Flagging Sunday attendance at summer services reminds me of an item from “What Episcopalians Believe,” a Garrison Keillor-ish “hit list” that makes the rounds on the Internet.  It claims we entertain the conviction that God trusts Episcopalians enough to excuse us from summer worship. This may seem to be true, but it’s not the most amusing among this list of truisms because of its irony – because we are a people identified in large measure by our worship, by the care with which we worship and its centrality to our fellowship.

Worship is what we do. Worship is attendance at a ritual event, like Sunday morning Eucharist, but it is much, much more than that.  Worship means ascribing worth. Worship, however it is expressed, is the activity of identifying and affirming the central, formative values of our lives.

All of us are drawn to conflicting deities – money, power, attention, food, alcohol, acceptance, sports – the list is endless. Whenever one of more of these competing deities gains control of us, we have succumbed to idolatry. The discipline of worship for Christians is necessary, not only as a protection against idolatry, but also, and primarily, because the worship of the God, whom we know in Jesus Christ, opens us to truth that is limitless and liberating. The worship of God in the Christian tradition involves us in deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ and with one another, and it holds our personhood open to what God might do in us that is new and creative while helping us to remember that which abides amidst the chances and changes of this life.