Celebration (can) Destroy Hope
Taking seriously the ravages and perils of living in a fallen world groaning for redemption
There are two sets of logic that I run into when people argue that sadness (or any “negative” emotion) should not be found in worship. The first is that: A. Sadness is caused by Sin. B. Sin is conquered by Jesus. C. Therefore, Sadness is conquered by Jesus. The second is that A. If we allow sadness in our services, we will promote hopelessness. B. Jesus is our one and only hope. C. Therefore, if we allow sadness we remove Jesus, our hope, from our services. I’ve tackled the first in just about every post on this Substack, so let’s think about the second set of logic.
In their books Black Preaching: The Recovery of a Powerful Art and Introduction to the Practice of African American Preaching, Mitchell and Thomas try to introduce the power of African American preaching to the rest of the Christian world. In doing so, they hope to share with the rest of Christianity the joy of preaching celebration. According to Cleo LaRue, a black theologian, “Mitchell and Thomas are too inclined to equate noncelebratory preaching with hell-fire-and-brimstone condemnation as if to suggest that a sermon that does not end in celebration must of necessity end in hopelessness.” (LaRue, 26) The idea is that if you do not end the service with joy and celebration, you are leaving the congregation without any hope, which would be contradictory to the Gospel.
It might seem weird to end the service without a blessing and even more wrong to send the congregation out with repeated reminders that they are going to die or that God is sitting in judgement against them. But we can do that while also maintaining hope for the future.
Two False Dichotomies
The idea that a service is either hopeful or hopeless ignores the spectrum of emotions in between these two options. It also does not negate the need to lament. Jamie Grant, in their Worshipping Trinity, writes that “Lament is not based on the psalmist’s lack of future hope: lament is grounded in the psalmist’s present experience of life with God in the world.” (Quoted in LaRue, 26) Grant continues that “The knowledge that everything will be alright does not change the fact that, in our humanity, we need to respond before God,” with sadness and lament, “to those present realities that are not alright.” (LaRue, 26) LaRue comments that “while every sermon should carry good news, every sermon needs a Good Friday move where one takes seriously the ravages and perils of living in a fallen world groaning for redemption.” (LaRue, 26) LaRue states a page earlier, “when we look at the psalms of lamentation it becomes clear that true worship is not limited to celebration, nor is it spoiled by the tears of lament.” (LaRue, 25) Just because one song, one sermon, or even one service does not focus on the hope Christians have does not mean that they have ruined the service or abandoned their faith. It means that they recognize that they need to think about the fullness of the life happening in the congregation.
“There are any number of times when the sermon,” worship, or whole service, “should leave us in a sober, reflective, thought-provoking mood as we ponder the exigencies and challenges of life.” (LaRue, 26) It is inauthentic and unloving when celebration and hope are the churches response to tragedy and trauma. It is very odd that contemporary North American Christians have devoted themselves to studying and living out the Scriptures while ignoring the large swathes of non-celebratory and non-hopeful parts that are not denounced.
A Forced Praise Kills Hope
LaRue tells the story of the vice president of the National Baptist Convention USA complaining about how tired they were after having to spend his time having to goad the congregation to celebration after a less than stellar sermon delivered by the preacher who just finished preaching. The vice president felt that he had to rile the crowd up to have a worthy worship service. The vice president was trying to do a celebrative lift which “is intended to help the preacher over his or her “homiletical hump” when the sermon lacks life and energy on its own.” (LaRue, 23) It is like when Jeb Bush walked on stage while the crowd was silent and had to ask them to “please clap.” The people might be clapping but it’s an awkward clap. The same thing happens with praise.
According to LaRue, forced praise is not praise. He states that “heartfelt praise glorifies God; pretentious praise does not.” (LaRue, 23) LaRue's statements can be connected to the messages found in Amos 5:21-23, Malachi 1:6-14, and Isaiah 29:13. When we try to manufacture praise, we end up producing an “empty ritual and contrived ceremony.” (LaRue, 23) It is just rehearsing words without putting any meaning behind them and teaches the congregation that to have a successful church experience, they only need to pretend to worship God and not have an encounter with God.
If the congregant is going to have an encounter with anyone at a church that promotes false praise, they are going to encounter the pastor. The forced praise might seem directed at God, but as LaRue points out (LaRue, 23) the praise is only going to the pastor or the worship leader. Since the congregation is only encountering the pastor, they have to shift their hope to the pastor’s sermons and songs being good enough to save them and not the grace of God.
An Over-Realized Eschatology Kills Hope
“A word of hope for the suffering and sorrow that so many congregants face on a daily basis in a fallen world seems to elude any number of contemporary preachers who only want to preach “happy texts” or “gospel-lite” sermons that are more likely to elicit a shout of approval.” (LaRue, 25) Congregations influence the preachers by indicating they prefer only positive messages and the songs that are popular also perpetuate that desire. It is nice to occasionally have a taste of heaven in our lives but if the church’s worship is only happy and celebratory and like we imagine heaven is like, we start to forget that we are not in heaven. I have brought up the idea in the past and will continue to bring it up, so I do not need to go in depth here.
An over-realized eschatology is, according to worship theologian Matthew Westerholm, present in the very structure of contemporary Christian Praise and Worship music. What is meant by over-realized is that “the kingdom” of God “has essentially arrived in its fullness.” (Westerholm, 75) Songs that sing about the absence of pain, the needlessness of tears, and being in the full presence of God in the here and now are songs that wretch hope from the future and try to cram it into the present. Songs that tell the congregation that their chains are gone or that they have been set free from bondage give false expectations about the Christian life. Songs that say that there is no darkness or ugliness in the world project a culturally idealized version of heaven into the here and now. If God has already fulfilled all Scriptural promises, what is to hope for in Heaven?
Conclusion
LaRue quotes Otis Moss’s Blue Note Preaching, where Moss states that “America is living in stormy Monday, but the pulpit is preaching happy Sundays. The world is experiencing the blues, and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses of non-prescribed prosaic sermons with severe ecclesiastical and theological side effects.” (LaRue, 25) The members of the congregation are experiencing disassociation as their weekday lives conflict with the messages they receive on Sundays. They are being conditioned to see the Christian life to be full of joy or worthy of celebration every day. They are also being instructed, whether tacitly or not, to avoid certain texts of Scripture because they do not edify, bring hope, or are difficult to wrestle with. Because they are not reading those texts or books on them, or hearing songs and sermons around the texts, they do not fully understand what is in the Scripture they claim to base their life and thoughts on.
A service “that always ends in celebration (emotional rejoicing)” or consists only of celebration “can become a mere whistling past the graveyard or, even worse, the celebration of our captivity to a homiletic gone astray.” (LaRue, 26.) LaRue’s point is that celebration and praise can train us to completely ignore all our problems until we cannot bear them anymore and collapse. Naming that things are not right can play into hope more.
Dan - this is so rich. Thank you! Isaiah 29:13 has always been a key verse to me in my understanding of my calling as a worship leader; “You people worship me with your lips but not your hearts because your hearts are from me and your worship of Me consists of tradition learned by rote.” Jesus quotes this to the Pharisees and adds the heart-felt comment, “In vain do you worship me.” In essence, Jesus is saying, if this is just about ‘rehearsing words without putting any meaning behind them…if you’re going to ‘pretend to worship and not have an encounter with God,’ (Larue quote from your article) then don’t bother! Our calling as worship leaders is to invite people into genuine encounters with the living God! That is what He longs for and what we desperately need! Worship is about relationship in all of its joys and sorrows. It is walking with one another through the truth of life. God wants us to encounter Him there, in our victories and disappointments. That is relationship!
I had never put these concepts together, however, that sometimes the reason our praise is ‘forced’ or ‘empty ritual contrived in ceremony’ (Larue, and Isaiah 29:13) is that we have so limited what we help people express. We haven’t acknowledged the suffering that people carry in a fallen world, which is often where we need to encounter God the most. We so easily force people to proclaim something that isn’t congruent with their experience rather than encouraging the depth and honesty that real relationship requires. As worship leaders, we want to encourage people to ‘engage their hearts’ - both corporately and individually - with the living God, not just sing songs. Your work is helping us learn how to encourage genuine engagement with God in all of its aspects so that we come to Him with all that we are. That depth of relationship, that encounter, that engagement in worship is what transforms us.