I. Introduction

Take yourself back almost seventeen centuries. You are a Christian, and that is illegal. What would you say if you were caught and arrested? How would you defend yourself? Would you confess that Jesus is your Lord and Savior? Or, maybe you would gallantly announce, "I am on the Vestry of St. Paul's" You might even consider explaining the Doctrine of the Trinity to your arresting officer; that ought to straighten him out.

The year is 304 A. D. The proconsul is putting Christians on a torture rack, tearing their bodies part with barbed hooks. What would be worth dying for? What would you die for?

Put yourself in the place of a young Christian named Felix. He has just seen his father and a friend torn apart on the rack. The proconsul now turns to him and asks the fateful questions.

"Were you one of the assembly; and do you possess any copies of the Scriptures?:

How would you answer?

Listen to the response Felix makes as he tells what one early Christian is willing to die for.

As if a Christian could exist without the Eucharist, or the Eucharist be celebrated without a Christian! Don't you know that a Christian is constituted by the Eucharist, and the Eucharist by a Christian? Neither avails without the other. We celebrated our assembly right gloriously. We always convene at the Eucharist for the reading of the Lord's Scriptures.
Quoted by Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. in The Worship of the Church

Encouraged by that response, the proconsul had Felix beaten to death with clubs.

This early Christian believed that the Church's Eucharist was worth dying for. "Don't you know that a Christian is constituted by the Eucharist, and the Eucharist by a Christian?" How about that? What do you think about that?

Well, I do go to Church every week...almost... (you might say) but; I'm not sure I'm being "constituted by the Eucharist." I don't really understand it all; and, to tell you the truth,
I'm not all that sure I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing in church. Am I supposed to be feeling something? What is supposed to be happening? Whatever it is, I don't think I would be willing to die for a Sunday morning Eucharist.

There is a real hunger for authentic, life-giving worship and an instinct that what we need is right under our noses. I believe Episcopalians can worship and pray. We've got everything we need in the Book of Common Prayer. My intention in this series about the Eucharist is to prod and cajole Episcopalians into worshipping to their full potential. You might discover yourself to be "constituted by the Eucharist" and ready to die.

What is worship?
Let's start with what is worship is not.

First, it's not like negotiating a contract --"God, I'll come to church, pay my pledge, say my prayers, live a good 'Christian' (i.e., respectable) life; and you get me through the rough spots. Better yet, you smooth the way, Lord, so nothing really rotten and unfair happens to me. After all, I am a good Episcopalian."

This is magical thinking. There really is a lot of subtle expectation about what we hope to get out of worship. But that's not worship. You don't offer worship to get something out of it.

Second, worship is not affiliating with an organization. "I am a member of St. Paul's, Fayetteville, and this is just what we do on Sunday." Loyalty to the rites of the community is important. But worship transcends the institution.

Third, worship is not mastering all of the bows and crosses, the history and symbolism of liturgy like it were a fascinating hobby. It is easy to get so wrapped up in the right way of doing worship that you lose the spirit of why we do anything at all.

Finally, I once knew a fellow who said he wasn't sure he believed all of this God-stuff, but he was an active member of his church because he wanted his bases covered in case it was true. And, it didn't hurt anything, he said; probably made him a better person. That's honest, but inadequate for me.

What is worship?

Let me approach it in a roundabout way. Worship is a little like marriage or raising children; we pretend everybody knows how and anybody can. Yet good worship like good marriage and child rearing is both difficult and simple.

Someone has said that the Christian religion is the simplest thing in the world. All you need is bread, wine and water. Theologians speak of the utter simplicity of God who is Absolute Love.

The great mysteries are simple. When you ask people who have been married fifty years and raised a half dozen sane children how they did it, they usually answer with disarming simpleness,
"Oh, we just tried to forgive each other and do what was right." There is simplicity at the heart of all mystery and truth.

But good worship, like good family life, is difficult also. "The celebration of the Eucharist is the most complex activity that most people will ever engage in; and the most demanding action that could be asked of any human being."
Gregory Manly, C.P. and Anneliese Reinhard, M.S.C., The Art of Praying Liturgy


Let me give you a simple definition of worship and then we'll try to flesh it out.

Worship is, "the response of the creature to the Eternal."
Evelyn Underhill, Worship

Worship is first of all a response, which means worship is initiated by God. That's not so obvious. Worship looks like something people do themselves. "I am searching for God. I am trying to grow spiritually. I feel good when I go to church. It gives me strength to make it through the week." There is truth in all of these motivations, but more basically worship begins with God's actions. God has already placed the desire for union within our hearts. St. Augustine described it as a "God-shaped vacuum," that is inside each of us. Only God can fill that emptiness, and "our hearts are restless until the rest in Thee." Your "God-shaped vacuum" responds to God freely and personally. It is the action of the Holy Spirit in you recognizing and responding to God.

God is always coming to us -- worship is our response.

I don't think it is too far fetched to say that the whole universe worships God. When we say that "worship is the response of the creature to the Eternal," we include the non-human creatures as well. The next time you pass a field of wild flowers, try to think of their flowering beauty as their worship. in response to the God who created them and holds them in life. After all, God is Absolute Beauty. Human beings are a part of the created universe. Part of our duty as humans is to offer conscious worship to God on behalf of the universe, for only human beings can offer conscious worship to God.

Human beings like the rest of creation, are composed of minerals. I'll never forget the panic I experienced witnessing a man in a deathly shock simply because his body was low in the mineral potassium. We salt our food to bring out its taste. Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." Jesus called Peter "the rock" on which he would found his church. Theologian Paul Tillich describes God as "The Ground of Being." I think it is both humbling and elevating to unite ourselves with the mineral world when we worship God. If potassium and salt, rock and ground are to consciously worship God, they must do so through human beings. We are mineral.

[Stardust -- conversation about our origins; everything material that exists on this earth is the result of the impact of massive stars that formed the heavier atoms; we are literally "stardust"]

We are also vegetable and animal, and through us the whole created order consciously responds to the Eternal. If minerals, vegetables and animals are to consciously worship God, they must do so through us. When you worship, all of nature worships through you. All the universe worships consciously through us. In fact, nature is often the environment where we have our first trembling intimations of God. "In this infant-school of the emerging human spirit," as Evelyn Underhill describes nature, God "comes to man and awakens him where he is."

Imagine a first act of worship from prehistoric days.

John Caveman is passing through an unknown part of the primeval forest, carrying berries and some primitive bread he has ground from wild oats. He travels toward the sea to trade for fish.
Suddenly he descends into a deep, dark part of the forest where the canopy of trees blot out the sun. He smells the damp jungle decay and feels the thick atmosphere. As he rounds a corner, the trail passes a great rock starkly jutting from the earth. A shaft of sunlight glares upon it, the shadows giving the rock an eerie facial resemblance. He shudders involuntarily and hunkers his head a bit, drawn to the unexpected sight.

A momentary pause, and he is off down the trail, his heart and his pace quickened. After trading his wares on the coast, he returns home circuitously. He does not forget the strange rock, and the fear and fascination that he experienced in its presence. In fact, he tells his community about the awesome place. When he next travels to trade, he brings a group of people with him back to the trail in the deep woods.

They feel the heaviness in the air, too, as they near the place. This time when he arrives at the great rock, John takes two bread cakes and some berries from his pack, places them in a crevice on the rock, lowers his head reverently and says aloud, "O mighty god of the forest, thank you for allowing us to use your trail and walk in your woods." The others murmur an awed caveman version of "Amen," and they leave quickly.
This is a version of a story that I recall when I visited a Confirmation Class taught by the Rev. Homer F. Rogers. The full story is found in the posthumous publication of his popular class by his daughter. Fr. Homer F. Rogers; ed. Dr. Mary P. Tuck; The Romance of Orthodoxy, copyright 1989, Dorothy J. Rogers, pp. 19-23.

That is not bad worship.

It has its origin as an experience of the holy. It is oriented toward the transcendent Other whose presence is focused by a symbol. It is essentially a response of thanksgiving and praise embodied in a sacrifice. It is expressed concretely with words and gestures. It is an act of community and it is dangerous.

The foundation and source of worship is the experience of the Holy. It is impossible to explain with words, but it is like the feeling of fear and fascination that John Caveman felt in the presence of the rock in the deep forest. It is Moses' burning bush, Mary's annunciation, the appearance of the Risen Lord to the disciples.

Here is one attempt to describe the religious experience of the Holy:
[It is] that religious trembling, that interior vertigo before the Pure, the inaccessible, the wholly Other, and at the same time that sense of invisible presence, the attraction of a love so infinite and yet so personal that, having tasted it, we know only that it surpasses all that all that we still call love.
Louis Bouyer, quoted by Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist - Sacrament of the Kingdom

I remember a time in my childhood when I was sitting in my favorite tree in my grandparents' yard. My attention was grasped by the complexity and beauty of the dark deep grains in the tree's bark. Suddenly, it was like I was seeing the infinite complexity of the tree in the beauty of a few square inches of its bark. It was like I had never seen a tree before; I had simply glanced at trees before now. Suddenly my consciousness was expanded terrifically. While I was seeing the bark in stunning depth, I was opening up to see the whole tree, seeing its twigs and leaves almost individually, even being aware of a squirrel hiding above. I was also fully aware of the neighbor's hillside and their house, its color and detail. I took note of the placement of the neighbor's window shade, though I had no conscious awareness that I was thinking, noticing or looking. I saw the whole sky, it seemed. I can still recall the precise blue and the shapes of the clouds. All while I focused on this tiny spot of bark on the tree before me. It was like I was seeing the whole world at once, with startling detail and richness. Then, there was a numbness in my body, a tingling that made me realize where I was. It seems I had lost awareness of my being for a moment. And as my vision shrank to "normal" the thought occurred to me, "this is something like the way God sees everything at once totally." And I was filled with a peace and gladness that "it" is really true: there is a God, all is good. That was an experience of the Holy.

[Story of Cosmic Laugh -- on retreat, I experienced the presence of God. Indescribable. The closest I've been able to come is to call it the experience of a "cosmic laugh"]

I believe this is a common experience. In fact, I wonder if every human being has not had some similar encounter. You don't have to be a mystic or even an adult to experience the Holy. I think it is important to remember, to treasure, and to share such experiences. They are the foundation of worship.

Worship is the creature's response to the Eternal, the Holy.

Worship begins with God's revelation which can happen anywhere. The ultimate revelation of God for Christians is through Jesus Christ. Jesus reveals God fully in his life, teaching, obedience, love, death, resurrection, ascension, and presence through the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, God's Kingdom draws near to us, the Holy God becomes tangible.

The Eucharist is the Spirit's response to God through Christ. We are taken into God's Kingdom through the Eucharist. The Eucharist is both the Church's response of worship initiated by God's gift through Christ, and the Eucharist is the revealer of God's gift through Christ. The Eucharist, then, is response and revelation.

Like John Caveman, we come humbly before God's presence remembering the story of our redemption through Jesus Christ. We bring bread and wine and offer ourselves in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. We receive the gifts of the Kingdom of God, the unity and life of the Holy Trinity through Christ's Body.

It is a stunning act of worship. And sometimes we sleepwalk through it, making the motions like zombies and reciting the words unaware. But the Eucharist is powerful.

Often the Eucharist itself reveals God in spite of our numbness. A professor of mine once told a seminary class of an experience of his in the Eucharist. I think it helps to know that this professor was a particularly rational, intellectual type. When he preached and taught, you had to have your thinking cap energized. He exuded religion-as-a-head-trip, God as a philosophical proposition. (Class B apologetics) For me, that makes his witness of his experience sound especially authentic.

He told our class about a time when he was assisting at the altar with a priest he disliked. In fact, he said it would have taken energy to work his feelings all the way up to "dislike" for the priest.
In a real sense he cared nothing at all for the man. It was a dull, routine Eucharist presided over by a dull, routine priest. In the congregation was an older man who was partially crippled and unable to mount the steps to the altar rail. Unfortunately, he was one of those people whose disability only exacerbated his bitter personality. He was cranky, offensive and mean-spirited.
My professor said, "I really had no sense of compassion or empathy for him. It was as if in his crippling he had gotten what he deserved. His body truly reflected his being."

As was the custom, the priest picked up the cup and a host to take communion to the old man in the congregation. Now quoting:
"As the acolyte swung open the altar gate," and at this point my professor telling the story began to choke with emotion. His face flushed and his eyes watered. This rigidly logical professor sat glowing upright fighting to gain composure. "Even now the remembrance of it causes me to weep," he said. He took a deep breath, and in a hushed, cracking voice he spoke rapidly, "As the acolyte swung open the altar gate, I saw a heavenly light pour through the windows and ceilings upon that priest, and I saw him. He was Christ entering our world to feed broken humanity. And that crippled man -- he was all of us. Broken and hurting, waiting to receive life literally from Christ."

There was a few seconds of silence as my teacher recovered. "So you see I believe the classical apologia from experience is a strong argument for the religious possibility." Crisp, logical once again. You may say you have never had such a religious experience. Fine. You don't need to. The Church has.
the teacher was Dr. Walter Hurt

The Church has known Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Each time the Church celebrates the Eucharist it witnesses to the reality of Jesus' resurrection and invites the members of Christ's body to share in the sacrament of the Kingdom of God. When we as worshipers respond with the Church, we share in the Church's experience of God. We are incorporated into something bigger than ourselves, and we are brought into communion with all reality. When we join our response with the Church's response in the Holy Eucharist, we find God is revealed.

The "God-shaped vacuum" in each of us is drawn to its source, its hunger, and its life. We find ourselves beginning to be "constituted by the Eucharist."

These next weeks, I intend to prepare us to join the Church in its worship.