Worship

November 20, 1957
Akron
Originally Bridgeport February 21, 1954

(HASTINGS) phases: Anointing, Asceticism, Atonement, austerities, baptism, celibacy, chastity, communion, confirmation, confession, consecration, dance, deification, devotions, devotional literature, expiation, fasting, feasting, human sacrifice, hymns, images, idols, initiation, mysteries, oaths, ordeal, penance, pilgrimage, prayer, priest, priesthood, processions, prophecy, propitiation, purification, sacraments, sacrifice, secret societies, tabu, totemism.

--- There are wonders to worship ----- There are weaknesses to worship

There must be many weaknesses in an organized worship because there are so many persons who are consistently absent. There is the story about a man who asked an acquaintance, “why don’t you go to church?” “Too far.” was the answer. Then the second man inquired, “Why don’t you go?” and the answer was, “We live next door to one, and I hate to get all dressed up just to go that little way.”

In a story of the Virginia Colony of 1611 (Behold Virginia, by Willison) there is told the story of how the workers in the colony were compelled to attend church twice a day under military escort. After the bell “had tolled the last time, the (sentinels) searched the homes and commanded everyone who was able to walk to go to church right away. After the last had entered the church, the Captain of the Watch locked the doors and laid the keys before the Marshall, who then called up the roll – and woe to him who was absent without excuse.”

Many church leaders are proclaiming that the United States is the most religious country in the world, and furthermore that we are in the midst of the greatest revival of religion in our history. If this is so, there must be great weakness in worship, for during this so-called peak or religious consciousness, the national average would demonstrate that less than 1/3 of all church members are in their pews on Sunday. The ultimate in advertising weakness in worship is the church that has the slogan, “every Fourth Sunday is go to church Sunday.”

On the other hand there must be strength and wonder in worship because the converse proposition can also be stated, “why do so many people go to church?” We do not have to leave our homes to get the news; we can speak with our friends just by lifting the telephone; we can listen and see religious services through the airwaves; there are countless other and more glamorous attractions to capture our attention and money on Sunday and no longer are there soldiers whose duty it is to round us up and escort us to morning worship.

But worship has enough power so that in some neighborhoods the home-owners object to a new church because the church traffic, crowds, and noise would destroy the residential character of the neighborhood and interfere with their privacy. (Not a thrill for liberals).

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“Let righteousness pour down as a mighty stream.” When you read your N.T. again, count the number of times that Jesus conducted a worship service. “We will now chant Psalm 8!” Isn’t that a striking thought – if Jesus didn’t conduct worship services, why should we? Jesus thrust upon men’s consciousnesses the need for love and service. His whole life was worship. Even Paul, with all his submerging of the religion of Jesus, insisted upon right living and real faith, rather than the performance of ritual acts.

These germinating ideas which are at the heart of worship are the clues to the weaknesses, but also to the wonders of worship.

We no longer offer gifts on an altar in the old sense. But many people come to watch someone else worship, as in olden times people watched the priest slay the animal. One of the most devastating criticisms of the lack of depth of persons in responding to worship was made by a TV comedian. Henry Morgan remarked that he went to church with a friend. As they were coming out Morgan was impressed by the apparent fact that his friend had not felt a thing as far as that worship service was concerned.

Then Morgan went on to say, “Most people go to church the way they go to a filling station. They drive in Sunday morning and say to the attendant, ‘fill her up!’ They expect a full tank of grace. While waiting, they fall asleep and they wake just in time to have the attendant check the tank for the milk of human kindness. They throw a tip into his little basket and leave, figuring they have got enough to last all week. With most of them it runs dry before Sunday night. What they forget is that it is not only last year’s model, but that each year it suffers more and more spiritual depreciation.”

Henry Morgan’s parable has kinship with the criticism that is made at times of persons leading worship (SS and church). You have heard it

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You will find great weakness in worship if you come merely to be entertained. There was a time, perhaps, when the church service offered the most fascinating entertainment. The preacher might have been the most eloquent voice available. The organ and choir the best music, the Sunday clothes the most recent fashion parade. If that was ever true, it certainly is not so now. Let’s face it, -- in terms of entertainment, the church cannot compete with Sullivan, I Love Lucy, Wyatt Earp, the $64M question, Fight Night on television, Bishop Sheep, Elvis Presley or the Cleveland Browns.

There are persons who seek diversion when they attend church. They feel some sort of detached power when watching others worship; they find places where their particular prejudices are tickled rather than challenged; they manage to discover a preacher occasionally who is an entertaining performer. But the real wonder of the worship experience is lost when such are the attractions.

So much for some of the weaknesses of worship. But the worship service is still at the center of organized life of most churches. If there were not some values of deep intensity available, this would not be so.

Paul in his address to the Athenians in the market place, says, “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations. They should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, ... for in him we live and move and have our being.” Paul is saying that we are made for worship. If this be so, when worship becomes weak and flat, then we are denied the full flavor of that which is an essential part of ourselves.

The custom of weekly Sabbath was a development in religion. At first worship coincided with the seasons, when man had reason to be more aware of the mysterious powers that surrounded and enfolded him: seedtime, harvest, the shortening and lengthening sun. But the custom of one day a week set apart for worship had a dual purpose.

First of all it was to be a day when man should consider their creation and existence, when they reflect upon the mysterious, divine source of being. At the same time there was the purpose of a day of needed rest for weary bodies. To overlook either of these functions today is to deny the satisfaction of needs which the human being has recognized for hundreds of generations. Sunday, for many, has become a day of recreation. Too many times the other function is overlooked – that it is a day of RE creation also.

We cannot capture for ourselves the wonder of worship unless there is a renewal of reverence. In spite of the aroma of piety that is popular today, is not reverence a disappearing emotion? How often are we caught up by the holiness of the world that veritably our breath is taken away? Yet we miss so much when we hurry reverence out of our lives. Reverence is something that captures us, -- sometimes with the beauty of a flower, the glorious colors of a sunset, the smile of a child, the calm tragedy of aged life for whom the sands are running out, or the power of the fellowship of worship which runs from “heart to heart and from hand to hand.”

It was said of ancient Israel that Solomon’s temple was such a revered holy place that “all people longed to come there for pilgrimage and worship.” Psalm 84 which begins “how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea the sparrow hath found a house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my king and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will still be praising thee.”

The psalmist expressed the longing of the people of the outlying regions for the opportunity to worship in the Temple. Such a pilgrimage meant so much to them that they envied not only the priests and attendants, but even the sparrows which nested there.

But we cannot hope to the feel the edge of such deep religious feelings unless we renew the spirit of reverence. The conviction persists that there is something more penetrating than habit or social pressure in the great ceremonies of life which the church and the synagogue celebrate: birth, bar-mitzvah, confirmation, church membership, marriage, death. The church is the framework for the celebration of life.

There are people who do not need the regular practice of worship at a set hour each week to plunge to the depths and climb to the heights of this religious spirit of reverence. They can go by themselves by the river’s brink, or in the forest and come to that awareness of beauty, order, and creation which is beyond words. But most of us need the regular habit of worship to condition our emotions, to participate in that feeling which combines in thrilling intensity, joy, sorry, tragedy, and hope. If we enter “into his gates” with hope fullness and teachableness we can learn to appreciate inwardly (in the words of C F Von Weizacher) “body and soul are not two substances, but one, (it is) man becoming aware of himself in two different ways.”

Such may be the reward of reverence illustrated in the gospel according to Luke when it is said of Jesus that “when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.” Such an awareness is the wonder of worship.

But worship, whether kindled by a babbling brook, or conditioned by the regular habit of being one of a company of worshippers, cannot rest with the spirit of reverence as a detached, vague, feeling.

Worship, reverence, must be keyed to life itself. The philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined religion as the “attitude of viewing all our duties as divine commands.”

Worship is one of those rare opportunities each of us has to be completely honest with himself. You do not have to be in tune with the preacher to meet yourself as you really are. One man leaving a church said to the minister, “I want to thank you for the sermon, it did me a great deal of good.” The minister was pleased and remarked that not always did he know if his sermons reached people. The worshipper smiled apologetically and said, “I wasn’t speaking about your sermon. I left you a long way back. I was speaking about the sermon I preached to myself after I stopped listening to yours.” You can’t wash the new car in church, you can’t catch up on the housework, -- but there are a few places so well suited for grappling with the real problems, wrestling with the tensions that make us fearful, arrogant, rash or enraged.

It has been said about Immanuel Kant, whom we quoted, that he formed the habit of “thinking about his problems while gazing at his neighbor’s weather vane; and when the neighbor removed it from his building, Kant considered suing him because he claimed its absence interfered with his work.” The weather vane had become the trigger to his thinking.

When a person comes to group worship trying honestly to see himself as he really is; and his fears and hopes for what they really are; then worship can be a healing function of the spirit and the worshipper will go on his way clean and rejoicing. And that’s the wonder of worship.

Lastly, but primarily, worship can create wonder when it is related to conduct. John Murray Atwood emphasized that worship is a way “of winning a man to certain principles and implanting them.” Unless the spirit of worship improves conduct, or holds a person fast to high principles and noble duties, then it is of little purpose, In his words, “day by day, in the common round and in emergencies, if we are going to do well and faithfully, meet the danger, perform the hard duty, do over the oft-repeated tasks, we reach up unconsciously for perseverance, for fidelity, for patience, for courage, for determination, for good-will, for integrity, for love – for God, and find ALWAYS when we do, if we attend to the experience, that there is an upward surge of emotion that enables us to carry on. He girds us when we know it not.”

The Hebrews in the great devotional literature of the psalms, asked, “What does Jehovah require of his worshippers?” In Psalm 15, there is illustrated the temple liturgy performed at the door. The pilgrim asks, “who can worship at the temple?”(1) The priest answers (2-5) those who are honest and righteous, truthful, who refrain from gossip and slander, who do not harm their friends, do not insult neighbors, do not despise the reprobate, who honor those who fear the Lord, who keep an oath, who do not take interest.

Was this not demonstrated in the life of Jesus in the story of the temptation? Jesus resists powerful and seductive temptations to use his time, power to conduct himself so as to glorify himself. Jesus calls on those inward reserves of patience, courage, determination and integrity. He resists the temptation in a mighty tide of moral resistance, and when he does, we are told that Lo angels ministered unto him.

That is the wonder of worship.