How we worship
Preacher: Revd Bethan Rodden, Assistant Curate, St Mark’s Newnham and St Andrews and St Mary’s Grantchester
Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-21
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and redeemer.
I want you to pause and imagine. Close your eyes if it helps you. Imagine a big square, filled with people, everyone you know is there and hundreds that you don’t. Men and women are there listening intently to what’s being spoken from the stage, the children move around, some listening too, others playing together quietly. There’s a tension of concentration and inspiration in the air, everyone knows what you are hearing is important.
The speaker draws their words to a close, and declares ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared.’ The whole town is a buzz with life, every person filled with joy as you disperse. People gather to feast. Street parties and groups celebrate together. You can smell the foods, freshly prepared with love, spices, flavours fill your nose. Joyful chatter and praise, enjoyment and excitement are all you can hear. There is a new energy, something has been reset, there is a new energy.
As we return now to this room, this space, this gathering, I want you to hold those feelings in your mind. What might it have been like to be part of such a gear change, a movement for good and have been present as it started.
In our readings this morning, acts of worship are recorded as they took place. They’re not rules for worship but a glimpse into the life of the communities they are set in. The worship in Nehemiah, which we just entered imaginatively into, is a gathering of all the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem from Babylon. Ezra and Nehemiah gather the people for a festival of worship and study of the Torah. They aspire to creating unity amidst the conflict faced within the city and new commitment to spiritual practice.
In Luke, the worship takes place in the synagogue and is part of the rhythm and routine of worship there day-to-day and week-to-week. Luke places Jesus’ return to his childhood place of worship immediately after the temptation in the wilderness, emphasising the guidance of the Holy Spirit in all Jesus is and will do. The other synoptic gospels place this return later in his ministry.
We catch just a glimpse from the middle of their worship. It is likely that this reading from the Prophets would have been bookended by recitation of the Shema and prayers, call and response, readings from the Torah and by benediction.
From these two descriptions of worship I want to encourage us to reflect on our own patterns of worship. What would the text read if we were to write a passage about today’s service? What would be the key things we would record? How does the way we worship speak about what we believe? And does our worship inspire us to the joy of the people of Jerusalem?
To do this we’re going to think about a few aspects of our worship. Firstly, where do we worship? In our gospel the act of worship takes place in the synagogue. A space set aside, designate for worship. a holy place.
In Nehemiah the worship isn’t in the designate worship space – the temple – but instead in the public square by the Water Gate. There were rules about who could enter the temple, but by the Water Gate all could be present, this was a place in the city where deliberation and judgement took place, where anyone could attend, even the ritually unclean.
- Where do we host our services of worship?
- What does it take to cross the threshold of our churches and enter in?
- What do our buildings and the way we use them say about our faith?
Our worship need not be bounded by the walls of a building. There is an importance to having space set apart. We are reminded this by Jesus’ custom of attending synagogue. But worship need not only be in a set place, every part of our lives, every place we find ourselves can be turned to worship – at home, in the public square, anywhere.
Next I want us to turn to who is invited, who can join in? Our gospel passage doesn’t tell us who was gathered at the synagogue but the passage from Nehemiah emphasises those who are gathered – ‘all the people gathered together’ ‘men and women and those who could understand’. Everyone is welcome and invited.
By this gathering taking place at the Water Gate it meant those who would normally be excluded could be present too, those who were ritually unclean for example.
Whilst the Gospel doesn’t mention who was there, it does spell out who Jesus’ is for. The passage includes the poor, the oppressed, those on the margins in the good news which God brings.
This radical inclusivity both in Jerusalem at the Water Gate and in Jesus’ words are something we are called to mirror in our worship now. Who is welcomed into our worship? Is anyone missing and why? Are there groups who can’t access the worship that is taking place? How does our worship need to change so that everyone, on the margins of society or not, can join together in praise of God?
The next aspect of our worship I want to dwell on is our resources, what do we use to resource our worship and how do we unpack it? We, like the people in both readings, have the Bible at the centre of our worship, a sacred set of texts, passed through generations. But a text that we must remember is changed by that passing through generations! None of the Bible which we read from today in English was written in English. None of the original papyri exist for us to study. Even if we did have the full original manuscript of each book those would be written by human hand and I’m sure they, like every essay or sermon I have ever written, would contains mistakes! In both our readings the Book of the Law and the scroll of Isaiah are interpreted or unpacked. Jesus begins with the sentence “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”. In Nehemiah, the omitted verses from our reading list the names of those who interpreted the law for the people.
In our choosing of texts, and of other worship materials like our music, hymns, prayers we must be attentive what our worship is teaching us. Interpretation of texts changes as the circumstance of the people change. We must always be ready to listen and ask questions. To read some of the many and differing translations of the Biblical text and to compare them, to consult commentaries and most of all put the Biblical texts and all our resources into dialogue with other cultural artefacts of their time and of our time.
So much history has taken place between the people of Jerusalem hearing the book of the law of Moses read at the Water Gate to us studying the Hebrew bible today. So much history has taken place between Jesus’ recitation of those words of the prophet Isaiah and reading them here today.
The words that we choose are so important. By the words we choose to use in our worship we declare who is welcome and who is excluded, how grace and forgiveness are received, we can change a time of joy into mourning, or sadness into dancing.
As an Anglican, words of our worship are important to me. We don’t have a denominational declaration of belief in the way many other denominations might but the words we pray each week in Church, the liturgy we use, the hymns we sing are the articulations of what we believe. In joining together in corporate responses and creeds we declare the faith we believe in.
What often can speak even louder than our words, however, is our posture and attitudes. In our reading the people are ‘attentive’, they stand for the reading, they lift up their hands, bow their heads, assume a posture of faces to the ground and they weep. In our worship we sit or stand, we may turn our bodies when we recite the creed, some may genuflect to the altar or kneel in prayer.
These are all bodily ways in which we can show our attention, intention and give reverence and praise.
Once again, though, through these things we have the power to include and exclude. If someone is unable to sit or stand, or needs to move to maintain their attention, use a fidget or read along with the spoken word to be able to focus and process. Each of us in our diversity, wonderfully created by God with a great range of physical and cognitive differences, must be allowed to show our reverence to God and to enter into praise and worship of our Lord God.
Our churches and worship should be spaces where we can be uninhibited in embodying the joy we find in the Good News. Where we can come with all our emotions and express them authentically. Where our posture and attitudes enable each one of us to be attentive to what God is doing in our lives and communities.
By the end of the Gospel passage, the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Christ. The scholar and theologian Origen wrote “whenever you direct your inward gaze toward wisdom and truth and contemplation of God’s only Son then your eyes are fixed upon Jesus”.
If our worship can elicit those emotions we imagined at the start, of focus, inspiration and celebration we can be confident in encountering the Lord our God.
If each one of us fixes our eyes on Jesus and we gather as all God’s diverse and wonderful people, united in the body of Christ, then we will be well on our way to embodying the Good News to which God has called us and moving step by step into the Kingdom of God.
Amen.