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2 The worship of one church
In this chapter we are going to look at the Christian service of worship in onechurch. This church is my church, St Mary’s Stoke Newington in London. OnSunday morning I sit at the back of St Mary’s by the font. In this chapter I tellwhat I see and hear and, as far as I can, I explain what is going on in theservice.
1. Gathering – In this Place
On Sunday morning the people of St Mary Stoke Newington gather together.They are surprised, sometimes embarrassed but also glad to find themselvesbrought into this company. Some have been members of this congregation for years, others for only weeks or are even here for the first time. Some areChristians with a lifetime’s discipleship, some have been hovering betweenfaith and religiosity for years.
1. Arrival
You service starts with the first hymn, the Introit. As we sing our first aprocession comes into view at the front of the Church. It is led by a half-dozenpeople dressed in white surplices. It comes down the side aisle, turns at thebottom of the Church, and goes up the central aisle and to the altar, whereeach of them takes their place. The rector sits on a seat behind the altar. Wedress them in white to remind ourselves that are all a people given radiantnew garments. The first person in this procession carries a large cross. Thesecond and third carry large candles, a fourth carries the bible, then comesthe priest, and we follow them. We are the column that stretches behind them,so the whole congregation is notionally part of this procession. We sing:
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation! O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation! Come ye who hear,now to his temple draw near; praise him in glad adoration
(
Neander)The Christians are people called together in order to make this journeytogether. We form a cavalcade that is on the move. Although at different timesin the service we are sitting or kneeling, we are nevertheless on this journeyright through the service. This community of a hundred people are being ledby these people led by the cross and Word of God. We are singing versionsof the psalms that the people of Israel sang as they journeyed up toJerusalem, the city of God. Our first hymn echoes these songs of the journeyand ascent to the house of God, so they are all about coming into thepresence of God.
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 All people that on earth do dwell sing to the Lord with cheerful voicehim serve with fear, his praise forth tell come ye before him and rejoice
2. Witnesses
We are a people on the way. We have made our way across the borough inorder to be here together in Church. At least a couple of times a year our service begins outside the church building. We are led by the same little groupthat we called the procession, dressed in these white garments, and we followthe cross and torches that they bear. In this way on Palm Sunday we followour Lord up to Jerusalem and into the city for the final week of his passion. OnPalm Sunday morning we meet in the middle of the borough, with Christiansfrom other churches, we pray and sing with them and then we walk to StMary’s singing the whole way. This year we met on the Kingsland High Roadwith St Paul’s West Hackney, and Hackney Baptist Church and processedback along Church Street the mile to St Mary’s. We sang:
 All glory, laud and honour to thee Redeemer King To whom the lips of childrenMade sweet hosannas ring 
We sang
Ride on! Ride on Majesty! 
and
There is a green Hill far away 
… and
Give me oil in my lamp, keep it burning 
… We got through the whole lot twice,in rain, in good voice the whole way. From the shops and cafés of ChurchStreet heads popped out to see us. The Church is not stuck inside any churchbuilding, but is audible, visible and public.
3. The glory of God
The next thing we sing in the Church service is:
Glory to God in the highest,and peace to his people on earth
.The Gloria has inspired the most complex musical settings, but in our Churchwe all sing it together, to quite a simple tune, and with some gusto. This is our song, and we don’t know any great joy than to sing this. We worship God. Heis Lord, we are not. This is our faith.
Lord God, heavenly King, Almighty God and Father,We worship you, we give you thanks,We praise you for your glory 
The result of giving this glory to God, and not to anyone else, is peace toGod's people on earth, and for this we praise God. We confess that the Godof Jesus Christ is the only God, and that he, and no one else, is ‘most high inthe glory of God the Father’. It is an astonishing thing to us that we arebecoming the bearers of the name of God. We bear his name to the world,and we bear the world to God. So we sing that the God of Jesus Christ is theonly God.
For thou art holy, Thou only art the Lord,Thou only O Christ, with the Holy Spirit,art most high in the glory of God the Father 
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When we give glory exclusively to God, we can recognise all creatures for what they are, the intriguing, marvellous,
creatures of God 
. Worship of God isthe backstop that prevents us from taking too low or too high a view of thosearound us, so that we do not idolise them or demonise them, but give themthe proper regard that they are owed.
4. Rivals for our worship
The confession that only God is God takes place in the face of all the manyclaimants to divine status. There may be rival gods, alternative authorities anddivinities, but we declare that none of them are what they claim to be, andnone can give us what we want. Other people give themselves away to allsorts of powers and forces, but the Christians just give themselves to the onefrom whom they have received themselves, in order to receive their lives backfrom him, renewed.In its worship the Christian community says that the Father of Jesus Christ isthe only God. This sounds abrupt, of course. There are other ‘gods’ (ininverted commas) vying for us. Our contemporaries do not claim that thereare other gods, but the things that they say and do represent claims to power.A claim to power that is never challenged eventually becomes beyondchallenge, and takes on an unlimited authority, which is a claim to divinity.The world is made up of all the people in it and all the institutions, good andbad, accumulated through our history. Our social structures that are goodwhen they help us to come together, but when they get out of kilter, they canalso push us in the wrong direction. Then they have make it difficult to act welltowards one another, and easy to take more credit and power than belongs tous. When we return all glory to God, it does not linger in the wrong places andcauses harm. When it is not returned to him, it becomes identified with variousnebulous and ambiguous imperatives and authorities that withhold it. Weinherit them from previous generations, and we inflict them on one another,and leave them like bad debts that the generations that come after us willhave to deal with. There are many ‘more-than-human’ powers and subhumanpowers, and their effect is always to us make less-than-human. The ancientworld called them ‘gods’ and the Church calls them ‘idols’, The Church pointsthat all power and authority come from God, and so it is all limited and mustbe referred back to him so that it does not grow out of control.
5. Why worship God?
God makes a community that acknowledges him and nothing and no one elseas God. This community identifies him as the provider of all things, and creditshim with this and gives him thanks. It receives all things from him as good for us and so does not seem them as threats that we need to fear. We worshipGod so that we are not become corrupted by worshipping anything else. Godis not dependent on our worship. He is the God who really does not wantanything from us, so in this sense he does not have any agenda. We canrelax and take that it he wants the best for us, because he does not have anyreason of his own for this relationship. For this reason God cannot be warped
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