Some may persist in the wish that I not be so pessimistic. Or, they might think I am overstating the case in order to make a point and that deep down somewhere in my black heart there must be some hope that true worship is still possible. I am about to disappoint those people.

I wouldn’t disappoint anyone for the pleasure of it, but I think so long as we congratulate ourselves on our attempts to restore proper worship, we will continue to live in a comfortable fantasy but never deal with the condition that really exists.

A.W. Tozer gives, I think, two-thirds of a good definition of worship. He says many good things and I like all of what he said. But I would like to add one idea which I think is not just decorative: I believe this third element is as essential to proper worship as the two he rightly gives.

He says that worship is to a) feel in the heart, and to b) express in some appropriate manner.

Take those two statements as our first obstacle to proper worship. Many people today struggle to feel something in worship, and it is only natural that they bring into church what they already have some feelings for in an attempt to satisfy A. But if they come to worship with wrong affections, they cannot satisfy B. And should they, by virtue of a sheer act of the will, and in all good conscience, strive to satisfy B but are unable to have those feelings in their heart, they will have failed to satisfy A.

And if Tozer is right, A is as necessary as B.

The necessary connection between feelings of the heart and appropriate expression is not something we will into existence. That comes to us through our culture. “Using the right words to say the right things” and to feel properly about those right things. If you don’t think this is a problem, do what I suggested before: imagine trying to worship with music you hate. You may, for the sake of the church unity, try to have those feelings, but you might as well command a butterfly to land on your nose. It ain’t gonna happen.

Once evangelicals decided for whatever reason that they had a new way, a more appealing way, a more exciting way, a more evangelistically effective way to talk about God, that connection was broken. That began at least a century ago depending on how you do your cultural reckoning.

Nothing I know about how we come to love and value the right things (especially those things which we are at first disinclined to love or cherish) suggests that this is a fixable problem. This is the sort of thing that takes those thousands of years Eliot talks about. Something is not meaningful because we decide that it would be nice for it to be meaningful; it is meaningful because we come to appreciate a meaning that does indeed exist and we come to recognize and embrace it out of love for it. It is both true and loved for its truth.

But I think there is another complication. It is not just that A and B act for us like the same poles on two magnets; I think there is a third element to a definition of proper worship. In fact, I think Tozer would agree to this; I think the idea was in his head, he just didn’t develop it. He closes his sermon by quoting the Te Deum. The Te Deum lists all who worship: the earth, the angels, cherubs and seraphs, Heaven and Earth, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs and the holy church throughout the world. That is what the Te Deum is: a list of worshipers.

It seems to me one of the central ideas important to St. John is fellowship, not just us with God, but us with each other. And not just us with each other of our time (or local gathering) but us with every believer who ever lived, suffered, worked and witnessed: all the elect of the church except for those not yet born. I don’t think this is a doctrinal flourish. It is not one topic among many for worship; it is the scope, the amplitude, of our worship.

So. Is not worship a) feeling in the heart, b) expressed in an appropriate manner c) a truth we all hold in common, what we all cherish as always true?

Is not the alternative that the church does not fellowship around one Lord, one faith and one baptism? It has a variously understood Lord, a sequence of doctrinal permutations, and a rite which means many different things, depending on whom and when you ask. It seems to me that the burden of the Te Deum is just this idea of a commonly held feeling in the heart appropriately expressed. This is also true of many of the Psalms. It is not just that private Jews recognize a covenant-keeping God.

Certainly the 20th Century church will have more to say than the 1st Century church, having seen more and having more to express, but surely what it says cannot be other than something known by the whole church. Some may say more than others, but those things around which we fellowship must be the same things.

And if this is so, and if we can see difficulty in achieving A and B, how much less likely is it that we will achieve C as well? How offensive must some of our words be to Abraham, David, Isaiah, Mary, John?

Might it not be a good thing, for those of us who wish to repair our worship, to devote ourselves to a recovery of this element of worship?

All glory, laud and honor to Thee Redeemer, King,
To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring:
Thou are the King of Israel, Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s name comest, The King and blessed One.

The company of angels Are praising Thee on high,
And mortal men and all things Created make reply:
The people of the Hebrews With palms before Thee went;
Our praise and prayer and anthems Before Thee we present.

To Thee, before Thy passion They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted, Our melody we raise:
Thou didst accept their praises; Accept the praise we bring,
Who in all good delightest, Thou good and gracious King.

Children and kings, angels and mortals, before his death and after his resurrection.

We just don’t believe in this kind of antiphonal worship anymore.