We have been talking for a couple of weeks now about having inner peace. For many people, inner peace is elusive. Their minds are consumed by turmoil coming from difficult family relationships, hostile work environments, grief from the death of loved ones or things loved and lost, or from uncertainty about the future.
The anxiousness of life’s circumstances chokes our life and prevents us from flourishing. To live life this way is not part of God’s design or desire. We see God’s desire clearly expressed as God created the heavens and the earth and that his creation would be at peace with itself and at peace with Him. But sin marred that peace and so God has sought to restore peace to us.
We saw through Psalm 23 that the avenue for peace is a continual conversation with God amid all circumstances of life, whether gracious or challenging. Last week, we saw that in our conversation and fellowship with God that we can exchange our anxiousness for peace by giving our burdens over to God.
Today, I thought we could focus on how we continually keep our spirit attuned to God so that we can have those conversations with God. Today, I want us to explore how worship is integral to our inner peace and serve the purpose of engaging our spirit to be conversational with God.
And so we begin with the question, what is worship? Many of us have been in church so long that we probably do not realize what worship is anymore or why worship is such a uniquely transformative experience. If we stay in church long enough, we might think of worship as the one hour a week we spend in the church building. For contemporary churches, some folks view worship as that portion of time in the church building in which they engage in singing praise songs.
What then is worship? Today, like many Sundays before, we opened our time together with a “Call to Worship.” We followed that with a hymn, “I Love You Lord,” in which we together sang the words, “I love you, Lord. And I lift my voice, to worship You, Oh, my soul, rejoice!” We prayed words of invocation praising God and together saying, God’s name was hallowed, that God’s name is the most worthy name.
We read from the New Testament in which the immediate reaction of the women who saw Jesus after his resurrection was to worship him. We prayed words of comfort for one another sharing joys and concerns of life. Then we sang again the words of hymn, “Worthy of Worship.” These we might say are elements of our worship service but are they worship?
Familiarity and repetition of worship practices may have left us unaware that a transformation was occurring among us today. As we began worship, we began a group experience that is taking individuals of different ages, occupations, states of marriage, race, ethnicity, gender, economic status, and education and creating a kernel of unity in the present from our pasts of diversity.
Worship takes that embryo of unity and grows us into a maturing body in which all parts begin somehow to fit together. We are a body made up of many parts in which as we engage in elements of worship we are accepting a different and greater identity. Worship causes us to start thinking and seeking together without embarrassment. We sing without embarrassment and share deep concerns about our life or to cry either tears of joy or tears of pain without concern.
But how does worship cause us to be so transformed? No one element of worship can cause the transformation of so many different individuals into one body. Instead, that transformation comes about through the person being worshipped. We come to worship God. Worship focuses our hearts, minds, strength, and soul on God who then transforms us into a single body.
Worship and the transformation that happens to us is such a marvelous occurrence we may not even recognize what has happened and is happening to us. Worship takes that body in which all are part and gives them equal dignity because we see in worship that we are all made in the image of God and therefore each part of the body is precious in God’s eyes.
In that one body, we begin to build a fellowship that has goals to invite others into worship, goals to support other members of the body, and goals of serving others who are or feel outside the body created by worship. What has happened to us through worship of God is that we begin to understand God’s desires and we begin to want to fulfil those desires as a single entity.
All these changes that we can see are occurring within each person, within each part of the body, every time we worship God, whether in groups of a few or many. And yet, in worship there is more transformation occurring that cannot be seen with the eye but can be experienced by the spirit.
Consider the example from our first reading today from the Gospel of Matthew. Women who had followed Jesus in his public ministry made their way to Jesus’ tomb. When the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb, an angel appeared frightening the women and causing the guards at the tomb to shake and become like dead men. “5 The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.’ 8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. They [the women] came to him [Jesus], clasped his feet, and worshiped him” (Matthew 28:1-9).
The women who approached the tomb were devastated by the profound grief of Jesus’ death on the cross. Life was hollow. No doubt the women had not slept well. They had intrusive images of Jesus on the cross playing over in their minds. They were restless, agitated, their muscles were tense, and all hope was gone. There was no inner peace. “No Jesus, No Peace.”
Then suddenly, they received news that Jesus was not to be found in the tomb but would be found among the living. The women ran from the tomb afraid and joyful. What was Matthew trying to tell us here? Joy and fear are competing emotions. Joy opens our minds to the excitement of possibilities. Joy pushes back against fear. Fear closes are minds creates walls of doubt around joy, trying to contain it. The women were highly conflicted consumed as it were simultaneously by fear and joy.
As the women were running from the tomb, Jesus appeared and spoke to them. In the presence of Christ, the women without embarrassment or hesitation acted in unison, acted as one body, and throwing themselves upon the ground, wrapping their arms around Jesus’ feet, and worshipped Him.
This was the first time the followers of Jesus worshipped him, and the effect was an immediate transformation. In the act of worshipping Jesus, the women were transformed as joy fought back against fear, against anxiousness, against the walls of doubt, and created room within the spirit of these women for peace, real inner peace. The women had come to that point of “Know Jesus, Know Peace.” That combination of joy and peace would forever give these women endurance, character, and that moment of worship would give these women a hope that would never disappoint.
The women, transformed by the worship of Jesus Christ, ran tell others. “9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:9-11).
The women who worshipped Jesus and became one body shared their transforming experiencing and were not believed. Yet, the women remained as one body. It was not important if others did not believe the transformative experience of worshipping the risen Christ. The peace these women possessed was depended only on Christ.
This same sense of relief from fear can be ours as we are transformed through worship of Jesus Christ the risen savior. Our spirits, like the spirits of the women at the tomb, can be conflicted when we enter worship and can be at peace when we leave. It is a marvelous gift of God.
We see this transformation later in the evening of the same day as the women worshipped God, we find the eleven apostles together behind locked doors consumed with fear of the Jewish leaders. No doubt the apostle’s conversations centered on an endless series of “What ifs.”
The apostles were thinking of their own safety and ways to build better walls against the dangers of life they imagined. They were becoming rigid, fragile, fearful, and lacking any sense of inner peace. Though gathered and aware of the news of Jesus’ resurrection, there was no worship going on. The body was beginning to separate into individual parts and, unless something happened, their situation would soon become an “everyman for himself,” response.
It was then that Jesus entered the room and bid the apostles “Peace.” In that peace, the transformation of the apostles occur and they became a united body worshipping Jesus.
Later in time, the Apostle Paul would seek to explain the transformative nature of worship. In a letter to the church at Rome, Paul wrote, “Brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).
Paul was setting the stage that worship is not just brothers and sisters gathering to create something between them, a self and other relationship. Those sorts of self and other relationships exist throughout society from family gatherings to local bars. What Paul was suggesting here is that we recognize that worship creates a self, other, and God relationship.
Paul said that when we are combined as brothers and sisters in worship of God then we are engaged in transforming our mind into one that can act in a way that is in accord with God’s desire. “2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).
Worship transforms our outlook and our understanding as to the goodness that God created for humanity and has preserved from the effects of sin. Worship helps us see the reality of peace and worship allows us the opportunity to share the inexpressible feelings that being a peace gives us. This means that worship of God creates inner peace for the worshipper and gives the worshipper a place and way to express that inner peace.
Finally, Paul said that worship transforms us into one body, “4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4-5).
We are transformed by the worship of God through Jesus Christ. The transformation changes our minds, our hearts, it gives us strength, and gives us a spirit that controls our body. The transformative experience of worship brings us inner peace.
For me, and I suspect for many of you, one of the most transformative and peace-giving acts of worship we can do is to participate in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus inaugurated this spiritual meal moments before fear, anxiousness, betrayal, denial, and turmoil would cause his apostles to scatter in different directions into the night.
The apostles needed something to remind themselves that even if they could not see Jesus, he was still there. We can worship God through that supper and receive a sense of peace and through that same worship express the inner peace we feel.
And so, as one body united in worship being at peace with ourselves, being at peace with our fellow worshippers, and being at peace with God, let us come to the Lord’s Table. As we do, let us “Know Jesus and Know Peace.” Amen.