Denver Seminary’s Focal Point
Summer 05
Dying to Worship

By Kevin J. Navarro

Whatever worship is, it has something to do with dying. Over twenty years ago, I was a music student at the University of Northern Colorado. My consuming desire was to be a famous jazz musician. I told my trumpet professor, Bill Pfund, of my dream. He responded by saying, "My job is to make you a proficient trumpet player and then you can decide whether or not you want to play jazz." I stayed the course with this legendary professor but I also wanted to get on with pursuing my dream of being a great jazz musician. I truly learned what it meant to pursue this dream by studying with Jack Waltrip.

Jack Waltrip was a tenor saxophonist who took jazz seriously. He had already been credited with numerous recordings, having lived in New York City where other devoted jazz musicians live. Jack told me straight out that if I was going to get serious about jazz, I needed to be assiduously attentive to John Coltrane. This was not too much to ask of me since I was already listening to Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and Thelonious Monk.

The most memorable idiosyncrasy I remember about Jack was that he practiced through a phone book for 12-14 hours a day. He would take a telephone number and use it to practice his intervals through multiple scales in every key and through dozens of progressions. In one sense, I first learned about worship from Jack. He ascribed so much worth to playing jazz that he died to everything that stood in the way of being the next Coltrane. For some people, practicing 12-14 hours a day would be unthinkable. For Jack, it was a willing sacrifice he made to create magic on that tenor saxophone.

Every human being is a worshiper. The question is not, "Are we worshiping?" but, "What are we worshiping?" In other words, what are we willing to die for? For some people it’s jazz. For others it’s success. And for others, it is a cause they strongly believe in. That’s worship!

As we search the scriptures, we find people dying to worship in practically every narrative. Adam and Eve literally died for the idea of becoming like God. Worshiping the potential of knowing good and evil as well as gaining a kind of wisdom that God clearly prohibited was the virus that infected the human race. Worshiping the wrong thing caused not only Adam and Eve to die but all of us as well.

Moses knew that worship was correlated with sacrifice. In his deliberations with Pharaoh, the petition was for worship not just for deliverance. This meant sacrificing livestock in the desert. With each progressive plague, Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go. Finally, Hebrew worship climaxes with the Passover and the Exodus. Because God’s people obeyed by sacrificing and putting the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes, no destructive plague touched God’s people (Exodus 12). This idea of sacrificial worship was integrated into the burnt offering, for the atonement of sin, as commanded by God (Leviticus 1).

In the Bible, the pinnacle of dying to worship takes place when the Lamb of God was sacrificed to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29). You must understand propitiation as worship, the appeasement of God’s wrath, if you are ever going to understand worship. David Peterson in his excellent book, Engaging with God, states, "the priestly ministry of Jesus is superior because it involved the offering of himself as a perfect sacrifice to God and because it inaugurates the new covenant, which is ‘founded on better promises’."¡ In the same way that the Exodus event was the climax of Jewish worship, the Christ events construct the climax for Christian worship.

This then is taken a step further. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1)." Do you see the connection? We now worship by taking up our cross daily to become an apprentice of Jesus. Since Jesus died to worship, we must too. Worship is much more than hymns, choruses, choirs and praise bands. Although music and the arts are wonderful ways to offer praise, worship is more comprehensive. Worship encompasses Monday through Saturday as well as the worship services on Sunday. Worship means dying; dying to ourselves, dying to our demands; dying to our preferences; dying to our agenda; dying to everything that eclipses Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Worship means sacrificing our time and gifts in service. It means honoring the Lord from our wealth and from the firstfruits of all our produce (Proverbs 3:9-10). It means making the necessary sacrifices to make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20).

Quite honestly, I believe that the primary reason that we have "worship wars" in the local church is because nobody wants to die. At some point, church leaders need to stop asking, "What do we want from worship?" or, "What do our people want from worship?" and begin to ask, "What does God want from our worship?" And then after we get our marching orders, we must "trust and obey" as the old song says. We must be willing to die in order that we might worship. As an example of the kind of dying Christians must consider, listen to this story:

In February 2001, John Oros spoke to an audience at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary about his experience as a church leader in Romania during the Communist era:

If we are to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth then we must be willing to die. We must sacrifice all in order for God to have His way and for His name to be exalted. So, ask the question, "What am I willing to die for?" Am I willing to die for jazz? For ambition? For materialism? Or best of all, for Jesus Christ, the One who died for me? Whatever the cause, you will die in order to worship, for that’s what worship is all about.

All I can say is that I still love jazz and enjoy listening to skillful musicians like Jack Waltrip. I also know what it costs to be a famous jazz musician. But, there is no way that I would make the kind of sacrifices for jazz that I would make for being a follower of Jesus. As the years go by, I’m discovering that although the cost of discipleship is great, the cost of non-discipleship is greater. Dying to worship God is actually the Easy Yoke. Dying to worship anything else is an unbearable slavery.