The opening of Psalm 146 is typical of many psalms. "Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long." The psalms are filled with God's praise. People of faith have long found this fitting. My own Presbyterian tradition says humanity's "chief end is to glorify God."
But why should we glorify God, and why should we praise the LORD? What is it about God that calls forth such behavior? I suppose there is a certain amount of a Wayne's World "We're not worthy," going on here. Recognizing the majesty of God does call us to bow in awe and wonder.
I also think that praising and glorifying God must surely be related to the command to love the Lord our God with heart, mind, and soul, a command found in the Old Testament and reiterated by Jesus as the greatest commandment. But can love be commanded? Can I love because I'm supposed to, or is something more required?
I've increasingly come to believe that much of Mainline Christianity's difficulty in recent years is related to this. We have trouble calling people into loving, praising, and glorifying God, because we have trouble helping people see the motivation side. We have trouble telling and, even more, demonstrating how we have experienced and felt God's love that calls us to love God back.
I've repeated this quote so many times that I imagine many in my congregation have grown tired of it. I think it was Roy Oswald of the Alban Institute who said it. "People come to us seeking an experience of God, and we give them information about God."
Much of our culture's interest in spirituality runs off in directions that I do not think helpful or life giving. But this spiritual hunger is a sign that many churches have somehow forgotten a big part of Christian life, encountering God's love in the Living Christ. This is not something that can be taught, although ways of being open to God's love can be taught. Knowing the biblical story is an essential piece of Christian life, but I can memorize the Bible and never meet God of feel God's love.
In his devotion for today, Richard Rohr writes that all the mystics speak of being overwhelmed by the experience of God loving them, by a "full body blow of the divine embrace, a radical acceptance by God." And for all the things we Mainline Christians do well, sometimes helping people encounter this is not one of them. But that is changing. And as Mainline congregations begin to recover neglected and forgotten spiritual practices, I expect to see an energy and vitality emerging that may well be like another Great Awakening.
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