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I rejoiced with those who said to me, \u201cLet us go to the house of the Lord.\u201d Our feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem. (Psalm 122:1-2)

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Psalm 120 marked the repentant turn that began the journey to God.\xa0 Psalm 121 marks the trustful journey up.\xa0 And now, already in Psalm 122: we\u2019ve arrived at our destination.\xa0 \u201cOur feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem.\u201d

Even though the journey is the backdrop of all of the psalms of ascent, the focal point of these psalms is not the journey itself, but the destination.\xa0 It is a journey to God and to the place where God had caused his name to dwell among his people: Jerusalem.

That\u2019s a good reorientation point for us, too.\xa0 Because we\u2019re good at the journey.\xa0 We\u2019re good at stringing together a life that works.\xa0 We have all sorts of \u201ccommon sense\u201d and sayings and experts and best practices and YouTube how-to videos to navigate ourselves successfully through the journey of life.\xa0 And we have to do these things\u2014we have to work, keep up the house, raise the family, get where we need to go\u2014because if we don\u2019t, these things have real consequences.\xa0 They make their demands on us daily.\xa0

But God doesn\u2019t.\xa0 If we don\u2019t stop to pay attention to God\u2026 nothing really happens.\xa0 If we don\u2019t go up to worship on a regular basis\u2026 our life skates on just fine.\xa0 No one has to go to worship.\xa0 And lots of people have discovered this over the pandemic time with its lockdowns.\xa0 Going up to worship is not \u201cessential.\u201d\xa0 It is voluntary.\xa0 It always has been: even in ancient Israel.\xa0

Sure, Israel had laws that said otherwise, but if you examine the record of faithfulness to this law given in our scriptures, you\u2019ll find it ebbed and flowed, just like it does today.\xa0 Faithful practice never lasted for more than a generation in the general population.\xa0 And faithful practice usually never resumed until there were, well, consequences: like subjugation to a foreign power or exile to a foreign land.\xa0 But Jesus has now shouldered all those consequences for us\u2026 so there really is only one reason left to ever go to worship.\xa0 Do you know what it is?

God.\xa0

And unless that\u2019s the reason you come\u2014to meet with God, to be shaped by God, to grow in your love for God, to live in faithful response to God\u2014then your coming is subject to the same shifting sands that have ever blown away the faithfulness of God\u2019s people.

Of course, it works the other way too: in coming to worship, our pretenses and utilitarian uses for God and for worship are slowly stripped away as God does his work in us and as the relationship between us grows.\xa0 We become part of God\u2019s story, we are reminded of God\u2019s presence, we receive God\u2019s love, we are empowered by God\u2019s work through his Son and Spirit.\xa0 Slowly, the act of worship trains our emotions, our desires, our habits, and all of our lives such that we find ourselves in company with Psalm 122 among those who can say: \u201cI rejoiced with those who said to me, \u2018Let us go to the house of the Lord.\u2019\u201d

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