Reflections on a Snowy Evening

By Robin G. Jordan

Are we really engaging in deep worship on Sunday mornings and at other times, worship that glorifies God, worship that helps us to grow as followers of Jesus Christ, worship that spurs us on to share the good news?

Or has our worship become a ritual in which we participate whenever we gather as a local church. We hear and say familiar words without giving a lot of thought to what we are hearing and saying. They are comfortable because they are familiar but they have lost their power to move us.

We gather as a local church because it is customary for churches to gather. It is something that they do. But we do not gather out of a pressing desire to give honor to God, to offer him praise and adoration, to hear once more the recital of his mighty deeds, to give thanks for how he has blessed and spared us.

For most of us church attendance has become a part of a weekly routine that we follow. It is something that we do without much thought. It is a routine that we will continue to follow unless one or more changes in our lives disrupt it.

The notion that God makes invisible changes in us through our participation in the liturgy, while it is appealing, conflicts with what our Lord himself said. “A tree is known by its fruit.”  Our Lord expects more from us than showing up on Sunday morning. He likened himself to a vine and his disciples to the branches. He warned that those branches that do not bear fruit will be cut off and burned. He also cursed a barren fig tree because it bore no fruit. The tree withered and died.

I am not suggesting that the Holy Spirit does not work through God’s Word to transform hearts and minds. However, whether the seed of the Word bears fruit depends upon the soil on which it falls and other circumstances. We can also grieve the Holy Spirit and even quench the Spirit by hardening our hearts against God’s Word.

While the liturgy can reinforce and strengthen what we believe, it does not automatically confer these benefits. We must be attentive to the words of the liturgy, to the Scripture readings, to the prayers, to the affirmation of faith, and to the sermon or homily. We must take them to heart. We must also pray the liturgy with understanding and not mindless of what we are praying. We must pray the liturgy from the heart.

Clearly something is wrong when we come to church and then go away unchanged, when our lives are perceptibly no different from the lives of our neighbors who head for the golf course or the gym on Sunday morning. Something is wrong when we live in our own bubble, heedless of those who face an eternity apart from God. We are falling short of what God has called us to be.