The scriptures referred to are Psalm 63:1-8.
Some animals are basically solitary most of their lives. Bears, leopards, sloths, koalas, wolverines, the platypus, spotfin lionfish and, perhaps not surprisingly, skunks. Except when they mate or are raising their young, they tend to live alone. Humans, however, are social animals. We live in families; we gather not just for work but to play and to worship. At the site of the world's oldest permanent human settlements is the world's oldest worship site, Gobekli Tepe. Located in what is now southern Turkey, it goes back to the dawn of the Neolithic period, about 9000 BC. Here at the beginning of village life and agriculture, humans erected the world's oldest known megaliths, 6000 years before Stonehenge. Moving the pillars from their source 9 miles away would have been a massive undertaking. The people at Gobekli Tepe decorated their megaliths with carvings of animals and abstract designs. Butchered bones of game animals show that large numbers of people gathered there, perhaps at feasts that coincided with the peak hunting seasons. It is estimated that people would have come to worship from as far as 90 miles away.
A computer simulation of the development of civilizations shows that religion is a necessary step. Indeed the word “religion” comes from the Latin word for “to bind.” As we can see from Gobekli Tepe, as well as other ancient stone circles and worship sites, people's beliefs bring communities together in activities that take a lot of time and work. These sites are compelling evidence that worship is not an occasional quirk of some humans but an ancient and widespread communal desire.
Christianity is a social religion. After being expelled from synagogues, and classified as illegal by the Roman empire, Christians did not have sacred places for worship. So they gathered in houses and, during times of persecution, in catacombs, mazes of burial chambers. It was literally an underground movement. It also looks as if the churches did not have too many sacred times, aside from Sundays and Easter. The oldest sources we have tell us that followers of Jesus met before dawn. They prayed, read the Old Testament, and preached. Thus far they behaved very much like a synagogue service. But next they would celebrate the Eucharist. Public buildings and a fuller church calendar came about after Christianity was made legal by Constantine in the 4th century. But you can see in the accounts from the late 1st and mid 2nd centuries that the core of our worship has endured: the service of the Word followed by the service of the Eucharist.
Of the 3 elements that make up religion, we tend to focus on beliefs and behaviors more than belonging. Part of the reason for this is the Western emphasis on the individual. But humans need connection: connection to other people and connection to God. And we are drawn to connect to both at the same time. We are drawn to worship together.
In fact, almost all the studies that have found that religion has both physical and mental health benefits have been tied to how often a person attends worship. It's very hard for scientists to determine how religious an individual is so they take weekly attendance as a measurable indication of it. And because scientists are loathe to attribute benefits such as lower blood pressure, less illness, faster recovery from illness, and longer life to a supernatural cause, they tend to chalk it up to being part of a caring community.
Yet, despite the benefits to those who attend, the focus in worship is not on us but on God. In fact the word “worship” means “acknowledgment of worth.” We are celebrating God's worthiness. In Revelation 4:11 we are told that in heaven those before God's throne sing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, since you created all things, and because by your will they existed and were created!” And in the next chapter, they sing of Christ, our Passover: “Worthy is the lamb who was killed to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12) Because God made us and Jesus died for us, the Triune God is worthy of everything we can offer.
Just as you would owe the person who bought you out of slavery and saved your life, so we owe God for giving us redemption and salvation. And in worship we are offering God not just praise but offering our attention to his Word and ourselves for his service.
Ideally worship should include as many senses as possible. We see the beauty of the setting and the service; we hear song and speech; we touch as we pass the peace; we taste the bread and wine; and in some churches, we smell the incense. All serve to bring us out of our ordinary lives and into the sphere of God and his goodness. Let's look at the elements of worship.
Some of the most beautiful music in history has been written for worship: Gregorian chants, the sacred works of Palestrina, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, the entire corpus of Bach, hymns by Martin Luther, Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby, Isaac Watts, and more. Anthems and hymns glorify God, adore the infant Jesus, mourn his death and joyously proclaim his resurrection. We use God's musical gifts to offer him evocative songs of thankfulness and praise.
In reading and hearing God's Word, we learn about him and receive wisdom about how to live and how not to. We receive God's commands, his promises and his comfort. In preaching we receive insight and encouragement. These in turn help us serve him with enthusiasm and intelligence.
In prayers we ask for forgiveness, healing, and guidance, not merely for ourselves but for others: for the church, for the nation and for the world. Thus we bring our spirits into alignment with God's Spirit.
We offer God a portion of what he has given us to be used in his service. Not only do our gifts help pay the bills and the people who work at the church, they also help those outside the church through our ministries.
In Communion, we come to his table where we, the body of Christ, receive spiritual nourishment in the form of the body and blood of Christ. As we hold out our hands to receive him, we simultaneously offer him our whole selves, body, mind and spirit.
As we close, we thank God and receive his blessing that we might bring his blessings to those we encounter in our life outside these doors. Spiritually nourished, we take what we have received here to share with others. As we used to say at Lord of the Seas, the worship is ended; the service begins.
In his book The Way of Love Scott Gunn writes of how worship incorporates all the spiritual practices we are discussing in this series. He says, “we turn when we make our confession, we learn when we hear scripture and the sermon, we pray throughout the service, we bless the world as we make our offerings, we rest in the knowledge that God's power working in us can do more than we can ask or imagine, and then, in the end, we are sent out by the dismissal to go into the world.”
Even what happens after we go from worship, the results of our communing with God, is vitally important. In many of the creation myths of ancient religions, humans were created to serve the gods, often by feeding them through sacrifices. But in Psalm 50 God tells us he does not need or want animal sacrifices. Instead as David says in Psalm 51:16-17, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices God desires are a humble spirit—O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject.” It's not the physical sacrifice but the moral state of the worshiper that counts. Again in Isaiah God says he takes no pleasure in worship—unless it is accompanied by just and compassionate behavior. In the very first chapter of Isaiah, God gets specific about this: “Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight. Stop sinning! Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the fatherless! Defend the rights of the widow!” (Isaiah 1:16-17) In Isaiah 58:7 he says, “I want you to share your food with the hungry and to provide shelter for homeless, oppressed people. When you see someone naked, clothe him! Don't turn your back on your own flesh and blood!” These actions are the result of a humble and contrite heart. We serve God by serving others who are made in his image.
And rather than us feeding God, in Jesus he feeds us. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life...The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me and I in him.” (John 6:48, 56) We are both physical and spiritual creatures. And so God uses the medium of bread and wine, blessed by him, to impart spiritual benefits to us, namely communion with Christ. He becomes part of us and we become part of him. And it is through this connection that we are able to do what he commands. As being fed physically gives our bodies the ability to act in the physical world, so being fed spiritually gives the body of Christ, his people, the ability to act in accordance with God's Spirit. When we neglect worship, we find ourselves running down, like phones that haven't been charged recently. As the old pun goes, 7 days without worship makes one weak.
Apparently neglect of worship was even becoming a problem in the 1st century. The author of Hebrews cautions his audience about “not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other...” (Hebrews 10:25) As social animals, when we gather together we encourage and energize each other. It is not the same energy one gets from a rock concert or a football game. That kind of energy has caused people to do destructive things afterwards. The divine energy we get from coming together in the Spirit of Christ leads to constructive acts of sharing his love with those we meet outside this circle.
But going outside this circle does not mean leaving God behind. People came to the tabernacle and to Solomon's temple before the exile to experience the presence of God because the Ark of the Covenant was there. There was no Ark in Herod's temple, which was destroyed in 70 AD. We Christians do not have a single sacred space. But we don't need one. As Jesus said, “But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such persons to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24) Again Jesus said, “For where two or three are assembled in my name, I am there among them.”(Matthew 18:20) So we don't need to be anchored to something external like a physical temple. As Paul said, “...you have been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:20-22) We are the temple of God's Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16); we are to be Christ's presence in the world.
While we can practice the disciplines of the Way of Love on our own, worship is optimized when we do it together. We come out of worship blessed. But we are not to keep that blessing to ourselves. We will talk of that next week.
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