Taking Part in the Common Life and Worship of a Congregation
Be the Church 2
This ministry of the members, taken from the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (For more information, check out my first post in this series), is partially about one of the first things that we think of when we think of church.
Worship is a vital element to the life of the church (at least in it’s current iteration). One Hebrew word for worship is shahhah, means to ‘Bow down’. Another Hebrew word used for worship is ee-vod, which means to “produce in service to another” this word is used both for work, and for worship.
In the ancient Hebrew context, worship meant the blood sacrifice of animals. Later, as the Law of Moses was enacted, worship also came to include other forms of sacrifice (e.g. grain, thanksgiving, and libation sacrifices). There were certainly assemblies of the people, especially around high-holy days, and the book of Psalms bears witness to music as a particularly important part of these assemblies.
Assemblies that we might recognize as such began more around the time of the Synagogue and house-churches in the First Century. The former were local gathering places (first in addition to the Temple in Jerusalem, and later instead of) where Jewish men could listen to Torah read. The office of ‘Rabbi’ (Teacher) became central to this form of worship, instead of the Levitical priesthood of the Temple structure. The Synagogue movement comes mainly from the reform movement of the Pharisees.
The early church began gathering on Sunday mornings, the day of resurrection. For Early Jewish believers in Jesus, this assembly would be in addition to their Synagogue worship on the Sabbath/ Saturday. These house church assemblies seem to have been formed around the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in ‘Love feasts,’ and the recounting of the stories of Jesus. As Paul and others began writing letters, these would have been read (usually in their entirety) in these assemblies.
After Constantine made Christianity legal, and these Christian assemblies could come out of hiding, the worship became more formalized (as did their institutional nature). Worship became more and more ritualized through the late-medieval period, when the Protestant Reformation sought to restore that worship back to the time of the Apostles (or, at least make it less papist). Reformers insisted that worship should be conducted in the language of the people (rather than Latin) and that the Lord’s Supper should be shared (instead of only eaten by the priests).
Today Christian comes in a variety of flavors, from the ‘high-church’ formality of the Roman Catholic, Episcopal/Anglican, Lutheran tradition, to the casual/contemporary flavors of the Evangelical and Non-Denominational traditions, to the fervor of the Pentecostal tradition, to the quietude of the Contemplative/Quaker/Taize/Monastic traditions. While there is great verity, Presbyterian worship tends to be somewhere between ‘high-church’ and contemplative. One of the chief texts for our worship comes from Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6:1-13
The prophet Isaiah, in the liminal space around the death of one king and the crowing of another, has a vision of YHWH God in the heavenly Temple. He may have been in the physical Jerusalem Temple, or his vision simply references the physical temple.
The vision begins with an understanding of the presence of God, whose presence utterly fills the space. Above him, paralleling the angelic beings sculpted in the lid of the Holy of Holies (the Seat of YHWH), are Seraphim (the burning ones) who cry to one another praise for the Living God on the throne. This CALL TO WORSHIP draws our attention to the Divine presence, and highlights the purpose for this space and time.
Isaiah, being surrounded by the ‘Shakina Glory’ of God’s cloudly presence, makes a CONFESSION OF SIN, stating that he is a man of unclean lips, and from a people of unclean lips. A Seriph takes a burning coal from the altar, and burns Isaiah’s lips (those which he just confessed about), and gives an ASSURANCE OF PARDON.
It is then, and only then, that Isiah is able to hear the WORD OF THE LORD proclaimed, saying “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah then is able to RESPOND TO THE WORD OF GOD in a declaration of, “Here am I; send me!”
The rest of the Passage is God’s CHARGE AND BENNEDICTION to Isiah. Interesting that while we form our worship service around this liturgy, the bulk of this section is in the sending of Isaiah to the impossible but necessary task of saying to this people, “Keep listening, but do not comprehend;/ keep looking but do not understand.” I think that this message likely reflects the frustration of the prophet who is not listened to, yet also is called to continue.
This Charge and Benediction is the “common life” part of this ministry of members. It is the call to not only join together in worship, but also to entangle our lives together, to be charged and reminded of God’s presence in our lives together. To practice on a weekly bases the seeking and giving of forgiveness. To hear afresh God’s word for us each day, respond to it in community, and then be charged to take that Word into the world around us. This ministry is about worship, yes, but it is also about living out that Kindom life practiced in the worship service.
Hebrews 10:19-25
The author of Hebrews has been laying out a case that the death of Jesus is his ascension to the position of High Priest, not in the physical Temple in Jerusalem, but in the far more real Spiritual Temple in the Heavenly Places. Through the blood of Jesus, like Isaiah, we are able to enter into the very presence of the Living God through worship and prayer. This worship; however, is not an end in itself, but an invitation to practice a new way of life, we are called to “provoke one anther to love and good deeds” in this experience. In our services of worship, in our fellowship and life together, we are invited to practice our Kindom Life. Meeting together in community is a vital part this lived experience. Can we, and do we worship together? Of course, but there is great benefit to worshiping and studying together, to see the same text from a different perspective, to be called together in worship of the living God. Hebrews, as is the case in much of the Christian Scriptures, is written from the perspective of the expectation of the imminent return of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God (shorthand here is “the Day”). While our expectation for the coming of Christ is less imminent, we are still called to live out and bring about the Kindom of God in the world around us, as well as expect it coming in fullness.
Revelation 5:6-14
John’s Revelation is an often disturbing and confusing book. The hope is found in the singular revelation that ‘God Wins’ that one day all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. This passage pictures the slaughtered lamb in the divine throne room of God (ostensibly the same one pictured in Isaiah) victoriously opening the scroll (there was just a big stinking deal about how no one in heaven, or earth, or under the earth was able to open it). When he does, the heavenly beings (here beasts, in Isaiah ‘the burning ones’) sing a ‘new song.’ And all creation, myriads of myriads, praise the Lamb and the One on the Throne. Worship is indeed a part of our eternal existence.
Other Possible Texts
Themes:
Worship: There is the obvious theme of the worship service itself, the flow of the Reformed service, the opportunity to practice asking forgiveness, giving forgiveness, hearing the Word, responding to the Word, etc.
Common Life: Note that this ministry of membership is not only about Worship, as in only about the worship service, but it is about participating in the common life of the church as well. I think that the service of Worship can be a wonderful lab in which we practice living out our Kindom identities, and the call to go and live it out (note that the Isaiah text is mostly call to worship).
Hybrid Congregational Life: One of the shifts in the 21st Century church, accelerated (but by no means caused by) the COVID Pandemic, is a shift away from exclusively in-person worship to at least a virtual option. To be sure there is a contingent who only wants to ‘get things back to normal’ and have regressed to in-person only worship. Like the writer of Hebrews, they seek “not to neglect meeting together, as so many are in the habit of doing.”
However, the increasingly digital nature of our ministries his has followed the trend of an increasingly digital element to out lived experience. For a while now, we have lived at least a part of our common life in the virtual worlds of websites and Social Media like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Tick-Tock. Savvy church leaders have been using these tools for a while, and many of us are seeking to use them in our overall ministry. Despite our assumptions about the situation, in a Pew Research Study performed during the height of the Pandemic, a large majority of respondents reported feeling a real spiritual connection through virtual worship services.
I cannot stress how huge it is that our worship services are now unbound by time and space. Five years ago, the ONLY way that someone could worship with John Calvin Presbyterian Church was to be in that physical Sanctuary at 10:30am on Sunday morning. If you were sick that day, too bad; if you were on vacation, tough cookies; if you were unable to get out of your house due to disability or age, we will see you at your funeral (but we would still like your pledge card). Now worshipers can attend in-person, virtually live, or virtually at a later time. Connections to your home congregation can be made even if your life does not allow for your physical presence.
To be sure, this adds an extra layer of complexity. There is so much about being together: the simple act of seeing and being seen, the idle chitchat before the service or during fellowship time, the chance to catch up and pray with and for each other. Virtual-only worshipers are unable to have these interactions. This is where other tools of communication (old ones like letters or a phone call, or new ones like sliding into their DMs) are vital to continue to build relationships and community.
As I tell my folks during Communion, through the meal we are united with all those who have taken it before, are taking it, and will take it; so uniting people across time and space is nothing new for the Holy Spirit, it’s just a bit new for us.
Charge and Benediction: our lives should be ones of worship, our service rendered. The worship service should not be something done out of obligation or to check off of our to-do list, it should be an encounter with the living God which changes our perspective. We are to hear the (sometimes impossible) charge of the Living God to go into the world proclaiming the message, to say “here I am, send me!”
Worship Resources
Call to Worship
ONE: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’
MANY: And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
Prayer of the Day
Living God, you have called you to worship you in Spirit and in Truth. You call us to enter into your presence, to confess our sin, to receive absolution, to hear and respond to your Word, and to be sent out into the world living lives of worship. You have called us into a community of faith where we can practice living your love in common life together. Draw us in and send us out in your Spirit. Amen.
Hymns
There's a Sweet Sweet Spirit (Glory to God 408)
God is Here! (GTG 409)
I, The Lord of Sea and Sky (GTG 69)