The disciplining necessity of work foreshadows the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. It is not the case that worship is optional. As Paul teaches in his genealogy of morals (Romans 1), the question is not whether we shall worship, but only what. Promethean fantasies of a purely human-centered existence are as difficult to realise as fantasies of aristocratic indolence. We are propelled by an inner need to bow down, and, as a consequence, unless true worship is always before us, there is always the danger that we will work feverishly in order to propitiate Baal, whether in his bloody martial form or in the bloodless image of lucre.
Fantasizing that worship will ‘just happen’.
Running a Church is hard work, and illusions to the contrary feed clerical sloth, anger and despair. The same holds for lay people. I have often heard friends complain that their involvement in the Church is just ‘too much like work’. Or they complain about the regular routine of regular worship. They want the Church to be a form of leisure or entertainment, something fresh and new that will be a deliverance from the all-too-human limitations of the working day. Yet, this is not the meaning of Sabbath. The ‘rest’ of Christian worship occurs in, and not in spite of, the world and sin and death. The joy of worship addresses the bitter cup of sin.
Russell Reno ‘Working towards Worship’
