The first night of youth group this year our topic is worship. My professor in college taught what I can only assume many others teach as well- that you should spend a lot of time in the text just meditating on it before you begin planning your lesson. Well, I didn’t have a specific text in mind so I looked up worship in my concordance and ended up reading about the building of the Temple. Talk about a lot of rules. I was reminded how easy it is for us to worship today compared to ancient Israel. They had to go to the Temple, wash, only the men could enter, only a priest (who went through a 7 day long anointing process) could offer the sacrifices, only the priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and people didn’t go and worship falsely, at least not easily. Worship was a serious matter. It was a big deal. And I am so glad that I can worship God in a variety of ways and whenever, wherever I want. But I feel like we may have lost something important in the evolving of worship. I feel like with worship being this big process it’s not something a person would be doing apathetically. Hypocritically, sure, but apathetically? Probably not. I mean, you have to go through a cleansing ritual before you enter the temple. Other than my usual shower I’ve never cleansed myself before worship. They had to buy animals to sacrifice, or else take animals that would give them money to sacrifice for their sins. We have to ask for forgiveness, our sacrifice has been offered for us. They had to have a mediator between God and them, our mediator resides at God’s right hand. And I am so grateful, so glad that I don’t have to do all those things, but I sometimes wish we did just enough to be able to remind us what we are doing and what we have been given. How can I forget that I have repented of my sin and need to leave it in the past when I just gave up my best cow? How can I forget that God has taken my sin away and I am clean when I literally wash? How can I forget that their is someone who has taken my sin upon himself and now serves as a mediator between me and God when I am kept separate from God/him by a curtain? Yes, we are blessed with the privelage to worship God in the temple of our bodies, but let us not forget who we are worshipping and why we are worshipping him. Let us approach our worship as something more than the apathetic Sunday morning church service we so often settle for. Let us truly worship the almighty God.
