"Worship Pastor"

One of the kids at church yesterday waved their palm branch towards me and said, "worship Pastor Chris; worship Pastor Chris." I chuckled as I turned to set them straight. "Thank you but we never worship the pastor. It's Jesus we worship and no one else."

It made me think, maybe that's part of the problem, not only of other religions, but within Christianity. It's not that we don't believe in Jesus, but we have the objects of our worship all wrong. We worship our pastors, our churches, our buildings, our budgets (or our savings), our children, our ministries. And as long as we keep believing in Jesus we're okay. But many still get sidetracked by the physical part of church and they don't truly know the very God who is to be found there.

It's the problem Jesus found with the religious leaders. Now I am not only talking about the priests and scribes, but also the rabbis and other religious leaders. The Pharisees were largely a group of teachers and leaders who were laity. They would have made up the boards and committees of the local synagogues. They were equal to Sunday School teachers, Administrators, etc. They were the leaders of their "church." And they were more concerned about their "church" than they were of their faith. I like the way Peterson put it in his translation, The Message, "The Pharisees took one look and threw up their hands: "It's out of control, The world's in a stampede after him."

I can just imagine them rolling their eyes in anger and disappointment. They didn't look closely at this Jesus, they couldn't get over their own doctrine, their own church, their own narrow view of faith. The couldn't imagine a God who was so flippant with tradition, so gracious to accept outsiders, so unfair to make Gentiles equal with Jews. I can understand how they might be angered at their own people for following this Jesus.

I can also understand the disappointment Jesus felt over these leaders failing to look beyond their doctrine, their church and and simply trust in God. They tested Jesus to see if he could be tripped up, but they never tested him to see if he was for real. Most of them never tested their faith to see if what Jesus taught resonated with their spirits.

Today, people come and go from churches for a lot of reasons. Many leave because they refuse to look honestly at the object of their faith, to identify whether they are trusting in God or trusting in the leadership, or the church itself. So when things don't go their way they "throw up their hands."

Worship is an important part of our response to God. The key phrase in yesterday's message was that "we worship what we know." The key then is to understand our worship and the object of it. It is critical to understand that it is easy to move from worshiping God through Christ to worshiping the church or the pastor. And then make sure that we are focused on Christ in our study, in our prayer, in our living. To do anything less is to move away from Christ and worship the church.

And that's idolatry.

I don't remember who it was that said it to me, but they were bothered by my priority list: God, family, relationships, church, work. They said that as a pastor my service to God was to put the church first, above everything else. But the church is not God. The church is not Christ, rather it's the bride of Christ. I don't serve the church. I serve Christ in the Church.

That's what Christ wants of you, too.

Peace ><>
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