God as Man to Serve Men

If you want to engage in a marvelous, great worship of God and honor Christ’s passion rightly, then remember and participate in the sacrament. -- Martin Luther

Truest and purest worship is nothing more than faith. It abides in the hearts of the baptized. It receives all things from God. A disciple leans back with his shoes off while God kneels to wash his smelly feet, for our Lord came to serve. He is the Lord who gives, who heals, who restores, and who forgives. This is how He would rule in your life. It is how He would bring you through death and into His life. Truest and purest worship, then, is reception of God’s gifts.

This is not usually how we think of worship. Why? It is because the English word “worship” means to give reverence to, to honor, or to respect someone or something. It is something we do. We honor men by serving them. When our British cousins address the governor as “Your Worship,” they mean he is worthy of honor and praise. They are submitting to him and placing themselves at his service. He gives them orders and they do his bidding. But what does it mean to worship God?

Certainly God is worthy of honor and praise, but God is not like the men He saved. He is not honored and praised in the same way as human kings. He became Man to suffer and die, to give His life as a ransom, not to be served or to make us obedient. The most appropriate way to give reverence to Christ is to call upon Him to be God, to be our Savior. That is why it’s higher praise to say “God save us”—”hosanna”— rather than “praise the Lord”—”hallelujah.” We give up our hallelujahs during Lent, but we never give up our hosannas. Hosanna is greater praise than hallelujah because it is specific to who God is and rightly asks Him to fulfill His Word for us. He says His mercy endures forever and we hold Him to it. He loves to give Himself to men. He delivers, rescues, and redeems. His children harvest where they did not sow. They draw water from wells they did not dig. And they receive gifts they did not earn. God is gracious and loves to serve. We worship Him by being served by Him.

We receive good things from God throughout the service on Sunday mornings. God forgives our sins in the absolution. He speaks to us in preaching and in His Word. He hears and answers our prayers. In all those things God feeds and nourishes our faith. But nowhere is His service to us more evident than when He gives Himself to us as food and drink.

Jesus serves us, but this is not His humiliation. He took our flesh and became Man by His power. He humbled Himself in flesh so He could fulfill the Law and die for us. Now His humiliation has ended, but His humanity has not. He still has a body. He is risen in His body and soul. He joins Himself, true God and true Man, in the flesh, to our flesh, under bread and wine. As God and as Man, He serves us. He enters into us to make us His temple. He forms us into the place of His gracious presence and the seat of His mercy. Our worship is to receive Him.

This Body given, this Blood shed is for you. It removes your sins. It proclaims His death. It witnesses His resurrection. It joins you to Him and to the saints in heaven and on earth. It is what He wants you to have, what He wants you to do. It is the worship He Himself has instituted. He is wellpleased with it. For in it, He bestows life and salvation, and restores the goodness of creation. In it, we worship by receiving.

The Rev. David Petersen is pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.