Weekly Devotion: Neverending Worship
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Every Sunday morning in churches big and small, people get ready for worship. Pastors might look over their sermon one more time. Church musicians practice the songs people will sing in worship. Parents struggle to get their children dressed and ready to head out to church.
Of course, for a year there was a period where we weren’t doing any of this, or at least we weren’t doing it in the regular ways. COVID kept us from worshipping in person forcing us to do things online. It also forced many of us to wonder what worship is all about. Why should we get up on Sunday morning to head to church?
In Romans 12, Paul focuses on how the church focuses on God. As Christians, we experience this awesome love from God. How do we respond? More importantly, how do we live?
Paul says, “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters,[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual[b] worship.” Paul focuses on sacrifice and worship. The church in Rome understood what sacrifice was. For the Jews especially, they knew it mean offering an animal up to God. But what Paul was writing about was the same and yet different. You see, in most societies, to offer a sacrifice meant something had to die. But that’s not what God was looking for. God wanted a sacrifice that was living. God wanted not a single sacrifice on an altar, but the sacrifice of lives lived for God. God wants us to sacrifice our own lives to live in the mold of Christ.
When it comes to worship, we think we know what worship is all about, right? It takes place in a sanctuary, there are hymns and preaching. Sometimes you have to dress up or give an offering or something. That’s what worship is, right?
But Paul is saying something rather different. He’s not that interested in what takes place on Sunday alone. Paul and God believe that worship is something that goes beyond Sunday worship. God wants us to sacrifice our bodies and THAT amounts to worship. Worship is not simply a place or a time. Worship in God’s eyes is also a way of life. What matters is what happens when we leave church on Sunday. This isn’t something new. The prophet Amos spoke to the people of Israel about their own worship:
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
In the time of Amos, people went to worship, but that worship didn’t please God at all. God didn’t care about the people’s worship the people were treating others with justice and dignity. God could not care less about their songs or their sacrifices if they weren’t offering caring for their sister or brother. Worship matters. But worship is not just what happens on a Sunday morning, it’s what happens after the last song is sung.
A few years ago I went to a funeral at a church in suburbs of St. Paul. As I got in my car and left the church parking lot, I saw a sign. It said, “You are entering the mission field.” When Sunday worship ends, when the video is done or when we are back in the building, and leave the parking lot, the worship continues. How will you present your bodies as living sacrifices to God?
-Dennis Sanders, Pastor