The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

A Person Will Worship Something #563

 

Did you hear what you just read?

 

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behoves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

 

I think Mr. Emerson hit the nail on the head. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character.   And, the implication is that what we worship is what dominates our thoughts and our imaginations.   That’s scary. If I take this literally, at least this past week, it would mean that I worship the act of moving…how to organize myself and my stuff in practical and aesthetically pleasing ways…how to be as efficient in my trips back and forth from old apartment to new…how to focus on writing a sermon with disorganization all around me. On a deeper level, this might mean that I worship, unintentionally, organization, that I worship having everything in its place. Pleasant perhaps, but worship-worthy? I don’t think I’d be happy with such an epitaph: well-organized. So, my personal commitment to communal worship is that it provides a place where I am called to turn my focus to things of more ultimate concern and meaning.

 

But let me start with the word itself…worship. Not an easy word for all Unitarian Universalists to swallow, to speak, or to embrace. There was a conversation a few years ago on the CUC worship chat about the use of this word, set off, as I recall, by comments from someone who felt that putting the word ‘worship’ on a Unitarian sign…as in “come and worship with us”…would send the wrong message…that it would imply that we are worshipping in a similar or even identical fashion to a avowedly Christian church.    Rev. Anne Treadwell responded with a suggested re-working of the word…something she’d heard from Adrian Mark, a UU who lives in London…and that is that we substitute “worth-shape” for worship…come and worth-shape with us. How does that sound?

 

After all, this is exactly what the word ‘worship means’.  The origin of the word is in the Old English weorthscippen, meaning to ascribe worth to something, to shape things of worth.  We worship, then, whenever we ascribe worth to some value, idea, object, person, experience, attitude, or activity[1] – and the more worth we ascribe that thing, perhaps the more it dominates our thoughts and imaginations and consequently, the more it shapes our lives and our characters.

 

And still, the ‘worship’ word gives some of us the willys. You may already know that in the conversation about a language of reverence, I stand on the side of reclamation. As much as I like Rev. Treadwell’s turn of the word, ‘worth-shape’used as a noun, just don’t quite cut it for me. I can’t quite imagine saying “come to worth-shape with me.” It just doesn’t hold the deep meaning of the word we’re trying so hard to avoid.

 

This past summer, I was the minister-in-residence at the Canadian Unitarian Universalist Leadership School – CUUL School. This included leading a workshop on worship. I asked the participants, some thirty of them, to call out religious words, or reverent language, that they had rejected and/or objected to using. I can tell you that within a couple of minutes, my flipchart paper was filled to overflowing…I wrote in the spaces and margins, and the words just kept coming. How are we to speak of our religion without all of those words?

Judith Walker-Riggs tells the story of a discussion with an old professor of preaching at Oxford. He warned again using the word “dog” in a sermon. Not because it is an anagram of god, but because as soon as you say it, every person present will have a different picture in their mind from the picture in the mind of the person sitting next to them…dogs they have known, loved, buried, been bitten by, want, whatever.

 

Yet we do not suggest that we stop using the word “dog” altogether. The fact is, when we struggle to define words we can only do so by using more words, which then also need to be defined.  I doubt any two of us ever have exactly the same thing in mind as we speak, so maybe we should just use all the words and take the time to make them our own by trying to clearly make our use of them understood.

 

And, the common UU understanding of worship is to hold up those things of ultimate value, worth and meaning.   I suspect that most of our resistance to the word is that it is often defined as reverence given to a divine being or power. But worship need not have supernatural implications. It is, again simply the act of holding up those things that we most value…and calling ourselves to carry those things with us in the week ahead, and in the living of our lives. Worship is the place where beholding and becoming meet and merge. 

 

Of course, worship can happen anywhere. Much worship is solitary. But there is something significant about communal worship. The UU Commission on Common Worship said in their 1982 report that what individuals find to be worthwhile in their own experience must be tested in the context of other persons, society, and history, as well as in those innermost regions of the self.  Worship then, is indeed a shaping process where we together, in the light of many wisdom sources, consider what has worth for us.

 

This is what happened with our little streaked tenrec, no?[2] He saw some value in building things out of twigs. Perhaps the process fulfilled him. Perhaps he felt worthwhile when viewing the results. Perhaps his building was a spiritual practice. In any case, in the light of another’s perspective, he began to question the worth of his life and activities. In the end, he was able to re-affirm his commitment to his twigs, and to go on living in service of that which he valued. But he could, just as well, have re-directed his life, altered what he found valuable, changed up his worship.

 

Worship is a consistent reconsideration of what we value, in the company of a community. This is something unique to the covenantal free church tradition, of which we are a part. It is very different from creedal traditions, which tell you what is to be worshipped. I remember well the parable of the wise man who built his house upon the rock[3], mostly because there was a song with hand motions to go along with it…and where the house of the foolish man built on the sand, is washed away by the rain. I suppose that the story of the three little pigs harkens back to this biblical parable. Did any of you find yourself thinking of the poor little pig who built his house out of twigs when you were listening to the Tenrec story? Anyway, I think you get the commonly espoused point of that parable…that you’d better find out where the rock-solid truth lies and build your life based on that, or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. 

 

But here, we’re not so worried about finding The Rock, capital T, capital R. Here we covenant with one another to walk together on this journey of shaping meaning. Here we build our houses of worth with the materials of our lives, whatever those may be, and if those houses wash away, we support one another in rebuilding… understanding this to be part of the process of the search.   We’ve had experiences of living in houses of truth that are purported to be indestructible but which have proved to be worthless when we’re looking for shelter. And so we re-build, we test, we journey on, called forward by the light of a truth that is illusive and mysterious and abiding. 

 

So, worship is a process of covenant, of recognizing our connections to everything around us. Worship built on covenant is, at its best, an experience of one-ness, of wholeness.   The Rev. Roy Phillips wrote that he believed there to be five meanings around which we covenant, and they are, in summary: to value our common journey, to recognize and respect our individual dignity and gifts, to support the attainment of a better world, to praise the mystery, and to engage in the practices of a religious life.[4] In the recent publication, Worship that Works, Wayne Arnason and Kathleen Rolenz suggest that congregational life is diminished if all five are not present in our worship.[5] 

 

Valuing our common journey, recognizing and respecting our individual dignity and gifts, supporting the attainment of a better world, praising the mystery, and engaging in the practices of a religious life. It’s a compelling picture of worship, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’m especially challenged by the last one…to engage in the practices of a religious life. Living a religious life, or living a life consistent with what we most value, is not always easy. And more, let’s not ignore the implication that worship is a verb, a way of being, an action. Do you come here on a Sunday morning to soak it in passively, or with the intention of really engaging in worship?  How can you, how can each of us, truly make worship a spiritual practice?

 

First, you gotta show up. To say that to you who are here is obviously preaching to the choir, but there’s no arguing that communal worship requires a community. So committing yourself to be that community for others is, in my opinion, where it all starts.   

 

Second, we all need to treat worship with an ear, and an eye, to how it might transform our lives, how it might lead us to living a religious life. What happens here on a Sunday morning does not happen solely for the benefit of our experience of this one hour…if it is truly worship that works, it needs to be something that we carry with us into our life outside of this place. Arnason and Rolenz state that worship is a human activity located at the crossroads where the apprehension of the holy and daily life meet. What happens here has to touch our daily life. 

 

Further, in the new UU adult curriculum, Spirit in Practice, it is suggested that there are several ways that you can make worship a spiritual practice. One of them I already mentioned, the one about just showing up, but the list also includes things like using the prelude or gathering music for centering yourself, opening yourself to simply experiencing the service instead of analyzing it, actively appreciating this community by looking around and remembering that we’re all in this together, making an offering out of the largeness of your heart, and reflecting on the service between Sundays.   And, here’s one I really like…how about saying a silent “thank you” when something in worship turns you off!? This is to acknowledge that it is often in our encounters with the unexpected that the “magic” really happens.  Like Tenrec, we have to see who we are in the context of difference. 

And another great one… how about using the coffee hour to speak with someone whose sharing during the service touched you? Or to seek out someone you haven’t seen in a while or haven’t yet met? Such practices could really deepen your weekly worship experience. 

In other words, worship that works is not a passive, consumerist exercise. There are things you can do, practices you can learn, that will enhance and deepen your experience, and open up a greater possibility for transformation.  After all, is this not why we gather…in order that we might be transformed? 

 

For myself, in this position, I find all of this to be both humbling and challenging. But it is also helpful to me to know that I am not in this alone. When I come to worship here, I come to participate in a time to which we all contribute our presence and our energy and our hopes. I come to be in your company…to enter into a conversation that weaves our lives together in a tapestry of meaning. A person will worship something, and a community will be defined by what it worships. Therefore, it behoves us to be careful what we worship. It matters that we are here, worshipping together. 

 

Blessed be. 

 

 

---