Net Worth-ship (Body Temple Series #1)
Ancients worshiped in places and buildings.
Christians worship in their bodies.
by Jack Hoehn
In September, the Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled that a well-known businessman had multiple times for over 10 years deliberately and fraudulently overstated the worth of his possessions. Examples of this fraud show that his luxury apartment with 11,000 square feet was stated in financial documents as three times larger than it really was, at 30,000 square feet! Appraisers said his 70-story office building was worth $260 million dollars, but his financial statements claimed it was worth $560 million dollars, more than twice what it was actually worth.
WORTH-SHIP
When we get a house mortgage or a loan for a new car, we may have to give some sort of statement of our net worth. Most of us will not have a 70-story skyscraper or an 11,000-square-foot penthouse apartment to evaluate. But there is a worth statement that all Christians are asked to make. We are asked to worth-ship God. The verb “to worship” suggests to honor or adore something as sacred or holy with religious rites and ceremonies. But the foundation of this activity is to evaluate this God as worth something. And the higher worth with which we regard something, the more costly, expensive, precious, valuable our “worth-ship.”
PUBLIC WORSHIP
There are buildings called temples or cathedrals and holy places in the world. I am asked to attend church to worship God. When in that church, instead of sitting I should either stand and sing loudly, or bend my knees and kneel with head bowed and eyes closed very quietly—as worship.
I am invited to worship the Lord with cash, check, or credit card as tithes or offerings, in dollar worth-ship.
There is a piety involved in “spending time,” using the same verb as in “spending money.” Because, again, time is treasure, and using time in some combination of reading sacred texts and praying is called worship. Done early, we are investing in morning worship. Done late, we are investing in evening worship. Friday sundown worship, Sabbath closing worship–all these worship activities somehow involved a statement of worth. God is worth the time you take, or your focusing on God is valuable, worthy of your time and attention.
In my youth it was respectful, honorable, to remove a man’s cap in worship (although not so much now). On the other hand, Jewish men don’t worship without head covering. Asians and Muslim take off shoes. Some cultures held it was respectful, honorable, worshipful for a woman to cover her head–with a hat, a shawl, hijab, wimple, or veil. Although very different, all were statements that God was worth something we testified to by taking off, putting on, standing up, kneeling down, shouting something, or being very quiet with “every head bowed and every eye closed.”
But if the District Attorney took us to court, could we prove that the worth we pretended to claim for God was a true and honest evaluation, or would we too be found guilty of deliberately or fraudulently overstating the true value of our devotion to God? How big a deal is God really to us? What is the true net-worth we are ascribing to God when we worship?
JESUS OVERVALUES
Jesus was in the part of Herod’s temple open to the whole Jewish family—men, women, children. It also had a dozen or so big offering boxes with trumpet-like openings on top for giving metallic money. Moses set ½ a shekel of silver as annual support for the worship tent. By Jesus’ time the shekel was a silver coin, a tetradrachma, worth four days’ wages—a one-drachma Roman (or denarius in Greek) coin (Matthew 26:2) was a wage for a 12-hour workday. Working at McDonalds you can earn about $17/hour, and $17/hour times 12 is about $200/day, so the annual temple tax of ½ shekel was worth 2 drachma, say $400 a year for the temple tax. The single drachma could buy you 16 big brass coins called assarion, worth, let’s say, $13 each. Those were divided into four smaller brass coins called quadrans, let’s say $3 each. And those were divided into 2 little copper pennies called lepta (or prutah), so each “widow’s mite” was worth about $1.50.
Wealthy people in the Temple were obviously giving more than $3, or even the required minimum ½ shekel of $400. Their next size money was a gold stater worth 20 drachma ($4,000, let’s say). The gold staters were likely held in the palm for a few seconds to catch the flash of sunshine and then by weight would make a very satisfying sound when dropping down the tube and landing with a solid clunk in the box of ½ shekels, assaria, quadrans, and little lepta below. When the “poor widow” slipped in her two tiny copper coins, the $3 offering made little noise.
Jesus makes a deliberate and intentional overstatement evaluation of the worth of that offering. Unlike the businessman guilty of overvaluing his real estate holdings by two or three times its actual worth, Jesus said the two copper pennies were more valuable than any of the gold given that day! Jesus is guilty of a thousandfold overvaluation! That is worth-ship on steroids. That is worship rated by Jesus.
WORTH IS NOT WHAT
It appears, then, that the worth of worship is not what is being done. It is why and how it is being done.
Worship may be sitting in church listening to a sermon Sabbath morning, but it can also be sitting in the emergency room with a worried neighbor Sabbath morning. Worship may be reading the Bible, but it can also be getting a casserole ready for a newly bereaved family. Worship can be kneeling in prayer, but it can also be kneeling to get the weeds out of the church landscaping. Worship can be singing, but it can also be rewriting a story for the fifth time to make it as safe and clear for the children as possible.
Worship with $3 was worthy because she gave it her best. Mary’s wildly extravagant alabaster box of perfume was worthy because she gave it her best. Worship is not how often you perform; worship is how hard you practice—how well I guitar or organ or preach. Sometimes I am worshiping best when I refuse to sing or play or preach—because I know my singing, or playing, or preaching is not yet (or ever) “worthy” of the Object of my worship. So sometimes worship is saying no.
BODY TEMPLES
And we can also worship by studying science–chemistry, anatomy, physiology. We can glorify God in the study of creation. Jesus on the cross ended the significance of worship in buildings on special places. There is no temple in the New Jerusalem (Mark 15:38; John 4:21; Revelation 21:22). The Christian focus of worth-ship, worship, is now in your body. Jesus had a specific human body limited to time and place. The mothering Holy Spirit who created that body in Mary’s womb is not limited to any specific time or place and is omnipresent. God has left the buildings, and we are asked to worship God in our bodies. Don’t travel on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship where Jesus used to be. Don’t climb Mt. Sinai, where God handed over the 10-Commandments. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19,20). Wherever two or three believers are gathered in my name, there I am.
Glorifying (doksázō) God in our bodies means valuing him for who he really is. Recognizing the worth God has given us in our bodies as the temple of life is now a proper locus of worth-ship. So I am not asking you to go to a holy place or building. I am going to ask you to evaluate the worth we have been gifted in the treasure of life we have in our bodies. Join me in the worship of God in your body temple.
[This is #1 in series on worship guided by science. Jack is Dr. John Byron Hoehn, MD, CCFP (Canada), DTM&H (London). His book Adventist Tomorrow—Fresh Ideas While Waiting for Jesus is in its second edition and continues to be the most popular book Adventist Today has published. Jack’s wife, Deanne, has also published a book called Loving You—I Went to Africa, about their 13 years as medical missionaries. These books and others are available at SHOP in the menu.]
First photo: By © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22120484
Second Photo: Lepta or Prutah, Wikimedia Common Content.