Worship

When I say “worship” what do you think of?

singing?

a church building?

maybe coffee or parking lots?

Sunday school or sermons?

Depending on your experience, maybe you think of cathedrals or a small country church, of robes and candles and a pipe organ or of a capella hymns sung outdoors.

Much of what we often think of and pay attention to are the style of our worship gatherings… volume, musical options, length and type of sermons - 45 min vs by vs “exegetical” or 10 min thematic homilies?

But what IS worship anyway?

ask people for the words or ideas that spring to mind?

aspects/actions/necessary components?

Christian Worship is grounded in the Trinitarian God, and centered on God’s acts of salvation (esp. in Jesus Christ)

How do we begin? (Candle)

What story do we tell? (Hint: Jesus)

Christian Worship, whatever its content and style, consists of four movements: Gathering, Word, Response (Table) and Sending

These are seen in the Emmaus Road encounter (following Constance Cherry)

Jesus initiates the conversation & takes the disciples as they are (confused, perplexed, mystified) and “tenderly pulls them into the conversation, without expecting them to fully receive what He has to offer them. (GOOD NEWS)

Jesus teaches and interprets the Scriptures for them

In response, Jesus hosts the meal and this where they are able to recognize him (in the breaking of bread)

The disciples run joyfully to tell others that Jesus is alive and that they have encountered Him. (sending)

And so we do the same …

we gather (responding to God’s invitation)

we listen (to the Word as revealed by the book)

And these four actions can be thought of as the four "load-bearing walls" of a worship structure

Prayer & Music are windows and doors in these walls

Christian Worship is multi-directional: at the very least upward & outward…

The same worship that Gathers us and Re-Orients us in the Story of God at work in the world - most specifically in the birth, life, death, resurrection & ascension of Jesus - is the one that we respond to in worship, and then in the world in which we are sent back into. Whatever life we had when we came to worship, is still there when we leave. But now our perspective is changed or shifted, or re-booted. We know as we are sent, that we are not working on our own but joining with the God who is at work making all things new. We are not sent out to hunker down and hide from the world God made and loves. But to engage and to love that world the same way we see God loving the world…giving Himself for it. Laying His own life down for the sake of her.

We may have thought we were entering worship to escape a difficult reality we are facing, but we will find more than escape. Comfort. Being seen in our moment of struggle. But also our place in a world that is much bigger and sent out to love and serve, even in our brokenness.

So worship is multidirectional. It guides our gaze upwards, yes. But then it sends us out with our eyes on the horizon…alert to the reality that we will meet the God we just met in the eyes of friend and stranger throughout the week.

“True worship is a transforming event whereby the worship that is turned upward and perfected by the priestly Christ becomes worship that is turned outward on behalf of the needs of the world.” (Constance Cherry)