Pastor's Comments

Last month we talked about prayer, the primary means of our communication with God.  This month we turn to the second major faith practice in our lives: worship.  Worship is our most public act as disciples: every week, we gather; every week, we come to a central location; every week, we greet and encourage and connect our lives together.  It is that necessary, repeating movement that fills our tanks and strengthens us at the start of the week.  I’ve heard from many of our members that worship is what gets them through the week, and without it, the week does not go nearly as well.

For us, worship is filled with the structure and language of the ancients, brought into our modern context.  We bring today’s energy and a sensitivity to what’s happening in our world and infuse them into ancient words, motions, movement, and mystery.  Our worship rings with the silence of the catacombs.  We thrill to the soaring chords of the cathedrals.  We are moved by the chants of the medieval monks.  We proclaim and echo the words of our ancestors, gathered through all time and space, in our shared Creeds.

Then we bring today’s world into this rich living faith of our ancestors.  We sing newly composed hymns and songs alongside familiar ones, because they speak to us in a language that resonates.  We plan worship texts to match the rhythms of the seasons and our own usage of language.  We utilize the best scholarship available in understanding what the Creeds and prayers meant to their authors, and what they mean in our world today.

As a liturgical tradition, worship for us becomes a well-worn path, a familiar route that brings us where we need to be: basking in the filling and fulfilling presence of God.  That familiarity is important because its structure can feed our soul and bring an expected peace.  But, there is also a danger of our path becoming a rut, and so as a congregation we watch for things to be too-familiar, too-comfortable, too-expected.  Worship should always have a sense of adventure, of the possibility and opportunity of being approached by God in a new way, of a new aspect of God’s grace breaking in like sunrise.

Above all, worship is when we know God is here, when the Spirit is available, when we are breathed into by God’s strength and presence and sent into the world.  Worship is the breathing in and breathing out of the body of Christ: brought into community, filled with his life, and then sent into the world.  What happens to you in worship is not for Sunday.  Worship is all about the rest of the week: encountering God changes how we meet the world.  It is Jesus who makes it possible for us to invite our friends and family members to come, to know the joy we have found in the Lord.

So come and worship, come and be filled, come and be connected across space and time to the words and motions of the ancients, to the new movement of the Spirit among composers and musicians, to the work and mission of God in the world today.  Come and see and be filled with God’s presence, that we can be sent into the world, so that everyone – your friends and neighbors and family members especially – can know his peace.

-Pastor Tim