Lived Out Faith: Worship Regularly
Lived Out Faith: Worship Regularly by Rev. L. John Gable
September 16, 2018
What do we mean when we say, “I am a Christian” and what measurement do we use, or what evidence can we point to, to support the truth of that claim? That is the question I’d like for us to think about together, today and over the next couple of weeks, because whether we ask it of ourselves or not, this is the question which “the world”, non-believers and religious skeptics alike, are asking about us all the time. What do we mean when we say, “I am a Christian” and what evidence do we have to support that claim?
Now let me be clear right from the start, these are the kinds of questions we should be asking of ourselves, individually as well as collectively. They are not intended for us to ask about others as some kind of spiritual litmus test, lest we fall into the trap Jesus addressed when He spoke of our trying to pick the speck out of our neighbor’s eye while we have a log in our own. But given that caveat, what evidence might we use to support the claim that I am, in fact, a Christian, a disciple and follower of Jesus?
When asked that question most generally we begin with a statement about our “orthodoxy”, our right beliefs: “Ortho” meaning “right or correct”, “doxy” meaning “thoughts or beliefs.” This is the affirmation that our beliefs conform to the historically held teachings of the Christian faith down through the ages, so when using “orthodoxy” as our standard of measurement we find ourselves making statements such as “I am a Christian because I believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior”, and so on. Such right belief is certainly essential to our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, but beyond that there is another set of evidences we need to look at, as well. Beyond our orthodoxy (right beliefs) we need also to show evidence of our orthopraxy, meaning our right practices and behaviors. To say, “I am a Christian” is more than simply professing to having the right answers; it is also committing ourselves to living in a manner that is holy and pleasing to God, that reflects God’s presence and Lordship in our lives. Either one without the other is not a full expression of what it means to be a Christian, but together orthodoxy and orthopraxy comprise what we will call a “lived out” faith.
Dr. Frank Harrington was the long-time pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, for many years the largest of our Presbyterian Churches. Whenever he met with new members he asked them to commit to four specific practices which are visible demonstrations of their Christian commitment. He knew that they would be answering questions about their orthodoxy when they stood before the Session and congregation to be received as new members, so he wanted to ask them questions which pertained to their orthopraxy – their right practices and behaviors as representatives of Christ and of His church in the world. I have since adopted these four questions as I meet with our new members and now commend them to you. As members and friends of Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, as those committed to having a “lived out faith”, will you promise to: worship regularly, live worthily, give generously and serve eagerly? These are four components of what it means to have a “lived out faith” and in the coming weeks we are going to look at each one individually, beginning today with the first promise to “worship regularly.”
Let’s begin by defining our terms starting with “regularly”. I don’t know what regular means to you, but Biblically and historically, it means to worship weekly, at a minimum. If, as we will see, worship is essential to who we are as Christians, then to commit to doing so regularly is not so much something we “have” to do, as much as it is something we “get” to do. There are believers all around the globe who live under the threat of punishment or death if they are caught doing what we are doing there this morning, worshiping God; so isn’t it ironic that we who have been given this freedom as an inalienable right, do so so casually and irregularly? It has always confounded me, but there are many who consider themselves to be good, practicing Christians who consider worship to be “optional” rather than “essential” to their spiritual lives and growth, and studies consistently show that the number of those who think this way is growing year after year. I can’t imagine it.
As Christians, in worship we define who we are and to Whom we belong. In worship we very intentionally place ourselves in the presence of God, the One who alone is worthy of our worship and praise. The word “worship” itself means to “ascribe worth to”, which means that we will worship that which we value, even if it is not God. We will ascribe worth or glory or goodness or value to something – a possession, a person, a position we hold; something will claim our ultimate allegiance, devotion and praise, so as Christians we are saying that the ultimate placeholder in our lives is God and God alone, and we evidence that by our regularity in worship.
In our New Testament lesson from Romans 12 the Apostle Paul makes an appeal, he urges, some translations say “pleads”, “by the mercies of God to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship.” This is what we are doing when we come to worship: we are presenting ourselves as a “living sacrifice” before God. Rick Warren puts it this way, “Offering yourself to God is what worship is all about. The heart of worship is surrender and surrender is best demonstrated in obedience and trust.” Whereas in the Old Testament people killed their sacrifices and presented them dead at the altar of God, in the New Testament we believe that Jesus Christ has already paid that ultimate sacrifice for our sins to secure our salvation, so we are called to present our bodies to God as a “living sacrifice”, ready and willing, not just to die for Him, but to live for Him, to do His work and to work His will. This is our spiritual worship; this is what is “reasonable/logical” for us to do if God really does hold that place of highest authority in our lives. In worship we discover who we are and Whose we are and what we are called to do and be.
Paul goes on to write, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This is what we do when we come to worship.
Former Bishop of Canterbury, William Temple, writes, “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 purpose of God.” In worship we make the conscious and deliberate decision to conform our wills and behaviors, not to the standards of the world and the culture we live in, but to the will and purpose of God, and that is why, in the desire to have a “lived out” faith, worship is essential, not optional. It is the one thing we cannot live without if we are going to consider ourselves committed followers of Jesus Christ. Worship is the one thing the church alone is called to do, that the culture cannot do, and that is why it must have primacy in our lives, if we desire to have a “lived out faith”.
George Barna, in his book, Think Like Jesus, writes, “My sense is that worship is the deciding factor when it comes to determining the realness of your love for God…He can deal with a weak prayer life, an unstable family, bad behavior, and the failure to sacrificially serve other people, but He cannot reconcile a refusal to flat out worship Him. In His reckoning, worship is the ultimate expression of our love and the one unmistakable indicator of our feelings toward Him. Consequently, there is no middle ground on this issue. The authenticity of your love is proven by the breadth, frequency and intensity of your worship. Either He is or He is not the sole object of your worship…There is no more significant demonstration of your love than through your worship of the Creator.” Friends, this cannot be stated too strongly: a “lived out” faith begins with, and is sustained by, regular worship.
But even in stating that, we need to ask ourselves, “When I come to worship am I really coming to worship God? If worship means placing myself in the presence of the living God, is that really what I come expecting to happen, or do I expect something less, perhaps much less?” Will Willimon, former Dean of the Duke University Chapel, writes, “Most people come to church with their own agenda, the three most common of which are: heal my marriage, fix my kids, and get me out of this mess.” Perhaps we might confess that he is right in his assessment, but still those are very good reasons for getting us here, because here, in worship, we present ourselves before the very One, perhaps the only One, who can actually do those things for us.
The problem for many of us though is that in worship we have gotten our roles confused. We have somehow forgotten what part we are to play in this drama called worship. See if this rings true for you. “Too often”, writes Soren Kierkegaard, “when people come to worship they adopt the attitude of the theater, imagining that the preacher is an actor and they are the critics, praising and blaming the performance. Actually, (in worship) the people are the performers on the stage of life; the preacher is merely the prompter, reminding the people of their lost lines, and, in the most basic sense, God is the audience. In Christian worship, it is unto God whom we offer ourselves. Unto Him we offer our praise, our love, our thanksgiving. Unto Him we confess our wrongdoings in thought and in deed. Unto Him we respond in faith and obedience as we listen to God’s Word. Worship is the offering of ourselves individually and together as a community to the only One who is worthy of our praise and adoration.” In Christian worship the congregation is the performer, the minister is the prompter, and God is the audience. Now, if that is the case, and I believe it is, then we have failed in our primary task of worship if we become distracted by the little nuisances of whether we are singing our favorite hymns and choruses, or who we will get to sit by or see at the coffee hour, or even who is the preacher of the day and how well he or she “performs” for us. If these are our expectations when we come to worship then we have set our sights too low, way too low. To use Kierkegaard’s analogy, when we leave worship we should not be asking “How well did the pastor or the choir perform?”, but “How well did I perform as a worshipper before the audience of one, who is God?”
I’ve always loved the response of the pastor in Washington, DC. One Sunday morning the phone rang in the church office and the caller asked if they were expecting the President to be in worship that day. Without missing a beat the pastor replied, “As to whether the President is planning to be in worship with us today I cannot say. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that God is going to be present and that, in and of itself, should be reason enough for a reasonably large attendance.” Friends, when we come to worship we should come expecting nothing less, and desiring nothing more, than to place ourselves in the very presence of the living God.
For those who are seeking a relationship with God, or who are wondering about how to deepen their relationship with God, I always encourage them to begin by making the commitment to be regular in worship. What worship does for us is it allows us to find our way back home, to our true heart’s home. I’ll close with this story. To Catch an Angel is the autobiography of a young, blind man named Robert Russell. Russell lives alone on an island located in the middle of a river. One of his joys and daily activities is to go rowing on the river. This seems improbable, perhaps even impossible, given that he is blind, but he does so by means of a fairly simple, yet ingenious, system. On the end of his dock he has placed a bell. The bell is attached to a mechanism and a timer so that the bell rings every 30 seconds. With this system in place he can row up and down the river, judging his distance and direction by the sound of the bell. It is the sound of the bell that directs his way safely home again. Russell writes, “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.” In a spiritual sense, this is precisely why we worship. We too live along a rushing river and we venture out into it everyday and sometimes we will confess that we lose our way and journey far from our moorings, so worship is the ringing of the bell. It is the means by which we find our way back home and without it, we are lost.
As we, individually and together, seek to have a “lived out” faith, let us begin, right here, at home in the presence of God, as we make the commitment to worship regularly.