Today's Scripture Reading (May 15, 2020): Ezekiel 20
Where do you
worship? I have a friend who argues that he can worship better in the mountains
than he can in a church. And another friend who makes the same argument for the
golf course. For me, maybe it would be the beach that intrigues me as a place
of worship. But what each of us is saying is that these are the places where we
like to spend time. And part of our Christian tradition says that we believe that
the people are the church, not the place where we choose to worship, so maybe
the site doesn't really matter. But the critical question is exactly what or
who is it that you are worshipping? As you watch your golf ball gliding through
the air, farther than you thought it could go and right at that pond in the
middle of the fairway, what is the object of your worship?
We believe that
the people are the church, but we also understand that the focus of our worship
is God – and only God. I have had Christians tell me of their affection for
angels and that they wish we talked more about angels in church, but angels are
not our focus; only God can be our object of worship. I have had Christians tell
me about what their horoscopes say and how accurate those predictions are.
Still, horoscopes, and really any attempt to foretell the future outside of a
dependence on God, is a practice that is condemned explicitly in the Bible. Part
of my struggle with worshipping in the mountains, or on the beach, is that
while worship is between God and us, it also involves the Christian community.
Worship is something that we do together. Worship can be a solitary pursuit,
but it also must be one that we practice in the company of other people. And,
while worship can happen anywhere, some places open up to us dangers for
following false gods or false practices, and these are the practices that
actually lead us away from God.
And this
picture of worship is accurate, even in the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. God was
everywhere, but the early leaders realized, possibly better than we do, that
worshiping anywhere often led to worshipping anyone. And so, the Hebrew law
demanded that worship should happen in the Temple. The people prayed to God and
celebrated certain religious holidays where they lived, but three times a year were
called back to Jerusalem to worship God there, and if you lived close to the
Temple, you journeyed there much more frequently. But some in Jewish society
felt that the high places could replace the Temple. And it was at these high
places, or 'Bamah,' which means 'high places,' that they were tempted with
exchanging the worship of Yahweh for the Worship of Ba'al or Asherah or another
local deity. It is actually a relatively short trip from worshipping God in the
mountains and worshipping the mountains.
And the
truth is that part of our contemporary Christian Challenge is simply this; Do
we worship God, or do we worship a god we have created in our own high places?
Do we have a Temple that keeps our beliefs anchored in the God of all creation?
And I will be honest, I am not convinced that we do have such a Temple. We are
a people governed more by the hot topics of our day than the worship of a God
who is forever. We live in echo chambers where our beliefs are seldom
challenged. There are few instances in our lives when we are driven back to the
Bible and other Christians for the answers to the essential questions of our
day. We are a people of our own 'Bamah's,' and maybe our first step is
recognizing that, and then answering Ezekiel's question; What is this high
place to which you go?
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Ezekiel 21
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