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*This sermon is the first in a series entitled "Common Worship: Themes for Zion's Worship Life" and was preached at Zion Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Oregon on Sunday, August 19,2012.
Worship is God-centered. Of
course it is! Duhhh! What else would it be? Well, it could be about the people
who come to worship, socializing, following the order of worship in the
bulletin, a particular style of music, finishing on time, meeting human needs, evangelism,
keeping a liturgical tradition, or any number of things besides God.
I remember a very formal,
high church worship service I once attended at the Washington Cathedral as a
delegate for Mennonite Church USA. The high arched ceiling, sculptures of the
apostles, elaborate clerical garb, colorful drapes, and stained glass windows were
visually overwhelming for this low-church Mennonite. Every tiny detail of the
liturgy was carefully scripted and led by professional clergy. It all fit into an
ancient pattern including processional, waving of an incense contraption,
antiphonal responses to the reading of Holy Scripture, recitation of the
Apostle’s creed, and recessional; just to name of few of the worship elements.
Was this worship? It was for many people gathered that evening. But, for me, I
was so caught up in the externals of worship that encountering God in that
space was far from my mind. I was more concerned about what was happening next
in the bulletin! It was probably my own subjective experience that kept me from
focusing on God, which was not the intent of the worship service itself.
Nevertheless, worship had become about something other than God.
Worship is all about God. “Let
us sing to the Lord!” says the
psalmist. Psalm 95 is a hymn of praise
that was used in Israel’s worship life. The word worship is an Old English word worthscipe
meaning to create worthiness or worth-ship.
Of course, we don’t create God’s worthiness, but we do create liturgy, which literally means “people’s
work,” as a means of ascribing worth to God.
Worship is about attributing
worthiness to God, pure and simple. The psalmist describes God as worthy of our
praise in titles like Lord, rock of our salvation, great, King, above all gods,
Creator and Sustainer of the mountains, of earth’s depths, the sea and dry
land, and humanity. In response we offer
worship through singing, making a joyful noise, coming into God’s presence, and
kneeling before God. These are means to
an end. Each of these forms is
secondary to worship itself, which is ascribing “worthiness” to God. The
psalmist makes clear what worship is all about. When we gather for worship it
is not about style or harmony or perfectly crafted liturgies or performing for
an audience. Worship is about attributing worth and praise to the Lord.
The psalmist invites us to sing praise to the Lord! Singing is
about praising God. It is not about vocal skill or technical performance or
musical preferences. For us Mennonites, we translate “sing” as four part
harmony. As a newer Mennonite of 25 years, I can appreciate four part harmony.
It is a beautiful sound. When I first
heard the old hymn 606 after a conference in Kansas, I was amazed by this
classical sounding music sung in parts and that a congregation could
immediately turn into a choir without rehearsal! I can appreciate the beauty of
harmony in acapella singing.
But, the psalmist doesn’t
appear to be too concerned with the aesthetics of sound in worship when he goes
on to say, “Make a joyful noise to
the Lord.” The Hebrew word can be translated as “a joyful shout, cry, blast, or
battle yell.” Yaaahoo! Praise God!
Not much harmony in a shout of praise! And yet, it is a means of praising God.
I take seriously the
implications of making a joyful noise
as praise to God. Though some of us here at Zion may not agree, drumming is
means of praising God. Last Sunday I was praising God! Someone might say,
“Drums are not for praising God. They’re just a bunch of noise.” Admittedly,
there is more noise than harmony in drumming. But, the psalmist says, “make a
joyful noise to the Lord.” Noise can
be a form of praise to God, a method of worship. I even call my drumming
program for churches, “A Joyful Noise.” My point is, the psalmist says that
even noise, a loud shout of joy, like Hallelujah!,
is a way of worshipping God. Worshiping
God can be done with melody and harmony, but also rhythm and noise, if it is done in praise to God.
The means of worship is secondary to
the subject of worship; God.
First, God-centered worship means that worship
is focused upon our encounter with God. More than getting to sing our favorite hymns, more than seeing old
friends, more than fulfilling a Christian duty, more than promoting church
events, worship is first and foremost about experiencing God. That may
graciously happen through the channel of liturgy, hymns, proclaimed word,
broken bread, and blessing. But, those outward, human words and events are the
means to an end and not the end in and of themselves. Preaching professor
Thomas Long reminds us: People are not
hungry for more worship services, for more hymns, sermons, and anthems. They
are hungry for experiences of God, which can come through worship; in the
primal sense, this hunger is what beckons people to worship.
Granted, we cannot control or
arrange people’s encounter with God, even with the most beautiful singing and
powerful proclamation. The pastor, worship leaders, and song leaders at Zion
will only encounter futility if we think we can plan for ultimate Mystery to
erupt within our order of service. And yet, we do seek to evoke the Spirit and
to enhance the possibility of our encounter with God through the liturgy.
Second, God-centered worship means that
God is the subject of our worship.
Our liturgy, our singing, our proclamation, our elements of worship should have
God at the center. If God is the subject of our worship, then we may need to
re-evaluate some elements of our order of worship. For some time I have wondered
about the intrusion that announcements seem to make within a worship service,
even when they are framed as opportunities of service to God. In other
congregational settings I have advocated for announcements to be placed before
or after the worship service itself. Announcements are mostly about reminders
of events and the housekeeping chores of the church and less directed toward
worship of God. In God-centered worship every element of worship is directed
toward God in some form or fashion.
Questions we might ask of our
own worship life: Do we direct most of the elements of our worship service
toward the worshippers or the one we worship? Are our offerings more for church
maintenance than in praise and thanks to God? Is our focus in singing upon the notes, the
melody, the harmony, or God to whom we sing? Does the sermon point us to the
preacher or to God? In God-centered worship the elements of the liturgy point
us to God.
Third, God-centered worship means there
must be preparation and engagement in worship. By focusing upon the magnificence of the Washington
Cathedral, the elaborate liturgy, and my place in the processional and
recessional, I directed my spirit away from God, the true subject of
worship. It’s so easy to enter the
worship service with our minds focused on talking to friends, thinking about
what I have to do after the service, will I miss my seat at the restaurant if
the service runs late, concerned about what the young people are wearing to
church, or any number of things besides preparing my spirit to be open to an
encounter with God through the word, song, visuals, or prayer.
Do we pray before we come to
worship? God, speak to me through this
worship service today? Do we reflect on the proclaimed word? God, how can I apply your word to my life? Do we sing our hymns to God or to ourselves? God, I sing praise to you! Do we join
our hearts together in the corporate prayers? God, I too pray for those who are grieving. Worship can easily slip
into an unconscious routine in which our hearts, minds, and spirits are
disengaged and we go through the motions of the order of worship like putting
parts together on an assembly line or washing the laundry. Didn’t we do the same thing
last week? Sing, pray, hear a children’s story, listen to a sermon, receive a
blessing? Been there done that. We can walk through worship like a sleepwalker
moving through the house at night.
Worship is more than sitting
through a weekly routine of repeated elements we have done for years. If it is
primarily about encountering God, then we must prepare ourselves for worship
and be open to engaging ourselves in the worship experience with an openness
and attentiveness to meeting God.
Not only is worship about God, it is about how we worship God. We see this in Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She tried to sidetrack him from discussing the moral issue of having numerous husbands and living with one without being married. She switched the subject to worship. “So, you’re having this relationship problem, eh?” “Uh…. uh, what are your views on contemporary praise songs.” She noticed that Jesus is a prophet. I guess she figured this out because he asked her an uncomfortable question. Prophets have a habit of doing that.
Samaritans claimed their
worship was the true religion of the ancient Israelites. They had some
different means for worshipping God from the Jews. Their sacred text was their
own version of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, with a significantly
different version of the 10 Commandments. They rejected the post-Torah books of
the Bible and the Talmud or rabbinical writings. Mt. Gerazim, not Jerusalem,
was for them the true place of worship.
The Samaritan woman wanted to
debate worship with Jesus, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you
say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” And debates over
worship have continued to this day.
The Samaritan woman was
focusing upon the differences in the location of their worship places; Mt.
Gerizim vs. Mt. Moriah. The Samaritan woman’s attempt to put worship spaces is
conflict serves as a fitting symbol for our contemporary “worship wars,” or
should I say “worship skirmishes,” with our focus turning toward our
differences in preferred outward forms of worship.
You say worship should be in Jerusalem, but we say it
is in Mt. Gerizim. You say worship
should be in a sacred cathedral, but I say it should be in a plain old
meetinghouse? You say worship should be traditional, but I think it should be
contemporary? You say worship should be with organs and pianos, but I say it
should be with guitars and drums? You
say worship should follow old worship traditions, but I say it should be
creative and experimental? You say worship should be formal and serious, but I
say it should be informal and joyful.
And so the debate about worship that the Samaritan woman wanted to start
with Jesus has been passed down through the ages. So, today we have what we
unfortunately refer to as “worship wars.”
We will discuss “worship
wars” more when we come to my sermon on blended worship. But, let me just say
that “worship wars” usually occur when take our focus off God as the subject of
worship, get caught up in the different, outward forms of worship, and insist
that our preferred style dominate.
Jesus’ responds to the
Samaritan woman’s attempt to sidetrack him with a worship debate. He appears to
start off his response by reinforcing the differences in worship among the
Samaritans and the Jews. Jesus said, “You worship what you do not know; we
worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” His comments don’t seem
like the best way to talk about someone else’s religion! Whatever you make of
Jesus’ response, he seems to suggest that worship has a concreteness, a
historical, cultural, and traditional situatedness about it one does not easily
transcend. Jesus ties worship to a particular chosen people, the Jews. He
doesn’t seem to be able to transcend the “Jewishness” of worship in his
response to the Samaritan woman, Jesus
Christ, why can’t you think more ecumenically, more interfaith, more universal!
Jesus, you’re just too…too… Jewish!
There are some things we
can’t transcend in our religious lives. Religion is always situated within some
particular history, culture, and tradition. That’s why I get frustrated with
Mennonites who, when I emphasize the importance of our Anabaptist tradition, I
often hear something like, “Why emphasize being Anabaptists? We should just be
Christians!” My response? Please, show me this generic or universal Christian
that you want us rather to be. There is no such creature.
My hunch is that most often
what the person who says these kinds of things means by “Christian” is
“Evangelical Christian.” I don’t imagine that their idea of a generic or
universal “Christian” means Russian Orthodox, Pentecostal
snakehandlers, or Weaverland Amish! Every Christian is formed by a particular
history, tradition, culture, forms and practices. There is no such thing as a generic
Christian, any more than Jesus was some amorphous New Age, universalist,
transcendental, Spirit-person. The early church rejected this kind of Gnostic,
unearthly, spiritualized Jesus. Jesus was an orthodox, and sometime unorthodox,
Jew whose understanding of religion
and worship was tied particularly to the Jewish tradition and its practices. Only
with this in mind can we understand his very Jewish response to the Samaritan
woman about true religion and worship.
Jesus pointed the Samaritan
woman to a coming time, which had already arrived, when the location or outward
forms of worship would no longer be important. Where you worship must be
transcended by higher principles or realities, whether worship is done on
Mt.Gerazim, at the temple in Jerusalem, in a local synagogue, in a cathedral,
or in the woods. There are some things that must be considered secondary to
true worship. Place, forms, and style are among those things, particularly if
we understand that God is the subject of our worship.
Jesus envisioned a coming
form of worship that would focus upon God as Spirit and with true worship being
in spirit and truth. To speak of God
as Spirit is to recognize that God is other than human. God transcends all material
existence. God transcends even our images of God, like Father, Lord, King. As
Spirit God is not tied to a particular worship place, national or ethnic
identity. God is not bound by my worship style or preferences. God’s Spirit is
not hindered by sour notes, fumbled liturgy, or typos in the bulletin. God is
not locked up in some sacred building. There is no particular land where alone
God treads the earth. There is no “one nation under God,” but a Spirit that
permeates all of reality.
If we end up worshipping our
own musical preferences, our own historical worship tradition, a god of our
national identity, a god of my racial or ethnic group, or a god of my
denomination, then we have not worshipped God in Spirit and in Truth. Spirit and truth are interconnected. They
point us back to Jesus’ reference to the living water, the Spirit within. To
worship God in spirit does not mean
to worship God internally as opposed to worshipping God with external forms. It
means that it is the indwelling Spirit, the well of water that is within us,
that connects us to the Spirit of God in worship. To worship in truth is to worship in the
Spirit of Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
To strive toward God-centered
worship at Zion will not just be a matter of the Worship Commission diligently
planning meaningful worship services, worship leaders conducting services with
skill, or song leaders choosing appropriate hymns. God-centered worship
requires a community of worship open to the Spirit, engaged in the liturgy with
hearts open to encountering God, ears open to hearing the voice of God amid
human words, and voices ready to give praise to God, who alone is worthy of our
worship.
A day is coming when
We
will worship God
as
universal Spirit
Worship
will not be bound by
national
identity
race
or ethnicity
physical
or mental ability
gender or sexual orientation
A day is coming when
We will
worship God
In
spirit and truth
Worship
will not be limited
to
sacred buildings and holy places
to
formal or informal liturgical traditions
We
will worship God
with
our hearts open
with minds focused
with
our spirits engaged
We
will worship God
in the
Spirit
not
simply internally without external forms
not off in
the woods as an isolated individual
but through
the indwelling Spirit
within the transnational,
multicultural
gathered community
of believers
and in the
Spirit of Christ
who
is the Truth
A day is coming when
we will worship God
in
spirit and truth
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