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(From James F. White’s “Protestant Worship and Church Architecture” in Chapter One -- Two Approaches To Worship )

It will be helpful to explore very briefly the significance of work in Christianity, particularly as it is expressed in the Bible. The contemporary notion of work as a laborious necessity, .a necessary evil, is far from the understanding of work expressed in the Bible. Not only does the Bible view work as a normal part of life but it also'becomes the means by which man serves God. Psalm 104 speaks of the coherent functioning of God's universe in which "Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until evening" as naturally as the sun rises and sets. The fourth cornmandment states in positive terms: "Six days you shall labor, and do all your work." Work then seems to be a natural and normal part of creation.13 The soil was cursed in the account of man's fall but not the toil of man who had been placed in the Garden. "to till it and keep it."
13 Alan Richardson, The Biblical Doctrine of Work (London: S.C.M., ^^.pp. 25-9.

Work has additional significance since the Hebrew viewed God as One Who works. Psalm 104 is an eloquent praise of God for His works which create nature and provide for His creatures:

"These all look to thee, to give them their food in due season." The psalmist praises God, "0 Lord, how manifold are thy works!" and sees God as rejoicing in His works. The concepts of God's works and acts on behalf of His people run through both Old and New Testaments. For the Christian this is seen su­premely in God's acting through the person of Jesus in the time of the first century.

Man is placed in the world not simply as an autonomous worker in an indifferent universe but in a place where he acts as a servant of God. The Old Testament is particularly fond of referring to God's people as God's servants. "Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim," wrote Charles Wesley, echoing the lan­guage of the Old Testament. The character of a servant, of course, is that of someone who works for someone else. One serves God through one's treatment of his fellow servants, espe­cially in labor which is beneficial to them.

The line between the work of worship and the work of earn­ing a livelihood is a very fine distinction since both are part of man's proper service to God. The manner in which one treats his neighbor is directly a part of his relationship to God. A New Testament passage indicates, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Matt. 25:40). Work as service of God is by no -means limited to the work of worship. In the New Testament the same word is used for worship, acts of charity, and the work of the pagan civil authorities. All this work serves God in performing a beneficial service for mankind. Luther captured the same idea when he stated that all Christians. are priests to each other, "and every one by means of his own. work or office must benefit and serve every other." 14
14 "An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation," Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia ed.; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1943), II, p. 69.

Each mem­ber of society performs services that are beneficial-to the com­munity and in so doing serves God.

There are several reasons why the special work of worship is necessary. In the first place there is an inevitability-about wor­ship as man worships spontaneously out of joy and gladness. "To have a God," said Luther, "is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart." 15 It seems only natural that a life changed by such trust and belief should focus its response to God in acts of worship. The work of worship then becomes a spontaneous reaction of joy as suggested in Psalm 98, "0 sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!" Worship becomes an acknowledgment of God's love in which man shows his trust in Him Who first loved man. In this manner worship has as its purpose the glorification of God Who is its recipient. Indeed, to glorify God may well be interpreted as one of the chief ends of man's life.
15 Dr. Martin Luther's Large Catechism (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1935), p. 44.

In another way, the work of worship is done as obedience. There is a sense in which love obligates us to respond with action, a sense known to every husband who voluntarily washes dishes. Yet worship never becomes a good work that obligates God to reward us, any more than one can bargain for love. God's love always precedes our response.

In the Old Testament the covenantal relationship reflected the belief that to be God's possession His people were called to be "a ' kingdom of priests and' a holy nation," an idea reflected in the New Testament as "a royal priesthood, a holy nation." The worst deed God's people could do was to worship other gods besides the "Lord your God." Such acts'so polluted their relationship' with God that the covenant was broken. Those who disobeyed by worshiping other gods were rejected. Hosea represented God as calling them, "Not my people, for you are not my people and I am not your God." The only Old Testament alternative to the worship of God was idolatry, the worship of false gods, not atheism, the service of none. Worship then was a part of the life of God's servant, a work based upon obligation though the work might be most joyful. Thus a child sometimes does the will of his parent with pleasure though it still remains an act of obe­dience.

Worship as obedience is not tied to the performance of any special form of worship. It is the imperative to do worship that is fundamental not the prescription of its forms. The communion services of several denominations include the phrase that it is "our bounden duty, that we should at all, times, and in all places, give thanks." In this sense of a "bounden duty," worship becomes an act of obedience performed as a part of man's proper service to God. Worship, then, can be seen as something done simply as a duty to God rather than carried out to accomplish some purpose.

There is another manner in which worship appears as a matter of work. This is in connection with the concept of sacrifice. Ac­tually sacrifice in the Old Testament (and New) involves an immense variety of ideas. We can only touch briefly on a few of these. In one fashion sacrifice is a giving of ourselves through something that we do or have produced. We refer to our worship as a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," for in performing these acts we are offering our work. What is given, however, is a token of the total life and work of the giver. And it is not lost but received back with the power of God, much as the bread and wine in holy communion, which are offered to God, are blessed, broken, and then given back to God's people conveying new power. What has been given, our work "of worship as a part of our life surrendered, is given back as new life achieved.16

Another concept of sacrifice seems to be of particular interest to Christians. This is the idea that in our work of worship, in offering "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," we are united to Christ's sacrifice for our behalf on the cross. St. Augustine points out that in what the Church offers (her worship), "she herself is offered in the very offering she makes to God." "These concepts are particularly germane to the holy communion. A modern French Protestant speaks of this sacrament as "the offer­ing which the Church makes of itself to the Father, united to the Son's intercession." "What is offered is our own work of worship, but through this we are united to Christ's eternal work on our behalf.
16 Evelyn Underbill, Worship (London: rJisbet and Co., 1937), pp. 57-9.
it City of God, X, 6, translated by Gerald Walsh and Grace Monahan (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1952), p. 127.
is Max Thurian, The Eucharistic Memorial; Part II-The New Testament, translated by J. G. Davies (London: Lutterworth, 1961), p. 76.

Worship, then becomes work performed as a natural response, as obedience, and as an offering. When worship is viewed pri­marily as work done in God's service it has a profound conse­quence for all of man's work. In worship a bit of our work is offered to God, making it easier for us to realize that in actuality all of our work is performed as service to Him. A part of our work thus represents the whole of it. This means that whatever we do to our fellow man immediately affects our relationship to the divine: It also" indicates that worship gives meaning to our daily work in helping us to see it, too, as an offering to God. Nothing in life is theologically neutral. The priesthood of all be­lievers is realized in one's occupation, whatever it may be; but it is in performing the special work of worship that this becomes clear to us. It is perhaps not entirely by chance that business firms now prefer to refer to themselves as "services." We see firms advertised as,roofing services, typing services, or re-pair services. Exactly the same term is used for worship when we speak of the "morning service" or the "evening service'." In a real sense both are one, for work done in the service of the community or work done in worship are both means of serving God. Worship has profound implications for social responsibility but certainly not by imploring or threatening people to reform their behavior. It goes deeper than this; worship gives meaning to all our work so .that it can be judged in its true light as service of God.

The tradition of approaching worship as an act of work, as has been indicated, is already present in the Bible. Indeed the word used in the New Testament for public work is also used for wor­ship (Acts 13:2). Something of the same idea was preserved in the Church, particularly in the term used for the daily services that the monastic orders performed. These services became known as offices, a term derived from officium (duty, service).

Saying the daily offices was doing the work of worship and this was often referred to as opus Dei, the work of God.

Protestants have long regarded worship primarily as work done. The Catechism of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer lists as a part of man's "duty towards God" the need "to worship him," and the 1928 American version contains the statement, "My bounden duty is to follow Christ, to worship God every Sunday in his Church; and to work and pray and give for the spread of his kingdom." Among Presbyterians the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) likewise laid down the Christian man's obligation to devote time every Sunday to "public and private exercises of his [God's] worship." It is only in comparatively recent times that Protestants have come to look upon worship as primarily concerned with the feelings instead of being a matter of work done in God's service.”

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