Over on Twitter, @iWomansplainer asks:
This is a great question, and I think it highlights a difference between how many modern Protestants understand “worship,” and what the Bible means by “worship.” This is a topic I deal with in greater depth both in my new book and in a recent podcast episode, but the basic idea is that we need to distinguish three distinct things, which happened in three distinct places in the New Testament:
Preaching/Teaching (Synagogue): In the New Testament, there are weekly services in the synagogue that look like what happens in (many) Protestant churches. There are readings from Scripture, followed by someone preaching (see Luke 4:16-30; Acts 13:13-43), and many Protestants consciously model their “worship” off what they see Jesus and St. Paul doing in the synagogue. The problem is this: while reading the Bible and preaching are great, they’re not worship. In fact, they’re not even prayer. The only time the Bible connects the idea of “prayer” and the synagogue is in Matthew 6:5 when Jesus says not to pray there. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners.” Even the hypocrites weren’t praying in the synagogue because it was a place of prayer. Rather, it was a public place, like a street corner: somewhere “that they may be seen by men.”
Prayer (“Lonely Place”/Upper Room): Preaching and teaching are often public acts; after all, the point of preaching is to be heard by men. But that’s not the point of prayer. Since prayer is conversation with God, Jesus says that “when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6). This isn’t an absolute rule, of course: Jesus prays both in private (going off to “a lonely place” before dawn to pray, Mark 1:35) and in public (for instance, at the tomb of Lazarus, “on account of the people standing by,” John 11:41-43). But whether you’re praying individually or corporately, the key marker of prayer is that you’re not just talking about God, you’re talking to him.
Worship (Temple): While prayer could happen anywhere, worship in the Bible is something related but distinct. One way we know it was distinct is that worship was localized in a way that prayer wasn’t. The Samaritan woman says to Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain [Mount Gerizim]; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus doesn’t disagree with her, saying only that “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:20-22). So what did “worship” mean to the Samaritans and the Jews, to the woman at the well and to Jesus?
Our English word “worship” comes from worðscip or “worth-ship.” It’s to give someone what they’re worth. But the biblical concept of worship isn’t just about giving someone their due, but about giving God his due. So how did ancient Jews and Samaritans do that? As the (Protestant) scholar Everett Ferguson explains, “sacrifice was the universal language of worship in the ancient world.” Prayer is talking to God, but worship goes beyond that by offering something to God. And what we offer to God is sacrifice. This isn’t the only part of worship, but it’s at the heart of it. And this remains true in the New Covenant: even though we’re no longer offering animals in the Temple in Jerusalem, true Christian worship is still sacrificial. It’s why St. Paul can call us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). Worship is inseparable from sacrifice.
So why don’t Catholics worry that we’re “worshipping” Mary? Because we’re not offering her sacrifice. Preaching and prayer and honor aren’t restricted to God: it’s not sinful to speak well of your neighbor, or speak to her, or honor her. But sacrificial worship is something unique (and distinct). As St. Augustine says, “certainly no man would dare to say that sacrifice is due to any but God” (City of God, X.4).
On the other hand, if Protestants worry that we might be accidentally worshipping Mary, that might be a good sign that they no longer understand the biblical concept of worship. If you’re not giving God anything more than what we Catholics offer to Mary, the problem isn’t that we’re doing too much for Mary, but that you’re doing too little for God.