Sunday, July 12th 2009

‘Being A Worshipping Community’


This morning, we come to the end of our series on ‘The Five Core Values of A Gospel People’. We’ve already focussed upon the fact that we are called to be a prophetic community, an inclusive community, a sacrificial community and a missional community, and this morning we conclude by considering what it means to be a worshipping community.

I think that, in some ways, this is the most difficult of the core values to comprehend fully, because we take it for granted that we are a worshipping community – after all, we here every Sunday morning, aren’t we? We worship God every week by singing hymns, by reading the Bible, by saying prayers, by listening to God’s word – so that makes us a worshipping community, doesn’t it?

And my answer would be: “Well, ‘yes’ in one way, but ‘no’ in so many other ways.” For so long – probably from the very beginning of time – we human beings have had a very limited view of worship and of what worship is (and I stress the word ‘very’). We have tried to put it neatly in a box and confine it to a specific time and place within our lives. We open the box and take it out when it suits us – maybe Sunday mornings, or at Christmas, or at funerals – and then we try to put it back in the box until the next time it suits us to take it out again.

In truth, worship just isn’t like that – or, at least, it shouldn’t be. Worship – within the Christian context – means ‘declaring the worth of God and glorifying His name’, and that surely mustn’t be confined to one day of the week, or a few occasions each year, it must be part of our daily lives and permeate every aspect of our lives. Remember what Paul wrote to the Christians in the city of Corinth? He said:

“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Our worship and our witness, he says, are not confined to the worship service, but extend to whatever we do. Why is that so? Because we are Christ’s representatives on earth – the Church is the Body of Christ – and so how we live our lives and how we relate to people reflects upon Christ and His heavenly Father. In his letter to the Colossian Christians, he writes:

“Whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

You see, we must live our lives to the glory of God, recognising that this is our act of worship for Him. Paul goes on to say in the same letter:

“Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”

There must be no divide between how we conduct ourselves in church and how we conduct ourselves outside it, at work, at school, at the supermarket, in the restaurant, or wherever we may be. And that point is pressed home by God in chapter 1 of the Book of Isaiah – God says:

“What makes you think I want all your sacrifices? ... When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? ... I want no more of your pious meetings. ... Wash yourselves and be clean! Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

Our whole lives must be worshipful, pointing away from ourselves and towards God and helping the oppressed and vulnerable. If they are not, then whatever we do in church on Sunday mornings and evenings is meaningless.

And that’s my first point this morning:

being a worshipping community is a full time occupation (not a hobby, or a pastime)

For the Christian, the whole of life is sacred and can’t be divided into different pigeonholes.

The second point I want us to think about today is this:

being a worshipping community is a whole body experience

I want to approach this in two different ways. The first way I want to look at it follows directly on from the previous point I was making.

Just as our worship as a community cannot be confined to just one day of the week, or to just one setting, neither can it be confined to one part of our being. Let me explain ...

The apostle Paul often referred to the early church as a body – the Body of Christ. For instance, in Romans 5, he says that “we are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.”

For a moment, let’s think of being a worshipping community in terms of the human body.

And, first of all, I think it’s true to say that

the worshipping community will worship with its heart

Worship must be a response of the heart, in that there must surely be some emotional response to all that God has done for us. If our hearts do not overflow with love and joy and thanksgiving for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Son of God, who gave His life on the cross and bore our sin, so that we might be saved from condemnation and reconciled to God, our heavenly Father, then there is something seriously wrong with us.

In verse 1 of that modern worship song, “Jesus, we celebrate Your victory”, it says this:

It was for freedom that Christ has set us free,
No longer to be subject to a yoke of slavery.
So we’re rejoicing in God’s victory,
Our hearts responding to His love.

That really is an essential part of worship: our hearts responding to His love. It is an emotional thing to realise just how much God loves us and to recognise the lengths He was prepared to go to save us and so it’s inevitable, I think, that we will respond emotionally in worship. That is why there are quite a lot of modern worship songs that are not theologically deep, but are highly emotionally charged and allow the worshipper to express their deepest feelings in music.

And yet our worship as a community, and as individuals, must be much more than an emotional response, much more than merely a thing of the heart. So, it is good that ...

the authentic worshipping community will also worship with its head

God has not only given each of us a heart, but also a brain and He expects us to use it in worship. With it, we are to discern what is right teaching and what is not – at the beginning of his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul writes this:

“I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.”

And in Proverbs 3 we’re told:

“My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment. Hang onto them, for they will refresh your soul.”

We are called upon to us our intellects, our wisdom and our powers of discernment as we worship, so that we are not misled and so we don’t worship in an inappropriate way – if we are led purely by our emotions, there is a real danger that we will. We must look to be made mature in our faith, so that “we won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

I spoke a few minutes ago of the Christian songs which encourage and enable us to make an emotional response to God’s amazing grace. Well, there are of course also those Christian songs and hymns which feed our minds and build up our Christian intellects – traditional hymns like many of those written by Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts; and newer songs such as ‘In Christ Alone’ by Stuart Townend and ‘From heaven You came’ by Graham Kendrick.

But being a worshipping community is not just about listening to our hearts and exercising our brains, it also entails using our hands

And by that I mean more than just raising our hands when we sing! The truth is that we also worship God as we serve others: by obeying God’s commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, we offer Him the most authentic form of worship. In Isaiah chapter 58, which we read earlier, God describes to the Israelites the sort of worship He really wants – He says:

“Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them and do not hide from relatives who need your help.”

The sort of worship God describes is practical: it’s about righting wrongs and offering help and support to the most hurting and vulnerable people in society.

The implication of what God says in the Book of Isaiah and elsewhere is that, unless we get this aspect of worship right, what we do in church on a Sunday is of little consequence.

And being a worshipping community also includes a willingness to use our feet

As we heard when we thought about what it means to be a missional community, God also commands us to ‘Go’ – to go and make disciples. This means moving outside the church building and taking the gospel to our communities. As we get out there and tell others of God’s grace and mercy, we are declaring His worth, we are giving Him our worship.

So that’s one sense in which worship should be a whole Body experience: we need to worship with our hearts, responding emotionally to God’s love for us; we need to worship with our heads, discerning the truth and declaring it; we need to worship with our hands, in the service of others; and we need to worship with our feet, taking the gospel into our communities.

But it’s also true to say that worship should be a whole Body experience, because it should involve every person in the Church, not just the limited few.

In the Church, we believe in the priesthood of all believers – the apostle Peter wrote:

“You are living stones that God is building into His spiritual temple. What’s more, you are His holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.”

Every one of us has a role to play in making the Church a worshipping community – you see, worship is not a spectator sport ... everyone is expected to participate and bring to it the gifts that God has given them. That might be through getting involved in active service within the community – for example, by becoming part of our ‘Green Team’ which will be doing a monthly litter pick-up – or through helping in some outreach activity, like Messy Church. Or, it could be by offering to do the Bible reading every once in a while on a Sunday morning, or to lead prayers every now and then. If you think you could do either of those things, do let me know after the service, because that would be of great help to me.

So, this morning, we’ve learnt that being a worshipping community is a full-time commitment; that it should engage every aspect of our being, our emotions, our intellects and our actions; and that it is the responsibility of the whole Body of Christ, not of just a select few.

Let’s conclude in prayer ...