To Adore

“ Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. ”

The exchange of rings in a marriage ceremony is symbolic, beautiful and more personal and binding than the signatures on the marriage license. We wear these rings everywhere and they stand for what we said. Our prayer book service has the giver of the ring say, “With this ring I thee wed, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” But the older version of this great moment has more to it: “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, with all my earthly goods I thee endow, in the name…”

Giti and I first heard this when our bishop led us in saying it to each other at the altar in front of the entire congregation at St. Peter's Church in Oakland. “With my body I thee worship!” In church? In front of God and everybody? It was a little embarrassing, but profound. We had to think about it and make out what that meant. To worship a person and do it with your body: is it okay to do that?

The word “ worship ” stems from the English roots meaning “to attribute worth to, to value, to adore.” We can feel that about our wife or husband without making him or her a god. We certainly worship objects less worthy than our spouses, sometimes. And we need to cut that out. But the man or woman we married was made for us to adore, and God is only too happy to give that object of worship to us for the very purpose of worship.

A right religion is about worshiping the right object. We worship God rightly because He is truly worthy of our adoration, words and actions of attributing value to Him. Our songs and the lovely music of worship glorify Him, praise Him for His great acts and His very being, speak of His salvation and our love toward Him for all He has done for us. Our body language shows our attitude as we stand, kneel, cross ourselves, bow down, and quiet our bodies in His Presence. God is truly worshiped here.

Now, you may do all that and falsely worship. It may all be a mere drill, a religious observance, a dry dead twig of conformance with the activity being done around you. If we were to do all this and in our doctrine and teaching remove the wonderful and miraculous from the deeds of our God, deny the deity of His Son, pervert or undermine His Word and disbelieve the power of His Sacraments, then we would worship nothing and adore no one. We'd do this for show. Our 1928 Prayer Book language and ceremonial would be the entire reason we get together, and pride above all else, worship ourselves. That's possible to do. I've seen it.

But I hope you have always seen that there is Somebody Present at these ceremonies who, though unseen , is felt by all. King David sang of that feeling in a Psalm of resurrection: “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In Thy presence is fulness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.” Psalm 16:10-11 If we take pleasure in worship, feel the Joy of the Lord in our drawing near, and we begin to experience love of God.

Love for God is a hard concept to learn. He is invisible. He may seem like a concept, a force for good, a high and distant star, someone who acted and spoke long ago, but isn't really up close and personal for many of us, for large parts of our lives. When my wife, who had said with her body she worshiped me in church in Oakland, was asked to teach Sunday School for the teenaged girls in that church shortly after that, she found out something shocking. Those girls thought Jesus was a dead man. The fact that He lives today had never come home to them. Our worship in the church was a weird and meaningless thing to them all. She set about to demonstrate to them that Jesus is alive and His church is worshiping the living God. It stuck. The women who came out of that class believe and adore God.

St. Valentine's Day was last Wednesday. The religious significance of the day has long been overlooked while yet another opportunity for Hallmark to sell greeting cards and Sees to sell chocolates has come to the fore. St. Valentine was an early Christian martyr. In fact, there were perhaps two martyrs by that name. Whether one or two, he went to his beheading with songs of worship on his lips and the unswerving devotion to God in Christ in his heart. If you are in love that way, the horror of your circumstances changes dramatically and your sacrifice becomes a thing of beauty and celebration. Happy St. Valentine's Day , by the way, belatedly.

Where can you go in order to feel like adoring God? Isn't that the point of it all? The greatest commandment is fulfilled only by love. That God so high and holy and vaguely powerful and probably important must be loved or our whole system of religious observance is empty. Archbishop Morse has said our worship and ceremonies, if done without faith that the Jesus of the Bible is truly Present and real , all becomes merely the shell of the Serpent's egg.

Jesus confronted a sinful Samaritan woman who didn't know what she worshiped. He said, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:21-24 When she showed interest, He revealed to her that He was the Lord's Messiah. And she believed, and led the entire town to Him. St. John wrote the church, “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” 1 John 3:18 “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:8

How do you come to love God? I think little children have it almost automatically. We learn not to love God through a growing ignorance we get in the course of life. We need to do something to keep that love alive, and that thing is worship . I've known Christians who are Bible taught, blood bought, baptized believers, and who think that's it. They don't go to church because they don't like the people and don't care much for the music anymore. They stay home saved . And, lacking worship, their love grows cold and their faith, once strong and passionate, gets flimsy. They begin to doubt.

The next step, after worshiping God and learning to love Him, is to love each other. Loving people may be a tougher command, and sometimes people make it so. Henry Kissinger once commented on the endless war between men and women, saying: “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.” Mignon McLaughlin is quoted as saying, “In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. ” Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” While another author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, explained that “Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.”

But I speak of romantic love. Is that fair? Are we supposed to love each other with the same organ, with the same passion as we love our husband or wife? With my body I thee worship? Well, not the same way, please. But love is love, and whether it is for our married partner, or a friend, or a child, or a stranger, love is to sacrifice for another, bear another's burden, feel for the joys and pains another carries, care for their welfare. St. John wrote, “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” 1 John 3:23 “If someone says, ‘I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20

The blind man was healed of his blindness and he got up and worshiped Jesus. Are you still blind? Weren't you once blind and now see? Remember the song. With Bartimaeus, we may follow our dying Lord to Jerusalem and adore Him as He goes. I once was blind, but now I see. That's my song. And the One who healed me I adore.

We can do many things for God, and do them without loving adoration, without true worship in spirit or truth. We may erect Cathedrals, build hospitals, construct schools, conquer under the sign of the Cross, broadcast by satellite services of thousands, preach sweeping sermons that enthrall the masses, and get elected to high office, carrying our bibles to church. But without the love of God, and for each other it's the shell of the Serpent's egg. We may speak in tongues, prophesy and penetrate all the mysteries of faith, move mountains by faith, give everything we own to feed the poor and even die for our religion: but if done without love—what have we accomplished? Nothing. God does not receive such empty gestures. He's said so. Love makes our gift to Him worthy of Him. Faith opens the door, but love joins us to Him, heart to heart. The qualities of real love are unselfish, not possessive, only kind and good, lasting always.

Right now, in this sanctuary, we see walls, a ceiling, objects rich with symbolic significance, one another, and the space in between. Dimly, in our mind's eye, once blind, now seeing, we sense the Presence of Almighty God and His Son, the Lamb of God, seated upon His altar. That vagueness is temporary. One day we'll see Him face to face. All we've done partly knowing, partially believing, tentatively trusting the words and feelings, we will one day do knowing it all, for there will be no separation anymore. Until that day, “Come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker.” Psalm 95:6

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