Worshiping God in Jesus Christ

Romans 12:1-2

Introduction

Few issues get Christians as worked up as their personal preferences when it comes to worship. There is a reason why people call it the worship wars. There is your side, there are the people who are worn, and there is a battle to be won.

We often think of worship as being about music but that is only one part of it. I was raised Anglican and we never argued over music because we sang the same hymns every Sunday. But I remember when the Book of Alternative Services appeared in the pews alongside our beloved Book of Common Prayer. What was this strange book with its modern language? I had very few theological opinions but I didn’t like them messing with the things I was used to.

Of course the kinds of songs we sing does raise the temperature of the conversation. I know of Christians who think it is completely inappropriate to ever use music instruments in worship. I know other Christians who strongly believe that the only songs that should be sung in church are the Psalms. Then there is the debate over traditional hymns vs contemporary songs. Do you know that there are many churches that would never consider singing a song written in 2001? Half of those churches wouldn’t like it because it was too new of a song and the other half because it is too old of a song. 

The past two years has really stretched our theology of worship. The other controversies were often about style. But the pandemic really shook things to its core. We saw online services as an option when people could  not physically make it to church. But what happens when the building is closed and online is the only option? For some congregations, the decision was to disobey the law and continue to meet because gathering in a church building was the only acceptable way to worship. Even if we went along with the restrictions, it did force us to reflect on what this says about worship. What role does the building play? How many people need to be gathered together? Is it required that you sing? Then there was communion. Some Christians may have seen online worship basically as internet teaching accompanied by music. But can you celebrate communion at home while watching an online service? Do you need a pastor physically with you to administer it? Can you have communion with yourself? With your family? I unwisely got into an online debate with someone who not only disagreed with communion in the home, he claimed that all those who participated were actively sinning against God.

While these have been hard days, I think in the long term, this will lead to some healthy theological reflection about what is most important about worship. Unfortunately, much of what drives the discussion is based on what we personally prefer about worship. The problem with that is the Bible describes worship as being for God’s benefit and not ours. How we enjoy worship is not a priority found in biblical teaching. Perhaps our starting point should be what the Bible says.

Living Sacrifices

The passage we are looking for comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul was a Jew and the Roman church was of mixed Jewish and Gentile membership. Paul spends a lot of time quoting the Old Testament in this letter and he assumes familiarity with those traditions. So when Paul mentions worship, we need to ask what kind of images would come to mind. Most likely they would think of the sacrificial system. If you have ever started read a Bible reading plan from Genesis to Revelation, you may have felt lost when you got to the long lists of the different kinds of sacrifices. You may even have given thanks that this is no longer a part of our system of worship. 

We need to take a moment and think about the importance of sacrifice for the Hebrew people. No matter where you lived, inside or outside of Israel, sacrifice could only be offered in the temple at Jerusalem. When the Babylonians destroyed the temple, the Hebrew faith had to reinvent itself because the core of its worship system was gone. By the time of this letter, the temple was rebuilt, although it would be destroyed again about a decade later.

While in one way, Jesus’ sacrifice had replaced the animal sacrifices, in another way, sacrifices were still important.

Paul speaks here of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice. Is Paul suggesting human sacrifice? In a way. By our body, Paul is asking us to offer our entire being as an act of worship. This is radical. Many Christians think that what God wants is an hour on Sunday mornings, a percentage of our income and the occasional Bible reading and prayer. True worship is about giving everything. That does not mean being in the church building twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. It does not mean putting your entire pay check in the offering plate. What it means is living fully for God. How do we use our time when we are not in church? How do we use the money we don’t put in the plate? How do we use our words when we are not singing a hymn or praying a prayer? God wants it all. That might sound like too much of a commitment but we commit to other things all the time. When I asked Amanda to marry me, she didn’t respond by asking how many hours a week that would require. We would be fully committed to each other and there is no time off from being married. Nor is there time off from being a Christian.

Reasonable Worship

But is living a full Christian life really considered worship? We don’t think of what we do Monday to Saturday as worship. How does this fit together? Well, Paul makes it clear that offering our bodies as a living sacrifice  is worship, although translators have struggles with specifying what kind of worship. Numerous translations say that this is our “spiritual” worship. Many others go with something like our “true” worship. While I generally don’t preach from the King James Bible, this is one case where it is actually more accurate: “which is your reasonable service.” The Greek word that so many translate as “spiritual” is the word from which we get logic. Logical worship seems strange, but reasonable worship is getting closer to what Paul is getting at. So what is reasonable about worship?

I used the example of Amanda and I getting married. I said that the expectation was that she be my wife 24/7. But that was not a one-sided commitment. We committed to being fully each other’s, not just when we felt like it or as long as the feelings were there. That is where Paul is going with reasonable worship. Reason means it logically follows from some other fact. What is that?

God is not asking for a one-side commitment from us, the way a master in the ancient world would expect to be served by a slave. We are to offer ourselves as a sacrifice but only after God has offered his Son as a sacrifice for us. God wants us to give everything to him but only after God has given everything for us. Paul would want to say to us: If the incarnation is true, if Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh, if he died for our sins, if he was raised from the dead, and if he gave us his presence through the Holy Spirit, what would be the logical or reasonable response? If we took all of that to heart, could we really limit ourselves to an hour a week and $20 in the plate? I’m not arguing here for greater attendance or giving, I’m arguing for expanding our concept of worship to what we do with our entire life.

Conclusion

Thank God for the COVID-19 pandemic. How can I say that? Isn’t that heresy? I don’t take lightly the suffering the pandemic has brought, including to people in our congregation. But one thing it has done is help break open the box that we have put worship in. We have been arguing over style and preferences for so long that we have forgotten who we were worshiping. This pandemic has ripped our preferences out of our hands and forced us to look beyond what brings us comfort. We grieve when we are not worshiping that one hour a week in the church building, when what we should be grieving is the lack of worship over the other 167 hours of the week. This is not meant to condemn but to challenge, starting with myself. What if God gave his all through his Son Jesus Christ? What would it look like if we gave our all back to God in our reasonable worship, in our living sacrifice?