Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
June 1, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Easter 7
And I, John, heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them I prostrated myself to worship at the feet of the Angel who showed them to me but he said to me, “You must not do that! for I am your fellow-worshiper, your brother, and brother of the prophets, and of all who hold dear the words of this book. Worship God! (Rev. 22:8-9)
Worship God! This is the sum and substance of all things, and chief duty of all men, but especially those of the “household of faith.” (Gal. 6:10)
Worship God!
In the church of Eden, Adam and Woman worshiped God. The two became one in every way and lived in marital bliss and unity – but that was not the whole story. Together, the freshly married couple constituted the first church which, as we learn in Scripture, is the Bride of Christ. And so marital bliss reigned on earth, and reigned in heaven during those halcyon days of yore!
Life was beautiful all the time! Adam and Woman gladly heard the voice of God and the voice of one another. They loved God and they loved each other. They knew the joy of living (joie de vivre) in a way that no future generation ever would! They tended God’s Good Creation with more skill than all the knowledge amassed ever since. They did not need AI, because they had DI. Divine Intelligence. There was nothing they could not accomplish; and there were no tears there, no sorrow, no frustration, no pain and no death.
That is what the world is like when man worships God, but alas no longer.
Every Christian knows, or should know, the account of humanity’s Great Fall recorded in Genesis chapter three! How Woman, tempted by the Serpent’s fatal attraction, broke her marital vows with God, and committed adultery so to speak with the Serpent, and then seduced her husband to join in her sin which he did! From that time forward everything went south at the speed of light!
And though we like to tell ourselves utopian stories about how the world just keeps getting better and better, and how Nirvana is just around the corner, it is but wishful thinking! Desperation. And hasty generalizations that amount to zero, zilch, nada, nothing!
And so don’t eat from that tree, O Bride because those who practice deception (22:15) cannot enter the Kingdom of God. But all the promises you heard today in St. John’s Gospel and St. John’s Revelation are “trustworthy and true.” They are your present reality as you worship God here and now; and your unbroken future when Christ returns, “bringing his reward with him.” (Rev. 22:7)
But those who refuse to embrace the prophecies of this Book must create their own hopes, and that is what culture does with a narrative that grows more incoherent by the day.
But do not worship at their altar O fetching Bride of Christ; but let us close our ears to the Serpent’s siren song because he is still in the same business he was from the beginning – seducing those who are Christ’s! Robbing them of their baptismal innocence, and murdering their immortal souls.
Let us close our ears to the “elemental spirits of the world” as Woman should have done (Col. 2:8); and take “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” as Man should have done! (2 Cor. 10:5) Because we do not only sin by our words and deeds but also by our thoughts and our opinions as often as we quote culture’s fatal catechism, or give it a pass so that the culture will love us.
Worship God O Mankind! for it is the Way of Life! The Road to Happiness. The cure for all that vexes you today. Worship God and give yourself only to him!
The first and most obvious answer is by the divine conversation we are engaged in at this hour. Here we gladly and joyfully take part in all that it means to worship God. We begin by humbling ourselves before Him. Boldly confessing our deadly sins, and expressing our regret for them all whether perpetrated in thought, word or deed. Moreover we believe the absolution our God supplies for us by the “holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death” of His Beloved Son, and our Beloved Savior, Jesus Christ.
This is the worship of God!
Thereafter we “pray, praise and give thanks” by many fixed elements of Divine Service. Which all come from Sacred Scripture, the very utterances of our God, that we hear from Him and repeat to Him.
This is the worship of God!
We also “gladly hear and learn” His Word as we humbly hear the weekly readings ending each one with “Thanks be to God.” And the Gospel with “Praise be to Thee O Christ.”
This is the worship of God!
Thereafter we offer our gifts to the LORD, realizing that they came from Him in the first place. We are like the child who brings his mother a bouquet of dandelions. And we bring them in childlike faith. Whenever we make an oblation to our God we are relinquishing our claim on the thing offered because we believe that it came from Him, and that He will supply us with “more than we can ask or even think.” We need not hoard or be stingy fearing we won’t have enough.
This is the worship of God!
Next we offer our all-encompassing and fervent prayer to the Bridegroom as we are about to commune with Him knowing that He Himself fervently invites us to pray, and that His Father who loves us will grant us our every prayer. (John 16:27).
This, too, is the worship of God!
Then we engage in “Communion with the Holy,” believing with our entire being, and pledging by our very lives, that we know and believe that our Jesus is now with us just as He promised when He said, “Take eat, this is My Body … Take drink this is My Blood.” Yes, it defies reason times ten! But we stake our temporal and eternal existence on this fact. This is why we must approach the altar in deepest reverence, faith and prayer.
This is the worship of God!
Then, concluding our intimate fellowship with our Lord, we engage in worship all week long. When we leave here, we leave with a golden thread attached to us. From which and through which we bless the world with “the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:6). We do what are commonly referred to in Lutheran theology as “good works.” But they are so, so much more!!
Every act of goodness performed for the benefit of our neighbor is also an act of worship to our Lord who says, “When you did it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” Whether our Christian works are done as a matter of course within our daily vocation; or as opportunity presents itself as it so often does; this, too, is the worship of the One, True God who created us, preserves us, saves us, and will care for us with tender mercy unto the ages of ages. Amen.