If I’m right when I say that all churches do four things (we worship, we learn, we support one another, and we reach out missionally to the world), it’s worth noting that the peculiar one among the four is worship. Other groups and institutions engage in education/learning, others sometimes manage to care for one another, and others go out and serve or donate or collect goods for those in need – although we in the church do these three things with our own special wrinkle. But what other group or institution holds events for worship?

Of course, worship happens all over the place and in every mind and heart! We worship (not too strong a word) our political ideology, or things we long to purchase, or our stock portfolio, or what we gawk over at the altar set up in most homes: the TV! Part of the point of worship is to correct that way we worship the wrong things.

Worship isn’t spiritual consumerism. It’s not getting my batteries recharged or soaking up some great music or catching up with friends – although in worship you may get all these benefits. Worship is about God. We affirm how great God is, that God really is God, that other fake gods aren’t God. It’s wonder, awe, being moved that God made everything, and is wise and merciful.

So in worship, we praise God. Yes, we give thanks, we ask for help, we declare what we believe, we offer our money and lives. But the axis upon which all that turns is the reality of God, the goodness and greatness of God. Anne Lamott wrote a neat little book about prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. I wonder if we’d grow more strength of soul, and be more courageous as a church, if we reversed her order by beginning with Wow! We need to retrain our minds out of the sluggish habit of seeing me as the center of the universe, and of thinking everything’s up to me. God is the center, God’s got things. God is great, God is good. I don’t know about you, but when the Church at worship says to me, “It’s not all about you,” I say “Thank God.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said this to God: “I prayed for wonders instead of happiness – and you gave them to me.” Them? Wonders? Or wonders, and then, because of the wonders, happiness? We’re made for marvels. And we are marvels. The miracle of complex you, something only God could accomplish.

I simply adore Dacher Keltner’s fantastic book that’s simply called Awe. Keltner sorts through kinds of awe, and things that strike awe into us, and why that’s the secret to happiness, health, and even relationships. He interviewed people around the world about what made them shiver, gasp, weep or sigh. Nobody named Facebook or their gadgets, or money or stuff they’d purchased, or their politics. Awe can turn up anywhere, because it is everywhere, if we look and notice. Awe stirs something noble, like the image of God, in us.

Worship is practice in noticing wonders, and even expanding what we notice as wonder-full. It’s not just the impressive or the photogenic. Unmiraculous wonders are still wonders. The sun rising, the seasons, those laws you learn in science class, your blood circulating – and you’re not even trying. To the eye trained in worship to praise, clouds aren’t potential picnic spoilers, but wonders to behold. Every creature, and every person looks different: a walking marvel. All of us are made, not to gripe or judge, and not to be mere producers or consumers. We are made for praise, for worship, in worship and then in that extension of worship we call life.

A Church that majors in worship, that knows it’s not entertainment or spiritual consumerism but reverent attention to the one we worship, will reflexively do much good in God’s marvelous world. We’ll learn more, we’ll love, we’ll even become holier – holiness being not some smug purity, but simply holding space open for God. That’s what Church is: a place not so much for us, but for God.