Worship: A Matter of Being...

In response to a blog entry saying that God doesn't "need" us, and that worship is therefore really about us....

IMO it may be true that God doesn't NEED us, but surely he WANTS us. That makes all the difference, because it means that worship is not just about us, but about the deepening of a love affair--one in which He is the Lover, and we are His beloved.
Furthermore, it is about the overflow of that love, which births a community--the church, the Body of Christ.

That is why I can't understand how anyone who is a Christian wouldn't want to be together with Him and His people in worship. What else could possibly be more important to us? What else could command our attention and presence? As my favorite theologian, Thomas Aquinas once said, "any good which isn't completely sharable is a small good." The amazing thing about worship is that it is a completely sharable good--involving God, me, and others.

All this involves some difficult questions, I know; and indeed, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. But in the end, Sabbath is about loving, and acknowledging whether our first love will be a Who or a what.

Another way to think of worship is as a dress rehearsal, or a practice for our life together with the Lord, eternally in that state called "heaven." We wouldn't think of putting on a play without a rehearsal; we wouldn't think of going to an ultimate tournament without putting in lots of time practicing and perfecting our game. Well, the same thing applies to worship.

That is why when we are absent from worship, for whatever reason, God(Father/Son/Spirit) suffers. Christ's Body, the Church, suffers. A love affair can't be consummated if one of the lovers isn't present. God the Trinity is already and always there; the question is, where will we be, physically, emotionally,and intellectually?

Worship, then, is about us only because it is first about Him:

We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then, is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hears at rest in his presence...(1 John 3:18-19)

So here's a challenge: what is it that is keeping us from assembling together, from encountering Him and each other? Is it boredom? Is it work? Is it school? Is it unbelief? Is it a sports event? How will we change that? Because worship is not just about us and what we want. It's about being WANTED.