Worship Who?

On coming to the house, they [the Magi] saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Matthew 2:11.

I recall preachers using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer—still in use in my youth—instructing the man to say after exchanging wedding vows: “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

I understood the importance of the “for better, for worse” stuff that went before, but I found “with my body I thee worship,” both erotic and sacrilegious. Erotic because of my hormone driven thinking, but sacrilegious because God demands worship for Him alone. It would take a smooth-tongued cleric to explain that one!

Fortunately the Magi got it right, they worshipped the Christ child. The New Testament restricts legitimate worship to the one God, and includes many instances of worship to Jesus—further testimony to the deity of Christ. As we close the year 2010, we have the privilege of joining the Magi in worship to our living Lord.