This isn’t an attempt to foist a contrived and brittle ceremony on anyone. No liturgy for worship is offered here. Everyone has their own format for their worship services according to their own lights. But a greater appreciation of the value and place of the Lord’s Supper will tend to lead us to rethink what shape our worship services take. Worship centered around the Lord’s Supper is devoted to Christ, it is a time focused upon Him. Beyond that, how can it be other than that each denomination or independent church will retain their own unique and distinctive character of worship? But, and this is always surprising to us though it probably shouldn't be, if influenced to give greater value and place to the Lord’s Supper, our individual character will be more evident.
If creation tells us anything about God, as Paul says it does in Romans 1:20, we know God loves variety. Every snowflake, though similar is different. Consider the seemingly endless variety of color and shape in tropical fish. Think of the variety of feather and song among the birds. Each cloud, every sunrise and every sunset is different. And we, the people of his creation, we are each unique yet made in His image. And the almost surprising truth is that as we are more conformed to the likeness of Jesus, we become more uniquely ourselves. And that is true for our worship as well. As we better understand Scripture, and conform ourselves to it, thus conforming ourselves to God’s will, everything, including our worship, takes on that unique character God has given to each of us. So our worship though controlled by the same principle will not be the same in expression. It will not result in a standardized, formal, dulling liturgy rigidly adhered to. Worship will be freed to give the fullest expression of individual praise to our Saviour. But it will be worship focused through the lens of the Lord’s Supper and not just novelties that we invent.
©FH 2012