When we come to worship, we come together to meet God in worship and to give God thanks and praise. But how do we do that?
Today is the day to find out.
First of all, when two or three are gathered together, Jesus said that he would be there with us. And so here we are. And because Jesus dwells in each one of us, when we gather and worship, Jesus is right here with us through our being with one another. In our church, I, the priest, am here on behalf of Jesus, doing the things that I do in worship in his name, in addition to the things that we are all doing together in worship. So as we recognize and respond to God’s presence in our midst through one another, as broken as we are, we do so with reverence, for God and for one another, because Jesus is here-with us and in us.
As Jesus says in today’s gospel as he looks around at those seated around him, he says to them,
“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother—you all are my family.
We are God’s family, gathered here around Jesus to worship on the Sabbath.
In worship, we want to do the will of God by keeping the first and greatest commandment–to love God with our hearts, with our souls, and with our minds, by praising and thanking God, taking the time, as God’s family, to turn our hearts and souls and minds to God.
Singing unites us and draw us closer to God. So right away, we sing an opening hymn. Today, we’ll sing about walking with God in the garden, which echoes today’s first reading from Genesis. This hymn speaks to the idea of being with God in reverent worship. This hymn is about contemplative one on one time with God, which is its own kind of worship, important to prepare us for the worship we do together as the body of Christ on Sundays. So turn to LEVAS 69.
(Opening “I come to the garden alone, LEVAS 69).
The first words of the service are called “The Opening Acclamation,” and you can find these words on page 355 in the BCP.
With these opening words we say that we’re here to worship God, to bless God’s holy name.
(Opening acclamation)
Then we pray. In our church, the service begins with two prayers known as “collects.” These prayers collect us together in prayer. Prayers known as collects are put together in a certain way. First, we address God—Almighty God, and then say something about who God is—in this prayer God is the one to whom our hearts are open, all our desires are known and who knows everything about us. And then we ask for something—in this case, we ask that God would clean us up and dust us off with the help of the Holy Spirit, and here’s why, so that we can love God perfectly and worship well. And then we pray through Jesus. And say Amen.
So let’s all pray the “Collect for Purity” together—the prayer at the bottom of page 355 in the BCP.
Then we sing a hymn of praise, or a Gloria.
I like this one in LEVAS, page 245, because the hymn says why we’re here, “to worship God.”
And how to prepare. “Forget about yourself and concentrate on him;” include our whole bodies “lift up holy hands and magnify his name and then we’re ready to worship.”
Sing LEVAS 245
And then we have another collect that generally addresses the scriptural focus of the day. So find the collect on your lectionary insert for today and we’ll pray it together.
“O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”
And then we hear and listen to the scriptures for the day. In our church we have four readings—generally one from the Old Testament, then a Psalm. The Psalm reflects on the OT reading. And then we have a reading from the New Testament, generally from the letters, or sometimes from Revelation, and then a reading from the gospel. We sing a hymn before the gospel to set off the words of Jesus. And then we stand for the gospel out of respect for Jesus and his teachings and in thanksgiving for his death and resurrection.
The readings are another way that Jesus is right here with us in worship—because Jesus is present to us in the words of scripture. When we listen to the lector, Jesus is speaking through that person, so we listen with reverence to these words, with open hearts and minds. We listen for the words or the ideas that God is speaking, through God’s word, to each of us personally.
(Readings)
Sequence hymn, “Santo, santo, santo.”
After the gospel, we have a sermon in which I try to address some of the issues raised by the scripture.
My reflection today would center around Paul’s statement that we Christians do not lose heart. We have hope, even when times are bad, or when we’ve messed up, because we know that God has raised the Lord Jesus, and will also raise us up to be in God’s presence (just as we are in God’s presence every time we gather to worship!) We believe that God is present with us through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and that’s such good news that we want to share it! And as we share that Good News, here’s the best part—God’s grace, as it extends to more and more people, will increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”
But for the rest of the sermon time, I’m going to talk about what comes next in our worship and then give you some time for questions.
After the sermon, we spell out what we believe in the words of the Nicene Creed, pointing again to God—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
And then we pray. Praying is one of the important things we do together in worship, praying to God through Jesus, who is right here with us.
Look on page 359 in the BCP in the middle of the page—and you’ll see the section called the Prayers of the People. Every Sunday we pray about these specific areas. I write the prayers of the people each week. My resources include the BCP, and two other worship resources that are helpful (show Feasting on the Word and Intercessions for the Christian People).
Then we have a prayer of confession—this prayer of confession is part of the cleansing of the thoughts of our hearts—maybe you have heard something in the scripture or sermon that reminds you about something you did or didn’t do this past week that interfered with your relationship with God or with the people around you. So this prayer gives us the opportunity to say that we’re sorry, and then we ask God to have mercy on us and forgive us, so that we can delight once more in God’s will and walk in God’s ways to the Glory of God’s name.
Then I offer the absolution. These words are an official acknowledgement that we have been released from the sins that we’ve just confessed. We know this—that God is merciful and has already released us from our sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus, but we need reminding, so that’s why I say these words every Sunday.
Then we exchange the peace—this is a tradition from the early church, and it’s a great time to act on what we’ve just confessed. We have laid down our grievances against one another so that we can offer one another the peace of the Lord. We greet one another in the Lord’s name. Passing the peace is a way to acknowledge Jesus in our midst. The peace gives the opportunity for the presence of Jesus in me to greet the presence of Jesus in you.
Then we come to the heart of our service, the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving. And that word, Eucharist, comes from the Greek word that means “thanksgiving”, more specifically, “to offer graciously.”
Today’s Old Testament reading begins with these words. “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” Today, as we prepare for Eucharist, we’ll have quiet, so that we can imagine ourselves in a beautiful garden when the cool breeze of the evening comes, listening for God to come and to be with us, not with dread, but in great joy and expectation.
Think of the eucharistic time of our worship as a beautiful flower that opens into four petals, like a dogwood blossom.
And Jesus is in our midst in this part of the service through the offering, thanking, blessing, breaking, and sharing together that we do in this part of our worship.
One petal is offering, one petal is thanking, one petal is blessing, and one petal is breaking. And at the very center of the flower is sharing. When Jesus shares himself with us, and we take that bread and wine into ourselves, we are then ready to share ourselves with one another.
So we bring our offerings to God. We offer bread and wine. Bread is made from wheat, or in our case, beans, grown by farmers and then ground into flour and then BJ makes our bread—from many grains, one bread, which Jesus calls his body. Remember, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” And our wine comes from many grapes crushed and turned into one wine, wine that Jesus called his blood of the new covenant. And we bring the offerings of our labors in the form of the money we give each week for God’s work in the world through this church.
Then we enter into the words of The Great Thanksgiving, when we thank God for God’s faithfulness to us through time and for our salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And in the blessing of the bread and the wine, Jesus draws near to us, we draw near to Jesus, and we all draw nearer to one another.
The bread is broken. When I break the bread, this is a visual reminder that Jesus is broken open so that his spirit can go out into all of us, so that we can share his love for us with one another. In the broken bread, Jesus invites us into communion with one another in him. When we gather around the altar and share the bread, this union with Jesus in the bread and wine is when we draw very close to him, and at the same time, we draw close to one another, in communion with all the members of his body.
After sharing the bread, we offer a prayer of thanksgiving, there’s a blessing, and then I send you out into the world in peace to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God!
(Time for questions)