What is Christian worship?
After missing the gathering of God’s people receiving Christ’s gifts for 2 weeks, it’s especially nice to be here today.
The Lord Jesus who tells us a parable today about a Samaritan who had compassion on a man who fell among robbers, and went to Him, and bound up His wounds and cared for Him,
Comes to us here today to care for us and have compassion on us and show mercy to us and begin to heal our wounds again.
That’s the quick answer of what Christian worship is but let’s keep considering this question today:
What is Christian worship?
We know our Lord commands us to gather.
We should go to church.
And there’s something to be said of emphasizing that.
It is part of what it means to be a Christian – a Christian goes to church.
Jesus went to church according God’s commandments – the temple at least three times a year, more often later in His life, the synagogue at least once a week.
Jesus went to Church and commands us to do the same.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy (3rd Commandment).
Do not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some (Hebrews 10:25)
Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Timothy 4:13)
So, you’ve followed Jesus commandments, but what happens when we come here?
What does Jesus emphasize when He speaks of what He does for us here?
This the first point: that we ask that question.
What does Jesus do for me here?
Because there is a temptation to get it backward. To think that going to church is primarily about something we do.
Worship is my praise and thanks to God for who He is what and what He’s done.
Worship is our service of singing and praying to God.
Worship is our time to be the ones who act, the ones who pray, the ones who song, the ones who praise, the ones who give ourselves back to God.
There is a temptation to make worship the time when we are the givers and make God the getter, the receiver.
Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down, says some modern Christian praise songs.
But Jesus takes this question of our service to God, or what we think we do for God and flips it entirely on its head when He says things:
The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Jesus teaches us that we are not gathering because we are offering up to God our greatness and holiness.
This is one of our temptations.
The lawyer in our Gospel Reading asks Jesus what he can do to inherit eternal life.
One other time a rich man comes up to Jesus and ask what we can do to inherit eternal life.
There are other times when Jesus says the lawyers and Pharisees have rejected the purposes of God and seek to justify themselves before man, but God know their hearts
The lawyer in our Gospel Readings wants to justify himself.
A couple weeks ago Jesus warned us about those who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous.
Let’s not test Jesus, when we gather.
Let’s not justify ourselves here today.
Let’s not make our gathering ever be about what we do for God or be asking Him what we can to inherit eternal.
Let’s not make it about our emotions or our works or our badness or our goodness.
Christians worship is about Jesus giving us gifts.
Jesus coming down in the means He has promised to work through – His blessed Word, sung, and read and preached and His blessed Sacrament of His body and blood.
Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to teaches us about a lot of things:
But one thing it’s not about is about what that man who was left half dead did anything for anybody.
This man was the recipient of compassion.
This man received care and mercy.
This was man healed and loved.
And that’s the center of Christian worship, Jesus work on you.
Jesus came for the sick, not the well.
So, we better realize we’re sick and need Him as our great Physician all the time.
Jesus came to justify us, so let’s drop any excuses to exalt ourselves before Him or each other.
We are not good enough, like that lawyer that was testing Jesus thought.
We need Him to continually have compassion on us and forgive us and come to us.
The Law shows our sin, calls us to repentance,
We haven’t loved the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and all our mind, or our neighbor as ourself.
The Law and living in this sinful world puts us in the place of the man who fell among the robbers and was beaten and left half dead.
That’s us here today.
Isaiah 1 says it this way about us sinners:
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil. (Isaiah 1)
But Jesus comes to us wounded sick sinners today.
The primary picture is Christian worship is not of us coming to God,
“I went to church. I praised God! I paid my tithes.”
But of Him coming to us today to serve us and care for us and heal us.
This is Christian worship.
Do you remember how Jesus washes His disciples feet the night before His crucifixion?
The disciples were stunned at this act of humility.
Peter’s even offended and he protests and his protest takes on 2 forms that teach us about our sin, our misunderstanding of Jesus teaching on Christian worship.
First, Peter objects that Jesus is serving him.
And then Peter objects to how Jesus is serving him.
First Peter objects knowing that he should be serving Jesus, he should be humbling himself before Jesus, he should be offering to Jesus this act of service.
Jesus is after all Lord of Lord, King of Kings, Light of Light, and here is God of God, the Son of God who is washing His feet?
But Jesus says, you don’t understand, but you will afterward. Just wait until tomorrow.
If you think washing your feet is humbling, then wait until my feet are pierced for you on the cross.
If you think me bowing down on my knees is humbling, then wait until I’m beaten and fall on knees to answer for your sin.
If you think me stripping my outer clothes to wash you is humbling, then wait until I’m stripped completely to clothe you with my righteousness.
You must understand that you need me to do this for.
And that’s one of the keys of Christian worship, is that you must know who you are as a dying sinner that cannot be saved by your own works, but must be saved by Jesus work, finished on the cross, and delivered here in Word and Sacrament.
And that’s the second point of Christian worship: is Jesus gets to tell you what you need.
You need His Word – preached and read and prayed and sung and put upon you as a blessing. You need His body and His blood.
Through those things, He gives you what you need in forgiveness, life and salvation.
Back to the washing of His disciples feet, after Peter objects to Jesus washing him, he then tries to tell Jesus what Jesus needs to do.
“Well, if I need it, then don’t just wash my feet, wash my whole body.”
You see, if we were to consider what we think we need most from Jesus, we a lot of times would get it wrong.
Many church, too many churches, focus on health, wealth and wisdom.
If we were calling the shots, we’d always have left feeling great, having had an emotional experience, feeling the closeness of God, gaining new wisdom in how to live.
But Jesus is the one who serves.
Forty days after Jesus resurrection and minutes before His ascension, Jesus speaks these astonishing words, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” And the disciples minds must have been racing – wow!
What’s He doing to do with that?
Establish an earthly kingdom?
Make us incredibly healthy and wealthy and powerful?
End the Roman occupation?
Give us endless miracles?
What do you think you need the most?
Better health, better job, better marriage, better government, bigger church, less family problems,
But instead Jesus says that with all authority in heaven and earth, His Church is to baptize in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teach everything that Jesus has commanded and promises He is always with us.
Jesus doesn’t always serve us in the way we expect.
But like the man who fell among the robbers, we must receive what our Savior wants to give us.
The Samaritan goes to the man who fell among the robbers and the texts says that He took him to an inn and took care of him.
This the primary way that Jesus wants to take care of your soul.
He wants to bring you here and lavish you with His mercy.
He wants to gather you for Church and forgive your sins.
He wants you to sit and receive His Word and Sacrament.
That is the highest faith, to receive what Jesus wants to give you. To receive the care that Jesus wants to give us.
We’ll conclude this way:
The Lutheran Confessions confess it this way:
The worship and divine service of the Gospel is to receive gifts from God….the chief worship of the Gospel is to desire to receive the forgiveness of sins, grace and righteousness. (Ap V [III] 189 [310]).
God help us always seek to receive from Him what He wants to give – and so go to church, where He wants to serve us.