“I was glad when they said unto me, ‘we will go unto the house of the Lord.’”

           Everytime the Holy Communion is celebrated, after the introit hymn and Psalm, and the priest completes his personal preparation with the Lord’s Prayer, he then says the Collect for Purity, which is the prayer of preparation for everyone present. Then, as the rubrics instruct, he turns to face the congregation and repeats either the Ten Commandments or the two great commandments known as the “Summary of the Law” as they are expressed in today’s Gospel lesson.

           The Law has not always been part of Christian Worship, but it was added in the fifteen hundreds in the reasonable belief that a review of what God asks of us is an appropriate way to begin our worship. As we begin, we are reminded to put nothing ahead of God. Now in our worship service, now in the beginning of a new week, and now in the beginning of the rest of our lives here on earth, and now for eternity, we are reminded to put Him first. And the first thing mentioned in this reminder is that we should worship him. In the words of the catechism:” My duty to God is to worship him, to give thanks to him, to put my whole trust in him, to pray to him.” Worship, thanks, trust, prayer. But this duty is not onerous work, grudgingly done. It is the necessary outcome of our discovery of God’s love and our love for him.

           We are surrounded by many people who are not Christians, and many who claim to be Christians but who never come to worship him. The first step for everyone is to come to the realization that God loves us. Once we discover this basic truth we start to become freed of the bondage of our sins and all sorts of things start to come together. One of the most essential things that happens when we realize God’s love is that we want to worship him and bask in that love.

           We, as Christians, are part of something called “the Body of Christ”, and that our being part of that body, which is the Church, is what makes us Christians. This is more than just poetic metaphor, because as the “Body of Christ” we are able to share in that divine love that is the relationship between the Father and the Son. As Christians worshipping together we come to be absorbed right into the loving natures of God our Father and His Son, our Redeemer, whose body we are. This privilege is what we inherit through our baptism. Many people believe in God as all powerful creator, sanctifier, and yes, even redeemer, but what makes a Christian is knowing God’s love and then living and worshiping as an integral part of the body of our Lord.

           Saint Paul tells us quite bluntly that we cannot function independently from the body anymore than a hand or leg can live severed from the human body, and our Lord himself warns us that we cannot be apart any more than a branch cut from a vine can live apart. We can only be obedient to God’s will by worshiping him as part of the body, together with other Christians in the Church. But when we are told we must do this, by Saint Paul, by our Parents, or by our Parish priest, we need to remember that this is not so much an order to be unquestioningly obeyed, but rather an expression of what must logically be the outcome of our love of God and his love for us. Our participation in the body of Christ, the Church, and its worship is the outward sign of that love, rather than a simple obedience to a command. Once we learn that God loves us, then we each will need to worship and adore him, we will be driven to come before him. But this necessity to worship together that we discover then brings us to another issue we must deal with: the form of our worship. Because if we each choose to worship in our own way only chaos ensues, and our praise and adoration cannot be pleasing to God, nor are we operating as the one Body. We risk error and confusion when what we seek purity and light.

           So our public worship ought to be organized and systematic. The order and system we use today comes to us as an evolved pattern that has been handed down to us over the ages. The heart of this form comes to us from Jesus himself. He said “ when you pray, pray this way...” this means not only that we use the specific words he gave us; what we call the Lord’s Prayer, but that we should style all our prayer on that form, always remembering to offer God our adoration, confess our sins, give thanks to him for all that he provides us, and to offer supplications for ourselves and others. And since all worship of God is in essence prayer, our forms of worship have always followed that pattern. It can be seen quite clearly in the orders for Morning and Evening prayer in the Prayer book: we begin with confession, then adoration in the Psalms and canticles, followed by our prayers of supplication and thanksgiving. So too with the service of Holy Communion. While the specific order of things is different, we confess our sins later in the service for example, the features are still all there. We do this because Jesus commanded that we do it “in Remembrance of Him”.

           Other aspects of our worship are purely arbitrary based upon convenience or our particular sense of style, like the time of day we meet or the number and location of the hymns we sing. This leaves a great middle ground which is neither arbitrary nor commanded by Christ. This middle ground comes to us from what we call the Tradition. And remember that this word Tradition means not just that we have always done it this way but has a special meaning in religion. It means the continuous stream of the primitive faith of the Apostles’ time and how that faith has been understood and practiced. Tradition is the accumulated wisdom of the church. This is what makes us catholic. That we believe, teach and pattern our worship as the Church has always done in all places and times. An essential part of this Catholic Tradition is, for example, the Creeds through which we profess our faith. They are not found written word for word in the Bible, though they are thoroughly Bible based and were developed over time as a means to simply and briefly express the truths which we believe. We hold that if we do not believe what we say in the creeds we cannot claim the name Christian. The creeds, and the rest of the Tradition of the Church are as important to our worship life as the commandments of the Lord himself as found in the Gospels.

           We frequently hear complaints about the worship of the church being boring in its sameness. It rarely changes from one Sunday to the next, and people are often very vocal in their demands for change and novelty. Why do we resist this? There are a number of reasons. One is that as our worship reflects the divine perfection, it should only be revised in directions that make it more perfect. But another is much more practical in nature. Think of our worship service as a dance, a dance of adoration to God. If the steps were constantly changing, week by week, we would be spending all our efforts on following the steps. But when the steps are always the same, we eventually learn the steps and can focus on the purpose of the dance. Think of the Book of Common Prayer as footprints you can stick on the floor. After a while, as you learn the dance, you can put away the footprints and dance with pleasure and style, perhaps adding embellishments here and there, for variety, but staying with the same basic steps. As we learn the liturgy as a dance of praise to God, our worship becomes true worship from the heart rather than mere repetition.

           God’s love demands that we give him praise. Our Love drives us. But there’s no denying that we sometimes don’t feel like it, or are tempted to avoid him, So we discipline ourselves and come and worship anyway, whether we feel like it or not., practicing the dance until it becomes a part of us. And if we open our hearts to him from whom all things come, and truly put him first, before all things, we learn to come cheerfully to worship as a part of the Church, the real, corporeal Body of Christ.

           This drive that we have to worship and adore God once we discover his love for us, is what Jesus meant when he told the scribe that he was not far from the kingdom of heaven. Our worship is a sign and effective means by which we fulfill that commandment which is first and foremost: “ you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” All else pales in significance if this is our life and goal.

           Pray that God give us the grace to know his love for us and to love him always and worship him always in all that we do or say, now and evermore. Amen