“REJOICE
WITH TREMBLING”
I
have never liked wearing a tie. I much
prefer the unconstrained freedom of an open collar. I like the appearance of a tie; it’s the
discomfort that I dislike. Not wearing a
tie to church, or to the office also fits in quite well with the trend of being
casual.
It’s
OK to be informal and casual but we need to realize that it can be
dangerous. We could be standing on a
slippery slope that leads to something not so good. A cartoon I saw last week said it well. It pictured a business office with people in
various stages of dress and undress. One
of them is saying, “Casual Friday was so popular we decided to try naked Monday.”
In worship
and the practice of our faith being casual and informal is OK unless it leads
to a lack of reverence. When Prince
William and Kate were here recently it was really not OK for LeBron James, even
if he is called the “king” in basketball circles, to casually drape his arm
around her shoulders. How much more
important is it that we come into the divine Presence with awe and
reverence. Psalm 96:9 says, “Worship the Lord in the splendor of
holiness (some versions say “in holy attire”); tremble before him, all the earth.”
When
Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple he was filled with fear
and awe and his voice may well have trembled as he cried out, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isa 6). In the Psalms, “the fear of the Lord” is a
common theme. One Psalm captures
particularly well the attitude that we should have in our worship when it says,
“Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice
with trembling” (11:2 esv). Coming
into the Lord’s Presence calls for a kind of holy hesitation, a joyful
trembling.
Paul
recognized that the Lord was present in his church. In 1 Cor 4 he even calls the church the
dwelling place of God in the Spirit and then goes on to say they are defiling
it by their divisions and their sinfulness, their lack of reverence and
respect. It all comes to a head in their
observance of the Lord’s Supper which leads him to say this in 1 Cor 11:26-28,
as seen in Peterson’s The Message: What you must solemnly realize is that every
time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your
words and actions the death of the Master.
You will be drawn back to his meal again and again until the Master
returns You must never let familiarity
breed contempt. Anyone who eats the
bread or drinks the cup of the Master irreverently is like part of the crowd
that jeered and spit on him at his death.
Is that the kind of “remembrance” you want to be part of? Examine your motives, test your heart, come
to this meal in holy awe.
Let
us “rejoice with trembling” whenever we enter the divine Presence and
especially as we come to the table of communion.
