Sent Out to Live

If you got to last week and thought that must be the last week of this series since it focused on benediction—SURPRISE! The benediction isn’t the end of worship—nor is it the end of this series—because worship does not end when the gathered Body of Christ disperses. We are sent out from worship to continue worshiping God, practicing all that we have learned and rehearsed together in gathered worship in the everyday, ordinary moments of our lives.

Solomon’s prayer in today’s text emphasizes that the God who cannot be contained has come to dwell among God’s people. We do not just visit God in our places of worship. God dwells all around us. God lives in the neighborhood with us. We worship with our lives not because God is always watching but because worship is how we love God and neighbor, and, therefore, learn how to love our neighbors as ourselves. So, as you plan worship this week, consider how you might call your congregation to recognize God’s presence in the neighborhood. Introduce a prayer practice they can use this week when they water the lawn or take a walk. Add items from the neighborhood around the church to the altar. If you’ve been spelling out the day's theme on the altar, maybe you could do: “SENT OUT TO LIVE…HERE!” and surround the letters with pictures and symbols from around your community.

Also, consider how you might emphasize the difference between a benediction and a sending forth this Sunday. Many places combine these liturgical elements together, and that’s ok! But there is a distinct difference. A benediction is a blessing. A sending forth is a charge or a call to action. An influential pastor in my life used to end every benediction with the closing lines of the “Statement of Faith of the United Church of Canada” (United Methodist Hymnal 883):

In life, in death,
in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Taken alone, this is not so much a benediction as a sending forth, a charge to remember who and whose we are as we go from the space—a charge to live as people surrounded, held, and loved by God. Though this feels like a blessing, it is really a statement of fact, a reality that we cannot change by any effort or lack thereof on our part. Thus, the sending forth invites us to live our worship as the sent-out and scattered people of God who live in a world where God has taken up residence all around us.