"Taking Worship Seriously"

by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein

June 13, 2010 sermon

 “Ancient as the home is the temple, ancient as the work-bench is the altar. Ancient as the sword is the sacrificial flame, ancient as the soldier is the priest. Older than written language is spoken prayer, older than painting is the image of the nameless one. Religion is the first and the last, it is the universal language of the human heart.” More than a generation ago Waldemar Argow penned those words to impart the everlasting nature of the human need to worship. Argow, a Unitarian, knew the truth of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “a man will worship something.” Emerson meant that as a warning to the practitioners of religion in his own day that worship is to be taken seriously, for, as he said, “that which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.”

Like any other human endeavor, the art of worship has evolved over the millennia, in spite of those who in every age have attempted to cast it in stone. Religious liberals have always understood this evolution; in fact we have embraced and celebrated it. New times call for new and very intentional approaches. We have to take our practice of worship seriously indeed. That is why I was so pleased with the turnout for the Worship Workshop last month, and with the depth of the conversation we shared. Even if you never intend to lead a worship service, it is worth thinking a little bit about what happens in worship and why.

What we do together in this one hour is of critical importance to our own lives and to the quality of life in the larger community. It matters that we come together for worship, it matters how we conduct our worship, it matters how much we tend to the quality of worship. “Now I know what you’re thinking. She’s the minister. Of course she thinks worship is important.” But you are Unitarian Universalists. You believe in the prophethood and the priesthood of all believers. Surely you must believe that what you do here together on Sunday morning is way too important to leave it to me!

So let’s consider together what it really means to gather for worship. In an old Unitarian meditation manual, published in 1956, Rev. Frank Holmes wrote this brief reflection called “The Art of Worship.”  “There is,” he said, “a required alternation in the life of prayer. It must involve the initiative of each of us as an individual. I must face, alone, the challenge of life’s vastness and uncertainty – as also of its richness, beauty and hope – and learn to respond in terms of my personal gratitude, reverence, and courage. However, religion is not only an individual undertaking; it is also communal. Even before people understood with any definiteness what they were doing, long before there was such a thing as theology, they worshiped together. In song and dance, in united sacrifice and silence, they expressed their wonder and hope, and renewed and deepened their religious feeling. There are many ways of worshiping . . . no one way which alone is valid. The important thing is that I share in this communal experience. Let me learn to sing, to listen, to pray, and thus to grow with my fellow worshippers.”

Holmes makes two important points. The first is that our communal worship builds on the natural rhythms of our personal spiritual lives. I often say that the sermon is simply the beginning of a conversation, not the end. But it is more accurate to say that the sermon is, in fact, the middle of a conversation that each one of you begins in your own homes, in your own hearts and minds. This means that our worship service, while orderly on the outside, is actually a cacophony of voices in conversation with the spirit. I loved hearing that after reviewing all of the many places where she had experienced worship, Deidre held up as her quintessential worship experience the Flower Communion on Easter Sunday. Talk about a cacophonous service.

When planning worship, we must always be mindful of the wide spectrum of expectations and needs and hopes and experiences that you bring to the sanctuary. My mentor Gordon McKeeman says, “People attend church services in response to their own needs. Those needs are varied in their specific content, though in a larger sense they are aspects of the elemental human need for wholeness.  It is the sense of being unwhole, fragmented, separated, shattered, frustrated, in pain, sorrow, fear, anguish, the hunger and thirst after “rightness” that inclines us to attend worship. That neediness is to remind us who we are most essentially and profoundly, where we are, again most essentially and profoundly, and what we are to do or be.  The object is to enable the worshippers to leave the worship experience feeling renewed in the realization of who and where they are, and empowered to take steps in the direction of what they should do or be. Church may expand our understanding, but it is more vital that it increase our sense of meaning and direction and the resolve to realize that meaning and pursue that direction. When preaching on a topic of particular interest, the worship leader is challenged to provide a universal worship context  to address the needs of those who have pressing concerns not embraced by the speaker’s particular interest or expertise.  (“Of course waste disposal is important but my mother is critically ill, and I need some religious resource to help me address my personal struggle.)”

The moral of all this: one way for every one of us to take worship seriously is to acknowledge that the service does not start at 10:45 and end an hour later. We can all enhance the quality of our worship experience by taking our own faith journeys seriously all week – using the spiritual practice of our choosing to reflect intentionally on our lives. It is also incumbent on all of us to be aware of and respectful of that spectrum of needs that others bring to shared worship. When we are most enthusiastic about a sermon on a topic such as the theology of waste disposal we must be equally sensitive to the fact that one of our neighbors will be hurting in a terribly personal way and needs to be comforted by some other part of our worship service.

We all have to realize that when we come to worship, we are sharing not only space and time but the very spirit of the hour. At no time is it more important to be humble; to be aware that in this place and at this time it is NOT all about me. Some of you have let me know that there are parts of the service that you do not like. Some are uncomfortable with silence, others with singing hymns. Some of you prefer an upbeat message with contemporary music. Others prefer meditative experience with classical music. Some love having the children in the service, others wish for less of  the joyous but chaotic energy they bring. Some of you love to applaud the music, others find applause disruptive and even offensive. My response to every one of these preferences has always been to tell you that your gift to the congregation is to tolerate the part you like the least because for somebody else, that will be the most precious and moving moment of the entire service. So by all means bring all of yourself to the altar, but also bring your awareness that you must surrender some of yourself to the greater good. When you move from purely personal devotions to communal worship you don’t get everything you want.

On the other hand there is an extraordinary benefit to gathering together on Sunday morning. There is strength in community. Together we find the comfort we need when we mourn, we find people willing to beckon to us and guide us when we have lost our way, we find people who will challenge us when our reason runs amok, people who will encourage and energize us when our own batteries have run low. When we agree to worship as a community, we get back so much more than we give up!

That’s why there is no place I would rather be on Sunday morning than in church. I take worship seriously not because I’m a minister, but because I’m a battered, confused, hurting, scared human being. Much like you. I hope and pray that every one of you will engage in worship this coming year with a renewed commitment to the enrichment of your ongoing shared endeavor. I hope you will take worship seriously. And most of all I hope that you will in some way take these words adapted from Rev. Holmes to heart. “Give us the courage to truly belong to our church: to share our faith with others, and to draw upon their insight and hope; to learn a language of the sprit which we others can both speak and understand; to let our minds be enlightened and our hearts be moved by the larger conscience and vision of aspiring humankind.”