August 29, 2010

• True Worship of God by God’s People

  How are we to worship God?  There can be a great deal of anxiety about doing worship correctly.  We are going to have a day to teach anyone who wants to participate in worship the fundamentals of the different tasks.  The reason for this is not so people never make mistakes or so that everyone knows the correct way to do worship.  The purpose is to give worship leaders a basic understanding of the rituals so they can be more relaxed as they lead worship.  I cannot be certain where the fear of doing something wrong originates.  I cannot think of any examples of God punishing someone for making an error during worship.  The Bible has some very specific information about temple building and furnishing, and there are guidelines for those who serve as priests but there isn’t a great deal of detail about what worship should look like.  There is recorded an incident where someone reached out to steady the arc of the covenant when it appeared about to fall off the ox cart but that wasn’t a worship service and I believe it had more to do with when we handle sacred things as if they were ours to control.  I do not believe God is standing by waiting for someone to make a mistake in worship so God can zap them.  Much of what we have today in the form of communal worship was created by religious leaders of many different faith traditions.  We have come to equate a sacred space with sacred symbols and repeated prayers and songs, and readings with the worship of God.  What we do together as a faith community to celebrate our faith and our God has become loosely synonymous with worship but the service and the ritual are not worship, they are a container for our worship of God.

   

  The true worship of God is found in the way we live our lives. Coming to the sanctuary and doing the rituals and saying the words is meaningless unless what we do here springs from the joy we have in what God has done through us during the time we are not in sanctuary.  The sacred texts make it very clear we worship God when we serve in humility, when we are willing to be used of God and not expect any reward or recognition for our service.  Let me be clear, receiving recognition is not the problem.  The problem is our expectation of receiving recognition.  Serving others because it makes us feel superior is not service, serving others because it will look good on our resume is not service.  True service is when we do what we can to make the world a better place for everyone.  True service recognizes that we are all dependent upon each other and so we must all be willing to give and receive help without believing our worth is defined by whether we are a giver or receiver.  Too often our praise sounds like, “God has given me all I need and more and I will give to those God hasn’t blessed out of my abundance.”  How much better to say God has given the world enough that all can have what they need and must make sure it is equitably distributed.  Service done to honor and glorify God is true worship.

   

  Our communal time of worship is when we come together to share what God’s abundant love has done in and through our lives and to give God praise for that abundant love.  We come together to find strength in each other’s stories.  We come together to find opportunities to serve with others.  We come together so our song of praise can become a chorus of praise.  We do not come together to show off our fine outfits, or to show off our importance, or to prove how much more blessed we are than others.  Anything we bring to this service that is not God honoring and God glorifying diminishes the service.  True God worship isn’t about us at all and it isn’t about the others who are present.  God worship can only be about God and demonstrating our worship of God by living humbly and sharing what we have been given so all may have enough.  Amen.

  • 8:35 am
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