The work of worship. . .

Every now and then you hear parents tell their children Don't you want to go to church?  It will be fun! or something similar.  It is not only about worship but about Sunday school.  It is the great lie of our age -- no less true if you enjoy it than if you don't.  That lie is that worship is recreation, that is something casual and easy and, well, fun.  Certainly some congregations have designed worship to be just that -- fun.  The people sit in comfortable, theater style chairs, sip on their vitamin water or Starbucks, and are entertained by the music and teaching for that day.  It is the kind of thing my old home-town weekly newspaper said of the social gatherings reported:  a good time was had by all.

Parents, do not lie to your children.  Worship is not fun or easy or casual or recreational.  God is not our hobby or what we like to do with our time in the off hours.  Worship is the most serious of business (though it is not at all a business!).  It is the encounter with the wholly other God who comes to us, unworthy and undeserving though we be, by the means of grace He has appointed and through which He does His bidding.  This is the holy ground of which we dare not tread lightly.  This is the presence of the Most High God which we dare not take casually.  

Note that I am not saying it is wrong to enjoy worship or to find joy in it.  Those are good things.  But worship is work.  A person ought to be tired after church.  I know I am.  All that singing and the work of focusing our mind on the things of God instead of ourselves is hard work and tiring.  But it is the work of the redeemed who know that their debt to God is greater than His debt to them.  It is the work of those who rejoice to know a mercy strong enough to rescue us from ourselves, forgive all our sins, cover us with a righteousness not our own, and feed us as the royal priests we know we are not. 

The solemnity of the Church's public liturgy is not a distasteful thing at all but it is work and what happens on Sunday morning only happens because of the work of many people.  They do it not for us but for the Lord in whose service they have been placed.  To be focused upon the Lord instead of yourself is the hardest work of all.  We are consumed with ourselves and how we feel and what we think and if we are cold or hot or hungry or full or interested or bored.  To lay this aside for even an hour or so is the hardest work of all.  This is the work of worship.  The Spirit is at work doing this -- making room for Christ in our full hearts and minds.  We are not there as children learning about life or as volunteers working for a better world but as the baptized whom God has redeemed through the blood of His Son to be cleansed and restored and reminded of the future He has prepared, the place He has set for us, and of the completion of the good work begin us and completed in heaven and not here.  We are being remade into the image of God and this is a pure, holy, and righteous work of God in us.

Too many Christians take Christianity as a hobby they practice only occasionally, after all the other works of life are complete, when the desire for relaxation and fun have been primarily filled by other pursuits, and we sanctify a little time back to Jesus.  Too many Christians treat this as if it were primarily a horizontal activity -- things we do for ourselves and those around us instead of what God does for us and the response this saving work engenders in us.   When, on the seventh day, God rested, He did not take a nap or catch a baseball game or watch a move for distraction.  He turned His full attention to what He had made and relished the glory of its goodness, made from His own will, voice, and work.  In the same way, Jesus sanctified the holy day not by recreation but by turning His full attention to what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had accomplished and relished in the goodness and purity of God's holy love.  We are called to meet the Lord where He has promised to be present in the same way -- relishing the love that won redemption for us, delighting to receive this grace when and where the Lord has willed, and responding with every ounce of our being in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

We have had it backwards for too long.  We worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship, as so many have said.  We have it all backwards.  And it is killing our faith.  The truth is thatI hope you get tired after worship -- the good tired that comes from investing yourself fully into what God has done and the response of faith to that marvelous and saving work for you.  And if you are not, well, I am not sure you get what it means to worship.