Worship AND Work

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I have often heard it said by neo-Calvinists that “our work is our worship”; thereby they deprive the church’s liturgy of any independent significance. Work is not worship; they are distinct. And though it’s true that the liturgy of the church should equip us for our life in the world, the significance of the liturgy goes far beyond that. I have also often heard it said that “the church is for the sake of the world.” My response is that though it is indeed true that the church is for the sake of the world, the significance of the church goes far beyond that.

 https://reformedjournal.com/in-reply/

As much as they need to do God’s will, so also they need to enjoy God’s presence. In order to be truly who they are, they need periodic moments of time in which God’s commands and their tasks will disappear from the forefront of their consciousness and in which God will be there for them and they will be there for God——to adore the God of loving holiness and to thank and pray to the God of holy love. 

The character of charisms reflects the necessity of worship as a separate activity. In the New Testament we encounter, not only gifts that correspond to action in the world (such as the gifts of evangelism and healing), but also gifts that correspond to individual or communal communion with God (such as the gift of singing hymns and speaking in tongues). The Spirit inspires and gifts people not only to work but also to enjoy “festive companionship“ with God

 If God’s Spirit inspires people both to work and to worship without systematically preferring either one or the other, then both work and worship must be fundamental activities of human beings that cannot be subordinated to each other. N. Wolterstorff has rightly maintained that the “rhythmic alternation between work and worship, labor and liturgy is one of the significant distinguishing features of a Christian’s way of being-in-the-world.

- “Work in the Spirit, Toward a Theology of Work”  M. Volf - Ch 5

Our Reformed Fathers, who employed the Latin, made their motto, ora et labora (pray and work), while we usually speak of worship and work, to divide the activities of life. Sunday is set aside for worship, both individually and collectively; but "six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work!" The Liberals of the past mouthed a good deal of superficial nonsense when they, on the basis of Carlyle's "work is worship," concluded that worship is superfluous in true religion, that it was simply an imposition of priestly legalism. No one would deny, of course, that the way one works reveals his religion, perhaps more truly than the way he talks about it. But Scripture leaves no room for the idea that worship is not well-pleasing unto the Lord. Citing the Bible on that point is superfluous. Let the reader but remember the Psalms of David, the devotions of Jesus and his apostles and, lastly, the worship of the redeemed in heaven. To say that God, the Lord, does not demand worship of his creature, but only service is altogether contrary to the Scriptures and the spirit of religion. Religion, then, has these two aspects, indeed not mutually exclusive inasmuch as one may well pray and sing while working with his hands

The Calvinistic Concept of Culture - Henry van Til, p40

Worship is nothing more nor less than love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved — and just as the Eucharist, as the climax of worship, is love embracing the beloved and so being strengthened for service.

- from “For All God’s Worth” - N T Wright

Some broaden worship to cover all of Christian activity.' Worship definitely has a bearing on everything we do, but the biblical text uses the words and descriptions of worship for the special acts of the people of God in private or communal devotion. 

All worship is service to God, even though not all service is worship in the proper sense.

- “Recalling the Hope of Glory” - Allen Ross

And next, if human worship be essentially theocentric, creaturely, disinterested, the humble and graded response of man the finite to the generous and graded self-revelation of the Infinite God, it requires beyond all this a further character; already inherent in its creatureliness. That is, it must have embodiment, concrete expression.

. . .This is why, in every human society which has reached even a rudimentary religious consciousness, worship is given its concrete expression in institutions and ritual acts.

. . .And when this costly and explicit embodiment is lacking, or is rejected where once possessed, and the Godward life of the community is not given some sensible and institutional expression within the social complex, worship seldom develops its full richness and power. It remains thin, abstract, and notional: a tendency, an attitude, a general aspiration, moving alongside human life, rather than in it.

. . .“worship is a responsive act which involves his whole nature and therefore requires social and sensible embodiment; in visible and historical institutions which shall be entirely dedicated to adoring communion with the Unseen Perfect, and in symbolic objects and deeds which are often crude and always inadequate, yet the necessary means of religious self-expression in men.

• from “Worship” - Evelyn Underhill

"Work is worship."

It's the often heard (although usually indirectly and generally not in Latin) clarion call of Protestant Evangelicals.  Doing good hard work is simply another way to worship.  Living a good life is worship.  Heck, let's just go ahead and say it, everything is worship.

With all due respect, and in all kindness, and fully mindful of the noble intentions resting behind such idiotic thinking: Hogwash! . . .

. . . If everything is made worship, however noble to intention, the result is that worship diminishes, fades, and is eventually swallowed in our growing sea of secularity. The person who sleeps in, catches a few minutes of Joel Osteen, and then plays golf without cheating is able to happily tell himself he is spending the Lord's Day in Christian worship. If there is not a categorical and important difference between Texas Roadhouse and Eucharist, we have not just lost the battle, we have refused to admit there was ever a war in the first place

http://adorate.blogspot.com/2015/07/labore-est-adorate.html