It was before my time, but I remember my parents talking about
going to see silent movies. The movies made no sound, but according
to Sam Levinson in his book Everything But Money, the audience
made plenty of sound. As the hero and the villain shot it out, each
firing two thousand shots without loading, the audience would be
providing the sound effects.
When the hero appeared everybody cheered, and when the villain
came on everybody booed. When the hero kissed the girl 400 kids
would kiss their elbows and fill the theatre with kissing sounds. He
made it clear that silent movies were far from noiseless. He goes on,
"We screamed warnings, we screamed approval, we screamed at
each other. Fights broke out, We stamped, we whistled, we wept
when the faithful dog whined over his master's wounded body." The
point is, it was by making noise and movement that the people
entered into and participated in the drama unfolding on the screen.
This is the same idea that we see in the worship experience of the
Old Testament. It was not a passive experience, but one where the
people participated and became very active by adding sound and
movement of the body. There was also a place for silence and a quiet
worship experience where the people would be still and sense the
presence of God. Most of the songs of the Old Testament, however,
were songs calling for sounds of all kinds. Psa. 47 for example begins,
not with quiet meditation and prayer, but clapping of the hands and a
shouting to God with cries of joy.
The noise level was likely something like that of the old theatre
where people got their body involved in the experience. Body
involvement in worship is a subject we do not often think about, but
the Bible is full of it. It is of interest that most of the hand clapping in
the Bible is evil. That is, it is of the wicked clapping and rejoicing at
the suffering of the people of God. Clapping was an expression of
delight and approval, and evil people clap at evil for they approve of
it and get pleasure in it, just as people today clap for comedians who
use the foulest of language and ridicule God. But in contrast to man
who claps more for evil, the world of nature is always pictured as
clapping its hands for the glory of God.
In Psa. 98:8 we read, "Let the rivers clap their hands, let the
mountains sing together for joy." In Isa. 55:12 we read, "You will go
out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills will
burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their
hands." Nature makes a lot of noise in praising God. The bottom
line is, where there is a lot of noise, there is action and involvement,
and so worship was noise oriented because man was to make sounds
to express his praise of God, and joy in the Lord. Nature joins him,
for nature by its very being and beauty praises its maker, just as any
work of art is the glory of its creator. The Bible answers the age old
question: "If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one there to
hear it, does it make a noise?" The answer is yes, because there is
always someone there to hear it-God. He hears every clap of every
tree in the forest.
This Psalm was part of the New Years Day celebration in the
synagogue where they sing it 7 times and then blow the trumpets.
The same Hebrew word for clap here is used over 40 times for
blowing the trumpet. The idea is to make a joyful noise. In order to
do that you have to go beyond the heart, mind, and soul, and love God
with all your strength. That means with the instrument by which you
produce energy, which is your body. You can pray silently but in a
public expression of worship praises are to be fairly loud, for they are
symbolic of enthusiastic thanksgiving. What if you went to a Fourth
of July celebration and they said that this year we are going to have a
quiet celebration and just light candles? The protest would be wild
because noise is necessary to convey the joy and gratitude for our
freedoms in this land. How much more should there be noise of joy
when we celebrate the grace of God?
The volume that comes out of the mouth seems to be a Biblical
issue. Listen to these verses:
Psa. 98:4, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; make a
loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise."
Psa. 32:11, "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout
for joy, all ye that are upright in heart."
The New Testament does not tone it down at all, but keeps the
volume of praise on high:
Rev. 7:10, "And cried with a loud voice, salvation to our God which
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb."
Rev. 19:1, "I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, shouting
hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.."
Praise in the distant past and in the infinite future is loud because
it is to be an emotional release of joy. It is to be like the feelings we
have when our team wins a great game, and we are thrilled and shout
for joy. This, of course, explains why we do not do a lot of clapping
and shouting. We just do not generate the internal energy needed to
move the body to these levels of intensity. Different cultures and
different people in each culture develop the levels of emotion they feel
is appropriate. In England for example, Dr. Baxter says, for a
certain type of Englishman to say that something was not without
interest would be equivalent to saying there was "A Frenchman
dancing in the streets with garlands in his hair." Most Americans
are not that stuffy, but neither are we so free as those in the Bible
lands. They kiss and hug in ways we do not feel comfortable about.
When Boaz let Ruth glean in his field, and let her eat with his workers,
she was so grateful she fell on her face and asked, "Why
have I found favor in your sight?" You can do a lot of nice and
generous things for people, but I can guarantee they will not be falling
on the ground at your feet to thank you. It is too radical and too
emotionally expressive, and too much bodily involvement for our
culture. A handshake and a thank you is quite sufficient in our
culture.
There are many examples of Biblical customs where the body is
used to express emotions that we do not follow. In other words, we
are products of a culture different from the Biblical culture. We do
not fall at the feet of anyone as was a common custom of people in the
Bible. If their king visited, they would bow and kneel, but in our
culture we do not bow to leaders but merely stand and clap to honor
them. We honor people by standing in their presence rather than
bowing. That is an obsolete bodily movement in our culture. It does
not mean we honor people less. We just have a different way of
showing it.
We cannot escape the fact that the Bible does command and urge
us to use the body to make noise and movements to communicate our
honor and praise to God. In Psa. 134:2 we read, "Lift up your hands
in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord." In Psa. 141:2 we read, "May
the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice." What does
this mean? How can lifting your hands be like a sacrifice? The first
part of the verse helps us get an idea. "May my prayer be set before
you like incense." Just as prayer ascends to God like incense, so the
lifted hands represent the body being lifted up in sacrifice to God's
service. The steeple points up to God to represent a place of worship,
and the hands uplifted represents a person who longs to ascend also to
worship and be pleasing in God's sight, like a ascending incense. It is
a symbol of the heart and mind. The body pictures what the mind
thinks and the heart feels. The body is a tool for the heart and mind
to express themselves.
You know that in the male and female relationship it is not enough
to just think nice thoughts about each other. It is not enough to feel
loving toward one another. The heart and mind can be all they ought
to be in feeling and thought, and yet nobody would be satisfied. Love
has to be expressed to be real and adequate. This means the body has
to be the tool by which the heart and mind express love. The body
through the mouth speaks forth the love. The body kisses, caresses,
and develops the deepest possible intimacy with the one loved. The
heart and the mind need the body to fulfill their love. The reason
both the Old Testament and the New Testament use the husband and
wife relationship to illustrate the God and man relationship is because
the body becomes the key to the full expression of love in both the
romantic and religious experience. Both need the body to be
complete.
God is not content for you to feel love for Him, and to think loving
thoughts about Him. He wants it expressed through your body, for
your body is the visual revelation of your love. The body makes love
incarnate where it can be seen and heard. Incarnation was the way
God revealed His true love for us. He sent His Son into the world to
take on a body, for only God in a body could communicate just how
much He loved us. By means of the incarnation God made the
feelings of His heart and the thoughts of His mind visible to us. And
so it is that we, by our body, make our heart and mind visible to God.
Yes, He looks on the heart, and He knows the mind of man, but until
it is expressed in the body, it is only potential love, and not love fully
realized because it has not been fully expressed.
So worship and praise needs to have a physical side to it to be
authentic and real. That is why the clapping of the hands, the lifting
of the hands, the dancing, the singing, the kneeling, and the playing of
instruments are a vital part of worship. From the head to the feet the
body is used to praise God. Your dog may be able to feel love and
loyalty to you without wagging its tail, but that joyful wagging makes
you feel good, for it says to you that the dog is happy you are home.
It is a bodily symbol of the dog's heart feeling. When the baby smiles
at your expression of love, and you know its not just gas, but an
expression of true delight in your presence, it makes you feel good.
Body language is a very important part of communication. The body
of all those we love conveys a message of the soul, and that is what our
body is to do in our worship of God. The body is to say, "I really love
you, and I am delighted to be in your presence."
In our culture we have so separated the sensual and the spiritual
that we do not even realize how they are linked. The Biblical saints
knew their entire body, with all of its five senses, was participating in
worship. The beauty of the architecture got their eyes involved. The
beauty of the songs got their ears involved. The beauty of the incense
got their nose involved. The beauty of the sacrifice got their mouth,
or taste, involved. The beauty of the anointing oil and laying on of
hands got their sense of touch involved. The whole point of all beauty
in art, architecture, music, movement, and whatever else appeals to
the aesthetic nature of man is to get the body to participate in the
praises of God.
The resurrection of the body is a major Christian doctrine, and
the reason is clear: Man is not fully man without a body, and God
wants us to praise Him forever in the fullness of our being, and that
demands an eternal body which can eternally respond to the infinite
beauty of God's everlasting kingdom. Bodily worship is not a passing
fad. It is eternal, and it is important to God, and should also be to us.
To present our bodies as living sacrifices unto God involves the use of
the body as a tool of worship.
It is old fashioned now, and not used, but the old Anglican wedding
had these words in it: "With my whole body I thee worship." One
lover was to say to the other, "My body will adore you, and your
body alone will I cherish. I will with my body declare your worth."
The body and its actions are key elements in expressing love. How we
relate to our mate with our body tells them just how great our love is.
God wants the total man involved in worship because man is not
complete as mind and soul without the body. If we are going to love
God with our whole being, then the body has to be a part of our
worship of God.
When we are baptized we surrender our body to be immersed in
water to symbolize our burial with Christ, and our recognition that in
Him alone we are cleansed from all sin. The body rises out of the
water to symbolize the resurrection and our commitment to walk
with our Lord in newness of life. In communion we take bread and
juice into our body to symbolize our participation in all He
purchased for us in His body on the cross. The point is, the only two
ordinances that Jesus left for the church to observe for all time are
bodily expressions of obedience and acts of love. Jesus is saying,
"Love me with your body. What you do with your body is a major
factor in communicating the reality of your love."
Even the very act of coming to church is a bodily act of love and
worship, for by getting your body to the house of God you declare the
worth of God in your life. We read in the Old Testament of the saints
going to the temple. In the New Testament we read of the saints
being urged not to forsake the assembling of themselves together.
Why the big deal on going to a place to worship? It is because it is
necessary to get your body involved in declaring the worth of God in
your life. You can stay home and worship God with the aid of radio
and television, and that can be meaningful, but you have not made a
commitment of your body nearly as great as you do when you get it
ready and take it to the place where other believers are assembled for
worship. You have loved God less then with all of your strength.
On the parallel level of romance it would be like calling your lover
on the phone and having a nice talk. You do not go to all the trouble
of getting your body into their presence. It is far more meaningful to
have face to face contact. The point is, God reveals to us that it
matters to Him what we do with our bodies as instruments of
worship. In His eyes it is a measure of your love. If you use your
body only for what pleases you, and seldom offer it as a living
sacrifice in His service and worship, God is not fooled by words. Any
lover knows how selfish you are if your body is only minimally
involved in expressing love. Do you think God is less discerning, and
can be snowed by a prayer or two?
What you do with your body is a major factor in your spiritual
life. Worship is to God what romance is to your mate, and that is why
God repeatedly calls idolatry, and the going after other gods,
adultery. It is using your body unfaithfully. Your body and its
movements are to convey your love for Him and no other. The
worship of God is to be an exclusion, just as sex is in marriage. Clap
your hands for the gods of this world, and you are unfaithful. Kneel
before the idols of this age, and you are committing adultery. Sing
the praises of the false images of materialism, humanism, etc., and
you become a spiritual harlot.
This is what the prophets were saying all the time to God's people.
You cannot be a spiritual person without the body being devoted to
the Lord. It has to be surrendered and used for His glory, or it will
send you astray, and be enticed by the sensual god's of this age. The
implications of this are astounding, for what all this means is that
everything is sanctified, made holy, and pleasing to God, when it is
devoted to the exalting of His majesty and worth. Dancing, which we
think of as secular, can become sacred when it is movement of the
body for the purpose of expressing joy in God.
We clap as a bodily act, and thereby we express the pleasure we
feel in the presence of some beauty that has touched one of our senses.
Clapping pleases God when we do it to say, "Thank you Lord for the
beauty of your salvation, and for the beauty of your grace. We praise
you with this bodily act of approval and appreciation." We don't just
say it, for we know actions speak louder than words, and we want to
shout it to the heavens saying, "Praise God from whom all blessings
flow."
God looks for love expressed in body language. That is what all
the clapping, shouting, and dancing are about in the Psalms. We do
not have to imitate what they did, but we can work at awareness of
our bodies being instruments of worship, and get them more involved.
When the famous dancer Baryshnikov joined the New York City
ballet, he said he wanted to be under the direction of the world
renowned choreographer, George Balanchine because, "I would love
to be the instrument in his wonderful hands." This is to be our
attitude in worship. We actually do more dancing than we realize.
Dancing is the movement of the body to music. Lavonne and I do
walkarobics almost every evening, and it is movement of the body to
music. I never thought of it as dancing, just as I have never thought
of our movements in church as dancing, but any organized movement
we do to music is a form of dance.
Since we do not think of it as music, we often do not display the
grace and harmony we should. When the choir stands you notice that
they all rise in unison, for that is part of the dance. If they popped up
one here and one there at all different times, it would give an
impression of discord. There bodies are singing before their voices
when they rise in unison. Often when we rise to sing as a congregation
we dance quit poorly, and are like one stepping on toes,
for we have not taken seriously the beauty of harmonious bodily
movement. We as leaders have not thought it through, and so we
have not made an effort to coordinate your movements with the
music, and work at uniformity.
The ushers as they come forward to receive the offering is another
area of bodily movement that can be orderly and uniform, or chaotic.
All we do in worship either adds to or subtracts from the grace of the
dance. We will soon be seeing the graceful performance of figure
skating champions. They move with such grace and beauty that our
minds are in awe as we watch bodily movements as a work of art.
Sports are also bodily movements that are so coordinated that they
successfully accomplish a goal, which is usually getting a ball to some
specific place. The movement of the stars and planets is God's work
of precision art.
Physical movement is symbolic of the unseen world of mind and
spirit. If the movement is that of a drunk who is uncoordinated and
stumbles into things, breaking things, and falling down, you see a
symbol of an impaired and fallen mind. When the movement is that
of a skater who can do triple twists with the grace of a bird in flight,
you see a symbol of an orderly mind that has been disciplined and
committed to the display of beauty. All of this relates to worship in
that when we use our bodies in harmonious movement we symbolize
that we worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The Psalms urge
us to do that, and our bodily movements are the way we do it. The
universe moves with such precision and harmony as a dance to glorify
the Creator. We too in worship are to sing and move in harmony as
our dance to the glory of God.
Now let me stress an escape clause. We are not machines, and
this is not a legalistic issue. It is a matter of great variety. As people
we have all kinds of limitations and handicaps, and so not all can do
everything in unison. We do not spend a major portion of our lives
practicing as do skaters. The goal is not to develop a professional
group of worshipers, like a marching band in a military parade. The
goal is to simply be aware that our bodies are a part of our worship,
and they add to or detract from the praise we offer to God. We are
to do all we do to the glory of God, and the movements we make in
worship portray either joy or indifference.
If you had a dance where some were doing the waltz and others the
polka, and still others trying to square dance, you would have utter
chaos. Everybody in a group has to be dancing to the same tune. In
church we need to work at this by getting all to dance in unity. Why?
Because our bodily movements are part of our worship. We don't
just think praise, but we offer it with our lips. We don't just feel
thankful, but we express it by what we do with our lungs and tongue.
We don't just remember what Christ did for us on the cross, but we
take the bread and cup and by bodily action we commemorate that
salvation event. The dance is a legitimate form of worship, but it has
great limitations in our culture, just as other legitimate Biblical
movements do. The washing of each others feet, the holy kiss, the
tearing of our clothes in anguish, the beating of our breasts in
confession, and the falling on our face to show respect, are just a few
of such movements.
Our goal is not to try and impose an ancient culture on our
modern culture, but to learn how we can praise God more effectively
with our whole being-the body being a vital part of our being.
Because we have not thought a lot about the physiology of praise we
tend to practice a sort of disembodied worship of the mind and soul.
We are cerebral celebrants, and this is not bad, for we are to love
God with all the mind as well. The problem is, we neglect the role of
the body. The body can add life to our praise. If our mind is saying,
"praise the Lord", but our body is saying, "Why did you drag me
here, and when will I be able to go home and get a nap," you are
sending mixed signals. The body is not in harmony with the mind and
spirit, and the result is discord.
Ideal worship involves loving God with body, mind, and spirit, so
that posture, gestures, and movement, all work together to say,
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow." The paradox of this
focus on the physiology of praise is that it will make it worse rather
than better for awhile, for we will be all the more conscious of our
disharmony and uncoordinated movement. We will have to go
through the bull in the china shop stage to get to the swan on the lake
stage, but if we are serious about growing in our worship experience,
we need to endure the pain of learning to do what leads to the
enjoyment of greater pleasure. May God help us to praise Him with
our whole being as we learn to practice the physiology of praise.
This song was written by me to the tune of Ode to Joy by Beethoven
as an example of body praise.
Clap your, Clap your, Clap your two hands
shout to God with cries of Joy.
Awesome is the Lord beyond man
He indeed is Lord most high.
Clap and shout and with great Joy sing
let your Savior see your mirth.
Let the whole world know He's your King
King of All Kings on the Earth.
Clap your hand and raise your voices
do not hide your love for Him.
God has given many choices
to prevent Love's growing dim.
With the body now we Praise you
with the tongue we praise your name.
Help us now to leave this Church pew
loving more than when we came.
