What is the Church For? (1) The Church is for Worship

Why are you here? Take a moment. Think about that question. Be honest. Why are you here? Maybe you’re here to check out the new guy. Maybe you’re here because your kids are here, or because you brought your grandkids here. Maybe you’re here because your spouse made you. Do any of these reasons speak to where you’re at this morning? 

I’m sure not. I’m sure all of you here this morning are much more holy than the man who once complained to his wife saying, “I don’t want to go to church this morning!” To which his wife replied, “You’re the minister. You have to be there.” And lest you think that story is an urban legend, I can tell you that at least on one occasion, it actually happened. 

But of course, there are more noble reasons to be here in church on the August long weekend, aren’t there? You’ve come to meet with family and friends. You’ve come to meet with Jesus. You’ve come to give thanks for his Word and to feed on Him in your heart by faith and with thanksgiving. 

There are a whole range of reasons to be there this morning, some noble, others less so, and still more at all points in between.

  

I want you to keep that question in mind over the next three weeks as we reflect together on a related question: Why is the church here? Not why is this building here on Main Street in Shawville. There’s a story there, we know it. We recalled part of it last week at Eldon and Frances’s farewell. But we’re not talking about a building. Rather the question is broader: why is this institution that the Bible calls the Church here? What is it for? For what does God intend it? 

Of course, I hope you can see how the two questions are related. If you’re a part of the church (and I don’t want to make any assumptions one way or another), you’re already caught up in the answer to the second question as you think about the first. You can’t answer why you’re here without thinking about your place in this community of faith, that does gather here, in this building. 

On the other hand, if you’re not a part of the church this morning, reflecting on this question is just good research. The days when people submitted to baptism because “it’s the thing to do,” are gone in our major urban centres and are numbered in small towns like this one. People are increasingly no longer raised in a faith, but instead come to it after a prolonged period of seeking, weighing, thinking. So if that’s you, here’s an opportunity to think about Christian commitment a little further. 

So, What is the Church here for? 

The answer given in the Christian Scriptures is, actually, pretty simple. Ready? Here it is. 

The Church is here for worship, for evangelism, and for service to the poor. Period. That’s it. Done. Worship, evangelism, and service. These comprise the braid that is the Church’s purpose in the plan of God. The metaphor of a braid, by the way, is deliberately chosen. Worship, evangelism, and service come together; they are intertwined with each other; they cannot be pulled apart without damaging or even destroying the braid. Where you find right worship, joyful evangelism, and loving service working together, there you find the Church of Jesus Christ.   

Over the next three weeks, we are going to look at three pivotal places in the book of Acts where this threefold mission is set out. And we’re starting today with worship 

The Church is FOR worship 

That’s easily said, isn’t it. The Church is for worship. Let’s pray and go eat lunch.  

No. Wait a moment. It is easily said. But is it clearly understood? What do we mean when we say worship? What is worship? More pressing, what is right worship (which is what the word orthodoxy means)? And if there’s such a thing as right worship, can we say that there’s wrong worship? (The Bible seems to think there’s such a thing as wrong worship. Read the stories in the Old Testament of the sons of Aaron or the sons of Eli, four priests before the LORD who worshiped wrongly and died as a result). 

So, what is worship? 

I was never taught what I’m about to tell you. I kind of caught it by osmosis. And I wonder whether some of you have come to think this too: Worship is singing. It’s the first half of the service. It’s complement is preaching. Does that sound familiar to you? I once attended a church in Manitoba where this way of thinking was explicit. Their service was divided by a coffee break, with the first half known as “worship time,” and the second half known as “teaching time.” 

Or maybe you’d click with this: worship is about a having a particular emotional experience, especially an intense one. Ring a bell? I’m not sure that that’s true. I had really strong emotional experiences when watching the Sens in last year’s playoffs. But that wasn’t worship. I have sung the Lord’s praises and sat under His word and not “felt” much of anything. But (I think) that was. 

When we wish to figure out just what worship is, we are wise if ask, simply, what do the Scriptures say. Well, let’s take a look at the book of Acts, for there we have the first description of formal Christian worship. It occurs right after Peter’s inaugural sermon on Pentecost day. Do you remember that sermon’s conclusion? “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 

Peter’s hearers, we read further, were cut to the heart by his words. They asked what they should do. Peter said, Repent! Which is to say, turn around. Change directions. Then, “be baptized, so that your sins might be forgiven and you might receive the Holy Spirit.” Those who welcomed his message obeyed Peter’s instructions and the Jerusalem church plant began with 3000 members. Not bad. Then what? 

Then, our text for today: 

Acts 2:42—They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. 

What’s worship? That’s worship. Plain and simple. That’s the first strand in the braid. That’s what the church is for when we say the church is for worship. The community gathers around the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the community breaks bread, the community prays. It starts here in the book of Acts and throughout history. Listen to this description of early Christian worship from a second century Christian: 

 “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.  

“Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent.” 

The community gathers, the community listens, the community breaks bread, the community prays. 

That’s what Christian worship looked like in the book of Acts; that is what it looked like for Justin Martyr around the year 150; that is what it looks like today, here. Beneath the ways that our music has changed, our prayers have developed, our furnishing have become more elaborate or more simple, over the centuries, this simple four-fold pattern has remained. Let’s look at it a little more. 

(1) The community gathers. 

Thirty five years ago last week, a man whom I am convinced was a prophet sent by God died in a plane crash. His name was Keith Green. You remember him? You’ve sung his songs, even if the name if unfamiliar. “O Lord, You’re Beautiful,” “There is a Redeemer.” Anyway, Green was fond of saying, “Going to church no more makes you a Christian than going to McDonald’s makes you a Big Mac.” And of course, he was emphasizing the need for a living personal relationship with Jesus. He was criticizing the Christianity that says, “I go to my lawyer to get my will done; I go to my dentist to get my teeth fixed; I go to the accountant to do my taxes; and I go to my minister to get my soul looked after.” A view of Christianity that treats it as a necessary appointment, a mere formality. 

But the quote has a downside. Do you see it? 

It seems to imply that, if one has a living relationship with Jesus, gathering with fellow believers doesn’t matter. I don’t think Green meant that. I know that is how some people have taken his remark. And that is a mistake. In the Bible, worship is the activity of a gathered people. It can be a small number—think of Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus who gather, who listen, who eat and drink and so encounter the risen Lord. It can be a large number—3000 new believers in Jerusalem just 40 days later. Number is not the point except in this: worship is not a solitary activity. It’s not something we do alone. Our times of private prayer, personal scripture study are themselves important, but they are important only because they flow out of and lead back to the community that gathers. 

God has acted in history to call a people. A people unlimited by class, by tribe, by race, by history, even by the boundaries of time and death. When John in Revelation sees a multitude beyond number engaged in worship around the throne of God, he does not see only some distant future reality, he sees reality as it is now. Reality as God sees it. He sees even this little community of faith caught up even now in that great End Time gathering when creation will fully and finally offer its right praise to its creator and we shall be what God intended from the beginning: his priests leading his creation in right worship. 

Participating in that great day even now, and anticipating it, we gather. Worship is a public activity. The community gathers to worship. 

But what does it gather around? That leads us back to our text. 

(2) The community gathers around the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship. 

The community gathers around the Apostles’ teaching. In the book of Acts, we are given examples of it: Peter’s sermons, Paul’s sermons. Scholars call it the kerygma, the first “preaching,” of Jesus’ appointed messengers. The Apostles are simply replicating what Jesus did with them after his resurrection. Just as he opened to Peter and James and John and the rest the Scriptures (what we would call the Old Testament) to show how they found their deepest meaning in Him, how they revealed Him, led people to Him, so now they carry on with the first converts.  

When the Apostles died, the practice of gathering around their teaching continued. So within a century, Justin, whose description we read above, spoke of how one of the “memoirs of the apostles”  was read and then the worship leader exhorted people from it. We continue to do that today: We read from the Old Testament and Psalms, we read from the memoirs of the Apostles: the Epistle and Gospel. We continue to gather around the apostles’ teaching. 

But not only the apostles teaching. The new believers in Acts were gathered around the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. So as the Apostles lived a common life, a fellowship, that common life became the centre of a new and growing common life.  

This reminds us that our reading of Scripture is never private. We do not weigh, evaluate, accept and or dismiss the Apostles’ teaching on our own. We gather around their teaching in fellowship with them. The Church is a community that reads its Scriptures on its knees together and through history. We do not judge the Apostles’ teaching; it judges us. Our reading is never alone and it is never over, at least on this side of the kingdom. And whatever private devotional reading we do—which is a must in the disciples’ life—it is to grow out of and lead back to our common reading and fellowshipping together. 

But we’re not just a community gathered around the Word. We are gathered around Word and Sacrament.    

(3) The community gathers to break the bread. 

We are again doing something today that is written into the very fabric of our churchly dna from the beginning. We even find it in our Gospel lesson—the feeding of the 5000. It doesn’t look like Holy Communion, to be sure. But look at how Jesus receives the bread: he takes; gives thanks; he breaks; he gives. This fourfold movement is not there by accident in the miracle story. In fact for John, the multiplication of the loaves is the sign that leads to Jesus saying to the Jewish leaders, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in you.” 

And from the earliest times, breaking the bread in this formal fourfold way became a marker of Christian worship. Already when Paul writes in first Corinthians, not the earliest document in the New Testament, but close to it, the Lord’s Supper had become a formal tradition: “For what I received from the Lord, this I pass on to you: On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. . . . .” And from the basis of that formal worship, he corrected what become an abuse in the Corinthian Church.  

Justin in our second century quote spoke of the offering of bread and wine, prayers being said over it, and then being given both to the community gathered, and to the members of the community who, for whatever reason, had missed the gathering. 

Today, we are going to gather. We are going to confess our sins and examine ourselves. We are going to hear the words of institution and consecration. And we, with angels and archangels and all who have served God in every age, are going to share in this foretaste of the great End Time banquet and so participate in the very life of Christ.  

(4) The community gathers to pray 

So far, the community has been on the receiving end of things. We have received God’s presence, God’s life, God’s peace in with and under the signs of Word and Sacrament. But these gifts invite a response. They call out our prayers to this God who so freely gives himself in ways we can grasp with our minds and hold in our very hands. 

Notice in our text that Luke tells us the believers gathered for the prayers. We are still talking about a formal worship gathering. To be sure, our private prayers—those undertaken as Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, in our closets with no one looking; those emulating the prayer life of Jesus, who withdrew to places of solitude to pray—are again essential to the life of discipleship. They are as essential as daily devotional Bible reading. But this is not what Luke is talking about. Luke, I think we can say, takes this for granted. Of course you’re going to pray privately. 

But the community gathers to share in the prayers. The formal, communal response of thanksgiving to God for his great gifts to us.  

The believers in Acts did it; the community of Justin’s time did it; we have done it again this morning. 

So what is the Church for? The first strand of our braid tells us: the church is FOR worship. And by worship we mean the regular, public gathering to read and listen, to eat and drink, to pray and thank. 

Now, finally, why does all this matter? I mean, when we see the church, we don’t see all this grandiose stuff do we? We see Gerry in hospital. We see Gail and Jean faithfully preparing for Holy Communion. We see musicians faithfully offering their talents. We see ourselves with our faults, our hopes, our pasts, our futures. Maybe, on bad days, we are like the “patient” the C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape letters who, when he goes to church, “sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.” Screwtape the senior devil then adds to his junior colleague, “You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.” 

Church can be full of disappointments and distractions and the devil wants you to notice those. Why? Because he does not want you to see the Church as he sees it. Again, in the words of Lewis’s Screwtape, “the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy.” But the Scriptures, without losing any realism—remember the mess that was the Church in Corinth—want us to see the Church differently. And that’s why recalling the centrality and meanin of worship is important.  

Here are 2 quick take aways. 

(1) The worshipping church is a sign of the Kingdom. 

Isn’t that amazing? A sign of the presence of the Kingdom of God. Here. In Shawville. Of all places. Dad used to pray for “our little church here in Shawville.” And Eldon chastised him for being defeatist. So dad started praying for “Our Mighty Cathedral here in Shawville.” 

The Scriptures teach us that they’re both true! Think about the struggling communities in the New Testament: Jerusalem dispersed by persecution and suffering from poverty, Corinth—frankly and embarrassingly immoral, Philippi—proud, Thessalonica—fearful, Rome—negotiating the differences between Jew and Gentile, Galatia—tied up in legalistic knots. And yet, a great and terrible army. A sign of the kingdom of God. The promise of God’s presence. The foretaste of the new creation. Both true at the same time.  

We are a struggling community. We don’t need to enumerate the struggles here and now. We know them; God knows them even more so. And the word of the Gospel to us is this: Fear not little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Here is where we come not to be reminded of what is already obvious, but to recall what is at present invisible but no less true: We are the body of Christ, the people of God, living stones being built into God’s Temple, priests in the new creation.  

That is who we are. And that is why we worship. And that is good news. 

(2) The worshipping church is the place where YOU will meet Jesus. 

Meeting Jesus is not about having a mystical vision. Meeting Jesus is not about creating an emotional response to external stimulus. Meeting Jesus is about gathering where he said he would be present. And Jesus promised to be present when the Word was opened and the bread broken.  

We may well meet Jesus in other places—in our own private devotions, suddenly and unexpectedly in the strangest of places—Uncle Hugh getting blessed on the tractor is a story I’ve heard often. I don’t deny that for an instant. 

But, as we’ve noted all long, those times and those experiences flow out of and lead back to that place where Christ has PROMISED to meet us. And he promises to meet us here when we gather around the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. 

I once read a conversation that took place between a Catholic layperson and a Muslim about Holy Communion. The Muslim was shocked at the flippancy with which people entered into the church, the triviality with which they received the consecrated bread. He said to his Catholic friend, “If I believed what you believed, when I came to church, I would never get off my knees.” 

When the church gathers to worship, there is One who leads us in worship. He is here this morning. He has spoken to us in Word. He is about to feed us in the Sacrament. Here is where we meet him. And that is good news.