To Swell a Progress

By Robert Wetzel

 

 

As a young man, I heard an enthusiastic evangelist say, “Don”t think you are serving God by coming to a worship service. The worship service is an occasion of refreshment and fellowship. Serving God begins when we leave here and go out and win people for Christ.”

I have come to see that he was mistaken. Although his enthusiasm for evangelism was commendable, he unwittingly depreciated what happens when we gather to worship God. If worship is not a service to God then how do we account for all of those passages in the Psalms and Revelation in which people and angels are serving God by the very act of worship?

It was with this in mind that I came to write the following.

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One day during our 11-year ministry in England, my wife and I visited Kenilworth Castle. It is not a place where many tour coaches stop even though it is just off a main tourist route. It has the misfortune of being too near the well-preserved Warwick Castle. But we found the deserted ruins of Kenilworth more to our liking.

You could still see something of what must have been the grandeur of Kenilworth””the high walls, the great room, the towers. As we walked up a flight of stairs, now exposed to the sky, we wondered, “Were these the stairs that Amy Robsart, the wife of Robert Dudley, Duke of Leicester, died upon?”1 

Her death was surrounded by suspicious circumstances. It was in the time of Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was always under pressure to marry so there would be a recognized heir to the throne. And her courtiers, at least those who were bachelors, always saw themselves as the ideal match for her.

Robert Dudley was one of her closest advisers. One day as he pressed her about the need to marry she said, perhaps only flippantly, “You are the only man I have ever loved. And you are married.” These were the wrong words to say to someone as ambitious as Dudley. It was not long after this that Dudley”s wife mysteriously fell down the stairs to her death.

If you want the romantic version of this bit of questionable history, you can read Sir Walter Scott”s Kenilworth. Our visit to Kenilworth was a different kind of romance: a middle-aged couple with an afternoon away from the press of work, walking hand-in-hand among medieval ruins. And when our legs hinted of “ruin to come,” we would sit down and read the official guidebook.

It was during one of these pauses that I came across a curious expression. I was reading about a major renovation and expansion of the castle that took place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The work was done in preparation for a “royal progress.” What, I thought, is a royal progress?

 

TRAVELING WITH THE QUEEN

It seems that occasionally the queen and her extensive entourage would spend a few months traveling from castle to castle throughout her domain. Hence she would “progress” from place to place. Of course, to have monarchy visit your castle or town was a great honor. And it also reminded those powerful lords of the castle that they did have a sovereign. Hence the visit of a royal progress was both the social and political event of the year, if not the decade.

One would not expect the queen to be out on the road traveling with just a couple of secret service men wearing dark glasses. Her entourage, or her train, as it was called, was composed of hundreds of people. Some were distinguished members of court, others were hangers-on of the lesser nobility, and there also were hundreds of servants to do all the work.

As I sat there reading the guidebook, I began thinking about this particular use of the term progress. Then a line in T.S. Eliot”s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” came to me; it was a line I had never quite understood. Prufrock is a middle-aged man who has come to see his life as meaningless. In fear of death, he says,

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

But it is in facing the insignificance of his life that he says,

No! I am not prince hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

 To swell a progress, start a scene or two.

  

“To swell a progress!” Prufrock saw himself as one of the hangers-on of court whose sole significance was to increase the size of the queen”s train, to make his own small contribution to her majesty.

 

TRAVELING WITH THE KING

Swelling someone else”s progress hardly sounds appealing to us. Our American culture teaches us that we should be at the head of the train, not swell someone else”s. As soon as we learn to quit sucking our thumbs we are taught to put up our forefingers and shout, “We”re number one!”

First Corinthians 1:27 gives us a different perspective: “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong.” And there is also Paul”s beautiful hymn, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:5-7).

There is already a number one in the kingdom of God. To aspire to his place is rebellion. It is also very foolish. But even when we acknowledge the rightful place of the king, there is still a temptation to create a class system in the church. Jesus had to deal with this from the very beginning of his ministry when an ambitious mother came to him. She was a believer. She was so convinced Jesus was in fact the promised Messiah-king that she wanted to make sure that her sons, James and John, would end up on his right and left when he came into his kingdom.

I could imagine James and John off in a corner arguing about which was going to sit on Jesus” right side as opposed to his left side. Well, we all know how Jesus saw it: “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matthew 23:11).

The royal progress of the King of kings is not made up of higher and lower nobility, of hangers-on and servants, all marching in that order. There is only one class walking behind the King: servants! We may have different services to perform, but as Paul made amply clear to the Corinthians, there should be no competition among us about whose service is the most significant.

It is a sad irony that throughout the history of the church we have taken good biblical titles of service and used them to designate the various ranks of ecclesiastical power structures. God is trying to save us from that frustrating game of pride of place. He is trying to show us that we do not find our self-worth in a position, as the world sees position. The concern of Christ”s servant is one of stewardship before God. “Am I using the gifts God has given me to serve him?”

WHY WE WORSHIP 

The primary purpose for a service of worship is to swell God”s progress. We may well enjoy the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, and we may find inspiration from their contributions to the worship service. But we come together to praise God.

We may point to specific results: there was good attendance, someone”s faith was strengthened, someone was inspired to undertake a new service in the kingdom, a large offering was taken for missions. But these are all secondary to the basic purpose for the gathering: God was praised and we have swelled his progress!

There are times when a worship service just seems to come together, and we come together with it. We describe the experience as a little bit of Heaven. More accurately, such occasions are a prelude to Heaven. And they are a preparation for Heaven.

The book of Revelation gives us many images of God being praised by that grand gathering of the heavenly host and the company of the redeemed. Look, for example, at Revelation 5: 11, 12,

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

The images given to us by Scripture of this heavenly court are staggering. But with everything else that Heaven will be, one thing is certain. Each of us will find our place in God”s train. We will be able to praise him with heart and mind and voice in a clarity and beauty that was never ours in this life. We will know, in a way we cannot possibly know now, that the full duty of humankind is to love God and to enjoy him forever. And we shall swell his progress.

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1Amy Robsart, in fact, was found dead at the foot of the stairs at Cumnor Place, Robert Dudley”s Berkshire residence.

 

Robert Wetzel has served as president of Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, Tennessee, since 1994. He was instrumental in the founding of Springdale College within the Federation of Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, England. From 1980 to 1991 he served as the principal of this ministerial training school for the Churches of Christ in Great Britain. During these years he also held the post of recognized lecturer in the University of Birmingham. He taught philosophy and humanities at Milligan College (Tennessee) from 1961 to 1980 and served as academic dean there from 1970 to 1976. In addition to his teaching and administrative work, Wetzel has held pastorates with churches in Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Carolina. He served as president of the 2008 World Convention of Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. He and his wife, Bonnie, are the parents of two adult children.