In a little while, we will share in Holy
Communion. And today, we close our sermon series looking at the Communion
liturgy that we use every month.
So, as we prepare to take communion, I want to start by
reminding you of all the things we’ve talked about so far. We started by
talking about the importance of giving thanks to God, and how it is a joyful
thing to do that. We should feel joy
when we give thanks to God, because God always loves us and God will always be
with us. Then we talked about the holiness of God, how God is perfect and
so deserves our complete loyalty and dedication.
After that, we talked about the
new covenant that God has made with us through our sharing in Holy Communion.
We talked about how that covenant is a covenant of grace and forgiveness
that was made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and how by
sharing in Communion we accept that covenant that God makes with us. We
then talked about how this is such an incredible gift that God has given to us,
that we receive God’s grace and forgiveness not because we deserve them, but
because God loves us that much.
We also talked about how the
Communion liturgy calls us to be a holy and living sacrifice in union with
Christ’s offering for us. That calls us to give one hundred percent of
our lives to God. We talked about how
the fact that Christ is risen is the ultimate proof that he is, in fact, the
Savior, and how if we believe that, we should want to give one hundred percent
of our lives to God. And last week we talked about how we pray for God’s
Holy Spirit to be poured onto us and into us, and what we could accomplish for
the Lord if that actually happened.
There’s one last bit of the
Communion liturgy we need to talk about. It’s short. Here it is:
Through your Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy
Spirit in your holy church, all honor and glory is yours, almighty Father, now
and forever.
“All honor and glory is yours,
almighty Father.” You know, the Gallup organization took a poll last year
asking people who attend church regularly why they do that. Here are the
top seven answers--and you could obviously choose more than one answer:
1.
Sermons that teach
about scripture--76%
2.
Sermons that help you
connect religion to your life--75%
3.
Programs geared to
children and teenagers--64%
4.
Community outreach and
volunteer opportunities--59%
5.
Dynamic religious
leaders who are interesting and inspiring--54%
6.
Social activities that
help you get to know people in the community--49%
7.
A good choir, praise
band, or other spiritual music--38%
Now, none of those is necessarily a bad reason to come to
church. Maybe you nodded your head at someone. Maybe some of them resonated with you, and
that’s fine. If one or more of those things is why you’re here today,
that’s great. But remember what we call
this. This is a worship service.
We are here to worship God. We
are here to give all honor and glory to God.
Now again, none of those other reasons is wrong or bad.
If you get something out of the sermons, that’s great. I hope you do. If you like the music
and it sticks with you after you leave, wonderful. I’m glad of that. If you enjoy the social aspect of church,
that’s cool, too. God wants us to love our neighbors. But over and above those and all the other
things mentioned in that poll is the fact that this is a worship service.
We are here today to worship God.
We are here today to give all honor and glory to God.
Now, maybe that seems like a pretty obvious thing to say.
In a way, I kind of hope so. It
should be an obvious thing to say. But think about that list of reasons
why people come to church. Nowhere among
those top seven responses was “I come to church to worship God.” Now, to
be fair, I don’t know if the Gallup people included that response as one of the
options. Also, the article I read did
not give the rest of the responses, so I don’t know worshipping God might have
come in eighth or ninth or if it even registered at all. But still, it
appears that less than thirty-eight percent of the people who responded to that
poll cited “worshipping God” as one of their major reasons for attending
church.
Now again, if you enjoy some of those other things about
church, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if, at the end of the day, the church
does not worship God, the church is not a church. It’s just a social
club. And that’s not a knock on social
clubs--they often do good things and help people and let people form
relationships so they can be there for each other and all kinds of other things.
And obviously the church should do good things and help people and let
people form relationships and be there for each other, too. But even more importantly, the church needs
to worship God. We need to honor and
glorify God.
The church is about the worship of God. The sharing
of Holy Communion is about the worship of God. We should approach
Communion with an attitude of worship.
God deserves our worship. And we need to give God our worship.
Really, everything about the Communion liturgy leads us to
this point. That’s why we went through that review of it at the beginning
of the message. We give thanks to God, and feel joy in doing so, because
our thankfulness gives honor and glory to God. It shows our worship of
God. We give God our complete loyalty
and dedication, or at least we have that as our goal, because that gives honor
and glory to God. It shows our worship of God.
Accepting God’s new covenant of grace and forgiveness, a
covenant that was made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, gives honor
and glory to God. It shows our worship of God. Recognizing what an incredible gift that is
that God has given us, a gift that we don’t deserve but simply receive because
of God’s love for us, gives honor and glory to God. It shows our worship
of God.
Giving one hundred percent of our lives to God, or at least
trying to, gives honor and glory to God. That shows our worship of
God. Believing in and accepting the fact
that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead gives honor and glory to God.
That, too, shows our worship of God.
Praying for God’s Holy Spirit to be poured out onto us and into us gives
honor and glory to God. That also shows
our worship of God. And opening our hearts and our souls, so that we
truly can feel God’s Holy Spirit poured onto us and into us, gives honor and
glory to God. That shows our worship of
God.
And of course, these are not just things we should think
about on Sunday morning, and they’re not just things we should think about when
we share in Holy Communion. These are things that should be part of our
entire lives. Every aspect of our
lives--again, one hundred percent--should give honor and glory to God. Every aspect of our lives should show our
worship of God in some way.
In a little while, we’re going to share in Holy Communion.
And before we do, we’re going to read the Communion liturgy. For
some of us, it’s a liturgy that we’ve read many times before. But I hope
that this sermon series has helped us all, including me, see the Communion
liturgy in a new light. I hope it’s given the Communion liturgy more
meaning for all of us. And I hope that
meaning will not just be something that we think about today, but that we’ll
think about it every time we share Communion from now on.
Our Communion liturgy is very well-crafted. Every
part of it has meaning. Every part of it
logically follows the part that comes before it. And every part of it
leads to the conclusion, the main reason we come together on Sunday
morning: to give all honor and glory to
God. To worship the almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing,
all-wise, and yet all-loving, all-caring, all-compassionate, all gracious,
all-merciful God.
“Through your Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in
your holy church, all honor and glory is yours, almighty Father, now and
forever.” May we truly give God all honor and glory, not just now, but
always.
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