Romans 12:1-10
What would a community look like if it placed worship at the core of everything it is and does? That's a huge question really, but perhaps we can spend some time imagining and thinking and dreaming what our answer might be.
For me, worship is about a connection between a creature and its creator, the source of life. It is the recognition that my life, with all its blessings and challenges, all the people around me, all the opportunities I have had, all the pleasures of the body, all the beauty of creation, is a gift and flows from the love of God. Recognition, awakening, seeing, knowing that God is good: this is the beginning of worship. When even the smallest glimpse of that comes into our view, our natural response is worship, to give something of ourselves back, to offer our voice, to move our bodies, to exercise our minds, whatever we have within our control is given as an expression of wonder, love, and praise. But it grows and develops from there of course. Paul, in our reading, speaks of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. Our bodies, our minds, our spirits, all are involved when we respond to the mercy and love of God. And for me the most important thing to remember about worship is this: it always connects us to those beyond ourselves. Worship assumes the ‘we’ rather than the ‘I.’ That’s not to say we can’t worship alone, or that our individual response to God isn’t important. But it is to say that we reach a fulness when we worship together with others. And our worship isn’t even limited to the ‘we’ in this room. The Scriptures speak of the host of heaven, those who have gone before us, worshipping God day and night. When we worship, we join a great multitude past present and future, offering to God our praise and swimming in the great ocean of God’s love.
I could go on. Worship is the heartbeat of our Christian lives as individuals and as the universal Church. But we come back to that original question: What would a church with worship as a core value look like? I want to suggest a number of clues which might lead to the accusation that we are a worshipful community.
The first clue: a multi-voiced worshipping community. Multi-voiced doesn’t mean lots of people talking at once. Rather it means lots of different voices are given the space and the freedom to speak. So much of our traditional way of doing church is one person at the front speaking, the rest looking on in awe and wonder collecting every word the preacher says! The problem with that approach is that the church is much more interesting than one person can represent. We are a diverse community at LUFC. We come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, have different understandings about God and our faith, we like different music, dress differently, and so on. So does our worship reflect that diversity? I think it does in many ways, but we could grow in this couldn’t we? A multi-voiced church is our first clue, offering God a rich and diverse praise, recognising that diversity is one of God’s deepest desires for God’s creation.
The second clue: a mutually-loving community. When worship is at the core of our lives together the natural outcome is love for one another. Paul speaks about this in our reading. He urges us to love one another with all sincerity. Let love be sincere or genuine. What is the connection between worship and love? Well the connection is the one we all are worshipping. God is love. And those who worship God are stepping into that realm of love. The longer you spend in the company of God, the more loving you become.
So what might that look like? Building each other up, sharing each other’s burdens, taking time to be together, handling our disagreements well: these are all expressions of a church that places worship at the core of our values. When worship lives there at our communal heart, our lives together become ones of mutual love.
The third clue: a making-whole community. A making whole community is another way of saying a place of healing. Worship, individual or communal, can be a profound place of healing and making whole. In worship, we might find some of our deep fears are released. In worship, we might discover old wounds have a soothing balm placed over them. In worship, we reach out to a God who longs to bring us alive and make us whole. And in worshipping together as a community, we make room for each other’s journey of healing. We forgive one another, we accept one another, we live in the mystery of God who can turn every sorrow into joy. Worship can be a wonderful place of healing; as a community that places worship at its core, we long to discover that healing for ourselves, and to be a place where anyone who comes can be made whole.
The final clue is this: a making-good-decisions community. Paul speaks about this wonderful word ‘discernment.’ Holding onto the ways of God, living a worshipful life, you will be set free to understand what God’s desires are for our lives and for God’s world. Worship is about God, about us surrendering to the ultimate Other. We put aside our own plans so that we can dive together into the flowing river of God. Discernment, the processes of discovering what is good for us to do, is sometimes a slow and difficult process. It involves us all being willing to give up our own plans and prejudices in order to hear more clearly what God would have us do. That really isn’t easy. But in worship it becomes more possible. Because worship is about getting closer to God, hearing and sensing what God is like. We hear God’s heartbeat, and we sense God’s tears for the places and people who are hurting. And that gives us our marching orders, that sets our agendas, so that we become a people who make good decisions. When worship is a core value, the community that is shaped by those values takes time to listen to God and each other.
Having found the clues, I want to unmask our church as a worshipping community! That’s not to say we can tick it off our list. There is much for us to learn, and perhaps lots for us to unlearn. We might need to make some changes, we might need to give up things we have done for a long time. But if our desire as a people of God is to place worship at the core, then all kinds of wonderful things will flourish among us. So my questions are twofold: first, what is yours to do? In other words, how do you need to be challenged about your life of worship? And second, what is ours to do. In other words, as a church, where are the places we need to grow in worship?
May God give us all the desire to find God in the place of worship. May our worship be life-giving to us and honouring to God. And may we become the kind of community of faith that includes every voice, that loves one another well, that is a place of healing, and that hears the voice of God. Amen.
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