Worship, Belief, and Response

These days, it is hard to imagine Christian worship without a creed to recite or a New Testament canon to read from. But for many years, the first Christians gathered every week without the use of either a creed or a completed New Testament. What they believed was shaped and expressed through the way they worshipped together: through their liturgy.

There is an ancient Latin expression which speaks to this Christian principle: lex orandi lex credendi. It means “The law of prayer is the law of belief.” In other words, how we pray and worship expresses what it is we believe.

This is still an essential principle for Christians today, especially for us Anglican Christians. Anglicans do not have a single person who has shaped our doctrine, like a Calvin or a Luther. Nor do we have a pope or a magisterium like the Roman Catholics. For Anglicans, what we believe is expressed primarily through worship: through our liturgy. To understand our liturgy is to understand what we believe – and vice versa.

Our liturgy is comprised of two basic parts: the Word and the Sacrament.

The Liturgy of the Word is always first. We read from the Scriptures: the Old Testament, a Psalm, a New Testament letter, all of which leads to the weekly Gospel proclamation, the good news of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That Gospel is then preached and applied to our lives in the sermon.

The creed is an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word, because the creed expresses the very core of Christian faith and doctrine. It is our confession of faith: that God is one; that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And that Jesus Christ died for us, rose again, and ascended into heaven, where he lives and reigns with God, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

This fundamenal profession of faith is literally our entrance into the church – as it is our baptismal covenant.

From the Liturgy of the Word, we move immediately into the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” It is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the sacrifice Our Lord made for us. Through his death and resurrection, we have life beyond the grave. And that eternal life is gifted to us through his mystical body and blood, made present for us on the altar.

As we are spiritually born through the waters of baptism, so are we spiritually fed through Christ’s own body and blood.

This sacramental grace of eternal life is freely and bountifully offered to us in the Eucharist. It is that River in the Psalms “whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high.”

The death and resurrection of Our Lord has “opened up for us the torrents of the River of God’s grace to the Church.”

That saving grace of God is manifest for us, and made incarnate through, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. John tells us that the “Word was made flesh.” It is the same Word whom we profess in our Liturgy of the Word. And it is the same flesh manifested for us and our salvation in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The way we worship expresses precisely that which we believe.

But! There is just one more critical piece of the Christian faith; it is our response.

How we respond to this good news of God’s Word, and the gift of life he has given us through his death and resurrection, makes all the difference.

In Luke chapter 13, someone says to Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’”

Notice what Jesus says.

“Some of you will call me ‘Lord’.” In other words, some of you will profess the Good News that I am indeed Lord and God.

And some of you will testify that you ate and drank in my real presence.

But, because you are workers of iniquity, you will be thrust out of the kindom of God?

These are very difficult and alarming words.

We can profess Jesus as Lord, as we do in the Liturgy of the Word.

And we can eat and drink with him, and receive of his sacramental grace, as we do in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

And yet, our continual response to the gift of God’s Word made flesh still matters! What we do matters!

And this is precisely why the door is so narrow.

“Behold,” Jesus says, “some are first who will be last.”

St. Theophylact, writing in the 8th century, saw these first who became last as those in the Church who “from infancy have put on Christ and have been taught the Word, but who become last by transgressing against it.”

Our sin, no doubt, is capable of taking us to the back of the line.

But Jesus also says, “Behold, some are last who will be first.”

And these are, I believe, true words of comfort and peace for us today.

When we repent of our sin, we are cleansed completely by those same “torrents of the River of God’s grace.” And our return to the front of the line (as it were) is swift and immediate.

But there is another kind of “last” who will become first.

Those who suffer unjustly or innocently. Those who suffer for righteousness’ sake. All those whom Jesus mentions in the Sermon on the Plain, are the last who will be first.

“Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven. For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.”

Behold, some are last who will be first.

Because—we follow him who became very last for us, suffering innocently the shame and horror of his passion and death on the cross. And by his resurrection he has become first. But he did not do so for himself. He did so for us! That we might become first through him; that we might have life in him.

Beloved, we are most emphatically not alone in our suffering. He has gone before us. He is both the first and last, the Alpha and Omega. And he is with us on our own journey toward Jerusalem.

Preached on Proper 12: 22 August 2010

Related posts:

1. Worship Him in the Beauty of Holiness: Church Art, Architecture, and Worship
2. Defining “Belief”