PRIMITIVE WORSHIP LIKE A VICTORY CELEBRATION

In a publication issued by the United Church of Christ, Prof. Harvey Cox of Harvard describes early Christian worship in these words:

The earliest gatherings of the followers of Jesus … lacked the cultic solemnity of most contemporary worship. These Christians gathered for what they called the breaking of bread —that is, the sharing of a common meal.

They had bread and wine, recalled the words of Jesus, read letters from the apostles and other groups of Christians, exchanged ideas, sang, and prayed. Their worship services were rather uproarious affairs — more like the victory celebrations of a football team than what we usually call worship today.

We can better appreciate Cox’s illustration of a football victory celebration now that George Allen and the Washington Redskins have won their place in the sun. Not only do George and his team pray together (even before TV cameras’), but they are uninhibited in their display of joy over a big victory. When he and his players beat Dallas and gained a place in the Super Bowl, they wept and laughed, danced and jumped, kissed and embraced, tousled each other’s hair and sprayed champagne. In his remarks on TV George was the epitome of ecstatic joy. He was shouting glory.

TV coverage did not burden us with the gloom of the Cowboy dressing room. News coverage indicated that it was funereal. The unsmiling Tom Landry was even more unsmiling. The players were all undone. There was a solemn air, no place for one in search of joy.

But which of these two dressing room scenes is more like the typical church service in our time? The question makes a place for Cox’s observation that primitive worship was more like a football victory celebration than what we usually call worship today.

Cox’s point may go far beyond a surface observation. Even the scriptures use athletic contests to illustrate weighty truths. Meaningful victory is the result of discipline, hard work, and sacrifice. One foot ball coach made the surprising statement that he did not want his team to gain points solely through the errors of the opponent, for this seemed to dull the razor-edge discipline so long in cultivation. Victory is sweeter when it follows a fierce struggle with the enemy. If the Washington team now basks in the joys of the limelight, it is only because they knew the despair of darkness and defeat. It is probably true that real joy is always in some way related to hardship and difficulty.

The story along this line told by the Harvard great, William James, has always impressed me. The professor took an extended vacation at Lake Chautauqua, where there was fine music, orderliness, sobriety, intelligence, prosperity and cheerfulness, but no real problems. After a few days he was bored with it all, wanting to get back in the thick of Harvard’s ongoing world, which is not always so quiet. He concluded from this experience that it is the element of precipitiousness —the intensity and danger — that makes life worth living.

James applied this kind of thinking to academic life, insisting that students in college need to rub shoulders with the big outside world with all its sin and suffering. These words from his pen are about university life, but we can read then as applicable to our churches:

These excellent fellows need contact of some sort with the fighting side of life, and with the world in which men and women earn their bread and butter and live and die; there must be the scent of blood, so to speak, upon what you offer them, or else their interest does not wake up; the blood which is shed in our electives, fails to satisfy them very long.

James wrote an essay on The Moral Equivalent of War, highly influential back in 1910, that the modern church would do well to study. War gives us manhood, valor, hardness; and it is such martial value, he insisted that are the enduring cement on which societies are built. Since war is cruel and inhumane, we must look for its equivalent in moral efforts to conquer nature for the good of society. And so he said: “The military ideals of hardihood and discipline could be brought into the growing fiber of the people, without the callowness, cruelty and degradation that are the inevitable accompaniment of war.” James could have appreciated the fact that the scriptures describe the believer’s experience as that of a soldier in a war against the forces of evil. This is indeed the God-given equivalent to carnal warfare, for the saints are forever a part of the great conflict whose spiritual weapons are mighty before God and invincible to man.

This is where the joy comes in. The early saints were jubilant because it was their faith that overcame the world. They were disciplined and toughened through those tribulations that one must experience if he enters into the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). And so Paul could say in 1 Thess. 3:4: “For when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction; just as it has come to pass, and as you know.” But he could say to the same church: “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? For you are our glory and joy.” (1 Thess. 2:19-20)

If, as Harvey Cox has suggested, the early saints shared something of a victory celebration in their corporate worship, it was because they really believed that they were the winners in a heroic struggle with the world. This is why joy can never be a smug satisfaction with one’s experiences or a superficial happiness over one’s religion. It is rather that disciplined assurance that all is well and that we are part of a victorious community amidst a rebellious world that must finally surrender to the will of God. This calls for a life of praise and thanksgiving, and in a community situation it will be of such a character as to be likened to a football celebration.

Recent studies in early Christian worship have turned up important sources in the book of Revelation, especially in reference to hymns or poetry sung or chanted in the assembly. Oscar Cullman in his Early Christian Worship finds five or six such old hymns, and they do tell us something about worship as celebration. One is in Rev. 5:9 where the saints sang with the heavenly choir: “Worthy art thou to take the scroll and open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”

This is especially touching in that John weeps when there was no one to open the seals. The apostle was eager to know of the future victory of God’s people, so when the Lamb appears as worthy to unfold her future, John shares in the chants of joy. He heard not only the elders and the living creatures with their harps, but myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands of angels, crying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the lamb that was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” This is indeed a victory celebration.

Another is in Rev. 19:1-6 where the saints are joyful over God’s victory over Babylon the great harlot. “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” The saints, like the heavenly chorus, sing on: “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, pure and bright.”

When it is remembered that Revelation was written at a time when the church was terribly persecuted, which explains why much of its teaching is veiled in symbols the Roman authorities would not understand, these chants of victory take on more meaning. It was a mighty chorus that sang loudly its assurance of victory. The saints made these their songs of joy and exultation.

Our modern assemblies may lack this spirit and be more like the gloom of a defeated community because we are too much a part of the world against which we are suppose to be at war. We hardly have the vision of a pilgrim community. Unlike Jesus, who tabernacled in this world, we have that secular spirit that assumes that the glory of this world is the most of what God has to offer. So we can hardly meet together as warring soldiers who are out to change the world for Jesus’ sake rather than conforming to it for our own sake. How can we sing of victory when there has been no war?

Too, the victory celebrations of the primitive community were spontaneous, which points to a freedom that we have not yet attained in our assemblies. No one then said, “Brother Gaius will now praise God.” That would be something like George Allen calling upon one of his victorious Redskins to be happy! It is as unnatural as it would be for a child to be formal in reference to his Daddy around the supper table. A free and happy child will spontaneously show joy, with little thought given to procedure or protocol. It is this family atmosphere that we must in some way restore to our assemblies. We are more concerned with form and ritual than with a spontaneous overflow of the joy of the Holy Spirit.

The great lost secret of the early church was the spontaneous power that was generated in their informal home gatherings where they encouraged one another in the struggle against sin.

When we realize that we are at war together against a common enemy, and that the Captain of our salvation has given us certain victory under his banner, then our assemblies will be more celebration than they will be deliberation. —the Editor

All power is trust. —Disraeli