1.
Grace, mercy,
and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Why do we gather here for
worship every Lord’s Day? Is worship
really necessary for us as Christians, or is it something that’s irrelevant in
our modern age when we can catch a sermon or a worship service on the TV,
radio, and the internet in the comfort of our own car and our own homes? In our message from God’s Word today we’re going
to see that worship is important to our lives as Christians and how God serves
us through, “The Worship We Share,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
One Sunday
morning 40 Hell’s Angels roared up into the parking lot of a church in Concord,
California, just as the service began. One
of the bikers got off of his motorcycle, walked into the church, and sat down. The rest of the motorcycle gang stood at the
edge of the parking lot, smoking and waiting for the service to end. The congregation held its breath, wondering
what would happen next. When the service
ended, some church members invited the bikers in for coffee, it must have been
a Lutheran church. Some came. During the conversation over coffee in the
fellowship hall, the congregation learned why the lone Hell’s Angel had come to
the worship service. It seems he’d
broken the gang’s “code” somehow, and his fellow bikers had punished him by
making him go to church. Maybe going to
church is punishment for some people. Maybe even some of us here have found it
painful at times. Maybe more than one or
two of us wince when we sing the lines of the hymn, “Grant us courage for the facing of this hour.”
3.
Just what makes
worship painful at times? A worship
service can be poorly planned. Some
sermons are less inspiring than others.
But, those aren’t the only things that get in our way. Sometimes we who worship in a liturgical
setting don’t understand the meaning behind what we say and do together in worship. Then it’s easy to go through the motions of
the service and leave 60 minutes later unchanged by the Word of God. Instead of a blessing, worship becomes a bore. When we let
this happen to us week after week, we may begin to resent the time we spend
in church. We may look for reasons to
attend less often. We may show up, but
use our time to plan next week’s menus or what we need to get done at work or
at home. Or, we may congratulate
ourselves on “doing what good people do”
showing up in church on Sunday. Or, we
may come with an attitude that expects the sermon and the ceremonies to impress
us and, if not, we’ll find better entertainment somewhere else.
4.
Even if nothing
quite this drastic happens, we may suffer in other ways. We may find ourselves valuing our time of
prayer and Bible study through the week more than the time we spend in worship. We may “get
more out of” being alone with God than from being with God and His people
in church. What a tragedy. What a tragedy when we realize even a few of
all the wonderful things God wants to do for us in worship. When the Holy Spirit gathers us together as
the body of Christ to worship, we stand on the edge of eternity. Heaven touches earth. The God who created the universe moves His
throne to the place in which we gather. In
grace, He comes to us to receive our praises, forgive our sins, hear our
prayers, and speak His powerful, freeing Word into our hearts. We join the angels in their delight standing
in God’s presence to enjoy His love as we lift our voices to honor the Holy One. The psalmist writes in Psalm 16:11, “You will fill me with joy in Your presence,
with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.”
That will happen in its fullness in heaven. But, that eternal joy can be part of our
worship now. Think of it! We as God’s people can praise Him in a way
more fully than the angels themselves!
How can this be? Because we
worship as the redeemed, the ones bought back from Satan’s terrible grasp by
our Lord Jesus who’s taken away the sins of the world--your sins and mine. The holy angels don’t know the grace of God
in that way, but we can! And we worship
our Lord and Savior for it! And as we
worship together, we practice the praise song we’ll shout throughout eternity
on that day when we enter God’s presence in heaven as the Apostle John
describes for us over and over again in the Book of Revelation.
5.
We don’t need to
pit personal prayer, meditation, and Bible Study against worship in God’s house
with God’s people. Scripture tells us
both are important. God wants to meet
with us, to touch us with His grace in both settings. And both personal Bible Study and worship can
work together. When a person grows more
deeply in the study of God’s Word, their worship will also cause them to grow
and mature in the Christian faith. This
gives us another reason to learn to understand the liturgical heritage we share. As we grow in our understanding of the
elements of the liturgy, we can use these elements in our own private
devotions. As they become more
meaningful to us in our personal prayer lives, they will carry more meaning as
we gather with God’s people in worship.
And, they will mean more to us as we use them in our own personal
devotions during the week.
6.
Literally
millions of God’s people down through the centuries have found their personal
devotional lives tied up in their corporate worship lives. The liturgy we use has developed over 2000
years of Christian worship. Lutherans
aren’t alone in using the liturgy. The
Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches also use it. Why would Lutherans bring into their worship
a form of worship left over from the Roman Catholic Church? We need to remember that Luther and his
coworkers didn’t create a new church. Rather,
they reformed the church that was still there, though corrupt. They followed the “principle of retention.” Retaining the traditional teachings of the
church and practices except where these conflicted with the Bible. Lutherans respect the tradition of the
church, not “tradition” with a capital T, as exemplified by the Roman Catholic
Church, which bases its theology on Scripture plus the “tradition”--the decrees
of popes and councils. Instead, we as
Lutherans base our faith on Christ alone, believing that the Scriptures alone,
are as Luther said, “the cradle in which
we find Jesus.” Human beings put the
liturgy together, but it’s anchored in the Holy Scriptures and filled with
quotations from the Bible. We use the
liturgical traditions of the Church, not for their own sake, but because they
put us in contact with the Word of God, which is His means of grace.
7.
Maybe you’ve
begun to ask yourselves exactly what we mean when we use the word liturgy. The word “liturgy” comes from the Greek
word leitourgia, which means, “public
duty.” It’s a prescribed form of worship like our service of Holy Communion,
but it can be other worship services as well, like Matins or Vespers. We believe
that our Lutheran practice of worship using the liturgy must be centered in our
Lord Jesus Christ and His cross. The
essence of our worship centers on the cross of Christ. Because God acted in Jesus to redeem us poor
sinners when we were helpless and in rebellion against Him, we can now come
together as His family to hear the Gospel.
This Good News involves much more than mere words spoken by a human
being with kind intentions. No, it’s the
Gospel of God that we hear and speak to one another.
8.
This Gospel
doesn’t just inform us about what Christ has done; it transforms us by
conveying to us the grace of God through His Word. You hear me say to you as your pastor, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” We speak together the words of the Creed,
reminding one another of the truth that has set us free, the truth that’s now
at work in us, with God’s power continuing to give us freedom and peace. We listen to the sermon, centered in the
cross of Christ, and we receive the grace of God that comes in His Word to
soothe our hurts, clarify our dilemmas, and comfort us in our pain knowing that
our Lord Jesus is with us. We receive
the body and blood of our Lord Jesus along with the bread and the wine in the
Lord’s Supper that gives to us the forgiveness of sins, life, and
salvation. We Lutherans believe that
something very real happens to us when we worship together as the people of God. We don’t just hear about forgiveness; it’s
given to us. We don’t just tell one
another about freedom from sin, death, and Satan’s power; the chains that
anchor us to our old sinful ways drop away.
We come together to receive from our Heavenly Father the freedom and
power He makes available to us in His Word and Sacraments. And then we respond to that freedom and use
that power to return to Him the praise and honor He so richly deserves.
9.
Once a Christian
grasps the centrality of God’s action in our Lutheran approach to worship, the
question of going somewhere else to “get more out of” worship goes away. Remember how at one point in Jesus’ ministry
a number of followers left the Lord and how Jesus turned to the 12 and asked
them, “you don’t want to leave too, do
you? And Simon Peter answered for
himself and the other disciples, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68). What more could God’s children “get out of”
worship? Why would we want to
participate in a service where the cross of Jesus wasn’t central? Where those who lead and those who act don’t
expect God to act, forgive, and free us as His Word is preached and His grace
toward us in Jesus is declared? Jesus is
the object of our faith. He’s the
foundation that will never move. He’s our
Rock & Cornerstone. In our worship
we focus on Him alone. We, “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and
perfecter of our faith,” who endured the cross in our place (Heb. 12:2). We praise our God-- Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, who has redeemed us and who stoops down in His grace to bring that
redemption to us (Ps 18;35; 40:16-17).
All this leaves us with a better understanding of what God does for us
when we gather to worship Him. I pray it
leaves each of us with an interest in learning more about the elements of our
worship services we use so that our worship will grow more meaningful to
us. And I pray that it leaves each of us
with a sense of excitement as we
anticipate coming to God’s House in a few days to worship Him there with all
God’s people, with our brothers and sisters in God’s family. God bless your worship both now and
forever! Amen.
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