News from Faith United Presbyterian Church

Revisiting the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve's desire to be like God, the disingenuous offering of Cain, and humanity's attempt to build a tower reaching up to the heavens, Myer Boulton identifies the "work" of religion as an expression of human pride and a corruption of the relationship offered by God. Worship, then, as the height of human expression becomes the height of human sin.

"Every liturgy Christians build, no matter how excellent (and indeed all the more so for its alleged excellence), is permanently open to the charge that it is also a Christian effort to 'make a name for ourselves,' as the author of Genesis 11 puts it, to 'lift up our hearts to the Lord' so that we effectively 'build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens' (Gen 11:4). Every liturgy Christians build, in other words, is permanently open to the charge of spiritual pride. Thus we may ask: Is any Christian worship service exempt from this charge? Is there any way to pronounce the sursum corda (Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.) - or for that matter, to approach God at all in Christian worship - without building a liturgical tower at the same time?" (p. 4)

The answer, of course, is "No". Even our offering of worship here at Faith United, apart from Christ, is vulnerable to spiritual pride and corrupted by our desire to be like God, or at least our desire to be liked by God. We sacrifice in order to be sacred.

We've talked around this issue before. Our discussions regarding the appropriateness of applause, the use of drama, the attitudes/ expectations we bring to our worship, our appreciation, or dislike, of particular sermons, prayers, hymns, etc. all reveal how easily our worship may be infected by spiritual pride. Even our personal experiences bear witness to how easily our worship may be corrupted. How often do we become distracted or even angry over issues that in the realm of life are not important? Does not our very desire to "get something from worship" undermine and corrupt the free gift of God's grace? (If you question this, reread Genesis 4.)

If even our best attempts at worship are little more than a hopeless expression of human pride, where is our hope? Jesus Christ. In the incarnation, Jesus assumes and perfects our humanity, including our worship. Therefore, our offering of worship, in all its corruption, becomes Christ's offering of worship on our behalf. Moreover, Christ's offering of worship, in all of its perfection, becomes our offering of worship. This "wondrous exchange" is seen most clearly in the sacrament of communion.

"The Communion rite is the quintessential, climactic celebration in Christian worship: the joyous thanksgiving feast ('Euchrist' is from the Greek eucharistia, 'thanksgiving'), the reinterpreted Passover meal of liberation from bondage, and the foretaste of the messianic banquet that will be a culmination of all things. At the same time, of course, Communion is the meal of solemn remembrance that re-enacts Jesus' Last Supper and the night of his arrest, that is, the night he was betrayed and deserted by his disciples, the original Christians... In the same meal we take our place at God's table of reconciliation - and at our own table of desertion. The more strongly we deny that we will abandon Jesus, the more clearly we confirm our role in the narrative, for 'they all said the same' (Mark 14:31). On the other hand, the more deeply we doubt that we betrayers and deserters are already forgiven, embraced, and reconciled by God, the more clearly we confirm that this Communion invitation, as Jesus delivers it, is indeed addressed directly to us." (pp. 216-17)

My friends, this is one of the reasons Calvin, and so many others, including your pastor, believe(d) that we should never offer worship on the Lord's Day, without a celebration of communion. For it is in this "wondrous exchange" at the table of Jesus Christ that our worship, in all its corruption, is transfigured and redeemed by the body and blood of Jesus Christ to be pleasing in the sight of God.
See you in church!

Pastor Myers
revhaggis1@hotmail.com