TEXT Session 4

Session 4: An Invitation to Worship

Jesus, in summing up the greatest commandment, said, “You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” In doing so, he sets worship at the center of the spiritual life. What matters most is not where we worship, but whether or not we open ourselves and give ourselves to God in love with heart, mind, soul and strength.

Unlike our Western culture which separates the head and heart into two distinct spheres, namely the rational and feeling spheres, Jewish tradition understands the heart as the seat and center of the whole person, including thought, emotion, will, intuition and imagination. When the heart is turned to God, one is filled with grace; when the heart turns away, a person dwells in delusion. True worship from the heart means responding to God with our entire being. Worship is meant to touch us deeply and move us in both feeling and commitment.

Unfortunately, sometimes our worship is only half-hearted. In churches that tend toward reason and order, many members yearn to express more fully the intuitive and feeling side of faith. In churches where the intellect is less valued than emotional experiences of faith, many people are hungry for serious study and responsible action. Part of the gift of our increasingly multicultural society is the opportunity to learn various styles of worship from one another and appreciate the gifts of each tradition.

The Need to Gather

For many people, private worship is more attractive than gathering on Sunday at church. Many ask, why do I need to go to church when I can mediate on God in nature with far less distraction or listen to an inspiring message on T.V. or online. There is some truth to this as many now participate in livestreamed worship services in the context of the global pandemic and who are we to judge the quality or depth of a religious experience initiated through the beauty of nature.

However, the reasons for gathering are important. Whether we are alone or with others, we need to experience our Christian life as rooted in the larger community of faith. The support and encouragement of the community is essential to help us stay on the path. If we are honest, we need the prayers and support of others and they need our prayers and support. We delude ourselves if we think we can live the spiritual life in total isolation from the Christian community. Even those who are unable to come to worship like the frail, elderly and homebound, are committed to its importance and desire the church bringing community to them through the Eucharist or a special visit.

Worship as Problem

While there are good reasons to gather as a Christian community, truth be told, many people find worship a source of frustration, rather than fulfillment, feeling like passive (and not so happy) recipients of limited and uninspiring worship.

Perhaps we come seeking a lively community of faith and find people who seem bored, preoccupied, uninterested in visitors, or eager to escape for Sunday brunch and afternoon golf. Perhaps we feel unable to penetrate the circles of people who seem to be at the heart of the church’s life. We may find ourselves unaccepted for a variety of reasons, including various forms of brokenness in our personal lives. We may consistently leave worship feeling isolated and lonely. Perhaps we come for inspiration and get a heavy dose of ideology, a boring and predictable homily, or the personal views of the homilist. Perhaps we feel the worship is too traditional or too trendy. We become weary and angry instead of uplifted and energized. These and various other reasons have left worshippers dissatisfied, longing for something more.

Not everyone experiences such inadequacy in worship and certainly not all these ways at once! But it begs the question, how can we experience worship in a more lively way, better attuned to God in spite of the frailties and limitations of the community, the foibles of worship leaders, and the inadequacies of our own feelings and judgements?

There are things that we can do to help enliven our experience of worship. We may have little power to change the external forms, but we can certainly change our way of entering into it. We can take responsibility for our experience by (1) preparing in advance for Sunday; and (2) by engaging worship itself with a different quality of awareness.

One possibility is begin our preparation for Sunday worship on Saturday evening. We can use a simple ritual as way to transition. For example, drinking a special blend of tea or reading from a special book, reserved only for this occasion.

Many people find it helpful to arrive early in order to avoid last minute rushing. Once the liturgy has begun, you can do several things to heighten your awareness of God’s presence. First, be prepared to hear God—to you personally and to the whole gathering. Pay attention to the meaning of the words as you say them. Listen to the words of the hymns and music, allow yourself to express depths of joy, praise, sorrow, and yearning. Let the Spirit touch you!

Try to turn distractions into opportunities to stretch yourself and go deeper. If you are distracted by a child, pray for the well-being of the child and all the children in the church community, and in the world. If the Gospel reading helped you to see how fearful you are of people who are different, pray for those who seem most different and pray to be released from fear so that you are free to serve. If parts of the liturgy do not speak to you, try and focus on the parts that do. Take some time to ponder and reflect on the physical environment, the stained glass windows, art, or liturgical vessels or other elements of beauty if available.

These are just some suggestions for your consideration. What matters is that you are intentional about revitalizing your personal experience of worship.

Ultimately we are the ones who determine the quality of our worship experience, because worship is our response to God’s love. In her book The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris describes this lesson after spending time living in Catholic monasteries. She says, “Even when I find church boring I hold this in my mind as a possibility: like all the other fools who have dragged themselves to church on Sunday morning, including the pastor, I am there because I need to be reminded that love can be at the center of all things, if we only keep it there. The worship service will most likely not offer an aesthetically pleasing experience, great theological insight, or emotional release, although any and all of those things are possible and precious.”