A Meditation on Worship

 

 

I have been a regular church goer my whole life.  As I wrote in the chapter on worship in my book, A Spirituality of Service, the churches Judy and I attended have been primarily Lutheran, though I have worshipped with many other congregations including Pentecostal, Evangelical, Episcopal, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.  The format and liturgies vary widely.  Doing a rough calculation, I figure I have attended worship more than 3,000 times during my lifetime.  That means, among other things, listening to that many sermons and homilies, and experiencing everything from High Church Episcopal liturgy to very loud hand clapping Pentecostal singing and praying.

At times we found ourselves in places where there were few options in English or Spanish, the two languages we are comfortable with and in which we able to enter into the worship experience. 

In the little village in the highlands of Vietnam where we lived, there were Evangelical and Catholic worship services in both Vietnamese and Koho, the local tribal language.  We understood enough Vietnamese to get by in daily interactions but following long sermons and prayers in these languages was not satisfying.  We missed so much of the message, though we could follow the written hymns and songs and join in singing. I must admit that being in an assembly of a hundred or so Christians all praying in Koho at the same time is a fascinating experience.  But most of the time we would make do with devotions with our very small Vietnam Christian Service team.   

Living in the jungle in Peru we were rather isolated and there were few options, so we sometimes joined the nearby Evangelical missionaries who stressed “witnessing” and a literal interpretation of scripture. We never did stand up and tell “what the Lord did for me this week”, during those meetings.

In Nicaragua, we formed a kind of house church with a group of friends and co-workers.  The intimacy of a house church provides a lot of support, something much needed when living and working in a different culture and country.  From this experience we developed deep and lasting relationships through worshiping together for several years.  Small groups and churches offer something large ones don’t, and vice versa. 

I remember very few of those many sermons I heard over the years.  Honestly, do I even remember last Sunday’s sermon?  But there is something that brings us back to worship time and time again and it is not just going through the motions, as a skeptical person once said to me.  Thus, even if a church we attend may have some people who are less then friendly, or there is a tension between factions, stress over finances, or the sermon is not always great, (all issues we have seen in churches we have attended – not at St Luke), when we worship together, we are doing the work of the believers. The word liturgy comes from the Greek meaning the service or work of the people.

Remember the familiar story of Abraham and his son Isaak when Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son. This is where the word worship is used for the first time in scripture.  Genesis 22: 4-5 says “On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

The point of using this example is that worship involves three acts:  It is an act of Obedience – obvious in this story.  Though I resist using that term as I prefer to think of worship as a spiritual discipline or practice; in the end it is an act of obedience. 

Secondly, it’s an act of sacrifice – though it may be hard to understand, when we worship, we are making a sacrifice to God. We offer ourselves in worship.  The Catholic and Orthodox churches understand the mass as a sacrifice.  Is that true in the Lutheran church too?  I seem to remember phrases like, “we offer here our sacrifice… etc. in the liturgy.

And thirdly, it is an act of faith, trusting that God is present and provides (in the story it was the lamb in the thicket).

Why do we keep going to church on a regular basis?  Certainly, we don’t have mountain top experiences every Sunday, though we probably all have experienced profound and meaningful worship experiences at various times in our lives.  If you scan your memory for very meaningful worship experiences you will remember the setting, where and when it happened and what moved you at that time.  When I posed that question to our Wednesday book discussion group, several said it was the sermon: “the message spoke to me very personally and directly”, another said it was the complete liturgy in a magnificent chapel with a great pipe organ accompanying the processional and hymns; while others pointed to an outdoor worship at a camp, singing songs around a campfire.  Not surprisingly, some like quiet and silence, having time and space to reflect and know the presence of God in nature or in the worship service in church. 

In its many forms worship happens when the faithful gather to praise, honor and glorify God.  As we enter into the presence of the living God, we are renewed in our faith, remembering again that we are loved by God and saved by grace through the sacrifice of Jesus.  That’s why I go to church.