, we still need a framework for discussing the general subject of worship and its specific practice. Although this is none too precise, I believe it will serve. Worship may be divided into three categories, generally based on the impetus for the worship:

·     External: this is the worship that we recognize we are supposed to do, influenced by lessons learned at the very beginning of our religious observance. We give thanks to God for what we’ve received. We go to church; we say prayers; we participate in groups with others of our religion or denomination.

·     Internal: this is worship that springs from within us. This is David pleading and bargaining with God for the life of his son. Or Mary rejoicing after being told that she would bear the Son of God.

·     Essential: this is neither external nor internal in its source. It simply is. Neither does it have a past nor future tense; it exists only in the present. It exists only in the worshiper.

Each of these is—or can be—authentic worship, useful for connecting us to God. And, as we’ll see in the next chapter, God honors the worship we’re supposed to do as well the worship that we have to do. Or the worship that we are.