The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Active Worship

It is easy for us adults to become passive about worship, to think of worship as something we just attend… something that is offered to us or done for us. But worship is a verb, an active verb. And you, in the pews, are the ones whose activity creates worship. Without your active participation, there is no worship.

This sermon is prompted by a change taking place in our worship practice here at St. John’s. For some of you just those words elicit anxiety. For those of you who are feeling anxious now, I wonder if you could articulate what specific change in worship it is that you dread, or does any mention of any change at all in worship fill you with apprehension.

In general, not just in worship, change is often good. Remember: One of our foundational affirmations as Christians is that in death, life is changed, not ended. Not all change is good, but the complete absence of change is death.

The specific worship change here at St. John’s will primarily impact the 10:00 service. This fall, children’s chapel will no longer be offered. Many parishes offer some sort of children’s chapel as an alternative worship experience for children. When Donica was hired as our Christian Education director, I asked her to develop a children’s chapel program here. It was offered at the same time as the first half of the 10:00 service and designed to be an age-appropriate liturgy of the word. And Donica did a great job of creating an experience that was engaging for the kids.

Despite the fact that children’s chapel here began at my initiative, I’ve always had mixed feelings about it. I admit that the elimination of children’s chapel at this particular time is prompted in part by the fact that we have not been able to fill the Christian Ed position, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have always had real reservations about anything that segregates the worshiping community.

Children’s chapel certainly has some potential benefits for children, but I believe we are impoverished as a community when we are segregated during worship. To have two separate worship experiences going on at 10:00 diminishes us all. Worship should unite us as a parish family.

To have really common worship as a full community may be more work, especially for us adults, but I think God is calling us to that work. To create worship together that is engaging for all ages is work, but I know that we will be spiritually enriched by doing that work. For one thing, having the children with us as part of the worshiping community throughout the 10:00 service challenges us to a healthy reexamination of the activity of worship. Worship as activity.

On the one hand you might say that Episcopalians are pretty active in worship. As a child, I was taught the sit/stand/kneel drill. Sit for instruction, stand for praise, kneel for prayer. More recently some people have quipped that one of the advantages of being an Episcopalian is that you get worship and aerobics all at the same time. And then there are all those books and leaflets to juggle.

But I want to offer a particular definition of worship, at least for the purposes of this sermon. Worship is not just any physical activity that happens to take place in this place. Worship is activity directed specifically to God. Worship is active, created by activity… activity aimed directly at God. Which is to say, it is possible to be within this space for a whole hour and never actually worship.

What are the activities of worship? Prayer is one, of course. At least when those prayers are our own, active prayers. Being a people of “common prayer” has both strengths and weaknesses. It is our common prayer that unites us, draws us into communion with one another. In these common prayers we support one another and share times of trial and joy. The Book of Common Prayer provides a depth of reverence and majesty of language that most of us could not muster on our own. But it also enables us to coast. To just sit back and passively coast through the prayers without making them our own, without ever personally, actively engaging God with our own prayers. Pray actively. To God.

Another activity of worship is praise. Episcopalians talk about praise; we are not so good at it as an activity, as something we do towards God. Every Sunday as we begin Communion, I say, “Lift up your hearts.” For the early Christians that was a literal command to stand up. Stand up in praise. Throw your heart open to God. Offer your whole body to God in praise. Be actively praise-full. Other denominations clap and shout and dance in praise. That’s not the only way to be actively praise-full. I think our children can probably help us find ways to be better at the worship activity of praise.

Offering is another activity of worship. That portion of our Sunday liturgy that serves as a prelude to Holy Communion is called the offertory. It is a time specifically dedicated to the activity of offering. How do you participate in the offertory? The ushers are busy collecting money. I am busy setting the table. In the midst of that busy-ness it’s hard to think of directing those activities to God, but I, at least, am going to work on it. The choir is offering their voices and talent to God.

What about you? Theoretically, placing an envelope in a plate could be an activity of worship, could be a focused activity directed towards God. But is it? Does it feel that way? Or is placing an envelope in a plate a brief distraction from whatever thoughts or conversations or non-worship activities you happen to be involved in at the time?

Starting next Sunday there will be an opportunity for children to participate actively in the offertory. To offer something themselves to God. To bring an offering to God’s altar. That’s what the red basket is for in front of the altar. Each week it will be placed there at the offertory time, and children are encouraged to walk up and place their personal offering in the basket. Whatever they want to offer of themselves for God’s use.

A few possible suggestions might include things for the food pantry. A can of soup or a box of cereal. Offered out of their abundance in compassion for God’s children who are hungry.

Or something for God’s non-human creatures in need. The needs of lost and abandoned pets have been dear to the hearts of the children here at St. John’s for a long time. A child may want to offer a blanket or some dog food to God as an act of sharing in God’s care for all creatures. We’ll make sure it gets to the Humane Society.

Or money. Families handle money differently. Have that conversation in your family if it is appropriate. We have special offering envelopes available in the back of the church for kids to use. They go in the red basket, too. An offering to God, for the church’s use in doing God’s work.

We’re going to make one change, too, in how the “adult” financial offering is handled. After it’s collected, we’re going to place it on the altar and leave it there throughout Communion. That’s better liturgical practice anyway. Money isn’t something we collect and then stash in the corner; it is part of each of our self-offering to God. So it should be brought to God’s altar.

Any given Sunday during the time you are here, ask yourself: When am I actually doing something active, directed towards God? Not just sitting here thankful that God has dropped by to share this time with me, but actively praying, praising, offering myself directly to God?

It seems like those things that we get most actively involved in are not worship, not God-directed activities. Even during worship time that can be true. The challenge for all of us of all ages is to dedicate ourselves to worship, to seek out and focus ourselves on activities that engage us with God. For those of us who are adults it is also our responsibility to try to make this particular Sunday morning time a time when children’s God-directed activity engages them and enriches our common worship.

Some people say that children are too active to be in worship. I would suggest that most adults are not nearly active enough to be in worship.

A little child will lead us, Isaiah said. And Jesus seemed to agree, when he said in Matthew’s Gospel, speaking to his grown-up disciples, “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”