During the last few weeks, an entire year group of students from Cherwell School have been visiting Old Marston and St Nicholas church, as part of their history and geography studies. It’s been exciting and challenging to meet these Year 7 pupils, answer their questions, and try to help them discover something about the church, when anything to do with organised religion is increasingly unfamiliar to today’s young people.
I’ve tried to describe how, for 800 years, the people of this parish have come into this building bringing their children for baptism, or to solemnise their marriages, or bury their dead. All the great milestones of life and death, when people have wanted to involve God in their human experience, have been celebrated here. And then there is the constant round of worship, day in day out, and season after season: so I have explained the singing and the prayers, the hearing of God’s Word when the Bible is read and sermons are preached, the blessing and sharing of bread and wine in the Holy Communion. All of these describe the externals of worship, but how can we adequately explain the essence of what it is about? What is it that makes up the heart of worship?
This was the question we were also exploring at our Evening Praise service in July, during which we reflected on a song by Christian singer and song-writer Matt Redman. The pastor of his church, which uses a lot of modern songs in its worship, banned all singing until they had discovered other ways of expressing their worship of God. The story doesn’t tell how long the ban lasted! but by the time it ended, Matt Redman had reflected on the experience and written the song entitled ‘The heart of worship’. It includes the lines: “When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come; longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless Your heart. I’ll bring You more than a song, for a song in itself is not what You have required. You search much deeper within...”
If God doesn’t require a song, when we come to worship - what is it that he requires? We could equally well say, he doesn’t require a Bible reading, or a sermon, or a psalm, or a procession - could we? In the Law of Moses, the people of Israel were given instructions for the sacrifices they were to make in tabernacle or temple: burnt offerings, sin offerings, peace offerings and so on. A cast of thousands of priests and assistants (to say nothing of shepherds, cowherds, wood-cutters and cleaners-up afterwards) was required to manage the whole system. But even when it was at its height, in the days of Solomon’s great Temple, there was a general recognition that this was only the externals, this was not what worship was really all about. The prophets of old warned the people over and over again, that God was not really interested in animal sacrifices. What he wanted was the obedience of believers; the animal sacrifices were meant to represent that, and were worse than meaningless if that obedience was lacking.
The prophet Micah imagines someone asking, What sort of offering does God want, when I come to worship? The best of calves and rams and olive oil? What about if I offered my own firstborn child - would that be enough to buy God’s approval and forgiveness? It’s a ridiculous question, his answer concludes, because God has already revealed what he wants: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6.8) That is the kind of obedience that God wants from those who profess to believe in him. The heart of worship consists in part of putting ourselves before God, expressing our willingness to obey his commandments, and seeking his help in doing what we cannot always do in our own strength.
St Paul gives similar instructions to Christians in his letter to the Romans, when he tells them, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12.1-2) Truly spiritual worship, he says, is about giving our whole selves to God in obedience, in all that we do the rest of the week, not just when we’re in church. It is about letting ourselves be transformed by having God change our minds - which is a bit different from the impression that some religious people give, that they’ve made up their minds about everything, and God help anyone who tries to make them change!
It’s good to remember that worship is meant to change us, and make us more like what God wants us to be. Those young people in Year 7 have all their lives before them, and the potential to be shaped by what they experience and learn. In the same way, we who believe in God long to be transformed by our worship, into the people we have it in us to become.
Published in the Marston Times, August 2007