I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of your wonderful deeds. Ps.9:1 NIV. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. 106:1 NIV. On your feet now-applaud God….He made us; we didn’t make him….Enter with the password: ”Thank you!”….For God is sheer beauty’ 100.TM God is magnificent; he can never be praised enough. There are no boundaries to his greatness. 145:3. TM
The psalmist sees himself simultaneously as a consumer and a contributor. He is aware of God’s immeasurable goodness, but also of his responsibility to share God’s wonder and activity with others in obedience to God’s commands.
Consumerism is an accepted practice in international trading and an indispensable factor of daily life. Demand and supply, production and delivery, variety, usefulness, and appeal are key factors. A nation’s economy and local community life depends on it. The market exists to satisfy our hunger and its partner, advertising, is geared to stimulate our insatiable appetite for the latest we can afford with the maximum benefit it promises to provide. We get sucked in to consumerism’s powerful attraction so it pervades many other areas of our relationships and activities including our use of the earth and ocean’s resources, which we have taken for granted is for our use and benefit. The basic element from clothing to electronics, from commodities to appliances, from clubs to religion is – “What do I get out of it, or benefit from it? In Christianity this approach became grossly exaggerated by the ‘prosperity gospel’ where a generous donation was guaranteed to provide a prosperous benefit moving the emphasis in the direction of luxury, and removing if from the teaching and simple life style of Jesus, based entirely on love.
In church it influences our frame of mind for attending and our preferences – the hymns are not familiar, the organ is better than the piano, the guitars in the worship group are too dominant, the preacher was uninteresting, the subject unrelated to modern needs, the service too long; in actual fact we went with expectations that were not met, leaving us empty, disappointed. Dr Rupert Stout the conductor of the once renowned Johannesburg Methodist Choir, when leading in worship, instructed the members they were not performing (that was reserved for concerts) they were ministering. This lifted the act to a different level, purpose and meaning. The entire service of worship is, or should be, our grateful response to the greatness, grace, goodness and providence of God. Freely accessible to all!
In Holy Communion God is giving himself to us in the fruits of the earth, on which we daily depend, “This is my body given for you”, in so doing he’s combining his divine element with matter, a substance we receive and absorb. It is not an act of remembrance only, but a live act of his tangible self-giving. In baptism God has used his creative power to introduce a new life into the family, as his gift, bearing the image of himself to potentially enrich the community. Worship is our response to what God has done and is doing not in song and word only, but in commitment to his way of life; ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name’.
The way we relate to other worshippers, a greeting, a welcome, a smile, a hug, a friendly word of appreciation, a sense of caring and concern, a reaching out, a generous pocket, readiness to help where there is need and a concentrated identification with the prayers offered all contribute to the ambiance and energy of the act of worship. God is present in each one ready to release the life-lifting influence of his Spirit throughout the congregation. In an intangible, metaphysical way the journey through which each member is travelling bonds them into a whole family as the living body of Christ.
To be his body on earth is our contribution to his continuing creative activity in the universe. We are intended to be participants. In this area Teilhard de Chardin, a catholic priest, made a significant contribution declaring that the human race was in what he termed an ‘axial period’ – a period of significant, unprecedented change, involving science, the earth and the human consciousness. Many scientists now recognize the reality of the metaphysical experience as a factor in the human species. Science has pushed back boundaries in disease, and is exploring ever new methods of harnessing the earth’s natural resources for our benefit and survival. In this way humans are contributing to the evolving nature of a universe still in the making.
In the moral area Christianity, Buddhism and Islam are engaged in an inter-religious dialogue and united effort struggling to find new forms to express the divine connection that connects everything to everything. Poet, theologian, scientist, philosopher, scholar seeking creative energy to contribute to the ongoing discussion of our interconnectedness despite our diversity – an exercise of divine and human co-operation and a practical of combination of our universal consumer dependence on God linked with the need to make our life a contribution to the healthy development of the whole. Like the psalmist we are consumers of God’s generosity, but we may also contribute.