Good Morning Friends,
Today’s text selections though lengthy, if you are willing to spend some time in reading and considering their meaning, could give you some important insights into how we are to worship God. We give worship a lot of lip service, but too often our words are empty. Thankfully, Jesus spoke some of the most profound words that have ever been spoken on the subject of true worship, of worship as God intends it shall be— the kind of worship, Jesus said, that the heavenly Father goes looking for. John in his letter gives us some great insights into worship that hinges on the word love and that God is love but also a verb. Then we have a psalm on worship and some passages from Paul and from the Gospel of John a story about the woman at the well. Together the seven converge in a way to give us understanding on the nature of how we are to honor God and not complain like those in the Exodus, even as we ask, Is Our Worship Nurturing Us In Spirit And In Truth?
Scripture: Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
Romans 5: 1-8 (NRSV)
But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Exodus 17: 3-7 (NRSV)
For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1: 22-25 (NRSV)
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.
John 2: 13-25 (NRSV)
O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
Psalm 95: 1-9 (NRSV)
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.’ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’
John 4: 5-42 (NRSV)
They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So, we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
1 John 4:5-42 (NRSV)
Message: The elements of worship have developed differently for different denominations but at the heart of them all is prayer. For in prayer, we respond to God and God responses to us. There is a language of prayerful worship and there are so many symbols of worship that add to the experience: Candles and paraments…stain glass and robes… We have preludes, introits, welcomes, invocation, anthems, confessions, repentance, forgiveness, affirmations and passing of the peace and laying on of hands. We have hymns, benedictions, and postludes. We have sermons and devotionals of the Word and Sacraments. But our words are never enough because too often they really carry very little meaning unless the Holy Spirit filles them up with something spiritual. Nevertheless, regardless of how eloquent we are, it is worth the effort to have the gifts and prayers of people lifted up and joined with others as a witness of God continuing to work in and through us in community. For sure there are all kinds of prayer as a means of worship. Music is a prayer. Scripture read and proclaimed is prayer. Confession is prayer. And the sacraments are prayers as well. Baptism is a prayer and a sign of God’s covenant of grace and bond of unity with the people of God. And the Lord’s Supper is a prayer in communion with the crucified and risen Lord. So too true worship can be prayerful teaching and thanksgiving and remembering and being lifted up into Christ’s presence. But ultimately worship is offering ourselves to God as a living prayer that reconciles and turns our lives into mission and service that glorifies God. There are a lot of examples of worthy worship in the Bible which are often depicting a prostrate on your knees worship. But today I think true worship has a different connotation in a dynamic quickening of people’s awareness of the power and presence of our triune God, regardless of our physical positioning. Still, like the Israelites of old, we can get off track and be too quick to complain and grumble and quarrel, doubting God’s provision, forgetting what God has done for us in the past. We need to realize that God is present and at work in service in us if we will only trust the way of spiritual worship in its truth revealed and in the Spirit that convicts and comforts. For the phrase worship service and the word love can be empty or filled to overflowing with meaning. They can mean everything from verbs to nouns or they can mean nothing. We are therefor to pray that in service, in Christ, they come to reveal something transformative in us.
And So, with our new life in Christ we are to be bodies of worship both individually and collectively as an encounter with God but also as a witness of God’s encounter with us. Jesus told the woman at the well that God seeks people who will worship in spirit and truth. Figuring that out is part of worship. Sure, it is revering, reverence, adoration, veneration, paying homage to, but hopefully something more. For sadly, according to that basic definition of worship we worship all sorts of things and that misses the point. Understandably much of the narrative of the Bible is about restoring a true worship of God… hoping to bring us into a relationship with God. After the resurrection we see the disciples worship Jesus. Something has changed. Something has transformed. In order to worship both spirit and truth we need to be transformed by love. We need to give up our isolation. Friends, like the woman at the well we are unclean but nevertheless Jesus wants us to let our water jar of existence down and down into the deep well and watched it turn on its side and fill and sink. And then in worship God wants us to haul it hand over hand back to the well curb and poured the cool water into Jesus’ cupped hands. We are to be amazed at God through the Spirit speaking to us, as God drinks from the water jar of our unworthy worship. It makes me believe that in the least expected places, and in the strangest times Jesus shows up in the most unexpected ways to teach us about how to worship. He treats us like people of worth— for he values us. He asks us for our help. And then he offers us in return, though not as a transaction required, the kind of grace the rich and famous can never buy with all their wealth, and the keenest scholars can never figure out with all their fabulous IQ, and the most powerful politicians cannot legislate with all their hot air. He offers us up the knowledge of who we are, and the hope of who we can be. He helps us look Him in the face and see his purity— and then look ourselves in the mirror and see our possibilities. And before we know it, we are even looking our neighbors in the face, whether they are rich or poor, and telling them about this Son of God who makes us more alive than we ever thought we ever could be. Here in serving Jesus we learn about worship. Here in worship, we regain our self-esteem and purpose that shows us the way to glorify God.
Pray our words are not empty but filled with Holy water to quench the thirst of those in need. Pray we have a life of true worship. Pray in worship that we lay our baggage at the foot of the cross. Pray we remove from our lives those things that we prioritize higher than our relationship with God. Pray we break free of the idols in our lives. Pray we stop worshipping past victories and stale ways. Pray we open the doors of our hearts to worship God. Pray we accept the gift God brought into the world through Jesus’
transforming work in true worship. Pray we love God and love our neighbor. Pray we pray unceasingly. Pray we glorify God in worship and in song. Pray we are never bored. Pray we worship with praise and thanksgiving. Pray we lift up joyful songs in worship. Pray we dance as worship as a witness that in God we move and have our very being. Pray we remember and observe times of worship that help others to learn about and experience God. Pray we use our spiritual gifts. Pray we be a cheerful encouragement to others. Pray we be a living sacrifice of worship.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 