“What do you do?” Our Old Testament professor stood before us, the early September sunlight streaming in through the windows of the wood-paneled classroom. One after another, we began to look up from our notes, wondering what had made him pause. He looked back at us, his eyes sparkling but earnest. “What can you do?”
He had been lecturing on Israel’s exodus from Egypt and their approach to Mount Sinai. For the first time in human history since man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, since God promised the gospel of his restoration in Genesis 3:15, man was to dwell in the presence of God and worship. Israel, ragged and sinful, assembled around the base of Mount Sinai, and God’s presence—the everlasting, all-consuming fire—settled upon its summit.
“Imagine,” he continued, pressing the scene into our imaginations, “you are among the throng of thousands, hundreds of thousands, gathered like a sea around the mountain rising upward from the plain before you. Imagine what God’s presence must have been like. It is as if the sun has come down from heaven and rests, burning, on its peak.” How thick the smoke of his presence which ran down the mountain slopes, filling the valley. How the Israelite children must have cried out at the voice of the Lord. How the very stones must have remembered the sound of their Creator—and trembled.
“What do you do?” he asked again. “What can you do but fall on your face and worship?”
Worshipful Theology
I’ve written elsewhere about the necessity of theology for our worship. Since God is holy, we can’t worship him however we wish. As at Sinai, God initiates our worship and welcomes us into his presence as his guests. Our worship must color within the lines that he’s drawn; it must be fully oriented around the question of how God desires to be worshiped. We’re constantly in danger of becoming like Israel, worshiping a golden calf of our own choosing rather than the God in whose presence we stand. And so our worship must be theological. But we must remember, too, that our theology must be worshipful.
We sang hymns in the church I grew up in. Since I was little, I experience such a profound sense of resonance when I come to this line : “What language shall I borrow, to thank thee dearest friend?” We don’t have to study theology for long before our heads bump up against the ceiling of what we can know. There are certain truths that cause us to come to terms with just how insufficient our language is to respond to so great a God. After all, what are we to do when our theology brings us before the King, the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:4)? Surely our speech, our very thoughts, are like incoherent babbling compared with the God whose speech hangs in the air as so many galaxies. “What language,” the hymn writer asked, “shall I borrow?” Yet we cannot but praise him: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be continually in my mouth” (Ps. 34:1).
It's fitting that this sentiment was expressed in the form of a hymn. In many respects, music can express what mere prose can’t, lifting the heart where language fails. What a wonderful thing it is to know that when our speech falls short, God gives us his own words to give us voice, to reflect back to him in praise. Poetry and music, rhythm and exultation, the very heart of God’s people expressed in confession and adoration: theology set to verse by God’s own inspired speech.
True Theology Leads to Doxology
It’s striking that Mary’s response to the Lord’s revelation in Luke chapter one is to sing. She’s faced with the news that the Lord, at last, has come to his people—to her. And her response—as any theologian ought—is to acclaim his attributes and works in song: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-48). What else can she do in response to the news of the gospel but praise the God who has made himself known as Lord and Savior?
Think about what the gospel means; consider the drama of the incarnation. He who is holy, high and lifted up, who brings down the mighty from their thrones, has come down. He has taken to himself our true human nature. The same Word which was spoken from the cloud on Sinai has drawn near to us that we might be drawn near to God in worship. This God has come near: not in fire, not in sound, nor fury, but as God with us in the person of Jesus Christ. This God has made a way for us to approach him through the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
This mystery can only be expressed in praise: to express God’s self-disclosure back to him as light upon a mirror’s surface. Theology causes our souls to magnify the Lord; it causes our spirits to rejoice in God our Savior who makes our worship acceptable in Christ. The mystery of God’s love for us, revealed in Scripture, is returned to him—as all theology must—in doxology.
What are we to do when we come to know God as he has revealed himself? What is the only appropriate response to true theology? What can we do but lift our faces to heaven in worship?
Footnotes
Bernard of Clairvaux, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”
