The work of the people

DAILY BYTE

Now, this week, we’re talking about worship, but we’re also talking about work. We tend to separate the two into our ‘religious time’ and our ‘work time,’ but it turns out that the two concepts – work and worship – can’t be separated. You may have heard the word, liturgy, before. It’s a word that describes the prayers, responses, songs and rituals that we go through in worship services, and it comes from the Greek, leitourgia, which means the work – the public service – of the people.

Now, when we go to worship on a Sunday, we say, we are going to a worship “service.” We say this without thinking too much about what that means – it’s become a standard phrase that just rolls off the tongue – worship service.

But do we ever think about the meaning of going to worship for a “service?” When we do this, we are actually going to perform a service for each other, for God, and for the whole world.

We are not just going through motions – we’re not just showing up to get fed for the rest of the week – but we are doing the world a service in the work that we do through praying, singing, and going through the rituals and sacraments of communion and baptism. We are doing something that matters.

Not just to us in our own little me-focused worlds – but something that matters to the whole of creation. Our work in worship has the power to be a song of protest –a vision of light - in a world and life that is easily consumed by darkness.

A friend of mine told me that every time she goes into a pulpit to preach, she asks herself the question – am I speaking into what matters – is the work that I am about to do going to matter to people?

This is not only a question for preachers! We ask the question – why does what we do matter – because we want our lives to point to something bigger than ourselves.

The reality is that we only get to do a certain amount of work in our 80 to 100 years of life, if we’re really lucky. We only sing so many songs, we only pray so many prayers, and one day, our work here is done.

And in the midst of all of that work and prayer there are a lot of moments when we stop to wonder if even believe in what we’re doing, there are moments when we give up and feel like frauds, there are times when we just go through the motions, feeling dry and purposeless, and there are lots of times when we fail to make any effort at all – just being idle, drowning ourselves in front of the TV, wasting our time away on things that really don’t matter.

So how might God be asking us to reshape the way we see worship? How might we look at work differently, if we thought that it all really mattered to God?

FOCUS READING

Nehemiah 9:6 (NIV)

You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.