Working together

DAILY BYTE

We’re talking this week about worship and work. And so we read in 2 Thessalonians today about a group of people who seem to have forgotten to do work that matters.

They’re told in no uncertain terms that they’re being idle – they’re not remembering what the people who went before them taught them about doing what is right. Instead, they’re being busybodies – which means they might be doing a lot of things, but certainly they’re not things that bring life to the world or have any greater meaning behind them. These people are not actually doing the work – leitourgia – the work of the people. Instead of contributing to and serving the community, they seem to be sucking from the community what they need, expecting then to be provided for.

And let’s be honest, it seems this is the way many of us address the work of worship, myself often included.

We live consumerist lives. And when people who lead worship – with bands and choirs and microphones – get up on “stage,” we can be lulled into the idea that we come purely to be served and fed. I remember I used to tease my mom for having a preaching mic that looked very much like Britney Spears’ headset. Watching that, we tend to appreciate the work that others do to prepare, but we can comfortably sit as a member of an audience.

Sometimes we understand what’s going on in the performance – sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we care about what we see and hear. Sometimes we don’t. But it may be time for us to re-evaluate who the audience of our worship is.

There’s no doubt that God serves us, as God performs, in worship. The Presbyterian minister, Marjorie Thompson says in her book, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, that in worship “God fills us with the joy of knowing we are loved, restores our courage through forgiveness, provides the Word for hungry hearts, and fills us with the bread and wine of new life in Christ, giving new purpose to our lives.”

In worship the Holy Spirit flows around and within us – doing its work – so that when we come to church idle and feeling a bit empty or dry or in need of greater faith, God responds out of love for us with God’s work in our lives.

But the Christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, also talks about it as a “theatre of worship” where the audience is God. And so the truth about worship is that it’s work that is done by us and by God – all together at once.

It requires something of God, and it requires some sacrifice of ours. So that even when we don’t feel like doing the work, even when we’re not sure if we even believe in the work we do, even when we’re just plain weary, like it says in 2 Thessalonians, we are asked through worship to work together with God – through our prayers and music and hearing scripture and contemplating the word proclaimed and greeting one another and celebrating the sacraments together – we need to do this – it matters.

It is not just a way of filling up our own selves, although it does that, but it has real power to stand against things that tear the world down – power against feelings of disappointment and fear, discouragement and hopelessness, violence and abuse, unbelief and bland living. When we stand together with God and do the work of worship, we are working to create a world that brings life and beauty to people instead of death.

How exciting is that?? How passionate can we be about that????

So that even if we’re a bit confused at the moment about our own faith and a bit down in our levels of hope, we can stand together with one another and gain strength from each other to preach the word with our lives. Are you ready to do this work?

FOCUS READING

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 (NRSV)

Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.