Spiritual Disciplines: Worship

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were Hebrews 5:5-10  and John 12:20-33:

For the past two weeks, our gospel passages have come immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event that we will celebrate in two weeks for Palm Sunday. The crowd’s reaction to Jesus in that moment is a form of worship, something we continue in our understanding of Jesus as our high priest. But, the entire reason why Jesus is going to Jerusalem to begin with is for the Passover celebration, which is itself a worship event. We see Jesus participating in worship activities throughout scripture, in the Temple and in the synagogue. Even when he is tempted in the wilderness, one of the temptations is Satan asking him to fall down and worship him, and in return Jesus is promised the kingdoms of the world, to which Jesus responds, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” To worship literally means to bow down, to prostrate yourself, which is not just an act of worship, but it’s a sign of loyalty. And so as we talk about worship as act of bowing down, as an act of obedience, it is something that puts boundaries on our lives, because, as Jesus said, if you are worshipping God you cannot be worshipping other things. And since one of the things that spiritual disciplines do is to set boundaries, to govern conduct or activity or operation, or things that mold, correct or perfect, it turns out that worship itself then is a spiritual discipline.

It’s sort of seems obvious if you think about it, but I’m willing to bet that most of us have never really thought about worship that way, because it’s just something we do. It’s not like prayer or fasting or scripture reading, which are the things people tend to think of when we talk about spiritual disciplines. And yet, as we have talked about, spiritual disciplines are things we do, that are found in scripture, that help us to deepen our faith and our relationship with God. Things that structure our spiritual lives, and therefore our everyday lives, in order to put God front and center and to help transform our lives and our faith. And so by that standard, worship is clearly a spiritual discipline, and so for those who were wondering if you do any of the disciplines, or if you can, you can be assured that you are already doing one, just by being here, and of course we also practice many of the other disciplines within the service of worship.

But, just because worship is a spiritual discipline doesn’t mean that it necessarily is doing any of the things that disciplines are supposed to do. As I said when we talked about fasting, when I fasted I didn’t do it right, I wasn’t intentional about my practice, and therefore it wasn’t effective as a discipline for me. If you are not intentional about making worship a discipline, if you are just showing up and hoping something magic will happen, or even worse just showing up because that’s what you do, then worship will not be edifying or transformative. If we are not actually coming to worship, to bow down, to turn our lives over to God, and not just part of our lives, but all of it, then we are not opening ourselves up to the transformative nature of worship. And so that has to start with the reason we worship. We do not gather here, we are not told that we have to worship because God is some egomaniacal tyrant who has to be told how great he is, or he will strike us down. Nor do we worship in hopes of earning credit so that God will do good things for us in the future.

We worship because of what God has already done. We worship and give praise and thanksgiving, which is at the heart of worship, because of what God has already given to us. We give glory to God for the gifts that God has already provided us, for the grace that has been poured out for us, given to us without price. We celebrate God’s love from which we can never be separated. That is the reason we worship as a sign of adoration of God, and so we bow down, we turn our lives over to God. That is at the heart of worship. And to truly worship, we have to begin with that reality. It is a reminder to us that there is a God, and we are not it. That we are dependent upon God for our lives and our livelihood, for all that we are and all that we have, and as a reminder of who we are and whose we are, that once we were no people, but now we are God’s people.

Which leads into another point about worship which is that it is a communal exercise. The church has emphasized this gathering of the community since the earliest days as an extension, or in becoming the body of Christ. There are things that can happen only in a collective gathering, that cannot take place by yourself. And much of that is a building up in our faith. Think of a fire. If you pull out a coal and move it away from the others, what happens to it? It quickly cools and goes out. But, if you pull it back in with the other coals, it will warm back up and the other coals are all better for it. They will burn longer and hotter together than apart, and the same is true for us and our faith. Our faith will always be stronger and deeper in community than apart because one of the things that being in community does is to prevent us from having, what Marjorie Thompson calls, “privatized versions of spiritual truth.” In community we get pushed and challenged in our faith, and we can do the same for others. Worshipping in community should help us to remember that worship is not about me, but about the we. The question we should ask about worship is not what do I need out of worship, but what does God want worship to be? and so we have to let go of our own agendas and preferences as we come to worship in order to become part of the gathered whole.

And yet with that being said, how we approach worship and what we bring to worship can make a huge difference not just for us, but for the whole congregation. Have you ever been at a gathering or a party and someone comes in in a bad mood or just exuding negative energy? What happens? The whole mood of the room changes. All the energy can be sucked right out of the room. Of course the opposite is also true, that someone with positive energy or a positive attitude can change a room in the opposite direction. And so as we think about worship, how we participate, what we do, what attitude we have, what energy we bring matters. Being prepared for worship is a service that we do. When we serve, we give of ourselves for others, and we are called to do that in worship. Worship is giving of our time, it is giving of ourselves, it is giving financially, it is giving spiritually, there are lots of ways we serve in worship, and as anyone who has ever served others knows, we receive more in giving of ourselves than what we give out. And of course, worship should also lead us out into the world to serve, which is why we end every worship by saying “go be the church.” That is the call to leave to serve the world.

The expectations that we set for worship also will be determinative for what worship does or doesn’t do for us. As we say at the beginning of worship, we hope that you have come with the expectation that you will encounter Christ, that you will be moved by the Holy Spirit and that we will be transformed by being here together. In the letter of James we are told to draw near to God as God draws near to us, and that should be happening in worship, and if we have the expectation that will happen, it will be even easier to do. As someone said, we do not truly worship until spirit touches Spirit, and so that should be an expectation that we bring. And not that it’s me or the first light or the lay reader that makes that happen, but that you come seeking to make that happen as well. 

As I have said many times, we can craft the best worship experience we can, but we can’t make you worship, you have to do that yourself, that is part of the service we give, again not just for ourselves but for others. And do you know the best way to help you experience God here? That’s to experience God all the rest of the week. Because if you are spiritually dry all the rest of the week, if you are not practicing other spiritual disciplines, if you are not feeding yourself during the week, then you won’t be fed here because you are too hungry and thirsty to be fully quenched and satisfied. Worship may be the spiritual high point for the week, but it cannot be the only piece. And as the mystic Brother Lawrence said, he knew he would encounter God in worship because he encountered God in the rest of the week. And so all the things we do before worship will make an enormous difference in how we worship and what we get out of it, so a few more recommendations of approaching worship as a spiritual discipline.

In his now seminal work Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster gives a series of things we should do in order to help us to worship God in spirit and truth, and to be transformed. I am going to simplify it to 4, which doesn’t include what we just talked about.

The first is to find ways to prepare for worship. Go to bed early the night before so you are well rested. Study the scripture readings for the upcoming weeks, which you will find in the bulletin insert, and ponder what the passages are about, form questions or ideas and come with those in mind. If you rush into worship late and are all harried, do you think you will be centered and focused? Probably not. So come to worship early and have some time of quiet contemplation and prayer in preparation for worship, releasing the things that might hold you back from fully entering into the worship experience. Pray for the worship leaders, pray for those who are here, pray for yourself and center yourself. And, again, come prepared and with the expectation that you will not only encounter God and be moved by the Holy Spirit, but that you will be transformed by our time together as well.

Second is to be willing to experience the power of the gathering of the body of Christ, remembering that the “language of the gathered is about us, not about me.” That means that sometimes the message or the hymns might just not do it for you that day, but for someone else they might be exactly what they needed to hear, and so we remember that the group is more powerful than the individual. This also means that we are in prayer for others who are here to worship with us. Maybe you notice someone who seems distracted, or sad, or angry, and praying for them before and during worship that they might experience and feel God’s presence in this time together.

Third is to absorb distractions with gratitude. We all want and need different things out of worship, and sometimes others are doing things that distract us. So rather than fussing and fuming about those distractions, and therefore taking you away from the worship experience, instead lift up those distractions, thanking God for their presence, or asking God to touch them, so that rather than being a distraction it instead becomes a blessing and can keep you centered.

Finally we are to learn to offer a sacrifice for worship. There are times in which we don’t feel like worshipping, for many different reasons, and we can come up with lots of reasons why we can’t go to worship, but these are the times in which it is most important to go, and so we say that these are my people, and to say to God, “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this, but this is your time and I am giving it to you,” and we trust that God is going to reach into our lives in these moments and touch us and we will find in that worship, we will find in being surrounded by the community, that we come out different and changed because of what we have done, and that others may be changed as well.

Worship doesn’t just happen, because worship is about giving the best that we have to God, of worshipping fully with mind, heart, body and soul. Worship is about bowing down to God giving praise and glory for what God has done, to hear the story of the faith and to find our place in that story so that we may pass it on to future generations. And that means that worship deserves our full attention, our full presence and our full devotion. We need to prepare to be here, to do the work to celebrate together, to bring our desire to be in the presence of God here in this place, and to do it together so that we will never be the same again that we will be changed and transformed into the people of God and that we will worship in Spirit and in truth and discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.