Why do we worship the way we do? Where do we get the idea that worship should be something that is done all together on a Sunday morning, in a special room, in a special building called a church? (Of course with Zoom and this pandemic we are proving those don’t have to be limits!) Why do we set up seating the way we do? Why do we have a sermon and music and Bible reading and prayer and sometimes communion and all that sort of stuff?
The truthful answers to most of
these things -for us- is because that’s just what we’re used to. It’s what we’ve grown up doing, or it’s just
what every other church does. We just
assume that’s the way worship should be done.
Perhaps another question isn’t why
do we worship the way we do, but why do we worship at all? What is the purpose?
When I was a kid I remember
comparing worship services with other church-going friends. It seemed like all Lutherans worshipped basically
the same way. And all United Methodists
worshipped the same way. And all Roman
Catholics worshipped the same way. And
all UCC worshipped the same way, and so on.
It seemed like what made church denominations distinct was the way they
worshipped.
There
was also comparing of worship furnishings.
Why did some churches have simple things and other churches had all
sorts of elaborate worship stuff around?
Of course of great importance to kids (and adults too if they admit it)
is how long does the preacher talk each week?
Kids will also have deeper questions
that adults have too, but are too shy to ask.
Things like, what kind of worship does God like the most? Or, perhaps they think that God is happy with
you if you go to worship and maybe upset with you if you don’t. For those people going to worship means
finding the church whose worship is the most lively or engaging; or perhaps
what church has the best music, the most entertaining sermons; or the shortest
service.
Anyway, what is the purpose of worship? Is it to make God happy with us? Is your plan on judgment day to hold up a
worship attendance chart and show you’ve attending the requisite percentage of
services?
And
again, why do we do what we do?
The answer to why worship is
simple. It is God’s gift to us, for our
building up, for our nourishment. It is
not our gift to God. Participating in
worship should be like sitting down to a nourishing meal. Avoiding worship then is starving yourself of
nourishment.
The
answer to why we do what we do is very complicated. Christian worship has developed over
centuries. What we do here on a Sunday morning
is based on worship in the 4th century. That’s when Christianity went from being an
illegal religion in the Roman Empire to being not only legal, but the official
religion of the Roman Empire. If you’re
interested in learning how worship developed you can borrow the book Christian
Liturgy by Frank Senn.
The
real question of why do we do what we do is something we should ask
ourselves over and over again. The Bible
gives no real guidance for worship outside of what we read in 1st
Corinthians today. And we can sum up
that guidance easily in two questions.
Does it nurture faith? And, is it
orderly? Orderly not meaning strict and
formal, but orderly as opposed to complete chaos.
The
Christians in Corinth had nothing to go on to build their worship experiences. They were Christians who had converted from
what we would call paganism. Contrast
them with Christians who had converted from Judaism – or perhaps we should call
them Jews who accepted Jesus as the Son of God.
For them worship was pretty easy.
They just kept doing what they were already doing. Many of them even worshipped in the same
synagogues. There is a second century
writing called The Didache which is a manual for church order. It is Jewish/Christian in origin and it is
basically practical advice on tweaking Jewish practices to teach Christian
beliefs.
Churches
like the Corinthians, with non-Jewish roots, had no such blueprints. We have no way of getting a clear picture of
what their worship was like. The Bible
doesn’t say. But looking across the New
Testament we do get some hints. Biblical
scholars suggest they were gathering for these things called “love feasts”. They were basically potluck dinners. Wealthier people would bring more and so in a
very real way help provide food for the poor.
These dinners would include communion but it wasn’t a wafer of bread and
a thimble sized glass of wine. It was
significant quantities of shared bread and wine.
They
also appear to have had time for singing, teaching, and maybe more charismatic
things like speaking in tongues and prophesying.
People
being people, there were all sorts of problems.
From what Paul writes to the Corinthians it appears as if some people
are bringing food but not sharing. It
would be like coming to a potluck supper at church but only bringing food for
your family and close friends – or having delectable that you only share with
choice people while excluding others. It
also appears as if wealthy people were able to arrive earlier than poorer
people. They’d eat their fill and not
leave much for those who needed it most.
And of course, with large quantities of wine around, people were getting
drunk. (The only excuse I can come up
with for that is that the sermons were really long and really boring! Actually they probably didn’t have sermons.)
There
also appears to have been chaos. With no
real plan in place some people overwhelmed others with their talking, or they
interrupted. Instead of imagining people
sitting in rows facing forward imagine rows of tables with food – again, like a
potluck supper with no real plan or MC. We
find Paul’s overarching advice in the final verse we read, “…all things should
be done decently and in order.”
God
has not placed rules, regulations, and expectations upon worship. No one form of worship is more pleasing to
God than another. The only rule is that
it be done to nurture faith and help people grow. Just as there are a variety of people we
should expect there to be a variety of worship.
I
think it is our loss when the only way we worship is to have a preplanned
service printed in a bulletin, sit in rows facing forward, politely listen
during a sermon, and then in a very solemn way receive a scrap of bread and
trace of wine. Yes, there is much to be
said for that. But it should not be our
only way.
You
may remember that we have experimented with many things over the years. Our Maundy Thursday service these last
several years has been more like the early Christian love feasts. We’ve also experimented with the dinner
church model during Lent. There cooking
is a part of the worship experience too.
Plus there is clean-up! The whole
point is to move worship beyond just an orderly intellectual exercise and into
something truly interactive and tangible.
What
happens many Sunday mornings when there are visitors? We try to be friendly. We welcome them, offer any help, hope they
feel at home; but for the most part there is no real interaction until coffee
hour. Contrast that with what it is to
cook with someone and share a meal.
These are also valid and important ways of building Christian community
through worship.
As
the dean of our conference I am working with several churches on the verge of
closure. Congregations think that in
order to be a viable community of faith they need to own and operate a
building, have a weekly formal worship service on a Sunday morning, have a
pastor there to give a decent sermon, and have everything else that goes along
with it.
Again,
all of these things have their place, but we are missing the richness of ways
God will nurture our faith when we limit it to a formal event once a week on a
Sunday morning.
It
is a real struggle, but I am trying to convince congregations that they can be
very vital and valid churches if they do what their faith ancestors did in the
love feasts. They could be any day of
the week or time. They wouldn’t need a
pastor at each and every one.
But
old ways of finding meaning are deeply entrenched. That is simply reality. But again, whether our church is flourishing
or dying, it is our loss when we only worship in the way we do on Sunday
mornings.
My
prayer is that we can embrace the fulness of worship opportunities that can be
made, that we be creative, experiment, and explore. Ultimately our faith is not buildings and
rituals it is the faith of Christ alive and growing in our hearts making a real
impact in this world.
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