The Best Thing Going Today
Worship as promises kept
“No doubt God wants us to see him. That is part of his nature as outpouring love. Love always wants to be known.” - Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
In many Sunday services in my tradition, either the leader or the congregation recites the “summary of the law.” We stand to our feet, and recite the words Jesus said to the lawyer in Matthew 22:
Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.
We say this as a reminder of just what this is all about. How the whole Bible, in all its complexity, is actually a story of a God who just asks two things of the people He loves. “Love God and Love People” sells a lot of bumper stickers, T-shirts, and mugs. It seems to be the quick response of people who love Jesus but might be sick of institutional church or ‘organized religion.’ I get it. I mean, I’m as deep in the game of organized religion as one can be, but I get it. All these rituals and rules and isn’t it just about loving God and loving people? As bad as organized religion can be, I still think it’s way better than disorganized religion.
The rituals and ‘rules’ have their place. Each aspect of the service, the call and response, the written prayers, reading of long passages of Scripture instead of a single verse, reading the Psalms out loud together, standing, sitting, kneeling all work together to move you from the immanent—the stuff you brought with you into church—to the transcendent. It can be boring because you need boring sometimes in a world that is doing its best to overdose you on dopamine. It can be slow, but you need slow since everything else seems to be speeding up. It can feel like you’re not ‘getting anything out of it’ but maybe one single hour of your week can be spent not serving you. All of it adds up to a crescendo and a priest says “The Lord be with you.” NOT because they are hoping or wishing that the Lord is with you, but because He is. It’s a statement of fact. “And also with you” we respond, because if God is with us, then he’s up there by the Altar too.
If you believe in transcendence and have a healthy dose of mysticism in your life, this is the moment that the real presence of the Son of God is made particularly available to everyone in the room. In this moment we are joined in the river of worship which started at the Last Supper and is heading to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the Altar is a time machine like that. We take communion with the people next to us, with Christians in Mosul, Mogadishu, and Midland, with Christians who we’ve buried, and with those not yet born. We lift our hearts to the Lord and then, in the presence of God and the people who voted opposite to us, we are made living members of the Body of Jesus. We find the truth in what Frederick Buechner called “the Final Secret”
THE FINAL SECRET, I think, is this: that the words "You shall love the Lord your God" become in the end less a command than a promise. And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us—loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because he has been in the wilderness with us. He has been in the wilderness for us. He has been acquainted with our grief. And, loving him, we will come at last to love each other too so that, in the end, the name taped on every door will be the name of the one we love. - Buechner, A Room Called Remember
You SHALL love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, but not because you can. You SHALL love your neighbor (who is just the worst sometimes) as yourself, but not because you are so righteous. You shall love this way because you are removing you from the equation. Christian worship is the best thing going today because its the best way to completely get out of your own way and replace more and more of your desires with those of Jesus.
In wine and wafers, more of me gets replaced with more of Him. Our God, the one who wants to be seen because He is overflowing Love, makes a way for the impossible to be possible. And he does it three times a Sunday at my church!
I agree with you that organized religion offers us an opportunity to once a week (or more often) take a couple of hours and focus on God rather than on ourselves. No distractions, no devices, just listening and worshipping. I’ve been unchurched for a while now, and although my spiritual life is thriving through contemplation, I miss the reverent community found in church.
Thank you Drew. When in community I recite the Nicene Creed and the Confession I am making a promise to God, to those present and those afar to live each day in love just as God loves me. Peace.