WORSHIP
at
TRINITY UMC
"They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers."
Acts 2:42
Worship is the noun used for that private devotion and those public gatherings which address the Divine. For the followers of Jesus, worship is, among myriad occupations, our primary vocation: we glorify the Living God in response to God's grace and love, and on behalf of the whole Creation. As the great Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, explains:
...in the Bible to bless God is not a "religious" or a "cultic" act, but the very way of life. God blessed the world, blessed [human kind], blessed the seventh day (that is, time), and this means that He filled all that exists with His love and goodness, made all this "very good." So the only natural (and not "supernatural") reaction of [human kind], to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it and – in this act of gratitude and adoration – to know, name, and possess the world. All rational, spiritual, and other qualities of [human beings], which distinguish [them] from other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God...
"Homo sapiens" [the one who knows],
"homo faber" [the one who makes or creates] ... yes,
but, first of all,
"homo adorans" [the one who worships].
"homo faber" [the one who makes or creates] ... yes,
but, first of all,
"homo adorans" [the one who worships].
The first, the basic definition of [human kind] is that [we are] the priest. The priest stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God.
~ For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), page 15.