We Didn’t Come Here to Worship You

There’s a preacher joke I love. After a Sunday service, a woman walks up to the pastor with a look of displeasure on her face and says, “You know something, preacher––I really didn’t enjoy worship this morning.” He looks at her, completely unbothered, and says, “That’s okay. We weren’t worshipping you anyway.”

It’s funny because it’s true. And it’s convicting because most of us have been that woman.

We walk into a worship service with a set of preferences––songs we like, a sermon length we prefer, the perfect amount of light and production, and just the right degree of reverence and formality. Then, we evaluate the whole service based on how well it matched what we wanted. We become consumers rather than worshipers.

In Acts 21, Paul does something that cuts completely against that impulse.

He’s just returned from three missionary journeys. He’s been threatened, imprisoned, stoned, and run out of multiple cities. He arrives in Jerusalem and meets with James and the elders of the church. And as excited as James and the leaders in Jerusalem are about Paul’s incredible success in bearing witness to the Gentiles. They have a major problem.

Some Jewish believers have gotten the wrong idea about Paul. They think he’s been telling Jewish Christians to abandon Moses, to stop circumcising their children, to walk away from their heritage. It’s not true. But the rumor is spreading and it’s causing real division in the church.

So James comes up with a plan. He asks Paul to take four men under a Nazirite vow, go through the purification rites with them, and pay for the whole thing, which was no small expense. It was a public, costly act of solidarity with his Jewish brothers and sisters.

And how did Paul respond? He didn’t even hesitate.

He could have pushed back. He had every right to. He’d sacrificed more for the gospel than almost anyone. But instead, of complaining or pushing back, verse 26 simply says: “Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple.”

Just like that.

Paul wanted unity in the church more than he wanted to be right. More than he wanted credit. More than he wanted convenience.

Here’s the question that’s worth sitting with: what would it look like for you to do the same?

Maybe it looks like staying in the service even when the music isn’t your style––and choosing to worship anyway. Maybe it’s giving up your preferred seat, your preferred method, your preferred way of doing things––for the sake of someone else’s growth and your church’s unity.

I heard the Christian hip hop artist KB say something that cuts right to it. Every Sunday, we walk out of a worship service giving our verdict––I liked this, I didn’t like that––when the more important question is one we rarely ask: What did God think?

We didn’t gather to worship our preferences. We gathered to worship Jesus. He’s the only one who is actually worthy of it.

When we put Jesus first, everything else finds its right place. Our opinions get smaller. Our love for one another gets bigger. And the church becomes what Jesus always intended: a community of people who to lay down their lives for something greater than themselves.

That’s not just good church culture. That’s the gospel, lived out on a Sunday morning. And it produces the kind of church that can change the world.