Worship

Beginning with the sons of Adam and Eve the Bible tells the story of humans worshiping God or false gods through offering sacrifice. Through their natural religious instinct they knew that they were in debt to God. It was not that God needed their gifts but that they needed them. The sacrifice was a sign of love. To give to another at the expense of one's self. To love God in this selfless way was to worship God. Abel offered the best of what he had from his flocks of sheep and Cain became jealous when God accepted Abel's offering but rejected Cains's offering from his crops. Both built an altar, placed their gift on it and prayed that God would accept it as a legitimate form of worship. An altar was usually made out of stones and used to elevate the gift because God is seen as higher or above all else.

Other patriarchs such as Noah and Abraham offered sacrifices to God on an altar. During the time of Moses God revealed that He accepted sacrifices from the Levites one of the twelve tribes that descended from Abraham's grandson Jacob. Moses and his brother Aaron were Levites, therefore they were considered priests. The priest had the role of offering worship to God on behalf of God's people and he acted as a mediator between God and the people.  Offering sacrifice became a formal ritual as a way to worship God in love, to say thankyou to God and as a way to ask for forgiveness from God. Other sacrifices were meant to ratify or seal a covenant. These sacrifices required blood. The blood was a sign of a family bond and also a reminder of the permanence of the covenant. To break it would be death. 

God told Moses to build a special tent for God to dwell in the camp of the Israelites. This dwelling place is called the tabernacle (Ex 25). The tabernacle is seen as a replica or pattern of of heaven since God gave these detailed instructions for his own dwelling place on earth. Tabernacle courtyard had an altar for sacrifice of lambs, goats and bulls.  It also had a laver or large bowl fro the priests to wash their hands and feet before they entered the holy room. The holy room had three pieces of furniture, a seven branched lamp, a table for bread and wine and a small altar for incense. The inside of the walls was covered with gold and the smell of the incense and fresh bread on the table filled the room. The light from the lamp flickered of of the walls. The Levites regulated the ritual actions within the holy room. There was a large, angelic patterned veil that covered the back room. The back room was called the holy of holies. It housed one piece of furniture, a large golden chest called the Ark of the Covenant. It it were kept the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the staff of Aaron and a jar of Manna. The lid was considered God's throne on earth that it why it was surrounded on each side by an angel. 

On special occasions or feast days the Israelites assembled to worship God as they recalled his mighty deeds in their own story. Passover and the Day of Atonement are two days that requirted special rituals. 

The book that the priests used was a manual called the Book of Leviticus. It detailed who, what, when, where of all the religious rituals that centered around the Tabernacle.

Eventually, during the time of David the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusalem, the holy city. Solomon built the first temple patterned after the Tabernacle. Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Jews were taken into exile. This was a catastrophe for the Jews because they had to find an alternative way to worship God.

This alternate from of worship was called synagogue style of worship. A synagogue was a gathering place for the Jews where they came together in a U shaped building to keep their identity as God's chosen people alive. They read their stories, prayed to God as a substitute for ritual sacrifice, sang songs and they listened to Rabbis teach about the Law. 

Later, when the Jews returned to their land and to Jerusalem they rebuilt the temple. Once again it was desecrated by foreign powers until the Romans came. During the Roman time period Herod the Great doubled the size of the Temple and made it amazing. It was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. Herod's Temple is the temple that we read about in the Gospels, the one that Jesus was presented to God as an infant, called his Father's house as a child, taught about it, wept over it, predicted it's destruction, and where he turned over the money changer's tables.

Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish world. Male Jews were supposed to make a pilgrimage to the Jerusalem temple for the three major Jewish feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. However, since Nazareth was a three or four day journey from Jerusalem (about a hundred miles), it is unlikely that Jesus made the trip often. The Gospels tell us that he went with his family at the age of twelve. He also visited Jerusalem during his public life (once or three times depending on the Gospel). On one visit to the temple, Jesus is recorded as reacting violently to those who were using the temple for commercial purposes. It is highly probable that this action of Jesus is related to his trial and eventual execution. Of further historical interest is the fact that the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. 

In the year 70 AD about forty years after Jesus' death, the temple was destroyed by the Romans as a way to squash a rebellion of the Zealots who wanted to overthrow the Romans and expel them from Jerusalem.

Since then the temple has never been rebuilt. Instead, today on the temple mount there stands two Muslim golden-domed mosques. Today the Jewish people primarily worship God by attending services at their local synagogues. They no longer have a priesthood which offers sacrifices. Sometimes these synagogues are called 'temples'. 

For Catholics, the synagogue and the temple style of worship serve as a root for how we worship. At Mass, the celebration of the Eucharist, we have the liturgy of the Word patterned after the rituals in the synagogues. We have the liturgy of the Eucharist, a re-presentation of the Calvary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and of the Last Supper. These rituals are rooted in the temple sacrifices and the Passover meal. This is why we have priests, altars, vestments, incense, sacrificial language and prayers, scripture reading, preaching or homilies, and singing. We, like the Apostles and earliest church members, worship in a very biblical way. The Letter to the Hebrews spells out these connections by calling Jesus a new high priest who offers his Body and Blood perpetually in the real heavenly tabernacle of God the Father so that our sins will be forgiven and we will become holy. Jesus, and his meritorious death and resurrection is the fulfillment of the whole system of worship that He and the Apostles knew.