Not a problem.
No. God can do whatever he likes. It's human beings who give me credence problems. It's one simple line in the Psalms. It says: "I rejoiced when they said to me, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord.'" It's Psalm 122:1 and it puts me in mind of dragging myself out of bed on a Sunday morning, realising that I'm about to lead some worship and meet people. As an introvert owl - and certainly not an extrovert lark - Sunday morning worship is too early. How on earth I manage to take wild and fun assemblies with a single crystallising point about Jesus at 8.55am on a weekday is a minor miracle. Ditto Sundays.
Sunday mornings don't make me rejoice instantly, throwing back the Laura Ashley duvet covers and sliding down the bannisters to wake the Alderney so I can have some butter on the priestly slice of bread and perform a Morecambe and Wise breakfast preparation routine. No no no. It's more like that cornflakes advert about the dawn of time.
Most of us on a Sunday. Heck, most of us any morning.
Not usually me on a Sunday.
Certainly not any clergy I know on a Sunday. Okay, maybe Matt.
Martin Luther wouldn't celebrate morning prayer until 11.45, and he had a point (he also had a hangover, which never happens to me).
And yet. And yet…
The Psalmist dude is right. By the time I've addressed myself to worship in the company of other believers, it's good, it's liberating, it's excellent. Sunday mornings are marvellous. They just take some effort to climb onto the merry roundabout of rejoicing, the wild whirligig of worship, the colourful carousel of choruses… what's that? Enough fairground metaphors?
That's a miracle.
But did you spot that I said "addressed myself to worship"? The feeling of belonging and adoring is catching, but it's more catching when we realise that we have to contribute, participate, drag ourselves up onto our collective elbows and join in. It's never quite an excuse to say, "I don't feel like it." Feelings are a thermometer but not your master. Or mistress. Let me tell you a secret: lots of vicars don't feel like it, but if we all let our feelings have the last word, where would we be? Well, still in bed, probably, or off down the pub. Playing Call of Thrones in our pants eating dry week-old pizza or watching endless repeats of Game of Duty.
I digress.
It means that we need also to address ourselves to the component parts of a service.
Praise. Singing. We need to work (I know, four-letter word) to help the praise rise. That's why it's sometimes called a sacrifice of praise, because it costs. It costs us effort. And somewhere in the Bible someone says, "I will not give to God offerings that cost me nothing" (That's 1 Chronicles 21:24 and 2 Samuel 24:24. Lots of 24s there). You put nothing in, and often you get something out, because that's how God can work: generosity in the face of indolence! So imagine what might happen if we really put all our hearts and souls and minds and strength into it? Imagine if we made that line part of our liturgy? And of course worship isn't directly or primarily meant to benefit us: it's to glorify God. But praise be to God (as Peter would say) because everything is so connected that what's good for God is good for us and good for the universe. Gosh. It's like it was planned!
How praise often is…
…and how it could be. You have more say in it than you think.
Prayer. Intercessions. We need to work to join in the prayers and help them rise up like incense at the Temple evening service. I find other people's prayers tedious and this is the point where I am likeliest to fall asleep or drift off. How wrong of me! Congregational prayers are like pushing a car: you lend a shoulder, and you try to match the pace and rhythm of the chief-car-pusher (or person leading prayers). When I was a boy I'd try to help push my dad's car or neighbours' cars when the winter made them harder to start than me on a Sunday. Sometimes I could only get a hand on the bumper and wasn't much objective help. Sometimes the chief-car-pusher got in the way. Sometimes they set up a pace or style that was hard to join in with. And our prayer leaders in church need to remember they're not just talking, not showing off their oratory, not being frustrated wannabe-preachers offering a second sermon. They're pushing a car and making it easy for people to join in. But we need to try to join in… or to let people know how hard their prayers are to be part of. If at first you don't succeed…
Public prayer: every little helps.
And the gloria and the creed… What do we do? Do we "say" the creed? "Say" the Gloria? The Gloria is a prayer of praise, best sung in a sensible accessible tune, and when we "say" it without music, it maybe needs to be "declared" or "proclaimed" - not mumbled in monotone. And the creed - it's a prophetic declaration of the way things really are, an act of protest against a world that would silence and ignore God and run headlong into pleasure and sin without any sense of consequence or accountability. Declaring the creed itself is a revolutionary act - or it would be if we remembered and engaged and addressed ourselves to the business of being a revolutionary and seditious and liberating movement rather than a settled institution.
He may have said a creed… but then we went out and did it!
And when the creed has been declared? I can almost hear God asking the big question of the day. "And?" "And so what?" It's not just a long long motto. It may have started out as a liturgical corrective to the sermon, so that it pointed up if anything wrong had been preached (in my long career I have had readers who would preach heresy when I wasn't in the building: more of that another day), but now it's a firing-up moment.
It's no good declaring that all people are created equal as a creed but being aware that everywhere we are in chains and doing nothing to free anyone.
It's no good declaring that people are made in God's image as a creed but being aware that that image is defaced by profiteers and staying silent.
It's no good saying/proclaiming/declaring the creed and then carrying on as if we haven't just aired the single most revolutionary manifesto.
We snooze?
We lose.
What would happen if we all addressed ourselves to Sunday worship? What would happen if we used the Peace not to hug our friends but to track down our malefactors and detractors, naysayers and calumnisers and actually try to make peace? What would happen if we actually lifted our hands and hearts in song and prayer? I could stop grumbling, the church could stop mumbling, and we would really start rumbling…
So. I'm going to try to start Sundays better (possibly by ending Saturdays earlier). Lose the snooze, break the pain barrier, and mine church for all it's worth. And then maybe one day I really will rejoice when someone says unto me, "Let us go and worship God…"
