Why Worship?
A Sermon for Evensong
Some words from our second Lesson this evening: “Day and
night without ceasing they sing”.
In the parish church I served before coming here, we hosted
a day for the Royal School of Church Music.
It was a great deal of fun, and a good lot of singing went on. At the end of the day, perusing the visitors
book, I found that one of the children attending the day had written “this is a
beautiful church and a very good place to sin”.
Perhaps this is a good point to say to our visiting choir that we’ve
enjoyed having you very much and we hope that you have found this to be a good
place to sing! If you’ve found it to be a good place for
anything else, then so much the better.
Singing is a very important part of Christian life. There are very few places in our society that
we come together to sing. Sporting
events, pop concerts and church are probably the only places. St Augustine thought it so important that he
said that to sing is to pray twice. And
in our reading from the book of Revelation, we hear that the four living
creatures who sit around the throne of God sing constantly, day and night
without ceasing.
This passage is key to understanding the whole of the book
of Revelation. After the first three
chapters set the scene and then provide letters to seven churches in Asia
Minor, John the Visionary finally goes through the door and sees behind the
curtain. This is not, and let me really
emphasise the not, this is not a book that gives a step by step guide to the
end of all things. The book of Revelation is not, absolutely not, a
programmatic account of things that will happen or which must happen. To read it in this way is to fail to
understand it. What the book of
Revelation is, is a peering behind the curtain of this world to see what is
going on from the point of view of heaven.
Heaven is not a separate place, in the understanding of the book of
Revelation. For the book of Revelation,
heaven is the inner meaning of all things.
At the end of the book, that inner meaning is clearly seen on the face
of creation (as our first lesson would have us know was always the
intent). At the end of the book, heaven
and earth are married, and God dwells with his people.
But until then, there will always be things that are
difficult to see and to understand. Why
are there people dying to day from preventable disease? What are there Christians who are punished
simply for being Christians? Why does
God allow this to happen? Revelation is
written for a persecuted church, to encourage it to keep going and to keep
being the people of God. And throughout
the book of Revelation, we find worship.
Perhaps more so than in any other book of the Bible, worship is at the
heart of the book of Revelation.
And so, briefly, tonight I want to offer some reflections on
worship, why worship is so central to the Christian life, and what we are about
here in this place tonight as we come to worship. And the first thing that I want to suggest is
that worship is about putting all things in proper order, and especially
ourselves. The English word ‘worship’
comes from ‘worth-ship’. To worship God
is to give God his proper worth. In
worship we acknowledge that God is on the throne, God is the true meaning and
purpose of all things. God is on the throne and we are to cast our crowns
before him. And in doing so, we begin to
remove from that throne all the many daily idols that we put there – money,
status, ourselves, our desires, our prejudices, our duties and our needs. These are removed from the place of worship,
as we find that the throne is occupied by God.
Worship is the most human act of all, because it is in worship that we
acknowledge that we are human and that we are not god! Worship, as our Psalm (Psalm 148) reminds us,
is something that all creation shares in.
With angels, stars, mountains, hills, the weather and even dragons, we
too are creatures. We are made by God,
and we are to worship God. Worship
reminds us that we are human creatures, we are not god. Worship makes us more human.
Worship is central to the Christian life, because worship
acknowledges that God alone is worthy, and acknowledges that we are human and
not god. And in doing this, the second
thing that worship does is to give us a glimpse of what it will be like when
heaven is married to earth. In worship,
we catch a view of heaven. No pressure,
choir. That is the time, to jump to the
end of the book of Revelation, when God will dwell with his people “and he will
wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more, mourning and crying and
pain will be no more” (Revelation 21.4).
In worship, as we begin to see what it is like to have things in their
proper place, to give things their proper worth, we catch a glimpse of what God
intends for all things.
Worship helps us to be human, and it gives us a glimpse of
the time when heaven has come to earth.
And then worship sends us away to be worshippers in all of our
lives. John does not stay behind that
door in heaven, but is sent back to the exile of Patmos and the care of the
persecuted churches entrusted to him. At
the end of all acts of worship there is a dismissal – we are sent out to be
God’s people in the world. Often, and
tonight is not exception, we are sent with a blessing. But we are sent. We are sent to be human, not gods, in a world
that tries so hard to make us more than human and ends up making us less than
human. We are sent to be people in whom
others can get that glimpse of heaven come to earth. That is what it is to be a worshipper!
Tonight as we gather to worship God, we gather to be made
more truly human. We gather to catch a
glimpse of heaven come to earth. And we
gather to be sent away as worshippers, to live as human beings in the midst of
an inhuman world and to offer the vision of God dwelling with his people to those
who we meet. Let this be our song in the
days ahead: “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”. Amen. Let it be so.
Given at Derby Cathedral. 23.2.13.
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