Community Church Sermons
July 2, 2006
Romans 12: 1-2 (The Message Translation)
Margaret I. Manning
I’d like to begin
today’s sermon by taking a poll of your ideas about the nature of worship. How many of you would say that ‘worship’
happens only at our service on Sunday morning?
Ok – now, how many of you would say that primarily, ‘worship’ happens
when we sing songs, listen to the choir sing, or when the bells play? What about when we pray for one
another? Hear the sermon? Ok, that’s good – how about this
question: Can a person worship God by
playing golf? What about working in the garden? How about taking care of children or the elderly? Can you worship God while serving in a soup
kitchen? How about when you’re on the
job, at the workplace? Can an
accountant worship God as she crunches numbers for her company? What about a person who is a janitor or a
garbage collector? Are they worshipping God in what they do?
Well, all month long
we’re going to look at some of these questions as we examine the nature of
worship. This morning I’m going to
suggest a framework through which we can view all these questions. I want to suggest that worship is more than
what we do on Sunday morning. Worship
is really about the way we live out our daily lives, 24/7 and that all of who
we are, and all that we do should be an offering of worship to God.
Our texts for today
develop this concept of worship as a way of life. In our text from Romans, the apostle Paul
tells the Roman Christians to ‘take their ordinary, everyday life – their
sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking-around life- and place it before
God as an offering….’[1] Our everyday lives as an offering? What is Paul talking about here? First, Paul wants the people to understand
that their everyday lives are sacred.
His statement erases the sacred/secular distinction with regards to
worship. We are called to offer our everyday
lives, so worship cannot be reduced exclusively to those things deemed
sacred – like a worship service, or the rituals used in worship. Nor is worship exclusive to ‘so called’
sacred persons, like pastors or other ‘religious leaders.’ When we limit worship to a once a week
service, or to certain ‘religious’ people, we fail to see that our
everyday lives are to be a worship service!
If we walk out the door from worship on Sunday and believe that nothing
about the rest of the week has anything to do with worship, then we miss out on
the true nature of worship, and we live without any sense that we are still and
always in God’s presence.
Brother Lawrence,
the 17th century Carmelite monk recognized that God was just as
present when he was washing dishes and working in the monastery refectory, as
God had been in the sacramental service of communion. His book, The Practice of
the Presence of God, is based on his understanding that all of life is
worship. He wrote, “This time of
business does not with me differ from my time of prayer, and in the noise and
clutter of my kitchen…I possess God in as great a tranquility as I do when on
my knees for the blessed Sacrament.”[2] You see, everything that makes up our lives
– our relationships, our activities, and our work, all of us – should be an
offering of worship to God! In some of
his other letters, the apostle Paul said it this way: “Whether you eat or drink
or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God”;[3]
and “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord
rather than for other people.”[4] So you see whatever we do, should be
seen as an opportunity to worship God!
This truth is so exciting to me because it means that even the most
mundane ‘whatevers’ of our lives, perhaps the most menial and boring
tasks, and all the ordinary living that we do - day in and day out - can be and
should be viewed as everyday, beautiful offerings of worship to God.
Now Paul’s second
point about the nature of worship is that our whole lives need to be an offering to
God. Sounds like we’ve heard
this before…but there is something more going on when Paul makes this
statement. When the apostle Paul talks
about an offering, he has in mind the sacrificial system that was the
centerpiece of worship for the Hebrew people until the destruction of the
temple in 70 A.D. As their first order of
worship, people would bring an offering – usually a live animal or bird, but
sometimes grain, or oil, or some other product of the harvest, and offer it to
God. These offerings represented giving
the best to God, and giving one’s all for God.
These sacrificial acts were a response of worship – offering life
and livelihood back to the Source of all Life – Creator God.
So, when Paul tells
the Roman Christians, that they should offer
their everyday lives as an offering, he is suggesting that they offer their
lives to God on the altar of worship.
Other translations say it this way: “present your bodies a living and holy
sacrifice…which is your spiritual service of worship.” So the call of worship is the call to offer
ourselves as living sacrifices, and as we grow in our understanding of God, so
too, should we grow in offering our lives to God, surrendering to God’s will
and God’s way. What do I mean
here? Well, if our whole lives are to
be an offering of worship, for example, we cannot hold onto bitterness and hope
to grow in our worship of God. To be an
offering or a living sacrifice means sacrificing bitterness and instead
offering forgiveness on the altar of worship.
Or, perhaps we feel justified to lash out in anger at someone who has
hurt us. To offer our lives as living
sacrifices means that rather than anger, we embrace that person in
love, through praying for him or her, or through acts of kindness and
reconciliation. So, Paul’s vision of
worship as a way of life emphasizes both the redemption of what we
often think of as secular or mundane aspects of life for worship, and
the continual development of seeing all of our lives for what they should be –
sacrificial offerings of worship and praise to God.
Do you remember The
Academy Award winning movie, Chariots of
Fire? The main character, Eric Liddell, was a Scottish missionary and an
Olympic Athlete. What I love about the
story of Eric Liddell is that he understood this vision of worship as a way of
life. For Eric Liddell, the worship of
God included both the calling on his life to serve as a missionary, and his
extraordinary ability as a runner. One
of my favorite moments from that movie is when Liddell say to his sister: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he
also made me fast. And when I run I feel His [sic]
pleasure.”[5] Liddell understood that God made him a very,
fast runner. When Liddell ran, he knew
God took pleasure in his running because God made him that way – and what
better way to worship God than by using the gifts and talents God has given
us. But, Liddell also understood that
worship included sacrifice. He was
willing to sacrifice the very thing he loved on the altar of service for God. He would not run on the Sabbath even if not
running meant his disqualification from his best race. He forfeited that race, believing that his
obedience to God was far more important that winning a gold medal. You see, Liddell understood and illustrates
for us, that the whole of our lives, our abilities, our talents, our possessions,
our activities, our relationships –should be placed on the altar as an offering
to God and a spiritual service of worship.
Eric Liddell’s life
illustrates another principle about worship as a way of life that is
highlighted so beautifully in our text from Psalm 100. After providing a glorious picture of all
the earth shouting to the Lord with praise, the exhortation is issued: “Know
that the Lord is God; It is God who has made us and not we, ourselves; We are
God’s people and the sheep of God’s pasture.”
You see, Liddell understood that worship is the only fitting response to
offer God because we belong to God. We
too can be reminded that God is our Creator and we belong to God whether we
acknowledge that relationship or not.
Since God is our creator, we owe God our very lives because as we do, we
give witness to God as the Author and Creator of life. Real worship happens in understanding that
we are God’s and that God longs for relationship with us, as a shepherd cares
for sheep.
Now, a question
might remain for some this morning - if my whole life can be worship, and if I
can worship God anywhere, doing anything, why do I need to worship God,
corporately in church at all? There are
several reasons why we need corporate worship.
First, our corporate gathering reminds us that worship must be at the
center of our lives. For Christians,
this is why our worship service begins each new week. The rest of our week is meant to flow out of
our corporate worship gathering.
Second, reminds us of whose we are, and how we should live our
lives. As the psalmist proclaimed, “we
are God’s people and the sheep of God’s pasture.” Living lives of worship flows out of out of our corporate worship
together as we come to know God and as we are reminded what our lives should
look like as God’s people. And this is
the most important reason why we need corporate worship – worship is primarily
about relationship – relationship with God and with one another. While we need times of private worship and
devotion, worship seeks its fullest expression in relationship with
others. In other words, we cannot
worship God by cheating one another, or lying to each other, or gossiping about
one another. We cannot offer to God as
worship our ungratefulness, our selfishness, or our neglectfulness- we cannot
offer to God our misbehavior and our misaligned priorities and say, “I worship
you God with this greed, or this sloth, or this lust”. It just doesn’t fit. Corporate worship reminds us of our
responsibility to live as God’s people with one another. When we focus our lives around pleasing God
and giving glory to God, we will live with one another in ways that worship
God.
So, the worship of
God is meant to be our way of life.
Gathering together as God’s people for corporate worship reminds us of
this and sends us out into our everyday lives with the challenge to make every
minute of every day, doing what we do, being who we are, and living with each
other, offerings of worship and praise.
Worship really is as way of life.
So, may your Sunday worship become your worship way of life, everyday,
Amen.