What is the goal of worship? Worship is misconceived if we think of it as a means to some other end, such as "I will worship to feel better, to rescue my fractured marriage, to improve myself, to cure loneliness, to meet neat people, to recharge my batteries." All these and even more benefits may happen, but worship is the end, not the means to anything else. The Westminster Confession declares that the chief end of life is to "glorify God and enjoy God forever."
St. Augustine made an important distinction between two Latin words used in his day for love. First there is uti love, love of "use." I may love money, not because I delight in handling it or hanging it framed on my wall. I only love money because I can use it for something else. Then there is frui love, love of "enjoyment." I love chocolate, not because of what I use it for (which isn't all that advantageous to my waistline or cholesterol level!) - I just love it, will go to great lengths to get it. Augustine suggested that too often we love God with uti love: we want to use God to get other things we really want. What God yearns for from us is frui love, when we simply love God because of who God is, what God has done, no matter what we get out of it, no matter what that love might cost us.
A classic definition of worship is to glorify God, and to sanctify humanity. When we worship God, when we think of ourselves as existing in order to glorify God, then we are changed. Regular worship excavates a place in the core of our being, shoveling out the accumulated trash that is not of God, leaving an open space - a sanctuary within. We can visit that sanctuary, then, through the rest of the week, by day or night, and worship God at work, in the den, while driving, as we fall asleep. If we neglect that sanctuary, it becomes overgrown and chocked with dust. But when we worship in the Church, and build a bridge between those weekly encounters by inhabiting the sanctuary built inside us, we are sanctified, made holy. Nothing is the same, but we don't miss the old two-bit life we leave behind much at all.
From the vantage point of that sanctuary, we see the world and everyone around us differently. In the comic film, Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carrey character, having squandered his relationship with Grace, finds himself face to face with God, who asks if he wants her back. Surprisingly he says to God, "No: what I want is for her to find somebody who sees her the way I see her now - through Your eyes." Worship is like undergoing some kind of corneal transplant, and gradually we rub our eyes and begin to see what God sees, and to understand with a new heart, strangely close to God's heart, and then we love as God loves, not smugly distant from the world, but more zealous than ever to engage the world as God's hands and feet.
James
james@mpumc.org
