Romans 1:21–25
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
John 4:19–24
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The Worship Problem
What is it that differentiates humans from animals? Some point to rationality – that unlike animals we can conceive of something called “myself”. Others emphasise language, still others morality. But the Bible’s answer is that we are separate from animals for a purpose, and that purpose is to worship God.
By worship, I mean the fact of finding something ultimately valuable and ordering one’s life around it. Some questions might draw out what it is that we find most valuable: what do you think is most important in your life? What or who is worth dying for? And what do you want people to say about you at your funeral?
Perhaps it’s being a good person, or a good family member, or serving one’s community, or being happy
Now the fascinating thing is that we don’t choose what we find most valuable in life. We don’t sit down one day and write a list of all the things or people we think might be worth giving one’s life to. We simply find ourselves valuing and treasuring whatever or whomever it might be. Think of a functioning compass. It doesn’t evaluate the different ways it can point and then decide to point North. It simply points as part of what it is. In our heart is a compass, and it is pointing constantly towards what we ultimately value most, ensuring that the decisions we make are in line with it.
One way we could define God is: he who is most important, most valuable, most worth it. Everything which humans find valuable in this life find the source of their value in God. Think of a photo of a precious loved one. The value of the photo doesn’t come from the stuff it’s made from; it comes from the source – that is, the loved one depicted in it. In the same way: goodness, relationships, community, happiness – they are valuable because they are expressions of ultimate goodness, relationship, community and happiness, that is God the Holy Trinity. All the good and precious things of this world are like the sun’s rays, and the Christian life is about tracing them back to their source in the sun.
So, if our hearts were functioning properly, they would be orientated towards finding God ultimately valuable and ordering our lives around him. But they are not functioning properly. Our reading from the book of Romans told us that the fundamental issue with humanity is that the compasses of our hearts are orientated not towards the Creator as that which is most valuable and important, but instead towards things which He created.
Imagine Lucie wrote me a romantic letter. How wrong would it be if I valued the letter more than her – taking it out for dinner, giving it presents and spending more time with it than with Lucie? In the same way it is horribly wrong that humans value the gifts of God more than the Giver.
But here’s the massive problem for us: remember what we thought about just now - we don’t choose what we find most valuable in life. So, none of us can simply choose to value God as he ought to be valued. That’s because the choices are determined by what we already value, before we even make the choice.
Imagine a die-hard Manchester City fan. I could say to them “look, your club has done lots of naughty things. They’re probably going to get relegated. Why don’t you just switch to Manchester United? You can still go to matches locally…” Are they likely to say “yeah, good points. I’m switching allegiance to United”? Absolutely not! Their deep commitment to valuing City comes before the assessment of facts about who it is better to support.
In the same way, our commitment to valuing family or happiness or whatever comes before the assessment of facts about what it is best to dedicate your life to. So, it’s no good God saying, “it makes more sense to value me.” The human heart will simply say, “I don’t think so.”
So, I’d like you to stop for a second and think: could that be me? Step outside of yourself for a second. The vicar is saying “make God the most precious thing in your life. Dedicate your life to him so that that dedication is what you want people to say about you at your funeral.” Does that sound like a wonderful proposal? If not, could it be that what the vicar is saying is being filtered through what you already value more than God? Remember, you can’t change what you most value by yourself. But you can ask God to change it.
That is why, we are told in Romans, God gave humans over to destructive sin. Partly as a just retribution for spurning him who is the source of all that is valuable. But partly also as a wake-up call – these things you have dedicated your life to will only hurt you and let you down in the long run. Making family or happiness or whatever it is the most precious thing in your life is silly, as these things can be broken or even lost. The pain of being let down by the lesser things we value is meant to be a loudspeaker saying “come back to him who really is the most precious thing there is. And he will never let you down.” God wants us to reach the point where we say “OK. I can see that what I’m currently most valuing is letting me down. Might God be right? God – can you change what I most value please?”
Imagine a man who, since his early 20s, has always wanted to build his own house. He almost kills himself earning the money for a plot of land. He goes on all the relevant plumbing and masonry courses. He spends years building the house with his own two hands, and finally after 20 years he moves in. But things are going wrong. There are subsidence issues. He finds out old industry on the land has contaminated the soil so the garden is useless. He made a mistake with the foundations. And just up the road some friends are moving out of their lovely, structurally sound house and are offering it to him at a ridiculously cheap price. At that point the man has a choice: swallow his pride and move or keep reminding himself of how much he put into his dream house and stay put.
So, we’ve seen that each of has a compass in our hearts, orientated towards that which we find most valuable and precious. We’ve seen that we don’t choose this. We’ve seen that it should be God but isn’t, and we’ve seen that God allows what we value instead of him to let us down so that we ask him to change our hearts. And if we do, then he gently and lovingly fixes the compass so that we begin to find him most valuable and live in a different way as a result. So, to worship God is fundamentally to find him most worthy of worship, dedication and praise. Because it is possible to think one is worshipping God and to be mistaken. This is what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in our Gospel reading: you Samaritans think you’re worshiping God but you’re not, for salvation comes out of the Jewish concept of God and the Messiah who is from that nation. So, each of us must ask ourselves: am I really worshiping God? Am I valuing him as the most important thing in my life, or just paying lip service to him? To go back to the man in the house he built – one day it will be too late. His house will fall down, or his friends will sell their house to someone else. In the same way, one day it will be too late for us to ask God to change us. We must make sure we know where we stand today.