No, in a manner of speaking. The Lord’s Day isn’t for anything, but is that which everything else is for. The Lutheran theologian Marva Dawn wisely called worship “a royal waste of time.” That provocative phrase wasn’t a denial of the importance of worship, but a denial that worship could ever be a means to something else. It is a ROYAL waste because we meet with the King. It is a WASTE of time because it serves no purpose. Rather it is the purpose that everything else serves.
Sadly, in our day, both those planning worship services and those attending worship services are prone to forgetting this. Too many worship services are designed to give the attendee a “worship experience.” “Come here,” many churches seem to say, “and we will make you feel like you’ve had a powerful experience.” Such is wildly transactional, and leaves the Risen Lord out of the transaction.
Other, often more austere, churches and congregants see the Lord’s Day worship as an educational opportunity. We hurry through our singing, praying, giving, in order to get to the center of the service, the preaching. Here the pastor downloads the fruits of his study into the brains of his students, ahem, I mean congregants. Those in the pew have a good Lord’s Day is when their orderly theology is buttressed, when they’re blessed with perhaps a dash of new information.
Other churches subconsciously see Lord’s Day worship as a sort of spiritual time clock. You punch in when you arrive, punch out at the end of your shift. This information is sent to spiritual payroll which you hope will pay you with a ticket to heaven. It’s ridiculous on its face, of course, but then so are we.
Lord’s Day worship is an earthly positioned shadow of what we will do in eternity. It is what we did in the beginning, what we will do in the end. It harkens to Eden and points to the New Jerusalem. Worship is grounded in the perfect wedding of the first Adam and the first Eve and in the glorious wedding of the Last Adam and His bride, the church. We will live and be welcomed into the unveiled presence of the living God. Worship is a foretaste of this reality. How could it possibly serve something greater?
Like Elisha’s servant that feared the hostile army around them, we need to have the scales removed from our eyes, to see the Lord’s Hosts as they cover their feet, cover their eyes and fly before Him crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. All the world is full of His glory.” Every Lord’s Day we who are in ourselves a people of unclean lips, gather to proclaim His praise. Dressed in His righteousness, washed by His blood.
This is not just the reality, but is ultimate reality. May God grant us the grace to walk by faith and enter weekly into such a sublime royal waste of time.