You wake up on Sunday and you come to a community of
faith. Maybe it is a traditional church
building with a steeple on top designed for the specific purpose of worship and
ministry. Maybe it is a more modern
worship space with stage lights and projection screens; a storefront in the
city, just a large room with chairs and an overhead projector; a park or camp,
where the outdoor space becomes worship space; in someone’s living room, where
a small community gathers in simple worship.
What
happens in worship? In many communities
you might be handed a bulletin that serves as an instruction manual for the
time. You could point at the list of
events from prelude to postlude and say, “Here is what happens.” Yet I have been to communities where the
order is less formal. Songs are sung
until it feels right to stop. Preaching
is a shared action, a discussion with a smaller group. That is also worship.
At a
basic level, communal worship is an intentional turning toward God. We carve out a time and place to be together
and agree to dedicate that time and place to the living God. Note that at this base level, I am not
talking about praise or thanks because, while these are elements of most
worship services, they may not be elements of all. A funeral service for a child is a worship
service but one that might ask for songs of lament rather than songs of
praise. Worship in the context of
protest may call for songs and prayers of justice.
In many
and various ways and styles and moods, we are turned toward God. We listen to God speaking in scripture,
preaching and discussion. We speak to
God in prayer. We sing to God, often in
praise, thanks and adoration. We stand
before the table and are fed, receiving Christ in bread and wine. Through these actions we are reminded of the
constant nature of God’s presence. We are
reminded that although we may pick and choose the times when we pay attention
to God, God is constantly and lovingly aware of us.
This is
the grace of worship. We may come to
worship with the attitude that we are doing this action to please God only to
discover that God is already pleased. We
may come to worship wanting to show our love for Jesus only to encounter the overwhelming
love of Christ that is already present.
We come to do something for God and we encounter what God is doing for
us, implanting us in the story of the good news.
Worship becomes an act of faithfulness, both a
sign of our faith in God, but a reminder of God’s faithfulness toward us. Worship is the opportunity to connect to this
reality before we go out into a world where God’s presence is not always clear
and God’s love in not always celebrated.
We are surrounded by the love of God in worship, and we respond with
love, both in the act of worship itself and the acts of service that follow in
our daily lives, sharing love with the world.
The
measurement of true, faithful and good worship is not a matter of style or the
feelings evoked as much as we like to talk about such things. The measurement of faithful worship is how we
meet God once we have entered and what sort of people we are when we leave. It is fine if worship makes you feel happy or
feel good about yourself for having done it.
It is faithful if worship sends you to live and share the good news in
word and action.
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