A retired farmer friend of ours tends what’s either a giant garden or a small farm.  He grows enough potatoes, cabbage, onions, and broccoli to share with friends and local food banks.  He also plants a lot of flowers—what seems like an acre of zinnias and sunflowers and gladiolas to cut and place strategically around town in the hospital and at the front desk of the library.  “What are you growing flowers for?” I tease him.  “You can’t eat them.”  He sagely reminds me that flowers are beautiful and feed the soul.

We need beauty to feed our souls.  This goes not just for flowers, but for worship as well.  I’ve sung my heart out in services where the music moved me to tears.  I’ve kneeled with hundreds in candlelit anticipation at Easter vigil.  I’ve admired sermons that were not just gospel-true and compellingly-delivered but crafted with beautiful and fitting words.

I’ve also sat through services that were, well, something less than that, like that time the worship leader paused to take a phone call while leading the service.

Is that the best we can hope for?  I’m convinced worship ought to be beautiful as well as good and true. 

We see the importance of beauty in worship throughout the Scriptures. God designed the place where he is to be worshiped—first the tabernacle and later the temple—to be beautiful.  He fills Bezalel the craftsman with “divine spirit, with skill, intelligence, and knowledge” that he might “devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze.”  Bezalel can set stones, carve wood, embroider cloth (Exodus 35:30).  Alongside Oholiab, Bezalel crafts something beautiful for God.  Later, Solomon builds a temple that is “great, for our God is greater than other gods” (1 Chronicles 2:5).

God also inspires a beautiful liturgy of worship.  There is beautiful music: “play skillfully on the strings,” and beautiful verse: “my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe” (Psalm 33:3; 45:1).  Aaron and the priests are vested in beautiful garments as they lead worship (Exodus 28).  “Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Psalm 96:6).  “Behold the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4).  

Of course, what makes worship beautiful in the Scriptures isn’t just the outward trappings.  It’s also an inward faith that manifests in a commitment to justice and goodness.  Without that inner dimension, worship is empty.  “I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,” says God through the prophet Amos (5:21).  Instead, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24).  

So what does beautiful worship look like for us today?

• Beautiful worship will hold inner and outer dimensions together—the love of God and love of neighbor.  It will be beautiful inside and out.  Beautiful worship births the beautiful church.

• Beautiful worship will offer our very best to God.  It will be thought out, skillful, and excellent, crafted by modern-day Bezalels and Oholiabs, led by Aarons.  It will allot time according to what matters most.  There will be more Scripture read than announcements given.  We’re doing something in worship, and we aim to do it well.

• Beautiful worship will be reverent.  We’re worshiping the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of Hosts, the one who instructed Moses to remove his shoes.  It’s not a family gathering or a school play or a stand-up comedy sketch.  We’re approaching the Consuming Fire.  Let us offer our worship with “reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28).

• Beautiful worship will have symmetry and balance, like a beautiful face or flower.  It will draw God’s people in with a call to worship, teach them from the word, nourish them at Christ’s table, and send them out blessed.  Above all, it will hold together the unity of word and table.

• Beautiful worship will draw water from the most ancient well.  It will read the Scriptures and sing the Psalms.  It will contain confession and assurance of peace, lifting up our hearts and intercessory prayer, charge and blessing.  Beautiful worship is not afraid of a little ritual.

How can we offer anything less than beautiful worship?  After all, as St. Augustine pointed out, all beauty is a “profession” of “the Beautiful One” (sermon 241,2).  Beautiful worship points to the Beautiful God who fashions and feeds our souls.