Reason Number 1:
We Worship Because We Are Baptized
Who are you? Most people answer with words which describe themselves according to what they do: I am a teacher, or a nurse, or a farmer, or a secretary, or a carpenter, or an insurance agent, or a homemaker, or a chemist, or a student…or I am unemployed, or retired, or not yet employed. I am successful, or I have failed at something import. I am healthy, or I am dying.
And to whom do you belong? To yourself? To your parents? To your children? To your spouse? To your friends? To your employer? To your country?
It would be sad if these were the only answers you could give to those two questions. What if all of these relationships, all of your possessions, and all of your achievements were suddenly taken away? Then who would you be, and to whom would you belong?
When we worship, we are reminded that our identity comes from God. Who are we? By our Baptism into Christ, we are children of God. We belong to God forever, and to the family of God known as the Church. Everything else can be taken away, but our identity as God’s children remains. Every human relationship can be broken through death or separation, but we are a part of God’s family…the communion of saints…forever. In the waters of the font and in His Word, God claims us as His very own! Our worth depends not on our talents or accomplishments or health, but on God’s grace. Our salvation depends not on our successful works, but on Christ’s cross. In Baptism, we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, grafted into the way of dying to self-centeredness, and rising into life with God.
All this is easy to forget in the activities, pressures, and problems of life, even in the midst of pleasures and leisure-time relaxation. It’s easy to become so preoccupied with loneliness, or tired from over-work, or overwhelmed by struggles, or involved in recreation, that you forget you are God’s child. And, when that identity is forgotten, life’s burdens become even heavier.
One time and one place more than any other reminds us of both who we are and whose we are: that time is Sunday morning when we are assembled for worship. On Sundays we gather as God’s family, formed in Baptism, and reunited around Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament. We are reassured of who we are: God’s own people whom He has named by name.
Worship is not a luxury or an option, but a necessity for our Christian life. In fact, we are made to worship! Born as human beings, we have an inborn impulse to turn to the One who can feed us. In the same way, reborn as God’s children in Baptism, we have an inner need to turn to the One who sustains us, to worship God. Sunday worship is a normal, natural, instinctive part of the baptized Christian’s life. Regular worship reminds us that we belong to God in our Baptism. Regular worship nourishes us in that relationship through the Gospel and the Lord’s Supper. In Sunday worship we renew and give thanks for our baptismal identity as people embraced by God.
We need to help each other to know this. We need to encourage each other to do this. We need to strengthen each other to worship God and gladly hear His Word.
Reason Number 2:
We Worship Because It Is Sunday
Wouldn’t it be tiresome if every day were the same? If the year were nothing but an endless cycle of producing and consuming and disposing, of working and spending and playing and then working again? Life would be a treadmill of drudgery and meaninglessness.
One day of the week, however, invades time and stops the treadmill. It is Sunday, a very special day…special because it is the Lord’s Day.
Sunday became a special day of worship because on the first day of the week God raised Jesus from the dead. Sunday came to be called the Lord’s Day because it was the day on which the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. In his Word and in the sharing of the Lord’s Supper, we meet the risen Christ in our midst. When we share his body and blood around the Lord’s Table, we encounter the Risen Lord! Sunday is more than just a weekly time for rest and recreation: It is the day when we assemble for worship.
As we lift up our hearts in worship and give thanks to the Lord, we are lifted from the treadmill of life for a while and given renewed visions of God’s purposes for us. Sunday for Christians is not so much the first day of the week as it is the Eighth Day, to use an ancient term. The “Eighth Day” means the day of new beginning, a new creation…not just the beginning of a new week, but the repeated reminder of the beginning of God’s New Age. We entered this new age in Baptism; we are nourished in it in the Eucharist. This new age is sometimes called the reign of God. It is the age of light after darkness, of peace after conflict, of wholeness after brokenness, of freedom after bondage, of grace after guilt, of life after death. No amount of Saturdays can usher in such a new age, nor is it the result of rest or recreation or relaxation. The new age is the work of God, and God repeatedly brings us in touch with it through His Word and Sacraments.
Sunday is special because in worship we are given “a foretaste of the feast to come,” a glimpse of God’s future in the present. Because of Sunday, we know that there can be light at the end of every tunnel, that there is hope to transform every despair. Sunday sets us looking forward, with the assurance that Christ lives, and meets us, and leads us, and gives us hope!
Reason Number 3:
We Worship Because in Worship We Meet God
What if there were no God? What if there were nothing beyond our own short lives and our troubled world? Or what if God were far off, uncaring and unforgiving? Such thoughts are too terrible to think about for long…but they do remind us of how blessed we are to have a loving God who is revealed in Jesus, who comes to us each week in Word and Sacrament.
We assemble for worship on Sundays in order to sense anew that we are in God’s presence…to be confronted again with God’s word of judgment and God’s word of forgiveness and God’s word of life. Here, gathered to hear the gospel of love and healing and freedom, and assembled around the altar to feast on the food of eternal life, we meet God in a profound and wonderful way. In Word and Sacrament Jesus is present as in no other event or place. Here we meet the God who cares, who is merciful, who touches us with hope, who saves us from despair.
It is true that God is present everywhere, and we may often be aware of God’s presence in the beauty of nature. But that’s only a small part of the story of who God is. God, who created the heavens and the earth, is also the God of history, the God who repeatedly rescues His people and gives them hope. God’s goodness is revealed not only in the new growth of spring and the daily newness of sunrise, but also in the great stories of God’s liberating the Israelites from bondage in
God’s power is revealed not only in the pounding surf of the ocean or in majestic mountains, but more especially in God’s raising Jesus from the dead…and raising us in our Baptism to Christ’s new life. We hear of this when we come for worship. God not only created light from darkness, God also brings light to our own dark hearts in His word of forgiveness. We confess our sins and are forgiven in our worship.
It is in Sunday worship that God is present most fully, most assuredly, most intensely, most intentionally. We gather to worship on Sundays in order to meet God, to be conscious of God, to hear God’s word of grace, to share the Lord’s Meal of eternal life, to meet Christ as we remember his death and resurrection. God’s presence is what Sunday worship is about. We hear, at the beginning of the liturgy, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” We gather in habit and hope with awe and reverence in the presence of the Holy One, and so we sing “Glory to God in the highest…we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.” And then, after being renewed by God’s Word and strengthened by God’s Meal…having heard and seen and even eaten God’s salvation…we can go in peace to serve that Lord.
Reason Number 4:
We Worship Because in Worship We Meet Each Other
Have you ever been alone, really alone? Cut off from other people? Isolated from everyone who cares about you? Lonely and unloved? Most people feel like that once in a while. But what if you really were all alone forever? What would it be like to have no one to talk with, to hug, to smile, to care about your tears? What would it be like to have no family, no friends, not even any helpful strangers?
In the deepest sense, we who are baptized are never alone like that. In Baptism, we are made God’s children and, therefore, we are made part of God’s whole family. Thus when we come for worship to meet God, we also meet a portion of God’s Family. Worship is a corporate affair…God’s family affair! Worship is more than a private meeting between each individual and God…it is the gathering together of God’s people.
We are “all baptized into one Body (1 Corinthians 12:13).” The Holy Spirit calls and enlightens us…the Spirit also gathers us…into the fellowship of the Church. So we pray to “Our” Father, and we affirm, “We believe in one God.” And we pray for all people according to their needs.
We assemble on Sunday morning because we are all baptized into the one Lord. This is far different from coming together because we all think alike (we probably don’t), or because we are all good friends (we probably aren’t). But we do all belong together, because our Lord has called us to gather and because we all declare that we believe in Him…together. In the presence of one another, our faith is strengthened as together we learn again of how it is to live as God’s people in this world.
Sunday worship is God’s coming among us to forgive and reconcile…and to empower us to be forgiving and reconciling. On Sunday morning we rehearse the things of heaven. God gives us the peace to be able to say “Peace be with you” to each other. This is not just being cordial; it is expressing our baptismal unity. All who are baptized are part of the body of Christ. When we gather around Word and Sacrament, we are united and reconciled in Christ’s name.
This is the community of grace, an experience of God’s new way of living. In worship we are forgiven and renewed, so that we may delight in God’s ways.
Although we are most aware of our own congregation sitting around us, in Sunday worship we assemble also with all of God’s baptized family, the whole Church of every time and every place. Together, through Baptism, we are the body of Christ in the world.
The body of Christ exists wherever believers are, but nowhere can we be so aware of it as when we meet each other for worship. We need to know that we are part of that body. We come for worship because in worship we meet each other…members together in the body of Christ.
Reason Number 5:
We Worship Because We Need to Worship
Is there meaning to your life? Or is life just one thing after another, without much hope or purpose? Are you sometimes so overwhelmed by your own problems or pleasures that you can’t even think about anything or anybody else? Do today’s preoccupations ever weigh so heavily on you that you feel as though there is no yesterday and no tomorrow?
We need to worship, for we need to be heard, healed, encouraged, forgiven, comforted, strengthened, guided. And all of that can and does happen in corporate worship as we “lift up our hearts to the Lord.” In the liturgy we can be lifted out of ourselves, beyond our delights and dilemmas, out of our preoccupations and struggles. We can be lifted into a new way to see life: In worship we can see life the way God sees life.
We need to worship where today’s dilemma and delights can be put into the context of God’s eternal reign. In worship we are reminded of all that God has done for His covenant people in the past, and we are given the promise of God’s presence in the future. In worship God lifts us out of ourselves. Worship thrusts us back into God’s history, where we learn the hope of salvation. And worship points us into the world, where we meet our brothers and sisters in Christ. And in all of this, our own needs are met…because they are transformed.
We need to worship, for as we seek healing of a particular pain or ill, we are made whole in a way even deeper than we expected. As we seek protection for our loved ones, we are strengthened to commend them to the God who loves them even more than we do. As we seek prolonged life instead of death, we are given eternal life beyond death. As we seek forgiveness, we are enabled to be forgiving. As we seek comfort, we are empowered to comfort others. As we seek peace for our lives, we are made peacemakers. In Word and Sacrament, we are transformed.
We need worship, for there God takes our needs and gives us His blessedness. We need worship, where we are drawn more and more deeply into our intimate relationships with God our creator, Christ our redeemer, and the Spirit our sanctifier.
We worship because we need to worship to become more and more in our experience what God declared us to be in our Baptism…a people claimed by God.
Reason Number 6:
We Worship Because God is God
When all is said and done, it’s not our ability to understand that draws us to worship…we cannot really comprehend the greatness of God. Who can understand the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection? Can we truly imagine God’s majesty? Yet, even to think about such questions lifts up our hearts and reminds us of the most basic reason we worship: simply because God is God. That is, in the most fundamental sense, we worship in awe and wonder to honor the greatness of God, the Creator of the entire cosmos, the Lord of both history and the future. We, whom God created, respond in thanks and praise. In the final analysis, we go to worship on Sunday not because we get so much out of the sermon, or because we like every hymn that’s sung, but because in worship, we have a way to respond to the One who alone is holy and eternal…the One who alone is the Lord. It is our magnificent privilege to meet this God every Sunday in Word and Sacrament, and we go to worship not so much to get something from God, but to join the angels and all the company of heaven in praising God for being God.
Can’t I be a Christian without attending worship?
That’s about as possible as being:
A soldier who will not join an army.
A student who does not go to school.
A citizen who won’t vote or pay taxes.
A salesperson with no customers.
An explorer with no base camp.
A captain of a ship with no crew.
A businessperson on a desert island.
An author without readers.
A tuba player without an orchestra.
A politician who is a hermit.
