Is Worship Escapism?
Sometimes people may believe that worship is merely an act of make-believe and that my role as a pastor is to uphold an inspiring fairy tale.
Life is busy, life is rushed, life is complex; modern life is debilitating. People die, people suffer, people deal with the cynical corporate world. Come to church to escape that. Take a moment to get away from reality. Find inspiration in imagining a better world where everything is peaceful. Cope with life’s pain and sorrow by gathering in a peaceful place where we can pretend things are okay.
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Put on a mask and cover up your sorrows or cynicism. Life is harsh, but here, we don’t have to think about that stuff. We all know we have to go back out into the “real” world, where we will again face life as it is. Here and now, we can pretend otherwise and allow ourselves to feel better. People often think that Christian worship is just that, a form of escapism. However, escapism is the exact opposite of Christian worship.
Worship Aims at our Heart & Experience
Christian worship aims directly at our actual human experience and does not ask us to hide from it or ignore it. In fact, it shines a light directly on reality and reveals the world as it actually is. It answers the actual questions of the human heart. It speaks to us where we are, without asking us to pretend we are something we are not.
In The Gospel and the Catholic Church, Archbishop Michael Ramsey argued that everything we do on Sundays, and as the church of Jesus Christ, is all about the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If that is the case, then rather than avoiding suffering and reality, we are embracing them head-on: death, suffering, and sorrow, along with life, salvation, and redemption. Part of the human experience is to sense a need to appease gods and to be made pure.
Worship in the Sacraments
Baptism washes us in the cleansing, regenerative waters. We gather around the holy table. We eat at the Holy Table of the one who ended all sacrifice by the one sacrifice of himself. When we gather for communion, we are receiving the real presence of Christ himself, the final sacrifice. Here is the real human desire to appease God satisfied. There is nothing more real than that. There is nothing more full-out honest than to lay our sins upon God himself. We would be playing pretend if instead we tried to avoid or ignore the human desire to sacrifice. Rather than ignoring our desire to make a sacrifice or be cleansed, our worship shows us where to direct it.
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:4
Part of the human experience is to feel that something is broken in the world and that somehow I’m a part of that. We confess our sins. We don’t need to pretend anymore. We don’t need to feel shame, we release our shame in God’s redeeming love. That release allows us to be honest and real. It would be a fairy tale if we instead pretended we had no sin. To be human is to desire grace and peace, and to hope they exist.
Worship Forms Community
We speak words of peace and grace in worship; peace and grace are not unreal illusions or fantasies in Jesus Christ. They are finally made real, and they are made real within us as human beings, not despite us. Peace and grace are infused in us, as sinners who are also saints. We are a community of worshippers, human beings. This satisfies a genuine longing in the human heart for relationships and reconciliation. This speaks to a real human need for community and communion with others. Even as it builds this community of grace, it doesn’t ask us to make believe that this community is already perfected. Instead, it calls us to grow in grace together.
The Holy Bible: Echoes of Worship in Prose & Poetry
We listen to God’s word written. We hear it as God’s people. We hear a Bible that tells us of the misdeeds and mighty deeds of our spiritual ancestors. It doesn’t sugar coat anything. It invites us to see ourselves as God’s people, too. With all of our foibles and follies, yet still we are one communion and a family. This story shows us who made us, who loves us, and it directs us to a purpose: human flourishing, made possible by God’s reconciliation working through humans like us.
Death to Sin Through the Resurrection
Finally, to be human is to face death, and yet to sense immortality. There is no hiding from death when we see our God nailed to a Roman Cross. Both the death of Jesus and the joy of his resurrection connect with our human experience. Instead of using the afterlife as a false crutch to cope with life here, the resurrection shows us One who has gone before us into that life, and who will guide us now and forever. We would be pretending if we ignored death and sorrow, as well as joy and immortality. Our faith and worship answer together in Christ Jesus.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15:54, 55
Alexander Schmemann, in For the Life of the World observed that,
Christianity often appears to preach that if men will try hard enough, to live Christian Lives, the crucifixion can somehow be reversed. This is because Christianity has forgotten itself, forgotten that it must always, first of all, stand at the cross.
When we approach Christmas, we are reminded once again how earthly and human our Faith is. Jesus was born to poor parents and placed in a feeding trough for animals. This is no fairy tale. The poverty and powerlessness that Mary and Joseph experienced have been shared by the vast majority of people who have lived on this earth. The incarnation is God appearing in the flesh and dwelling among us as we are.
Christian Worship: The Cross Represents Reality
When our worship stands at the cross, it is honest and fully embraces our human experience. The Gospel is about tangible human experience. It is about redeeming our real, honest-to-God lives. The cross is the ultimate symbol of reality.
Christian worship is about reality. It is real people gathered around a real table, facing real life. As a pastor, my calling is to face reality and to lead others in facing reality together. To “go there” together and find that in Jesus Christ, God has already “gone there” and that he is waiting to meet us. In fact, he never left.
Image by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash.
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