I recently was with a pastor who said he liked to call church worth-ship. At first, I was interested. I am always up for a little wordplay. But then he explained. He said he called church this because it was the place we went to give God worth. What? I could not believe my ears. We give God worth? These words came to mind,
“Acts 17:24-25Â The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
I could not believe a man I know to be someone who spends time in the word could even suggest such a thing. It is an affront to God’s divine nature to assert that he needs anything from us, especially his worth. His worth is inestimable by nature.
But unfortunately, way too people are going to church to do something for God. They try to serve him the whole week with their lives and their come to church to give him worth. No wonder many of these people are spiritually exhausted all the time. Please learn to come to church to be served by Jesus. Come to be forgiven and fed. Come to be given worth. It is a sabbath, a time of rest for you.
I guess we could call it worth-ship. But only if we understand that it is the One of inestimable worth that is in that place giving his people worth, declaring them forgiven, redeemed saints through Word and Sacrament.
But… isn’t *everything* we give to God – honor, glory, etc – already in His possession? When we talk about giving God glory (or “worth”, even though the word sits funny with me), aren’t we just acknowledging what is already true about Him? And when we do that, doesn’t it help us to recognize that He *is* all-powerful?
Jaime, I did a little research before posting this and the ways we talk about giving God things are very rare in the scriptures. “Giving glory” seems to be an idiom that means something like “come clean.” I want to learn more about that phrase. You may be right that we need to be careful to rule out ever using such phrasing, but to me it seems that people talk this way do not often talk about God giving us anything. The idea of God gifting us in worship is an almost completely forgotten idea outside of Lutheranism and it needs to be restored to the church. And so maybe our situation calls us to not use phrases that we could use in order that this teaching be restored.