Ps 122

11 August 2002

“Built for Worship”

            You’ve no doubt heard me speak of my love of Star Trek.  Well, there’s another show, a cartoon, one which has been on the air for well over a decade now, and it’s another of my favorites—The Simpsons.  I want to use it as an illustration of this week’s topic on discipleship, which is worship.

For those not familiar with the program, here’s a quick look at the Simpson family:  The father is Homer, an overweight, bald, not-very-intelligent fellow who just happens to be safety inspector at a nuclear power plant.  He loves beer and donuts, and his trademark expression of alarm is “D’oh!”  The mother is Marge, a stay-at-home mom noted for a beehive style of blue hair.  The son is Bart, a ten-year-old whose name, it’s been observed, is a fitting anagram for “brat.”  The daughter, Lisa, is a socially conscious eight-year-old dreamer, artist, and saxophone player.  Then there’s baby Maggie, who never speaks and usually has a pacifier stuck in her mouth.  Rounding out the cast is a multitude of other characters, residents of the town of Springfield.

There’s one episode in particular I want us to look at.  On a bitterly cold Sunday morning, while the Simpsons are getting ready for church, Homer splits his pants and decides to stay at home.  So while the rest of the family deals with ice and snow, Homer takes a long, hot shower.  As it turns out, the church furnace is broken, so the congregation is shivering while the pastor, Rev. Lovejoy, preaches about the fires of hell, an image that brings a smile to Bart’s face.

By the time the service is over, the doors to the church have frozen shut.  So while Marge and the kids are stuck in a cold building, Homer’s in a warm house, dancing in his underwear, watching a football game, and indulging himself in various other ways.

Finally, when the family gets home, cold and irritated, Homer concludes that he’s possibly had the best day of his life, so it must be a sign that he’s not to go to church any more.  Homer defends his reasoning to Marge by saying, “What if we picked the wrong religion?  Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.”[1]  That’s just part of the episode.  Eventually, Homer does return to church, assuming his usual posture on the front row, snoring during Rev. Lovejoy’s sermon.

I mention The Simpsons because Homer’s theories about worship are more common than we might think.  Actually, the idea that worship is meant to placate an angry deity is a very ancient one indeed.  In our world today, many who would reject such an idea as hopelessly primitive still feel that going to church helps them score points with God, although, even the number of people who think that way seems to keep falling.

Increasingly common is the feeling that worship, at least, participation in a worshiping community, isn’t very important—it’s not worth the trouble.  I know I felt that way as a teenager.  I even had a problem with the word “worship.”  It seemed like something that would only appeal to losers.

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson reflects on “all the reasons people give for not going to church:

‘My mother made me when I was little.’

‘There are too many hypocrites in the church.’

‘It’s the only day I have to sleep in.’

“There was a time,” he says, “when I responded to such statements with simple arguments that exposed them as flimsy excuses.  Then I noticed that it didn’t make any difference.  If I showed the inadequacy of one excuse, three more would pop up in its place.  So I don’t respond anymore.  I listen (with a straight face) and go home and pray that person will one day find the one sufficient reason for going to church, which is God.  I go about my work hoping that what I do and say will be usable by the Holy Spirit to create in that person a determination to worship God in a Christian community.”[2]

Peterson believes, and I would have to agree, that much more interesting than the excuses people give for avoiding worship are the reasons people give for worshiping.  In one sense, it’s amazing that any of us are here.  I can testify to that for myself, and it’s true that we all have our own stories to tell.

The reality is:  we’re built for worship.  (We’ll hear that phrase again.)  From our own Presbyterian tradition, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we hear the often quoted question and answer—with the masculine language—“Q. What is the chief end of man?  A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

So much for my theory, once upon a time, that worship is for losers!  To actually be able to glorify God—to actually be able to enjoy God, be it for a moment or forever—that’s not the mark of a loser.  That’s why it’s so unfortunate when worship goes astray, when we turn to idols.  In fact, the word “worship” itself, coming from the Old English / Saxon word weorthscipe, means “worthiness,” “honor,” “dignity.”  In worship, we truly have a high calling.

Eugene Peterson says that Psalm 122 describes the nature of worship.  “The psalm singles out three items:  worship gives us a workable structure for life; worship nurtures our need to be in relationship with God; worship centers our attention on the decisions of God."[3]  This isn’t the definitive word on the matter, but it’s a pretty good one!

His translation of verse 3 and the first part of 4 speak to the idea of structure:  “Jerusalem, well-built city, built as a place for worship!  The city to which the tribes ascend, all God’s tribes go up to worship.”  For the Hebrews, Jerusalem was the place where they would gather for the major festivals.  They were all to gather, no matter what their tribe, occupation, or social class.  (Democrats and Republicans, Bills and Dolphins fans…)  This is worship as quite literally a structure for life, a clear example of being built for worship!

            Another reason to worship is to foster our bond with God.  The second part of verse 4 reads, “To give thanks to the name of God—this is what it means to be Israel.”  This is an identity based in God.  As the people of God, worship is part of our identity; it’s who we are.

            We don’t worship because we’re forced to, but we’re also not to do it because we feel like it.  Feelings are very unreliable; they come and go.  Sometimes we’re on top of the world, and we want to run yelling down the street and let the neighbors hear about it!  And then there are times when we not only don’t want to get out of bed, but we would even hide under the bed, although disturbing the dust bunnies may convince us otherwise.  So much for feelings.  However, our identity—as defined by God, not even the one we give ourselves—that is rock solid.

Closely related to that is how worship focuses us on the word of God.  The psalm speaks of “thrones for righteous judgment,” with “judgment” referring to divine declarations.  Corporate worship does what private devotions cannot.  Again, Peterson:  “In the call to worship we hear God’s first word to us; in the benediction we hear God’s last word to us; in the Scripture lessons we hear God speaking to our faith-parents; in the sermon we hear that word reexpressed to us; in the hymns, which are all to a greater or lesser extent paraphrases of Scripture, the Word of God makes our prayers articulate.”[4]

Starting with verse 6, the psalm lets us see how worship effects us, or at least, how it should effect us.  “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”  Now there’s a scripture text that’s been horribly abused.  That verse, like Jerusalem itself, has been appropriated by characters of every stripe.  For example, I’ve heard people say that that means we should support the governmental policies of the modern state of Israel, regardless of their nature.

Well, this character of a particular stripe is going to weigh in on the matter.  It seems to me that the word used for “peace,” !wolv] (shalom), is much too big for any of our petty agendas.  Shalom can’t be confined to a single city, not even to a city that has “peace” included in its name:  !l;v;Wry] (y^erushalam).  By its very nature, as the peace of God, it spills over every boundary that we humans draw on maps.  It refuses to abide by the various reasons we concoct for hating each other.

We become what we worship.  Being built for worship, we all worship something, even if it’s something we’ve never bothered to examine—even if we’ve never taken the trouble to investigate what it is we worship.  So if we truly worship the God of shalom, we will become people of shalom.

So in conclusion, to review:  (1) worship gives us a workable structure for life, both at the communal level—the church—and at the individual level.  The more we enter in to the worship of the church, the more that worship seeps into us, transforming us into the image of Christ.  (2) Worship nurtures our need to be in relationship with God.  As creatures built for worship, we become more human as we draw closer to God.  And (3), worship centers our attention on the decisions of God.  We find more wisdom and life and beauty in the word of God than we ever thought possible.

With such a discovery, we might even hear the words of verse 1 come from an unexpected source.  When the subject of going to the house of God is brought up, we might hear, “my heart leaped for joy”—not from the psalmist, but from such a one as Homer Simpson!

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