8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Worship
October 5, 2008
Franktown United Methodist Church
I hope that you were as stimulated by last week’s revival as I was. Over the course of those three services we were called to remember that we were made by God on purpose and for a purpose. We were reminded that we do not exist for the maintenance of a church building but that we are supposed to be more for the community around us. And we were challenged to live out the unique calling that God has for Franktown Church – to be a people living on the margins but telling the world what we are learning by being where we are. We may not have liked being called marginal people, but our guest preacher reminded us that we live on the edge – the edge of the continent, the edge of the economy and the edge of the kingdom. I like to tell people that the Eastern Shore is the edge of the world and the verge of heaven. Some of the most important things happen on the margins.
So I don’t want to forget that message. In fact, I want us to explore it some more, but we are going back to the sermon series today and so I want to take us back into the craziness. For 4 weeks before the revival we were looking at things that Jesus asks us to do that we would not do if the gospel were not true. These are things that mark a transformed people. So we talked about loving our enemies, loving our neighbors, praying and witnessing. All unique things that Christians do that might look crazy to the rest of the world. What could those Christians be thinking by doing those things?
So back to the craziness and today we talk about worship. Now the craziest thing about this sermon is that I’m going to be talking about the importance of worship this morning to people who have come to worship this morning. So it sounds like I’m talking to the choir here. Maybe the folks who need to hear this are the folks who aren’t here.
I’m aware, though, that we do a lot of things and we aren’t sure why we do them. Is that true for you? I mean, when you go into an elevator where do you face? The door, of course. Why do you do that? Do you have to face the door? Is anybody making you face the door? No! I want to know why it is that I face the door! In fact, let’s all just try a little experiment the next time we get on an elevator. Face another direction and see how much tension you can cause in a crowded elevator!
So, I guess what I’m saying is that even though you are here, you might not know why you’re here. You might not know what worship really means and you may be looking for an answer to a question you didn’t know that you had. So let’s look at some reasons that we are doing this crazy thing called worship.
One reason is that the Bible tells us to. That’s a pretty powerful reason. The Bible tells us to. There’s something to be said for heeding the wisdom of the ages. After all, one of the first things humans do in the first book of the Bible is to worship God and offer sacrifices to God. Of course, the first story of this is the story of Cain and Abel where one brother’s sacrifice was accepted and the other’s wasn’t and then Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, but we’ve always had wars over worship. J The point is that worship is part of the Bible’s story from the beginning.
Psalm 29 begins with this command – “Give God what is due to God, you children of God. Give Yahweh his due of glory and strength. Give Yahweh the glory due his name. Worship God in the splendor of his holiness.” [Psalm 29:1-2] Worship God. The word we translate as worship there in the Hebrew means ‘to bow down’ like a servant before a superior. But in romance languages like Latin and Spanish there is more…romance to the word. In Spanish it is ‘adorar,’ which you can recognize in the English word ‘adore.’ So there is this sense, not only of obedience and prostration, but adoration and love. We sing, “Come, let us adore him,” at Christmas time. We sing songs of praise that would embarrass a lover. “I could sing of your love forever.” “I want to touch you. I want to see your face.” “I’m desperate for you.” These are all lines from recent praise and worship songs and they speak to this sense that worship…what we are commanded to do…is a little like love.
Yesterday several of us from church were involved in a little conference at the soccer field. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time in the homes of adults with children. Tabi Webb is coaching a girl’s soccer team and a good number of the members of this team are from our church, including my Rachel. So we were standing by the field at the beginning of practice trying to determine when the next practice would be and whether we could have the first game of the season on Friday instead of Saturday. You have no idea how complex the negotiations were! Between school and music lessons and dance lessons and other sports, there were conflicts every day of the week. And there in the mix of all of this was the church. Youth events. Youth retreats. Wonderful Wednesday dinner.
It was clear to me that unless we make church a priority for our children it will quickly get lost in the avalanche of other things they are already active in. And it was also clear to me that many of our parents are doing that – making church a priority. Expecting that it will be part of the weekly routine. I appreciate what a challenge that is, especially when the image many children have of church is as a place where you have to be quiet.
I hope we’re changing to be more kid-friendly, but I also hope that we don’t lose the expectation in ourselves that we will introduce our children to the faith previous generations handed down to us. There will be a time when children will grow and will have to make decisions on their own about church, but they need us to give them a base. They need to see what we value and what we care enough about that we would bring them to even on days when they were resistant. They will have a chance to push back against the things that base and to question it, but they need to have a base to push back against. Worship God. Just do it. Why? Because the Bible tells us so.
Admittedly, that’s not a particularly satisfying answer to the questions of why worship, even if it’s true. Perhaps another way to approach it is to realize that we are built to worship. It’s in our make-up. It’s in our DNA. There is something in us that wants to give glory to God. There is something in us that moves us to praise. There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. And it wants to sing out to God.
The psalms are full of images of people and other creatures singing out just because they have to. Psalm 65 begins with words that can be translated, “For you praise waits in still repose, O God Elohim.” Every time I think of that I can’t help imagining this great wealth of praise locked up inside of each one of us that is just waiting to be released. When we worship it unlocks that safe…it liberates what is inside us and it makes us what we were always meant to be. In that sense, God doesn’t just command us to worship and we’ll do it whether we like it or not because it’s good for us like cod liver oil. No, the Bible tells us to and in doing so it helps us to discover that we are native worshippers. We were meant to worship and adore God.
This is so basic to us that we wind up worshipping things we ought not to when we stop worshipping God. Or we start loving people or things in ways that we ought to be loving God. It was my old buddy Augustine, the fifth century saint from North Africa, who observed that all of our loves are ultimately directed toward God. Our hearts are just made that way and when we take our eyes off of God and start to love lesser things with the passion that is meant for God then we get ourselves in trouble. We become obsessed with material things. We have extramarital affairs. We serve our pleasures. All of those sins come from a noble impulse within us – the impulse to give ourselves to someone or something else. But the one to whom we are to give ourselves is God.
Finally, we worship because God wants witnesses. God wants witnesses. This summer the Barrier Island Center premiered a new movie. It’s about 18 minutes long and you need to go see it. Not next month. Not soon. Go. It’s that important.
The movie is called “Our Island Home” and it is the story of what happened to Broadwater, the community that used to be located on Hog Island. Hog Island is deserted now. The big storm of 1933 basically did it in. If you go over around Willis Wharf you’ll find some of the old houses from the island that were moved to the mainland. Half of the United Methodist Church in Oyster was brought over from Hog Island. So there is nothing left of that old community on the island. The filmmaker, James Spione, has some beautiful shots of what the island looks like today – lots of empty beach and quiet marshes.
If that’s all the film was, it would be pretty to look at but it would not be worth me telling you to go see it. What make it a powerful film are the witnesses. They interviewed three folks on the Shore who were born on Hog Island to get their remembrances of life on the island. Yvonne Widgeon is one of them. She says in the film, “After my mother passed away, I realized that all of the older people were beginning to pass away and all of the stories from Hog Island was going to be lost.”[i]
As you listen to her and to Norris Bowen and Iris Clemente tell those stories, you begin to feel how fragile our communities are. The people who knew what Hog Island was will one day all be gone. The island itself is shifting and moving so that the place where the community was is now mostly out under the waters of the Atlantic. But as these three tell their stories you realize what a tough and vibrant place Broadwater was. People lived and died out there. People loved it and people hated it. People hung together through good times and hard, hard times. We know that because there are witnesses who care enough about the place to give voice to what they’ve seen and know.
God wants witnesses, too. When Jesus is born, God sends angels and shepherds and funny looking astrologers from the East and they all go worship him. Witnesses. All around the throne of God in heaven, Revelation tells us, there are angels worshipping God. Witnesses. There are saints who have gone through the trials worshipping God. Witnesses. God does not need them. God does not need their praise and worship to be God. God does not need our praise and worship, but God wants our worship. God wants our presence. God’s love is so great that it overflows the boundaries of all good sense to bring in you and me and all the nations of the earth to worship. God wants witnesses.
My colleague Steve Rhodes tells the story of a birthday party his daughter had when she was younger. Getting to be a year older was good, but what really excited her was the party. So the day came and she stood at the window waiting for the first guest to arrive. When she saw her friend get out of the car she started jumping up and down and she swung the door open and ran out to meet her and they both started jumping up and down. Then the two of them stood by the window and waited and they could barely contain themselves. When the next guest arrived they jumped up and down and ran to the door to greet the newcomer. It was pure joy. That, Steve says, must be what God’s kingdom is like.
Where do we get a taste of that kingdom? Right here. In worship. God is waiting like a 9-year-old before a birthday party…knowing that everything is ready and just desiring some witnesses. God is desiring you. And jumping up and down and running to meet you coming from wherever you’ve come from.
It’s crazy to worship God like this. But it’s the kind of craziness that makes the world the miraculous place that it is. Thanks be to God.
Isaiah 58:1-14 [NRSV]
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
"Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
October 5, 2008
Franktown United Methodist Church
I hope that you were as stimulated by last week’s revival as I was. Over the course of those three services we were called to remember that we were made by God on purpose and for a purpose. We were reminded that we do not exist for the maintenance of a church building but that we are supposed to be more for the community around us. And we were challenged to live out the unique calling that God has for Franktown Church – to be a people living on the margins but telling the world what we are learning by being where we are. We may not have liked being called marginal people, but our guest preacher reminded us that we live on the edge – the edge of the continent, the edge of the economy and the edge of the kingdom. I like to tell people that the Eastern Shore is the edge of the world and the verge of heaven. Some of the most important things happen on the margins.
So I don’t want to forget that message. In fact, I want us to explore it some more, but we are going back to the sermon series today and so I want to take us back into the craziness. For 4 weeks before the revival we were looking at things that Jesus asks us to do that we would not do if the gospel were not true. These are things that mark a transformed people. So we talked about loving our enemies, loving our neighbors, praying and witnessing. All unique things that Christians do that might look crazy to the rest of the world. What could those Christians be thinking by doing those things?
So back to the craziness and today we talk about worship. Now the craziest thing about this sermon is that I’m going to be talking about the importance of worship this morning to people who have come to worship this morning. So it sounds like I’m talking to the choir here. Maybe the folks who need to hear this are the folks who aren’t here.
I’m aware, though, that we do a lot of things and we aren’t sure why we do them. Is that true for you? I mean, when you go into an elevator where do you face? The door, of course. Why do you do that? Do you have to face the door? Is anybody making you face the door? No! I want to know why it is that I face the door! In fact, let’s all just try a little experiment the next time we get on an elevator. Face another direction and see how much tension you can cause in a crowded elevator!
So, I guess what I’m saying is that even though you are here, you might not know why you’re here. You might not know what worship really means and you may be looking for an answer to a question you didn’t know that you had. So let’s look at some reasons that we are doing this crazy thing called worship.
One reason is that the Bible tells us to. That’s a pretty powerful reason. The Bible tells us to. There’s something to be said for heeding the wisdom of the ages. After all, one of the first things humans do in the first book of the Bible is to worship God and offer sacrifices to God. Of course, the first story of this is the story of Cain and Abel where one brother’s sacrifice was accepted and the other’s wasn’t and then Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, but we’ve always had wars over worship. J The point is that worship is part of the Bible’s story from the beginning.
Psalm 29 begins with this command – “Give God what is due to God, you children of God. Give Yahweh his due of glory and strength. Give Yahweh the glory due his name. Worship God in the splendor of his holiness.” [Psalm 29:1-2] Worship God. The word we translate as worship there in the Hebrew means ‘to bow down’ like a servant before a superior. But in romance languages like Latin and Spanish there is more…romance to the word. In Spanish it is ‘adorar,’ which you can recognize in the English word ‘adore.’ So there is this sense, not only of obedience and prostration, but adoration and love. We sing, “Come, let us adore him,” at Christmas time. We sing songs of praise that would embarrass a lover. “I could sing of your love forever.” “I want to touch you. I want to see your face.” “I’m desperate for you.” These are all lines from recent praise and worship songs and they speak to this sense that worship…what we are commanded to do…is a little like love.
Yesterday several of us from church were involved in a little conference at the soccer field. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time in the homes of adults with children. Tabi Webb is coaching a girl’s soccer team and a good number of the members of this team are from our church, including my Rachel. So we were standing by the field at the beginning of practice trying to determine when the next practice would be and whether we could have the first game of the season on Friday instead of Saturday. You have no idea how complex the negotiations were! Between school and music lessons and dance lessons and other sports, there were conflicts every day of the week. And there in the mix of all of this was the church. Youth events. Youth retreats. Wonderful Wednesday dinner.
It was clear to me that unless we make church a priority for our children it will quickly get lost in the avalanche of other things they are already active in. And it was also clear to me that many of our parents are doing that – making church a priority. Expecting that it will be part of the weekly routine. I appreciate what a challenge that is, especially when the image many children have of church is as a place where you have to be quiet.
I hope we’re changing to be more kid-friendly, but I also hope that we don’t lose the expectation in ourselves that we will introduce our children to the faith previous generations handed down to us. There will be a time when children will grow and will have to make decisions on their own about church, but they need us to give them a base. They need to see what we value and what we care enough about that we would bring them to even on days when they were resistant. They will have a chance to push back against the things that base and to question it, but they need to have a base to push back against. Worship God. Just do it. Why? Because the Bible tells us so.
Admittedly, that’s not a particularly satisfying answer to the questions of why worship, even if it’s true. Perhaps another way to approach it is to realize that we are built to worship. It’s in our make-up. It’s in our DNA. There is something in us that wants to give glory to God. There is something in us that moves us to praise. There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. And it wants to sing out to God.
The psalms are full of images of people and other creatures singing out just because they have to. Psalm 65 begins with words that can be translated, “For you praise waits in still repose, O God Elohim.” Every time I think of that I can’t help imagining this great wealth of praise locked up inside of each one of us that is just waiting to be released. When we worship it unlocks that safe…it liberates what is inside us and it makes us what we were always meant to be. In that sense, God doesn’t just command us to worship and we’ll do it whether we like it or not because it’s good for us like cod liver oil. No, the Bible tells us to and in doing so it helps us to discover that we are native worshippers. We were meant to worship and adore God.
This is so basic to us that we wind up worshipping things we ought not to when we stop worshipping God. Or we start loving people or things in ways that we ought to be loving God. It was my old buddy Augustine, the fifth century saint from North Africa, who observed that all of our loves are ultimately directed toward God. Our hearts are just made that way and when we take our eyes off of God and start to love lesser things with the passion that is meant for God then we get ourselves in trouble. We become obsessed with material things. We have extramarital affairs. We serve our pleasures. All of those sins come from a noble impulse within us – the impulse to give ourselves to someone or something else. But the one to whom we are to give ourselves is God.
Finally, we worship because God wants witnesses. God wants witnesses. This summer the Barrier Island Center premiered a new movie. It’s about 18 minutes long and you need to go see it. Not next month. Not soon. Go. It’s that important.
The movie is called “Our Island Home” and it is the story of what happened to Broadwater, the community that used to be located on Hog Island. Hog Island is deserted now. The big storm of 1933 basically did it in. If you go over around Willis Wharf you’ll find some of the old houses from the island that were moved to the mainland. Half of the United Methodist Church in Oyster was brought over from Hog Island. So there is nothing left of that old community on the island. The filmmaker, James Spione, has some beautiful shots of what the island looks like today – lots of empty beach and quiet marshes.
If that’s all the film was, it would be pretty to look at but it would not be worth me telling you to go see it. What make it a powerful film are the witnesses. They interviewed three folks on the Shore who were born on Hog Island to get their remembrances of life on the island. Yvonne Widgeon is one of them. She says in the film, “After my mother passed away, I realized that all of the older people were beginning to pass away and all of the stories from Hog Island was going to be lost.”[i]
As you listen to her and to Norris Bowen and Iris Clemente tell those stories, you begin to feel how fragile our communities are. The people who knew what Hog Island was will one day all be gone. The island itself is shifting and moving so that the place where the community was is now mostly out under the waters of the Atlantic. But as these three tell their stories you realize what a tough and vibrant place Broadwater was. People lived and died out there. People loved it and people hated it. People hung together through good times and hard, hard times. We know that because there are witnesses who care enough about the place to give voice to what they’ve seen and know.
God wants witnesses, too. When Jesus is born, God sends angels and shepherds and funny looking astrologers from the East and they all go worship him. Witnesses. All around the throne of God in heaven, Revelation tells us, there are angels worshipping God. Witnesses. There are saints who have gone through the trials worshipping God. Witnesses. God does not need them. God does not need their praise and worship to be God. God does not need our praise and worship, but God wants our worship. God wants our presence. God’s love is so great that it overflows the boundaries of all good sense to bring in you and me and all the nations of the earth to worship. God wants witnesses.
My colleague Steve Rhodes tells the story of a birthday party his daughter had when she was younger. Getting to be a year older was good, but what really excited her was the party. So the day came and she stood at the window waiting for the first guest to arrive. When she saw her friend get out of the car she started jumping up and down and she swung the door open and ran out to meet her and they both started jumping up and down. Then the two of them stood by the window and waited and they could barely contain themselves. When the next guest arrived they jumped up and down and ran to the door to greet the newcomer. It was pure joy. That, Steve says, must be what God’s kingdom is like.
Where do we get a taste of that kingdom? Right here. In worship. God is waiting like a 9-year-old before a birthday party…knowing that everything is ready and just desiring some witnesses. God is desiring you. And jumping up and down and running to meet you coming from wherever you’ve come from.
It’s crazy to worship God like this. But it’s the kind of craziness that makes the world the miraculous place that it is. Thanks be to God.
Isaiah 58:1-14 [NRSV]
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
"Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
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1 comment:
Hello My Brother
I love this, you've captured the thrill of God's heart and made it tangible to my comprehension. Thank you for the warmth and yet deeply moving rebuke within Isaiah 58 at the end, because praise must do this to us in the Christian Church once again. It must cause us to connect at a level that changes what we do with our gifts and our blessings. Again well done, pastor.
Pastor Ron Bateman www.revivalhut.com
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