Aspects of Worship (1) - introduction

The next sequence of talks (work, not commentary!)

Dear friends,

Apologies for the radio silence during the Easter season, I took a break and was then laid low (probably Covid) for a few weeks. However, a more normal service shall now resume! I am wanting to start a sequence - I'm not sure how many weeks it will run for, but at least half a dozen - on 'Aspects of Worship', with the aim of helping us to understand what it means for us to worship and, specifically, how the Church of England itself is called to worship. I've recorded an introduction, the text of which is below, and the video is available here.

Grace to you and peace,

Sam

Pentecost (Exodus 33)

The letter to the Hebrews says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God – but keep in mind that fearful here, as in the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, means to be filled with awe at the presence of God, to be struck with humility and joy. In other words, it's an awesome thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Moses is something of a prototype for this, as we have heard. He enjoys the presence of God, speaking to him as one would to a friend. The people bow down and worship when he is in the tent of meeting, and notice that the tent of meeting is for everyone, for all who wish to come in to the presence of the Lord. The church building functions as the tent of meeting for us.

The first commandment comes first – we are to love God with everything we have, as the psalm has it, my soul athirst for you, eagerly I seek you – the desire for God is planted more deeply in our personalities than our sense of ourselves and so the principal means for loving God, for growing in our knowledge of God and allowing Christ to be born in us – the principal means for doing this is our worship. This is how our souls are fed. Augustine famously wrote, 'our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee O Lord', In other words, unless we consciously recognise that essential part of our nature then we shall forever be doomed to chase substitutes – and in the Bible those substitutes are called idols.

When we worship an idol, which is what counts as 'normal' in our society today– then our lives are taken away. It would be reasonable to suggest that the life of the Church of England has been taken away over the last few generations – might this have something to do with how we worship? For if we worship the living God then our lives flourish – everything finds its proper place. Whereas in the Church of England we have inherited a situation where the right way to worship is unclear – partly a result of cultural change, partly the change in how we worship has itself been a cause of that cultural change. So my guiding question [as a parish priest] is this: what will enable this people, at this time, in this place, to come in to the presence of God so that we might worship him in spirit and in truth? So that we might enjoy the promised life in all its fullness that Jesus spoke of?

I want to explore aspects to this mystery of worship over the coming weeks. I will touch on Scripture, psychology, ecology, the nature of liturgy, and I may do one explicitly on the role of music in worship, where it can help and where it can hinder. I will also do one explicitly on the nature of Christian mysticism, and particularly some of the great English teachers. My aim, at the end is to tell a story about how the Church of England has worshipped in the past, how we have ended up in the place we are in now, and where God might be calling us to go in the future.

At the heart of these questions is a desire that we might be drawn ever closer into the presence of Christ, who is the presence of God, the shekinah. God says to Moses in our passage this evening, “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest”. When we come into the presence of the Lord that is what happens, we are transformed, we become who we were created to be, and we find that rest, that peace, which the world cannot give. May the glory of the Lord go before us in our journeyings, so that we in turn may enjoy that promised rest. Amen.