Second: To worship him

Index

Our debt to God

You’ll remember in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant that a certain king discovered that one of his provincial governors owed him an enormous sum of money, something too vast for him ever to repay.  And our debt to God is like that, or rather it is much greater.

God’s gift of life

The first great debt we owe to God is that of our life.  If it were not for him you and I would not exist at all.  Just imagine this Catechism class in 50 years time.  There will be other girls and boys sitting where you are now, girls and boys who do not now exist.  If it were not for God’s giving us our life, we should be for ever as they are – non-existent.

Eternal life

But not only has God given us our life, he has also offered us the gift of eternal life in the next world.  And that is something even greater and more valuable.  We can see that it is even greater, because of what use would this life be if it was leading only to the endless misery of being separated from God for ever.  It would have been better in that case never to have been born at all.  And we can see how valuable this gift of eternal life is by what it has cost God to make it possible for us, namely the Crucifixion.  It cost God nothing to make your soul, but it cost him all the agonies of Good Friday to make your soul safe.

Giving God our worship

So you see that you and I confer no favours on God.  All the favours are on his side.  What we owe to him is far greater than we can ever repay.  So when we come to God in our prayers or in the services of the Church, we come to give, to give him our worship.  To worship means to honour God and show him our love by praising him and in particular by offering ourselves and our lives to him.


Our daily prayers

First of all, let us think of our daily morning and evening prayers.  You will remember that in our morning prayers we should always thank God for our night’s rest and also for his goodness to us all through our life.  And in our evening prayers we should thank him for the past day.  We should also in our prayers give to God our adoration and praise.  The last thing we do is to ask him for anything, and even then our asking should be a preparation for making a further gift to him.  That is to say, whenever we pray to God for anything, it should be with the purpose of being able to give him more worthy service than we could do if we did not have it.  If we pray, for example, that we may be successful in an examination, it should be with the purpose of being more useful to God as a result of passing it.

The Eucharist

And just as in our daily prayers we should give to God, so also should we in the public services of the Church, and above all in the Eucharist.  For the Eucharist, unlike any other service, has been given to us by Jesus himself and is the only perfect act of worship there is.  At the Offertory, when we offer the bread and wine to God, we also offer ourselves, a very poor offering and completely unworthy of him, for only perfection is good enough for God.  But is the best we can do at that point because it is all we have to offer.

But at the Consecration Jesus takes possession of our offering of bread and wine and he and it become one, so that what we now have to offer to God is no longer bread and wine, but Jesus himself in his Risen and Ascended Body on the altar.  And because Jesus is completely perfect, so our offering of Jesus in the Eucharist is completely worthy of God.  That is why no other services can possibly take the place of the Eucharist.


Hymns

All our worship, then, should be given to God and this applies also to the hymns.  People who find it very easy to sing hymns, often find it very difficult to sing hymns to God.  This is because, in singing the tune, they do not think about the words.  Indeed, sometimes it is almost as if the words were an excuse for singing the tune.  It is even worse when people sing hymns because they like listening to their own voice.

There is a story told of a monastery in the Middle Ages where the monks were spending much time and labour in practising a special programme of music for a festival.  At last the great day came and everything went off splendidly and the monastery choir was as pleased as Punch.  But that night the Abbot had a dream in which Jesus appeared to him and asked, “Why has the choir been silent today?”

So it is that, if one sings for one’s own enjoyment and not in honour of God, one’s voice may reach the roof of the church, but it will not be heard in Heaven.

SUMMARY

1. Our first purpose in saying our prayers and in going to church is to give our worship to God.  To worship means to honour God and to show him our love by praising him and in particular by offering ourselves and our lives to him.

2. The great and central act of worship, and the only one which Jesus himself has given us, is the Eucharist.  No other service can possibly take its place, because at the Eucharist we offer to God, not only ourselves, but also Jesus.