Worship Matters

Week after week for two thousand years, Christians have gathered for worship, an act that makes sacred a place and time, for in that place and in that time God’s Word is proclaimed and we respond to it in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. This living Word of God is Christ himself, who is, who was, who is to come. This Word was in the beginning, was with God, was God—is God.

This Word comes to us through the reading of scripture, the preaching of sermons, the sharing of wine and wheat, the washing of baptismal water, the conversation and consolation of our neighbors. This Word—made flesh in these things—dwells among us. It takes root in us, lives through us, and dwells in us. It kills us and raises us. It calls us, gathers us, enlightens us, and sanctifies us. It blesses us and keeps us. It shines on and through us with grace and mercy, and gives us peace. It forgives us, renews us, and leads us, so that we may delight in its will and walk in its ways, to the glory of God’s holy name. It is the source and summit of our gathering together for worship.

We gather, called by this Word, because the Body of Christ is more than the sum of its parts. We are not Christians in isolation from one another. We are Christians in community. There is no “I am part of the Church.” There is only “We are the Church.” And it is we, the Church, who are called and sent for the sake of the world.

We worship because the world cannot. The world cannot offer up what is due God. That is Church’s role, on behalf of the world. The Church offers to God pure, unadulterated praise. The Church offers to God the uninhibited cry of pain and lament. The Church offers to God the gifts of time, self, and possessions as instruments of peace. Our ministry is one of reconciliation. As Christ reconciled the world to himself in the fullness of time by the cross, so the Church, as Christ’s body, continues the as yet unconsummated work of Christ in the here and now. We heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give to the poor. We encounter the reconciliation of God in our worship, and are empowered to carry it with us in our daily lives for the sake of the world.

In worship, as in Christ, heaven and earth meet. The divine and human intersect. The host of heaven and the saints on earth join in praise and prayer. Worship is where the rubber meets the road. Worship is where our lives of faith meet our lives of service, where love of God gives way to love of neighbor. We come from the secular, are immersed in the sacred, and then take the sacred back into the secular. Worship is the primary place where our faith finds expression and where our daily lives find meaning and purpose. We are strangers in a strange land, yet in worship we are reminded of where our home is; we are given a glimpse of the Promised Land. In worship, we poor, wayfaring strangers are given bread for the journey, Christ himself. In worship, the old cliché is even truer: you are what you eat.

Worship matters because what happens in worship matters—we meet God, this God who dies that we might live. We talk with this God, we walk with this God. We eat and drink with this God. We are forgiven by this God. We find this God beside us, inside us, and all around us. We find this God in every human being, because that’s where this God chooses to be found. And one of the times and places where we are closest to this God is where this God has promised to meet us: in worship.

Worship matters.