Reconciling our worship and our theology

In the tug of war between the pulpit and the choir, it’s always the singer and not the sermonizer that carries the day. The theology nestled snugly in the tomes in your pastor’s study very seldom makes itself felt in those Power-Pointed pop songs that we sing on a Sunday. And that’s a shame. Not because the songs we sing are necessarily heretical, but they are often weak. Israel Houghton’s Friend of God is not saying anything false, but so much more could be said beyond, “I am a friend of God. I am a friend of God. I am a friend of God. He calls me friend.”

But, heaven help us if the theologians start producing worship songs! Their songs would be as boring as their books. Even so, it would be nice if our songwriters and musicians would take a peek at theology once in a while. I thought of this the other day while reading Colossians in Greek. I love that amazing doxology in chapter one: “He is the image of the unseen God.” It’s a pretty easy passage to read in Greek but the thoughts contained in it are awesome. However, I had a little trouble with the word “reconcile” in verse 20.

“And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:20, NRSV)

This set me on a course of investigation that was extremely interesting. I looked up all the uses of ἀποκαταλλάσσω and all its various related terms. It’s in times like this that it is really handy being a Bible translator because we have some really cool Bible study software! It took some digging to discover that these words are all based on the word ἄλλος meaning “other.” My understanding of “reconciliation” was the idea of two people that have separated due to a conflict and later “make up.” But the linguistic evidence seems to suggest that reconciliation in the New Testament is unilateral. In most of the examples that I looked at in the New Testament, a person was the subject of reconciliation and God was the object. To be more precise, almost every instance of these reconcile words is accompanied by τῷ θεῷ (”God” in the dative case).

This caused me to pause. Reconciliation as we normally think of it is the subject of countless love songs. It is a topic which lends itself to the format of “Praise & Worship” with its emphasis on emotive and physical outpourings to God. But this thing I’m looking at in the Bible doesn’t sound like that at all. We’re screwed up. We ran away. But God never moved. He is constant in his love and faithfulness. And this καταλλάσσω word implies bringing us back to him.

So, I’m at a loss for words as to how to describe this concept. CEV tends to translate it as “make peace between.” But again that makes it sound like God is somehow out of whack. We’re the ones out of whack.

The point of me sharing this little word study with you is to say that in-depth Bible study is the place to begin if you want to write a worship song. The wrong place to begin is with a guitar in your hands and a head full of nothing. The result is almost certainly going to be cliche and uninspired. So despite my long-standing animosity toward theology, I’m starting to think that it’s not really so bad after all. In fact, the more I look at the theology of reconciliation, the more I want to sing.

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For another post about theology and worship, see: Sing with the Spirit, sod the mind at MetaCatholic.

If you’d like to look a bit more at the verbs for “reconcile” here are their references in the New Testament:

• ἀποκαταλλάσσω: Eph. 2:16; Col. 1:20, 22.
• καταλλάσσω: Romans 5:10 (twice); Col. 7:11; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19, 20.
• διαλλάσσω: Mat. 5:24