Worship Disorder and the Search for Intimacy
Listening to the message of Dr. Lawrence Mascay in our chapel service this morning reminds me of one example in a book written by Eugene Peterson. The story is about a promiscuous woman seeking advice from Eugene as a biblical counselor. Many will find Eugene's approach in initiating a conversation with that woman surprising. Instead of talking about her sexual life, he asked about the status of her prayer life.
For Eugene, both prayer and sex are deeply relational and deal with human beings' search for intimacy. You can explore the status of someone's sexuality by asking about the condition of her prayer life, and you can do it vice versa.
The text in our chapel is taken from John 4, verses 21 to 24. The speaker announced his topic as Transformational Worship. What I find insightful is the analogy he used between the Samaritan woman and Dinah, the daughter of Jacob.
One can identify both similarities and differences between the stories of these two women. They are both female. The case in point has something to do with sexual activity.
However, there lie the differences. Though the female's sexual aspect has been mentioned in both narratives, in the case of the Samaritan, her sexual defilement was voluntary and willful, whereas in Dinah's it was forced. Shechem, by violating her, was deprived of her privilege to find an intimate relationship with a man she loves. In the case of the Samaritan, she has been searching to satisfy her longing for intimacy in all the wrong places on the planet with the wrong men.
The destructive life of the Samaritan woman is the logical outcome of worship disorder. She prioritized her search for sexual intimacy over the worship of the true and living God. As such, she not only ended up violating the 7th commandment, which is the specific moral law dealing with the sanctity of marriage, sex, and intimacy, but she also violated the first table of the law. By prioritizing the second tablet of the law dealing with loving our neighbor, the woman was guilty of taking the first tablet of the law focusing on our relationship with God for granted. Such a reversal of the order of the law or worship disorder will inescapably have destructive consequences, both personally and socially. The woman searching for intimacy ended up destroying her life.
Another discontinuity between the stories of the two women. In Dinah's case, the violation of her sexual sanctity has aroused the fury of her brothers, making them kill all the men of Shechem. In the Samaritan's story, we see here the triumph of grace that despite her immoral life, her encounter with Jesus brought salvation to many.
Worship disorder remains the basic human offense against our Creator and Redeemer. A man under the power of sin cannot help but prioritize the creature over the Creator. What we need is deliverance by the power of God's grace made available in His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord.
To stop the destructive consequences of worship disorder both personally and socially, it must be corrected. I think it is here that the central idea in our text plays a significant role. Jesus declared that a time is coming, and it has already come, that worship will be transformed.
I cannot elaborate on the points, for they require more time for study and reflection, and I don't have such pleasure, for I have to prepare our devotion for this afternoon's prayer meeting. It is enough for now to enumerate in what way such transformation of worship will take place. But before I do that, I would like to mention that the speaker's idea of transformation is different from the one I got from the text. The speaker talked about worship as a human encounter initiated by God, which cannot help but result in personal transformation. In a word, we could say that if one is really a true worshiper, change in the positive sense of the word is inescapable.
As far as our text is concerned, I see the transformation of worship in three ways:
- In terms of physical space.
. . . a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem
- In terms of knowledge.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, . . .
- In terms of the manner of worship.
. . . in the Spirit and in truth . . .
Each of the points above requires considerable time for exegesis and meditation.