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Friends United Meeting |
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November 2003
Worship, The Center of John Woolman's Life
From an inward purifying, and steadfast abiding under it, springs
a lively operative desire for the good of others. All faithful people
are not called the to the public ministry, but whoever are, are called
to minister to that which they have tasted and handled spiritually. The
outward modes of worship are various, but wherever men are true ministers
of Jesus Christ it is from the operation of his spirit upon their hearts,
first purifying them and thus giving them a feeling sense of the condition
of others. (31)
John Woolman mentioned meeting for worship as the first source of his convincement. Worship lay at the center of John Woolman's life. As for Friends throughout history, for John Woolman the experience of meeting for worship was manifold. Meeting for worship could be joyful, consoling, disturbing, and revealing. Here Friends encountered their truest selves as limitlessly loved by God. To come to that encounter they often first had to come face to face with any illusions they might have about themselves. These misperceptions could be many things, but often they were centered in their understanding of their relationship to God.
Sacramental Language
Communion. Like his Quaker contemporaries, John Woolman spoke of worship in sacramental terms. Other Christian bodies in colonial America observed the outward rituals of baptism with water and of communion with bread and cup. Quakers did not make use of such rituals, believing that worship in silence achieved the same goals toward which these rituals aspired. Silent worship was, they said, the worship about which Jesus spoke in the Gospel of John (4:24) when he said that God is a Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth...
In his essay "On Silent Worship," John Woolman wrote, "In real silent worship the soul feeds on that which is Divine." To worship in this way is to "partake of the table of the Lord, " to experience the real presence of Christ, the living bread, which nourished the soul. (510)
John Calvin and his theological heirs, unlike Catholics and Lutherans, refrained from the language of a physical presence of Christ in the bread. The body of Christ, said Calvin, ascended to heaven and was still there. Communion does not so much bring the physical body of Christ down to earth as it raises the believers to heaven where they could enjoy the presence of Christ. John Woolman agreed with Calvin that worship could lift the worshipers heavenward, though he did not use the language of sacramental communion to describe this experience. Instead, he alluded to the book of Revelation. The eighth chapter of that text begins:
And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stood before God, seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar, to whom was a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all saints on the golden altar that was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, arose before God from the angel's hand. (Revelation 8:1-4)
John Woolman spoke of "pure inward prayer" as "the prayer of the saints" that "ariseth up and before the throne of God and the Lamb." (160) English Friend Elihu Robinson heard John Woolman speak in meeting for worship. In his unpublished diary he noted: "Our Friend John Woolman from Jersey...made several beautiful remarks in this meeting...with respect to the benefit of true silence, and how incense ascended on the opening of the seventh seal, and there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour." (129) The inward communion experienced in genuine worship in true silence carries worshipers to the heavenly throne.
In my own Quaker meeting a member described his communion experiences in worship as an inward priesthood. In the silence he would come to feel a sense of connection with other worshippers. He might feel led to go in his heart, while his body was still seated, from member to member of the worshipping community, offering communion. The elements of communion were not the usual bread and cup used in other churches. To one he might offer a flower, to another a candle, to another a bowl of fruit, as he felt led by the Holy Spirit. It felt, he said, like a walking prayer and a communion with the other worshippers and with God. This was his silent ministry to the gathered meeting.
Baptism. The apostle Paul...describes baptism as dying — and rising — with Christ (Romans 6:3): "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?" Elsewhere Paul speaks of baptism as an experience of coming into unity though the Spirit...
John Woolman used the language of baptism to refer to the experience in worship of being led into a sense of the gathered body. Here the word "baptism" implies an experience of cleansing, renewal, and a sense of immersion into the worshipping community.
So we took the meetings in our way through Virginia, were in some degree baptized into a feeling sense of the conditions of the people. ...Through the goodness of our Heavenly Father, the well of living waters was at times opened, to our encouragement and the refreshment of the sincere-hearted. (37)
The next day I fell in at New Garden Week Day Meeting, in which I sat with bowedness of spirit, and being baptized into a feeling of the state of some present, the Lord gave us a heart-tendering season; to his name be the praise. (149)
We visited the meetings in those parts and were measurably baptized into a feeling of the state of the Society. (108)
Such a baptism can be a painful experience because one can be led in silent worship to sense the pains of others and to bear another's burdens.
I...was out seven days and at seven meetings, in some of which I was chiefly silent; and in others, through the baptizing power of Truth, my heart was enlarged in heavenly love and found a near fellowship with the brethren and sisters in the manifold trials attending their Christian progress through this world. (96-97)
...the humility of Jesus Christ as a pattern for us to walk by was livingly opened before me, and in treating on it my heart was enlarged, and it was a baptizing time. (151)
Suffering
The experience of participating in the suffering of others during worship was known from the earliest days of Quakerism. Robert Barclay, for example, wrote in 1676 in his Apology (7:3) that the experience of the inward birth of Christ in the soul of the believer brings such a union with Christ that, using the language of 2 Peter (1:4), we become "partakers of the divine nature." Christ's obedience becomes ours, as does his righteousness, and his suffering and death. We come to have a sense of sufferings of Christ and to suffer with the Seed of Christ, the divine potential for the fullness of human life, that is suppressed in the hearts of others...
By "dwelling deep" during worship, Friends in John Woolman's era likewise found they could come to a sense of the meeting as a whole, or to a sense of individuals in the meeting. As they came to this "feeling sense of the condition of others," they could bear the unspoken burdens of others. They could "travail" for the seed suffering in others and be like midwives in bringing this seed to birth. This silent suffering with others in worship could bring about renewal in the inward life, a renewal so powerful that they dared to call it redemptive. John Woolman put it this way:
Christ suffered afflictions in a body of flesh received from the virgin Mary, but the afflictions of Christ are yet unfinished, for they who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and as we humbly abide under the sanctifying Power, and come forth in newness of life, we feel Christ to live in us...his spirit in the hearts of his people leads to an inward exercise for the salvation of mankind. ...Sorrow and heaviness is often experienced, & thus in some measure is filled up that which remains of the afflictions of Christ. (479-80)
Excerpted by permission from A Near Sympathy: The Timeless Quaker Wisdom of John Woolman by Michael L. Birkel, Friends United Press, 2003, Chapter 2, $15.00. Available from Quaker Hill Bookstore, 800-537-8838 or www.quakerhillbooks.org.
Numbers in parentheses refer to the critical edition of John Woolman's Journal and longer essays: Phillips P. Moulton, editor, The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971; reprinted Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1989). Numbers in italics in parentheses refer to an older edition, which also contained his shorter essays: Amelia Mott Gummere, editor. The Journal and Essays of John Woolman. (New York: Macmillan, 1922).
Copyright (c) 2003 Friends United Meeting
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