The Foolishness of Worship: A Sermon for Ordinary Time, Proper 10

For the next few weeks, I have decided to hit “pause” on the Miracles in Matthew sermon series, and shift our attention to matters directly related to our current situation here at Christ the King. In response to the continued rise of covid-19 cases in our local community, the vestry and I met on Friday to check in and discuss how we at Christ the King should respond. A while back, many people hoped that Easter Sunday would be the triumphant return to unrestricted public worship. Then it was Pentecost. Then the 4th of July weekend. Lately the target has been the start of the school year. But as we get closer to that date, it is becoming apparent that covid-19 isn’t going away as quickly and widely as we had hoped. It is becoming more and more clear to the members of the vestry and me that in order for the church to remain relevant and meaningful to the community, we are going to continue to have to be flexible, nimble, and adaptive. Simply hunkering down and waiting for things to return to “normal” is not the best that we can do. Simply offering a livestream service and some weekday classes via Zoom and hoping that folks are being fed is not the best that we can do. We can do better, and the vestry and I are inviting you to help us do better.

Yesterday, we sent out a worship-related survey via The Weekly Herald. Thank you to those who have already completed it, and if you haven’t done so yet, please respond so that we can better know how to serve you. If you do not receive emails from Christ the King, please contact our church office tomorrow and Stephanie can add you to it, and she can send you a link to the survey. You can also sign up on the Home page of the CtK website.

I think that during this awful pandemic, many organizations are grappling with what is essential to their mission. Two organizations that come to the front of my mind are churches and schools – and lo and behold, here at CtK we are a church and a school. Schools and universities are struggling to determine what to do with classes – should they be in-person or online, or some hybrid of the two? Do they continue to offer sports, which, in the case of Division I college football, are a huge source of revenue for the universities? The schools that do the best job of addressing these challenging questions are the ones that will not only stay alive, but actually thrive during the covid-19 era.

And the same goes for churches. For churches, what is essential and what is periphery? One way to answer that question is, “What is it that we can do that nobody else can do? What is our unique offering to the community?” 

Two of my colleagues in the Order of the Ascension - Michelle Heyne and Robert Gallagher - are working on a new book, entitled A Pastoral Theology of the Parish Church. In that book, there is a section that deals with The Purpose of the Parish Church.  It says,

“A vestry will be more effective is it understands the three generally understood purposes of the parish church: 1) the worship of God; 2) the formation of the People of God; and 3) a sanctifying relationship with the external “public” the parish is most connected with (usually the neighborhood around the parish…). In practice each has its own integrity and also overlaps with the others.”

So, for today and at least next week, I’d like to address this helpful reminder from Michelle and Robert. Since the pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about essential workers and essential services. The “essential service” that the church provides is worship. When all else is suspended, delayed, or simply impossible to implement – whether due to a virus or not - the church’s primary role is to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God every week. And that has been and will continue to be the case for us here at. Christ the King. 

Due to the health and safety concerns of our community, our worship services may not always be open to the public – as has been the case in the recent past. But worship will always be the foundation from which everything else flows for our life together. We can temporarily suspend our nursery, Sunday School, coffee hour, concerts, and all of the other ministries that are part of our life together. But we can and will never suspend worship. We may have to temporarily make it closed to the public, and it may change dramatically – but worship will continue to happen one way or another. 

Perhaps one outcome this awful pandemic is that it has forced churches to be reminded of what is absolutely essential to our mission. Everything that we do – Christian Formation, Pastoral Care, Outreach, concerts, and social gatherings – must originate at the baptismal font, and from there, flow from the altar into our community. If the baptismal and eucharistic grounding of our mission and ministries are removed, then we are simply a social service organization or a special-interest club. And they are much better and more efficient at providing social services and entertainment than churches are. And that is as it should be.

Since worship has changed so dramatically, I think that an important question for us to ask is this – how might I/we continue to engage in the practice of offering my/our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God? One of the essential gifts of worship is that it reminds us Who is in charge, and Who is at the center of the universe. Or, to use Paul Tillich’s phrase – Who is the “Ground of all Being?” 

This reminder for us – that God is the Ground of all Being – is best embodied through worship. We may have our own practices of personal prayers, devotions, and reading that we do at home. And that is a critically important aspect of the Christian life. But that alone is not enough. It is imperative that we regularly gather “together” – either in person or virtually – to “join our voices with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” in offering our praise, adoration, and thanksgiving to God. In our era of toxic individualism, where the emphasis seems to primarily on what I want for me and my happiness – it is actually a radical thing simply to worship God. Worship invites us out of our sinful, selfish selves and towards the Ground of all Being. It is only when we take that radically selfless step of turning our focus towards God that we can then turn our focus towards others and ourselves.

I am not grateful for this pandemic. But it has offered us the opportunity to be reminded of what the essential service is that churches provide. Worship is one of the only things that truly makes us unique. Other community organizations provide care for others, book groups, opportunities for self-improvement, and means for social connection. Only the church is “foolish” enough to make “essential service” the worship of an imprisoned, humiliated, tortured, crucified messiah. But “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided , through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.”[1] So let us continue our foolish worship of God, whether we are at home or here in person. Thanks be to God!

[1] 1 Corinthians 1:18; 21