Back to School: Worship

Revelation 4

After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ ² At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! ³ And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. ⁴ Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. ⁵ Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; ⁶ and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.

Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: ⁷ the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. ⁸ And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’

⁹ And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, ¹⁰ the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, ¹¹ ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’

John 4:7-26

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ ¹¹ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ ¹³ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ ¹⁵ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ ¹⁷ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ ¹⁹ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ ²¹ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ ²⁵ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ ²⁶ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

Sermon

So last week we were thinking about our purpose. We are made to glorify God and enjoy God for ever. It is the number one task on our to-do list every day of our lives. And as we glorify God and enjoy the relationship with God for which we were made, God can use us to share God’s love with the word.

But learning to glorify God and enjoy God forever, is not one of those tasks that we do once and it is done. Rather it is about being a learner – which is what the word disciple means – and just like learning any new thing (how to speak a language, how to drive a car, how to play an instrument), it takes time, commitment, usually a bit of help from others and some tried and tested techniques to make sure we make progress.

So over the coming weeks, we are going to think about some of the tried and tested things that have helped disciples over centuries grow in their faith, glorify God and enjoy that relationship with God. We are going to think about how we do them here – in church, together – how we might practice them ourselves during the week, and how they might help us reach out beyond our church community to bless others.

Today we begin with worship. But it probably means we have to take a moment to work out what we mean by worship. Because actually the word worship can mean different things to different people. For some people, it is about the music we sing in praise to God. You might go to churches where there is a worship pastor and a teaching pastor – one is in charge of the music, the other in charge of the sermon. But for some people, it is about the whole church service – the people of God gathering to focus for one hour a week on God. And then there is a definition of worship which is wider still – it is anything we do in response to God’s love and wonderfulness. It is an offering of time, skill, energy, effort, resources, joy or love, given to God because of what God means to us. So a flower arrangement, or a donation to the Foodbank, or a visit to a neighbour or a knitted shawl or a carefully painted wall could all be worship. Our friend Rob Harrison calls that sort of worship “something that made God happy” and it is a very important sort of worship indeed.

Why do we worship God? Again there are several answers to that question. First and foremost, we worship God because God deserves it! God has made us, God loves us, God has saved us, God cares for us and God helps us. Our worship is a response to the love and generosity of God. When a friend does something incredibly kind for me, I give them a huge hug and say an enthusiastic thank you. It isn’t forced or a duty – it comes from my heart. How much more is worship a response of our hearts to the God who has given us so much more!

But there are other reasons why we worship. Worship puts us right for the week. I don’t know if any of you have ever driven a car where the tracking is off. As the wheels aren’t aligned properly you can get all sorts of problems, but one is that the steering goes wonky. The car always seems to be pulling to one side or another. You think you are steering straight but the car isn’t driving straight. A quick visit to the garage however sorts it out.

We live in a world which is very beautiful, but also very broken. We are surrounded by beauty and generosity and love which points us to God, hallelujah! But all this goodness is muddled up with violence and selfishness and wrong priorities and unfair systems – in other words sin – which can knock our spiritual tracking out of sync. It can be easy to slowly absorb sin’s story of selfishness, death and decay and gradually veer off track. Worship is an antidote – in worship we remind ourselves of God’s bigger and better story of forgiveness and love. If we don’t take time to realign ourselves in worship, we will probably tootle along fine for weeks, maybe even months, but over time, our we risk our spiritual steering becoming wonky and landing us in a metaphorical ditch! Returning regularly to God in worship is like that quick trip to the garage which keeps us safely on track.

If cars aren’t your thing, here’s another way to think about it. Worship keeps everything in their proper perspective. When I was much younger, I was a very anxious person. I found work very difficult and would come home and fret half the night about mistakes I may have made. Then I had our daughter, Erin. And I noticed that when I drove home from work, I would spend the first half of the journey fretting as usual, but as I got to the halfway point between my work and her nursery, something shifted. Suddenly, I wasn’t worrying about work, but looking forward to seeing Erin. I knew that even if I had messed up at work that day, she would love me. Having Erin in my life gave me a sense of perspective. When we come to worship, we come to God who loves us, who knows we makes mistakes and forgives them, who will never leave us, who will always be there for us. Worship reminds us that while the world may be messy and difficult, God is God and God is love.

Worship, resets our lives, reminds us of God’s bigger and better story and puts things in perspective. But worship is even more than that. When we worship God, we join with the whole company of heaven in our shared task of glorifying God. When we speak about heaven, we are – to quote Doctor Who – entering the realms of wibbly wobbly timey wimey. Our worship takes place at a set time: 8am or 10am on Sunday or 10am on Wednesday, and in a known place: this church, here! But we also join in with the eternal worship of heaven, when we will spend eternity responding to the love and wonderfulness of God. As we gather around the table to celebrate the Eucharistic feast, we are joined by the host of heaven, all who have gone before us. In worship, we are not simply learning how to live better now, but practicing for the life we will live in eternity caught up in the endless joy, love and peace of God.

At this point, I am reminded of the wonderful story in The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass aged 37 ¾. Adrian is having an existential crisis. He doesn’t want to die. He is worried that heaven will be like a Sunday morning service that goes on forever (some of you may feel that they already do!) Finally, he is pulled out of his misery by a wise monk who reminds him that God knows him and loves him, and so whatever eternity is like – and both our reading from Revelation today and our very best experiences of worship here on earth are just glimpses – it will be beyond our wildest imaginings. So let us remember that when we worship, we do not do so alone – when we worship we join with saints and angels who, like us, rejoice in God’s love.

So, we have thought about the what and the why, but now to the how. How do we practice this first spiritual discipline of worship and weave worship throughout our lives. Well, to be honest, this one is probably the easiest: come to church. Make it your regular habit. Now of course, life happens, work patterns are work patterns, family commitments come along. I am not about to start taking a register and judge people on their attendance. It’s not about duty or guilt. Come to respond to God’s love, come to remind yourself of God’s story, come to share an hour of your week with God’s people now and in eternity. And come because your being here blesses others. Being together reminds us that we are not alone in loving God and valuing God’s ways. Being here encourages one another. Being here means we can share love and wisdom and burdens and prayers. Be it weekly, monthly, at Christmas, Easter and Harvest, come to church and make worship part of your life.

But of course, worship doesn’t always happen at 10am on a Sunday. In our Gospel reading, we have the Samaritan woman asking where she should worship God, and he replies that it isn’t about a place or a time – it’s about spirit and truth. It’s about our heart. Worship is our heart responding to the love and wonderfulness of God.

And sometimes that might be humming a hymn of praise to God when we wake in the morning, a quiet word of thankfulness during the day, a few moments of quiet spent in God’s company over a cuppa or listening to some praise music when we need a reset. But worship can be so much more – it can be anything we do to respond to the love of God. And so when we do any of those things I listed at the start – that flower arrangement, or donation to the Foodbank, or visit to a neighbour or lovingly knitted shawl or carefully painted wall or so much more – if these things are done to make God happy, to glorify God, they can be worship.

So our homework this week is to think about the place of worship in our lives. Most of you are regulars at our church service, but if not, might you come back, might you make joining with us in worship part of your rhythms of life and learning that help you follow Jesus? And for those of you who do come regularly to church, how might you take worship out into your daily lives this week. How might you respond to God’s love, reset your spiritual tracking and join the eternal joy of heaven in everyday moments of your day? How might you make each task you do this week an offering of love which glorifies God and makes God’s love real to those around us?