Worship and Belonging

If you look on the top row of the windows there in the back of the church (feel free to turn around) you will see a remarkable series of images. The repeated motif is volcanic mountains.



On the left the volcanoes evoke the earth in its infancy, still emerging as it were from the primordial chaos, as sea and sky bring forth life and dry land emerges from the waters at God’s command.

The next image brings together two images of covenant and judgment. Noah is symbolized by the Ark, through which a righteous remnant of mankind was saved through the waters of the great Flood. Moses comes down from Sinai, the mountain of God, with the two tablets of stone containing the Law, in that awe-inspiring scene remembered by the Letter to the Hebrews: “So terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’”

The final scenes envision the destructive power of nature, of mankind, and of final judgment.

But the writer to the Hebrews tells us (you can turn back around now) that we have not arrived at any such fearsome place or destination. Not pictured in our windows, but very much in view, is another sort of mountain: “mount Zion,” “the city of the living God,” “the heavenly Jerusalem.” This mountain is our refuge from the eruptions and upheavals of the world, which Jesus said are the birth pangs of his Kingdom, and which, we may be sure, will continue until all things are made subject to his rule.

Mount Zion is the place where heaven and earth meet in peace and joy, reconciled through him. See who is here: “innumerable angels in festal gathering . . . the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven . . . a Judge who is God over all . . . the spirits of just men made perfect” (the saints triumphant). And Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, offering his righteous blood not as an accusation, but a propitiation for sins.

But who else is here? Why, we also are here, the preacher tells us. Can you believe it? You and me, entering the heavenly temple, washed in the Redeemer’s blood and clothed with his own merits, taking our places with the angels and saints! Heady stuff.

This is not just what happens to us when we die—when we hope to join the throng of those “spirits of just men made perfect.” It’s talking about us now, here in this mortal life on earth. How is that possible?

The Letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish believers in Jesus who were going through a hard time. They had been rejected by their Jewish communities, put out of the synagogues, perhaps even shunned by their families, all because they believed in Jesus as the Son of God and the hope of Israel. It felt to them like they had lost their connection with their heritage, the religious and cultural life of their people.

But the Letter to the Hebrews reminds them that they have something much better than the Temple and its sacrifices which are merely a dim reflection of heaven: they have in Jesus a connection to heaven itself. They are not missing out on God’s covenant promises; they are at the center of his plan for the salvation of the world.

I want you to think for a moment about how important it is to belong. We are not made to be isolated individuals. We need to be connected, to have a home, a people, a family; not just the weak ties of voluntary associations but the strong ties of blood, of close friendship, of place, and of religion. Those who lose these connections are unmoored; they have lost a great deal of what it means to be human.

On relocating to Albany I experienced a strong sense of loneliness. Once I realized this I was able to reflect on why I felt this way. I spent my formative years in remarkably strong communities; family, church, school, and work all significantly overlapping to form a close web of relationships and meaning which was very important for my sense of identity and significance; in short, belonging. I could say that I miss my home. But it’s less about the places themselves. I miss the human communities that fostered me. One of my big goals in life is to find that sense of belonging again.

But many of you can relate, I’m sure. I experienced this on moving across the country, but you can lose that connection even while staying in the same place. As life goes on, time takes much that was once familiar and dear to us, especially those people who are such an important part of out sense of belonging, our living connection to this world.

I often meet people who remember the St. Michael’s of their youth vividly and fondly. I think it was a community, perhaps for some the only one, where they felt that they truly belonged. For many it seems to have left a void that has never been filled by anything. I wonder if for some that sense of belonging was so strong, and the loss of it so keenly felt that it has prevented them from ever feeling “at home” since.

Anyway, I think the scripture gives all of us in whatever circumstances a direction for hope. There is a place and a people with whom we truly belong. It’s not my family, it’s not my hometown, it’s not even my local church, though all of these earthly experiences point us there.

The Letter to the Hebrews encourages its original recipients that they have a share of belonging in “a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” This kingdom, as I have said, is not just the matter of future hope. The preacher speaks in the present tense as of something they already possess and participate.

So we understand that “our citizenship is in heaven,” as Paul wrote to the Philippians. But how is that manifested right now?

It is primarily in the church’s worship that we find our real and tangible connection with God’s Kingdom.

It is said that we live in a consumeristic age. Churches feel the need to compete for people’s attention, not just with other churches but with all the other alternatives the world offers for things that create a sense of meaning and belonging. And so we often frame the question of worship like, what can we do or “offer” to “bring in” more people to our worship services.

This word “worship” can be misunderstood. In many churches today, the worship service is produced and finely tuned to create a highly charged and compelling sense of energy, emotion, and catharsis. This is accomplished by technological means, with loud music, dramatic lighting and projections, not to mention fog machines and other special effects. It was very common for people in this milieu to use the word “worship” to refer to the subjective experience engendered by these techniques.

The Temple worship experience of ancient Israel 2,000 years ago was just as immersive and overwhelming, perhaps even more so. Noisy, smoky, visceral (in the literal sense of people were dealing with the entrails of sacrificed animals). Lots of blood. Lots of noise too—you could probably hear the sounds of choirs chanting, animals, crowds of people. The smell also must have been overwhelming with smoke of burning fat and roasting meat, like a massive BBQ, not to mention the incense.

This kind of spectacle is what “worship” meant to most people, whether Jews or pagans, in the ancient world, which, after all, was also a society driven by consumer choice. Some things don’t change too much, after all.

But when the preacher to the Hebrews speaks of “acceptable worship” he means quite a different thing, something that has little to do with the outward trappings of what is commonly regarded as worship either in his own day or ours. His hearers have been called out of that, because the one thing needful is not there.

The Temple continued to put on an impressive religious show for a time, but God had left the building. Jesus, he says elsewhere in the letter, “suffered outside the camp,” and so even as these believers in Jesus find themselves excluded from the life and worship practices of their community, they may offer worship that is acceptable to God like nothing else, because it is centered on their crucified and risen Lord.

It is in seeking this path and offering “acceptable worship” through him that true belonging is found.

This is what we do in the Eucharist.

“Lift up your hearts”—what does this mean? It does not simply mean, be happy, with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. The “uplift” is more literal; in that moment the church is raised up to heaven, the place where we truly belong.

Sometimes in the sacrament we think of Jesus “coming down” upon our altars, and this is not wrong, but it is just as true and perhaps even better to say that in these rites we are “lifted up” to the heavenly places where he offers the one, true, pure, immortal sacrifice on our behalf. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ because we are spiritually present in that place where he lives and reigns eternally with the Father.

Heed, then, the preacher’s warning: “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”