By The Rev’d Canon Matthew Wilkins, Canon for Worship
We were made to worship...
The word “worship” comes from the same Saxon root as the word “worth." This means that to worship someone (or something) is to give that person (or thing) the honor that they are worth. As Christians, when we talk about worship we are talking about God and giving God the honor that is due his name (see 1 Chronicles 16:29). But worship is far more than just a thing we do, in the greatest sense, worship has to do with who we are.
From the very beginning, God created us to live in a relationship with Him, a relationship that I would argue is best described, at least from our side of it, as one of worship: where we know God’s incomprehensibly great mercy and love towards us, and are moved to offer back to Him not only thanks and praise but our very lives.
And even though sin entered creation and broke this worshipful relationship with God, the desire to worship still lives within each of us but is now distorted by sin. This means that we often point our desire to worship at things other than God, bundling our lives around those things in the process. As pastor/scholar/author Timothy Keller often points out, our problem isn’t whether or not we worship, but rather what it is that we worship.
This is why worship is one of the key components of the Parish Rule of Life. Worship is essential to a life of following Jesus because when we come to worship God we are reminded of what is true about ourselves, about the world around us, and about God. We are reminded of our brokenness and our deep need for God’s mercy, we are reminded that the world around us is not as it should be and that we are citizens of Jesus’ Kingdom, and we are reminded again and again of who our God is: a God of grace who week by week offers us pardon and feeds us both through His Word and in the body and blood of His Son Jesus.
There are two ways of thinking about our prayer and worship when it comes to the Parish Rule of Life.
The first is our corporate worship. This is where we gather every Sunday to sing and pray, to meditate on God’s word, and to gather around the Lord’s Table together. It’s the chance for us who have been wearied by the demands of life to come and find rest in the goodness of God, to hear the good news of what God has done for us and to offer ourselves back as a living sacrifice to Him, and then to be fed and replenished for the week that’s ahead.
Individual worship is what we do between these weekly gatherings. Our own daily pattern of prayer and worship keeps us connected to God and in relationship with Him as we go through the week. Some people read scripture and pray and journal. Some use the daily services provided in the Prayer Book like Morning or Evening Prayer, or the shorter Family Prayer services. No matter what form or which resources you use, the main point is finding a way to regularly be in God’s presence in the midst of life so that our worship (and our lives) are directed toward him.
My prayer as we begin to think about the Parish Rule of Life is this: that God will use it as a tool to draw us all into a deeper relationship with Him and into a more intentional life of following Jesus.