I thank God for all of you and all the gifts that you bring into our lives together. In our Christmas Eve service of Holy Communion, I saw the face of Christ in each and every one of you as you came forward to receive the sacrament and it blessed me tremendously, even those who found it uncomfortable to look at me.
At the beginning of a New Year it is customary to look forward to the exciting new future that
we are together creating with God, and normally I would invite us to cast our eyes for-ward at this time to where we hear God calling us to be. But first at this time, I am forced into looking backward to a place where we have been and where it seems, some of us are stuck. It’s about worship and the amount of time we take to worship God.
It is clear to me and has been for a very long time that worship is not about us, but about God. Worship is the central activity of the Christian faith and it is the time that we come together as a corporate body to give to God praise and adoration. When we enter the sanctuary we need to leave everything outside of that holy place except for hearts open and prepared to worship God so that we can give to God our all – all our attention, all our praise, all our hearts, souls, lives.
I have found that whenever my mind is on other things it is not on God. According to a universal law of physics, two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. So if, during our worship we find ourselves focused on anything else, that is a missed opportunity for focusing on God, and we are in fact adulterating our relationship with God by attending to something else other than God.(Third, Ninth commandments)
As the Christmas Eve 11 pm service went longer than 60 minutes, at least one person thought it important to comment that “Rev. Scott has yet to learn how to do a 60 minute service.” And while we often get tired praising God, God never gets tired receiving our praises. Thank God that He also doesn’t get tired of us!
I might have missed many things in seminary, but the 60-minute service was not one of them. I have spent the last ten years in a formal educational setting learning about God and the things of God. Nowhere in that ten years or among any of the many respected and wise persons who have been my teachers have I been taught that God will punish me for holding a service of worship to God for longer than an hour. For pretending to worship I will be held accountable, for misleading the people, I will be held accountable and for failing to preach and teach the truth I will be held accountable, but not for taking a service past 60 minutes.
In fact the focus of worship is not time (chronos) which is a human concept of measurement, but rather season (kairos) which is a God-generated. The heart of the matter is whether we hold nothing back in giving praise and adoration to God who gives all things, among which, is time. God seeks true worshipers to worship him in spirit and in truth.( Read John Chapter 4)
Why do we find it so difficult to revel in the things of God and in the household of God and to give back to God who has so generously given to us? Why do we keep wanting to put God into a 60-minute box, when God is infinite?
If I am to be faulted, let me be faulted for having kept a service of worship just a little longer on an occasion such as the celebration of the birth of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A special occasion. One of the highest, holiest days of the Christian calendar, for God deserves everything that we have.
And that is where you will find me, today, tomorrow …pointing the way to God, calling us back to God, not allowing us to relegate God to a side show. With God’s help and by God’s power you can look for me to stand on God’s side and to engage in God’s mission to save us from ourselves. That’s where the future is. That is what I look forward to, and I invite you to join me in a glorious future of never-ending praise to God.