Every new calendar year I take some Sunday sermons to talk explicitly about our worship , our Lord’s Day liturgy as an assembly. I love it. I love the reminders and giving the reminders (a la 2 Peter 1:12), but that’s because I love our Lord even more and am thankful for His grace to us in the weekly process and practice and profit of our time together.

Qualifications abound, of course. Corporate worship isn’t the only way of worship, Sunday isn’t the only day we worship, formal liturgy isn’t the only type of worship, we can’t claim that our liturgy is the only acceptable sequence of worship when compared to other churches or even that we have it entirely figured out with no need to grow. For that matter, more people eat than cook, so knowing the recipe is a greater requirement for some than for all. And yet, we are forgetful people, and reminders about what is good and what makes it good are good.

See the Cs

The Lord certainly gives us some flexibility; we speak English (not Latin or other), we meet at 10:00am (not sunrise), we sing seven songs (not because that’s the number of perfection), we have song books/Cantus and we project lyrics on the screen (because King David didn’t even have power, we’re blessed with PowerPoint).

But it is the Lord who calls us to worship; the congregation congregates to praise His name because He requires it. The Lord has revealed that our greatest problem is sin, that He sent His Son as a sacrifice for sinners, so we confess our sins as Christians for sake of forgiveness. The Lord cleanses, He consecrates us by His Word, which we read and which we receive in teaching and exhortation. It is His intention to sanctify us in truth (John 17:16). It is His desire to fellowship with us, so we have communion with Him according to Christ’s ordinance. And from all this filling we are charged to go and obey with His blessing; this is a commissioning. Our worship follows all five Cs every Lord’s Day morning.

We Come and Go

The whole body assembles to bless the name of the Lord and to be blessed by Him. We behold His glory and we praise Him and proclaim Him. We behold His glory and He transforms us from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). What a gift. That’s at least part of why “it is good to sing praises to our God” (Psalm 147:1). A “song of praise is fitting” for Him, and praise fits us, furnishes us, feeds us, orients us, conforms us to Christ rather than to the world.

And the anchor of our week is also the wind to our week; the Lord sits on His throne no matter what hellish flood comes at us (consider Psalm 29:10), and our resting in that truth is like fresh breeze and a filling breath and a spiritual strength for our walk. Sunday is like the fat kid spinning the merry-go-round of the other six days.

So we learn that the Lord calls us to put Him first every week, and we realize He calls us to put Him first throughout everything in the week. We learn the discipline of confessing sin to Him, exercising the muscles to confess sin to each other. We taste that the Lord is good in His Word, so we long for that same pure milk and meat and recognize by comparison the tedious bluster of so many scoffers. We enjoy the feast of fellowship at His Table and try to make fellowship the goal around our home tables. We come for blessing and we go with blessing. What happens here spreads everywhere.

This is Liturgical Living , not just life that has room for liturgy but a lifestyle that learns from the liturgy.

Fruit. A whole lot of fruit.

John 15 is always in season. This text is bigger than liturgy, though there’s no conflict, there should be complement with branches abiding liturgically, with abiding worship.

The agricultural metaphor blooms in the text. The culture in agriculture belongs with both cultivare, Latin meaning to prepare land for crops, and with cultus, Latin for worship. The TEC mission statement includes both.

We are laboring in joy to cultivate a Trinitarian community of worshipping , maturing disciples who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all the world.

The cultivating and the worshipping, as well as the maturing, all depend on our abiding in the Vine.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4–5 ESV)

Abiding speaks of constant dependence; so apart from Christ there is nothing doing. Abiding speaks of direct contact, connection, communing.

In context Jesus is referring to Israel who depended on religious trappings, on (God-given) liturgy and traditions, on externals (and Paul addressed similar concerns in Romans 2. They weren’t like the Gentiles who were abandoned to foolish sins in Romans 1, but they weren’t living by faith in Christ either.) Jesus warns that those branches will be pruned, so the analogy isn’t about losing salvation but about being cut off from corporate, in Israel’s case national, blessings as God’s chosen.

Worship and liturgy among the Jews was a distraction, an alternate dependence, rather than a tool driving dependence on the Lord. But when used in faith, liturgy ought to serve the body, to encourage each part and all the parts together to “hold fast to the Head” (Colossians 1:19). The Head nourishes and knits so that the body “grows with a growth that is from God.” Head and body, so vine and branches.

Abiding branches bear fruit (see fruit in verses 2, 4, 5, and 8). Fruit includes obedience, good works, all as a result of, not a means to, abiding. The abide for “much fruit” does at least two things. It 1) gives evidence that one is a disciple and 2) glorifies the Father, both in verse 8. It is also part of divine joy shared and filling in verse 11.

His words (verse 7), our prayers (verse 7), God’s glory. Of course this is any time and all the time for a disciple, but also part of our liturgy. We abide and that brings fruit.

Jealousable Joy and #MMGA

If we see that fruit of abiding—and we do already, and we desire the Lord’s blessing for more—what might be some of the consequences? We’d actually have even more problems to deal with. There would be more crooked, dry branches being grafted into the vine alongside us.

Let me try another angle on it: Who is our worship for? It is for God, it is for believers - us, the flock, and it is for all of Nineveh, I mean, Marysville. #MMGA, or making Marysville a destination, is supposed to be a sticky idea, not a small-minded or insular one. From Darrington to Sultan, in Smokey Point and Snohomish, Lake Stevens and Everett and Arlington…and up and down the I-5 corridor, we want the branches bearing fruit in Jesus. TEC isn’t the Vine. And TEC isn’t the whole field.

We’d be glad if the Lord increased our numbers, as others see His joy in us and a drawn to the source of joy, right? Actually not everyone has been, at least not immediately. We’d be glad if the Lord increased our influence, but that would mean, for example, welcoming those who have problems. Downstream it would include not only welcoming TEC students at ECS.

Again, our mission is to cultivate a Trinitarian community (which means it’s bigger than only the church) of worshipping, maturing disciples, families and feasting and education and business and writing and suffering well in the hospital. We’re not trying to build a bunker. Nor is this turning everything into a simplistic evangelism encounter. It is love for God that hungers for His blessing, worship of God expressed in the assembly’s liturgy, with fruit that goes with us into the week.

The fruit is a community, disciples and families and church body, and more, connected to other Christians, other churches. The fruit is worshippers shaped by worship, growing disciples who are helped by worship. The fruit is more laborers, and more joy. The fruit is acknowledging Jesus as Lord as a personal/theological confession of faith and over all the fields.

This fruit bearing is not pressure, any more than it’s pressure for a branch to abide in the vine. Critical? Yes. A burden? No. This is why our liturgy promotes abiding worship, constant dependance and direct contact with the Vine, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Sunday services are not denying the mess, but we whistle while we work for the Lord, trusting and waiting for His salvation, and we look around and see that our brothers aren’t dropping their brooms. Sweep on, brothers!

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Charge

Go live in such a way that you would be happy if Marysville repented. As in, if God granted a revival of repentance, you wouldn’t need to repent of a bad attitude, because you’ve already repented (the anti-Jonah). Who knows, maybe your repentance will snowball. Live consistently with the liturgy of grace and fruit and the abundance of His blessing.

Benediction:

The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you
and give you peace.
(Numbers 6:24–26, ESV)