A People with a Purpose: Worship
A People with a Purpose: Worship by Rev. L. John Gable
February 26, 2023
Alfred Loisey once said, “Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and what came was the church!” I guess you could take that one of two ways. Either as a great disappointment or as a statement of our primary purpose and reason for being. In our own mission statement we affirm that Tabernacle Presbyterian Church is “called by God, led by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to demonstrate the Kingdom of God.” Perhaps exactly what Mr. Loisey had in mind! Given everything else we may feel called to do it is safe to say that the church is called to carry on the ministry of Jesus Christ, and that ministry can be summarized in terms of His Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind, body and soul”, and His Great Commission, “Go, and make disciples of all nations.”
But what is it then that makes the church the church? What is it that sets this gathering of people apart from any other club or organization we may belong to? This is the question we will be focusing on during this season of Lent. What is our reason for being? We dare to call ourselves “the people of God”, but what does that mean and how does it shape what we do? How does that define the essence of who we are?
I have a Doonesbury cartoon somewhere in my files that shows the minister standing before the congregation, clipboard in hand, giving the morning announcements. “Okay, flock. I thought I’d run through this week’s activities. This Monday, of course, we have a lecture on nutrition from a celebrity personal chef…Tuesday and Thursday will be our regular 12 step nights.” At which point he is interrupted by someone who asks, “What kind of addictions? Alcohol? Drugs? Something else?” Rev. Scott answers, “These are the full 12 step meetings, some of those others we cut down to 9 steps. On Friday night at 6:30pm we have organic gardening and then on Saturday night we have a special treat: aerobic male bonding night, so bring your sneakers. Any questions?” Someone near the back asks, “Yes, is there a church service this week?” “Nope, sorry”, the pastor answers, “Been cancelled. There was a conflict with the self-esteem workshop.”
Given that Tab is a seven day a week church, with an extremely full calendar of events, I take to heart the sarcastic dig Gary Trudeau gives as it brings in to focus the primary purpose of the church. No matter what else we may say or do, as the church we are the people of God who worship God. This one act is at the center of who we are, and without it, we are not. A baseball team that does not play baseball is not a baseball team. A symphony orchestra that does not play music is not an orchestra. A church that does not worship the living God is not a church. It may look like a church and act like a church and even call itself a church; but unless the experience of worship is at the center of its life together, it is not a church. In the words of Martin Marty, “The one thing the church can do that the culture cannot do is praise God”, so praise God we must and praise God we shall.
We listen to the words of the Psalmist, “Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our God our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.” This is who we are, and Whose we are and this is what we have been called to do; exclusive of all else.
Everything else we do flows out from this defining center. If some catastrophe were to strike our church family such that we had to cancel all of our other programs and activities the one essential, the one non-negotiable, is that we would continue to offer services of worship. We see that when congregations lose their buildings to fire or natural disasters. In the midst of the devastation they gather to worship. Why? Because this is what the people of God do; we worship God. In this way, the church serves as a catalyst to faith as it proclaims the Word of God and creates or provides the environment for spiritual growth.
The church serves the function of being the place, or better the agent, which brings people of faith together in the worship of God. The Christian church was, is and always will be the fellowship of those who live together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We need to clearly understand that Christianity is essentially a community affair. As Donald Baillie put is, “This does not mean that it is not at the same time a personal affair…The Christian religion is a relation between the individual soul and God, but it is a relationship that can be realized only within the universal community which is the Church of Christ. This means I cannot be a Christian all by myself.”
The fact of the matter is, we cannot be Christians in isolation. While our faith may be intensely personal, it is never intended to remain private. My personal relationship with Christ compels me to be in relationship with other Christians, to be a part of a worshiping community. Albeit there may be instances in which circumstances prohibit individuals from participating in the gathered life of a congregation, we have certainly experienced that during the pandemic, and we have many who for reasons of health or capability or safety are not able to be present with us in person, so we are so grateful for the technology we have available for live streaming. But I will challenge the faith commitment of anyone who calls themselves a follower of Jesus who chooses not to be a part of a worshiping community of believers. And I know I am preaching to the choir on this point.
This is a unique challenge for the church in our culture today, a culture dominated by affluence and individualism, both of which make institutional belief more difficult. Yesterday our Session met for our annual retreat and our primary topic of discussion was “The Future of the Church.” Increasingly, studies have shown in recent decades that the overwhelming majority of the population, inside and outside the churches, hold strongly to individualistic views on religion, believing that they can arrive at their own beliefs independent of any church or religious institution. The statistics are sobering.
We must continue to challenge those who believe that genuine Christianity can be narrowed down to me and my relationship with God without regard for the world around them. In no way do I intend to diminish the importance of private devotion, nor am I simply trying to defend the institution of the church, much less its leaders, but the worship of God, public and corporate, is essential to the Christian life. As the church we are the people of God who worship God, together!
But what is it that makes worship, worship? What of what we do here is essential? We come to this place at this time with these people to sing and pray, to hear the Word of God read and preached, to celebrate the sacraments. Is this what it means to worship, or is there some quality that is more essential still?
Our Gospel lesson this morning tells the rather remarkable story of a conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well on Mt. Gerazim. This story offers us the perfect segue between the series we just finished on people Jesus met along the way and our teaching today on the importance of worship. This encounter was remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was a conversation Jesus had with a woman (definitely prohibited by Jewish law for a man to visit with a woman alone who was not his wife), and she being a Samaritan woman at that (remember the Samaritans were the black sheep of the Jewish family), and only making matters worse she was a Samaritan woman with a questionable past (she had been married five times and the man she was currently with was not her husband.) If ever we feel as though we are not good enough to be in the presence of Jesus because of who we are or something we have done this story should give us great comfort and confidence; yet Jesus welcomed her and engaged her in a conversation about things more spiritual than earthly. He began by asking her to give Him a drink of water and ended up offering her the living water of eternal life and they got there by talking about the essential nature of worship.
As a Samaritan she believed that the worship of God had to take place on that particular mountain; whereas the Jews believed that God resided in the temple in Jerusalem. Interestingly enough, Jesus, being a Jewish man Himself, challenged her, and them, and us today, to see that the true worship of God transcends time and place or ritual. “The hour is coming and now is”, He told her,“when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship Him. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
What does that mean for us “to worship in spirit and truth”? Clearly it means that God is not bound by this place, this building, this mode and manner of doing things. As Reformed Christians we believe God can be worshiped in every time and place, and some of you might be getting ahead of me at this point by asking, “Even out on the golf course or by the lake?” The answer to that is “yes”, but it begs the, not CAN we worship God in those places but DO we? For that reason, certain times and places have been set aside for the people of God to gather together to worship God in spirit and truth.
To worship in this way suggests that something must happen within us, rather than just around us. True worship is internal, more than external; it has more to do with relationship than with ritual. True worship has to do with an attitude of the heart: reverence, awe, submission, humility, repentance. When these are present then the various elements of worship: prayer, singing, the reading and reflection upon the Scriptures, are all enhanced. But if these heart attitudes are absent, then all of these other practices may be little more than empty habits, rote and mechanical. One way we might reflect on our own practices of the faith is by asking, “When I enter this sanctuary, am I consciously aware that I am entering in to the presence of the Living God? That I coming here to worship?” which is clearly something more than hoping we like the music and the sermon.
Something mysterious and holy happens when we worship. Worship, like prayer, is the intersecting of the human and the divine. In worship we present ourselves before a holy and living God, and when we do that we can’t help but be changed. William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote, “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purposes of God.” What we do in worship is so different than anything else we do in any other setting, yet when we worship in spirit and truth it is the most natural thing we will ever do because it grounds us, and reminds us of who we are and Whose we are; it reminds us of our heart’s true home.
To Catch An Angel is the autobiography of a young, blind man named Robert Russell, who lives alone on an island in the middle of a river. Quite remarkably, one of his daily activities is rowing, and he does so by means of a fairly simple, yet ingenious, little invention. On the end of his dock he has placed a bell which is attached to a mechanism and a timer, like a metronome, set so that the bell rings every 30 seconds. With this system in place he can row up and down the river, judging his distance by the sound of the bell. Wherever he may go, it is the sound of the bell that directs his way safely home again. Robert Russell describes it this way, “The river lies before me, a constant invitation, a constant challenge, and my bell is the thread of sound along which I return to a quiet base.”
Friends, worship is the ringing bell for us as Christians. Without that thread of sound it is very easy for us to get distracted and disoriented, lost on the river of life. But it is worship that brings us back home again. “If the Lord is to be the Lord worship must have a place of priority in our lives” writes Richard Foster. Here we are reminded of who we are and to Whom we belong. In worship we are reminded that we are a people with a purpose: we are the people of God called to worship God, and everything else we say and do flows from this center.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN