Restaurants and Worship

Well, it is official, summer is over.  How do I know?  Kids are back in school and the stands are full for High School home football games. I don’t know about you, but the summer was refreshing.  No, I don’t mean anything about the temperatures, for I dislike heat more than just about anything else. 

Why was summer refreshing?  I took a few weeks of vacation, and while on vacation was able to attend worship services in God’s house.  While attending these services, I was a hearer of God’s Word and a receiver at the Table of the Lord.  What a blessed thing it was not to be a servant, but to be one of those served.  This is not to say that when I conduct the service, I am not preaching to myself.  In fact, I write my sermons directed at everybody, myself first and foremost.  I am also the first to receive the Lord’s Supper from my hand.  But there is something about being purely receptive that is so refreshing.

When I go out to a restaurant, it is nice to sit in the seat of honor, and that seat is the seat at which you are waited upon.  Someone brings you your water, your meal, cleans up the dishes.  It is nice to sit there and be fed and nourished without having to prepare the meal, serve it, and (my wife especially likes this) clean the dishes.

It is the same at the worship services in God’s house.  Every Sunday, someone (Christ’s undershepherd, a servant, the pastor) prepares and serves that which is fed to those gathered, that is, the pure spiritual milk of the Word.  And those gathered are fed and nourished in the faith as the Spirit works in Word and Sacrament upon those who hear, eat, and drink.

Amazingly, there are some people who think that to be leading worship in some way is to be more important or more involved in the service.  Really?  Let’s go back to the restaurant.  Would you rather be seated at the table?  Or would you rather be the one serving the table?  Who is more important?

The highest honor in God’s house is to be those who are gathered to receive what Christ comes in Word and Sacrament to serve.  What a blessing it is that God sent His Son to give His life as a ransom to redeem us from sin.  What a blessing it is to gather in God’s house to receive that which He delivers in Word and Sacrament, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation.  What a blessing that God’s mercy moves Him to deliver such grace to us.