a lectio divina theme: worship & church
…..Do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit within you? –Paul to Corinthians
Sanctuary a poem based on psalm 114 (prh)
That God would dwell and be resident in my heart and soul,
by choice, not force, is astounding.
The sanctuary is inside me, not one built with human hands,
A mere ediface or artifact for pilgrimage or ritual veneration.
The contrast is simple. We become sanctuary abiders or idol makers.
A place for God to relax, reside, and put His feet up, or we use God for ourselves.
Psalm 114 1 When Israel came out of Egypt,
Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
2 Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
3 The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
4 the mountains leaped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
5 Why was it, sea, that you fled?
Why, Jordan, did you turn back?
6 Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,
you hills, like lambs?
7 Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8 who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water.
Make it stand out
We are that presence, that sanctuary, intended all along, and to be a spring of water out of our stony hearts.
Make time to ‘be present before God, clear a space for God. We need to be stilled, if briefly, so we may become more like Jesus.
If we don’t clear a space it will be filled for us. –Thena Ayres
Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your logical service of worship.--Paul to Romans 12:1
Worship is the inner surrender and availability of the heart. Paul starts out the letter to people at Rome, saying in Romans 1:9, “I worship with my spirit”. (latreia) This word Paul chose here is not merely the physical genuflecting or ritually bowing down to God.
It involves a corresponding surrender of a part of your life and availability of your spirit to Him.
And in 12:1 it’s not speaking of “logical service of worship” as going to a worship service, but rather that the only worship that makes any logical sense is— being available, presenting our bodies (hands, eyes, hearts, etc.), in our spirit, no matter where we are.
The Hebrew word in Genesis 1:26 used for working in our calling is the same word used for worshiping the Lord. (Avodah) In fact, God put us on earth to worship-work.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and yet you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship. Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”-- Jesus converses with the woman at the well in John 4
For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”--Jesus
We get confused about who’s doing what in worship: we think of worshippers as an audience, pastors and musicians as entertainers and God as a prompter. When in fact, worshippers are performers, pastors are prompters, and God is the audience. – Soren Kierkegaard
For some reason, it is easier to attend church services than quite simply to reverence the Real—the “practice of the presence of God,” as some saints have called it. It seems we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worship feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary….
People want something more from church; they long for a spirituality that connects with their whole life, not just on Sunday morning….Much of formal church has been unable to create any practical community. Yet today we see the emergence of new faith communities--many para-church structures--that seek to return to this foundational definition of church. They may not look like obvious "church," but they exemplify the kinds of actual community that Jesus, Paul, and early Christians envisioned. People are gathering in neighborhood associations, collective gardens, social services, and volunteer groups to share resources, support each other, and nurture connection. They're coming together, seeking creative ways of healing and whole-making. The invisible church might be doing this just as much, if not more, than the visible. The Holy Spirit is both humble and anonymous.--- Fr. Richard Rohr
"Faith itself sometimes needs to be stripped of its social and historical encrustations and returned to its first, churchless incarnation in the human heart." —Christian Wiman
[our work] is more hidden because it is not flashy or seeking attention. . . . I have seen it in the small parish of St. Thomas, Kagiso, South Africa. When we visited some years ago, the rector at the time, Xolani Dlwati, told us,“We do not do outreach. Everything we do is worship.”This congregation, comprised of predominantly poor families, fed lunch to children in the neighborhood school; bought school books, shoes, and uniforms for children in the community; stood as guardians for families of child-headed households; and made sure that those dying from AIDS had their homes cleaned, were eating healthy food, and knew they were loved. There was no fancy church sanctuary, no glamorous life for the rector, just worship of God that showed, through their caring, what Christianity is all about. —Episcopal priest Nontombi Naomi Tutu.
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