Voices of faith: What is real worship?

Voices of faith: What is real worship?

The Rev. Holly McKissick, pastor of St. Andrew Christian Church, Olathe, Kan.: “I started this church to be all about justice, but it’s ended up all about worship.” It surprised me, even as I said it to the group touring our “award-winning” sanctuary. In seminary, I was in the “social justice” camp, not the “contemplative prayer” camp.

Somehow, though, worship has come to be what our congregation is known for. It started in a school gym where we worshipped humbly: circling our plastic chairs, praying our deepest longings. It grew with visionary architects from California who believed the entire construction of our sanctuary, from the way we treated the Earth to the way we treated the roofers, must be sacred.

That’s “real worship.” It holds together God and God’s world. It can’t be defined by traditional or contemporary styles, by organ or bongo or guitar. Worship is “real” when it is built up and sustained by the people; when it is something we do, not something we produce or perform; when it involves thanksgiving and confession, authenticity and thoughtfulness, joy and justice, vulnerability and awe.

There are ways of structuring a sanctuary and a service that help that happen. But in the end, real worship is not measured by a big screen or a gilded cross but by the lives of real people who — week after week — grow closer to God’s desire: a life of peace, justice, wholeness.

Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz of Congregation Beth Shalom, Kansas City, Mo.: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great theologians of the last century, offers three possible answers to the question, “What is real worship?”

First, Heschel describes prayer as something inspired by an individual’s urge to share a personal matter with God. It is our personal situation that propels us to turn to God in prayer. Notice it is the individual’s feelings that lead to prayer.

In contrast, a second kind of worship occurs when we begin by turning to the words of the formal liturgy. At first these words seem formal, remote, perhaps even arcane. But according to Jewish tradition, the purpose of prescribed formal liturgy is to enable us to turn to God. Notice the difference. In the former it is our emotional needs that inspire us to turn to God in prayer. In the latter, it is our praying that turns us to God.

But Heschel described another kind of worship as well. He described it best in an unpublished diary written in 1963: “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”

Heschel’s now-famous statement suggests that while we can, and do, worship God with words, we can worship God with our actions, as well.

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