Worship? Why?

Psalm 122

What is the best excuse you ever heard for not going to church? This past year I wrote, with my father, his oral history. He was in the Navy in the Pacific during WWII and this is his excuse:

In the Navy, I went to church once. And there was an earthquake. It was on Okinawa and they were having a church service and so I went to it. At the end someone said there had been an earthquake during the service. I hadn’t felt it but it was an earthquake. I figured that was telling me something. Don’t go to church or you’ll have an earthquake. So that was my excuse and I never went to another service while I was overseas.

I don’t think he needed much of an excuse. There are a lot of reasons people use for not going to church. And for some who go to church, it is a duty, not particularly exciting or rewarding, but they go anyway.

How different this attitude toward church is from the opening words of Psalm 122.
I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

The psalmist doesn’t say, “I said, OK, as long as you’re going, I guess I’ll go too.” He says, “I rejoiced with those who said to me”

Here in Rabat it would be very easy not to come to church. Why not relax on Sunday morning? Sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, read a paper, watch some news on TV. (I hope I’m not tempting you.) In fact, most of the expatriates in Rabat do not come to RPF on Sunday morning. Even some of the Christian expatriates in Rabat do not come to RPF on Sunday morning. Yet week after week, RPF is full of those who come willingly to worship. Why do we come to church? Why do we gather with other believers to worship?

Psalm 122 is the third in the psalms of ascent, psalms Hebrew pilgrims sang as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the three festivals each year. Psalm 120 is a psalm of repentance, the starting point for any pilgrim when we have to turn our back on our own pursuits and begin our pursuit of God. Psalm 121 is a psalm of trust that in the dangerous journey of life, God will be present with us to protect us from all evil. Psalm 122 is a psalm of worship, what people of faith all over the world do on a regular basis.

Why do people of faith go to church? Why do people of faith gather with other believers to worship?

Psalm 122 offers three reasons for worship:
Worship builds unity in the body of believers;
Worship is an act of obedience that nurtures us;
Worship centers our attention on the decisions of God.

First: Worship builds unity in the body of believers.

Our feet are standing
in your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.
4 That is where the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,

The psalmist uses an image that the Hebrew pilgrims knew well. As they journeyed up to Jerusalem, they would catch sight of Jerusalem from a distance. What today gets swallowed up by the large city of Jerusalem and the towns that surround it was a far more impressive structure in the time of these Hebrew pilgrims. There was nothing but road and occasional villages and then at a distance there were the well structured walls of Jerusalem.

“A city,” says the psalmist, “that is closely compacted together.”All the pieces of masonry fit compactly, all the building stones fit harmoniously. There were no loose stones, no leftover pieces, no awkward gaps in the walls or towers. It was well built, compactly built, skillfully built.

This image of Jerusalem, a well built, unified structure, is used by the psalmist to talk about the unity of all those who came up to Jerusalem for the festivals. Different tribes, living in different places with different customs, all coming together to worship the same God in Jerusalem.

For the rest of my life, until God decides it is time for me to leave this world, I will use RPF International Church as the best example on earth of unity in the Body of Christ. We are from every continent on this planet, an average of 25 nations represented each morning. We are racially diverse. We speak many different languages. Even when our language is English, the dialects of English can seem to be a foreign language. We are rich and poor. We are diplomats and travelers passing through. We are high church and low church. We are Anglicans and Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists and Catholics and on and on. Diversity is our middle name.

And with all this diversity, we are drawn together as one congregation. We care about each other. We bear one another’s burdens. Why? Because when we worship together, we realize that these people with whom we are singing and praying and listening to the word read and preached are the people with whom we will spend eternity. These fellow-worshipers are our brothers and sisters. When we worship together, the Holy Spirit makes us of one heart.

Just as Jerusalem was a well built city, we are a well built body. Worship brings that truth home to us. Sitting at home with our Bible and singing some hymns does not build the unity of the body. It is our corporate worship that allows the Holy Spirit to make of us one heart.

Psalm 122 points out that worship builds unity in the body of believers. It also points out that worship is an act of obedience.

That is where the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
to praise the name of the LORD
according to the statute given to Israel.

Why do we worship? Why do we gather with other believers in church? Because Scripture tells us to do so. From Genesis to Revelation, worship is the core of our relationship with God. We worship because God has told us to worship.

But as with all of God’s commands, the command is for our benefit. Worship benefits us. Henri Nouwen gave a series of lectures to a conference of priests which he published as a book – In The Name of Jesus. It is a thin book, but very profound.

The first lecture focuses on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness to turn stone into bread. Nouwen calls this the temptation to be spectacular. Time after time Nouwen says he wishes he could have turned stone into bread to feed those who were hungry. When there is a need, we find ourselves longing for a spectacular miracle to meet that need. When someone is ill we long for a spectacular miracle that will heal that person. (And let me say that it is not wrong to pray for a miracle of healing. Scripture teaches us to do this.)

What Nouwen says is that instead of seeking after the spectacular, we are to take on the heart of Christ for those who are hurting and needy. We are not called to be spectacular, we are called to care for others as Christ cares for them. Rather than longing for the spectacular, we are to pray to have the heart of Christ.

His second lecture focuses on Jesus asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” If we take on the heart of Christ for this world on our own strength, we will collapse under the pressure. The needs in the world are too intense, too numerous to bear by ourselves. Only when we have a love relationship with God will we be able to be sustained while caring for the world as Christ cares for the world.

Worship encourages our love relationship with God that sustains us when we take on the heart of Christ.

If our love relationship with God is not a living, growing relationship, then one possible consequence is that we become calloused and indifferent. We develop our cynicism so we can practice our faith and brush off the needs of the world. We simply stop caring for the world. We say that it is too much to expect and focus on our own needs, our own concerns.

We cannot care for the world as Christ cares for the world for any sustained period of time without this love relationship with God. Mother Teresa was admired by the world for her work with the poor of Calcutta. How could she care for the least desirable day after day after day? I’m certain that it was her love relationship with God that allowed her to do this.

Back in Princeton, NJ in the USA I was protected from many of the needs of the world. I lived in a comfortable development in a generally wealthy area. When I came to Morocco, I found myself exposed to needs that I had known existed but from which I had been protected. I find it impossible to live in Rabat with exposure to the needs of those around me without a strong, alive and growing love relationship with God.

If you pray for me, this is probably the most important prayer you can pray. Much of my faith comes out of my head and my heart is in need of renewal. I care for the needs of the members of RPF, the expatiates in Rabat and the people of Morocco. I have prayed that God would give me his heart for this church, the expatriates and the people of Morocco and God has answered my prayer.

But it is clear to me that I need my love relationship with God to be renewed and strengthened. I cannot go on without this central part of my faith growing, becoming more vitally alive.

So please pray for me. And pray for others in the congregation. None of us are capable of sustaining Christ’s heart for the world on our own strength. We all need a strong, living, growing love relationship with God.

Let me point out in this discussion of worship as an act of obedience that our worship is not based on how we feel. There are times when we don’t feel like worshiping. Obedience requires that we worship whether we feel like it or not.

Eugene Peterson says, “We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act which develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God which is expressed in an act of worship.”

I have experienced this many times in my life, the most recent being Friday’s baptism service. John Gerber built a wood frame and bought a green plastic liner for the frame. We filled it with water down in the courtyard where the church office is located and about twenty men and one woman were baptized.

I came to it feeling very inadequate for the task. Who was I fooling, I asked myself, to be leading in this service when I don’t have the same enthusiasm the others seem to have. I felt inadequate to pray for these men and one woman who were baptized.

I was concerned that I would be too repetitive, praying the same thing for each person. I did not want to go through the motions of baptizing. I wanted God to speak through me. I wanted to be genuine in my words and actions. Yet as I prayed for each person who came to be baptized, I sensed direction for the prayers for that person. As each person was baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a quiet joy filled my spirit.

I came to this act of worship in obedience to my calling and feeling was generated through the act of worship and obedience.

We come week after week to our services. There are mornings when the weight of the world seems overwhelming. Getting the kids ready for church is a dispiriting task. A driver cuts you off as you make your way to church. Maybe you received bad news during the week. It doesn’t matter how we feel when we come to worship services. What matters is that we come.

We don’t have to feel good in order to worship. We obey our Lord. We worship. And God puts into us a sense of his presence, his love, his joy. The worship service weans us away from the troubles and distractions of the world and allows us to sense the presence of God with us.

When we obey the command to worship, the love relationship we need to sustain us in loving as Christ loves, is nurtured.

Psalm 122 points out that worship builds unity in the body of believers. It points out that worship is an act of obedience. And it points out that worship centers our attention on the decisions of God.

There the thrones for judgment stand,
the thrones of the house of David.

The word “judgement” means “the decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.” Thrones of judgement are places where that word is announced.

We come to our service of worship and hear the call to worship, God’s first word to us. We hear the benediction, God’s last word to us. In between, we hear the Scriptures, God’s word spoken to the church for the last four thousand years. We hear the sermon, God’s word applied to our lives and modern world. We sing the hymns which are Scripture or allusions to Scripture. Our entire service is an opportunity to hear the Word of God that straightens things out and puts things in order.

Paul points this out in his second letter to Timothy:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,  17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Every time we worship, we hear again God’s word that helps us straighten things out and put things right. We are encouraged, rebuked, comforted, corrected, trained and directed.

Nowhere does this happen as effectively as in church. When I sit in my home and read the Scripture and pray and sing hymns, I benefit. But that is never any substitute for the much wider exposure to God’s word coming from multiple perspectives and experiences.

Worship builds unity in the body of believers; worship is an act of obedience that nurtures us in our love relationship with God and worship centers us on the judgments of God that straighten things out and put things in order.

The psalmist ends his psalm with a prayer for peace and security.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
7 May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
8 For the sake of my brothers and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your prosperity.

As we come to worship, the psalmist prays that we will be blessed with peace and security.

Let me read what Frederick Buechner says about the word peace:

Peace has come to mean the time when there aren’t any wars or even when there aren’t even any major wars. Beggars can’t be choosers; we’d most of us settle for that. But in Hebrew, peace, shalom, means fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself.
One of the titles by which Jesus is known is Prince of Peace, and he used the word himself in what seems at first glance to be two radically contradictory utterances. On one occasion he said to the disciples, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) And later on, the last time they ate together, he said to them, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” (John 14:27)
The contradiction is resolved when you realize that for Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.

The psalmist prays for peace, that we would be filled with God’s love that will allow us to endure anything we face in this life.

The psalmist prays for peace and security.

Security, in Hebrew, shalvah, has nothing to do with insurance policies, money in the bank and stockpiles of weapons. The root word is leisure, the relaxed state of one who knows that everything is all right because God is over us, with us, and for us in Jesus Christ. It is the security promised to us in Scripture.

Paul in Romans
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Psalm 121
The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Worship brings us again and again to this place of peace and security.

We were created to worship, we cannot live as Christians without it.

Peterson uses this image to talk about the importance of worship in our lives. If you walk by a meadow and see a man who is supposed to be cutting grass sitting down with his scythe, you might think he is taking a rest, not working. But if he is sharpening the blade so he can cut the grass more effectively with less energy expended, then he is using his time wisely. He takes time out to sharpen his blade so he can cut grass more effectively.

When we worship, we are sharpening ourselves so we can go out into the world to be used by God as his servants.

We do not waste time in our worship. We worship so God can use us as his instruments in this world.

I am grateful for the spiritual life and energy of this congregation. I pray that God will continue to bless us in our worship.

1 I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”