Takeout Worship (Friday Devotional)

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

- John 4:21-24

If you’re like me, you ate a lot more takeout in 2020 than you did in 2019. Maybe it was because you were so exhausted by the end of a day of Zoom meetings and doomscrolling that the last thing you wanted to do was cook. Maybe it was because you wanted to support a local restaurant struggling to hang on. Or maybe you just missed eating out and were willing to settle for the next best thing.

What’s interesting is that, after a year of bringing home restaurant food in Styrofoam containers, I’ve learned that it’s not so bad! The food is still fresh. I don’t have to wait for a table. And if my kids can’t sit still during dinner, I don’t have to worry about the judgmental stares of strangers. Sometimes I miss the ambience and service of eating out—but it’s been nice to learn I can bring some of that experience home.

When we think about worship, we tend to tie it to a place: the church sanctuary. After all, it’s the place where the musical instruments are, where the audio-visual equipment is, and where the congregation of believers is. It’s where the preacher delivers his sermon and where the tithes and offerings are collected. It’s where new believers are baptized and where the Lord’s Supper is taken. Worship is something that happens in the sanctuary for one hour every Sunday.

Or so we think. But Jesus reminds us that worship is not confined to one place, nor to one time, nor to one style. Worship—that is, bringing God your praise and your devotion—has far fewer limits than we imagine. What is crucial to God is not the methodology of our worship but the motivation—not that we worship at 11:00 in the church house, but that we worship in spirit and in truth.

I love being able to worship every Sunday morning in the sanctuary with my church family. But I also appreciate the reminder we’ve been given in the last year that worship isn’t as tied down as we believed. God meets us where we are, whether the windows are stained glass or screened. Try some “takeout worship” today.