Lk 11:1-13

29 July 2001

 

"Thinking About Worship, Part 3"

 

This is the first time I've attached "Part 3" to the title of a sermon.  In case you hadn't figured it out already, this is meant to be part of a series!  The two previous "Thinking About Worship" sessions had formats differing from each other, so maybe a Sunday morning sermon is in order.  For the benefit of those who missed those sessions, here's a quick review.

The first session was held in Sunday school six weeks ago yesterday.  We had a discussion about what worship is, what it means to us, and we started the discussion about our own order of worship.  We also listened to two versions of a praise chorus, "He is Exalted."  We heard both Twila Paris' original version and the version done by the Celtic group Eden's Bridge.

The second session followed the worship service two Sundays ago.  After a light meal, we watched the first two parts of the video, "Ancient-Future Worship," hosted by Robert Webber.  It models what's called "convergence worship."  We saw the sessions on "Understanding Worship" and "The Ministry of Hospitality."  We also had some periods of discussion that, at times, became quite lively!

Our gospel reading lends itself well to a consideration of worship.  It's especially meaningful when we consider this statement from the Directory for Worship in our Book of Order:  "Prayer is at the heart of worship.  In prayer, through the Holy Spirit, people seek after and are found by the one true God who has been revealed in Jesus Christ" (W-2.1001).

At the beginning of Luke 11, Jesus has been praying when one of his disciples asks him for a favor.  It's apparently something that John the Baptist did for his followers, and that is:  show us how to pray!  That really gets to the heart of the matter for almost all of us.  Jesus not only addresses their need for a way to pray, but their need to pray, period.  It seems that for most of us, our struggle isn't fine tuning our method of prayer, but simply getting ourselves to pray at all.

Luke gives us Jesus' reply in three parts.  The first part is his version of the Lord's Prayer, which is shorter than Matthew's account.  Luke probably has the earlier version, since it's more likely that a gospel writer would expand on, rather than cut from, the wording of a prayer.

The second way Jesus helps the disciples is by telling them the parable of the friend at midnight.  (Knock.  Knock.  Knock.  Get out of bed; give me some bread!)  The moral of the story:  be persistent.  Jesus confirms this in the third part of his response when he encourages the disciples, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you" (v. 9).

We don't have to wonder if God wants us to pray.  Our Lord longs for that communion with us.  Jesus puts it in a rather blunt way by comparing God to a parent who wouldn't think of giving a child a snake when asked for a fish, or a scorpion when asked for an egg.  "If you then, who are evil," Jesus concludes, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (v. 13).

God wants to give us the Holy Spirit in prayer; God wants to give us the Holy Spirit in worship.  The two are very closely related.  Just as in prayer, so in worship, "everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened" (v. 10).

The question is, do we expect anything from worship?  Do we expect, do we long for, communion with our Lord?  (I'm posing these questions to myself, as well as to you.)  Do we sing?  Are we worried about what someone else may think if we sing freely to God?  Do we really mean the prayers and confessions we voice?  Do we listen for God's word to us when the scriptures are read and proclaimed?  Does receiving the body and blood of Christ change us?

Something that prayer and worship have in common is that we have to choose them.  As true as it is that God is overflowing with grace and goes to every length to provide us opportunity, we still have to decide.  God won't force us; if we don't want to pray—if we don't want to worship—then it won't happen.  We can choose to forego that vital link with our Creator.

We humans are unique in that respect.  In all of creation, as far as we know, only the species homo sapiens has the ability to opt for or against worshipping the God of creation.  Plants and animals, sand and rock, fire and water—everything that is praises its creator in its own way.  It's in the very nature of things.  Only we humans have the ability to act contrary to our nature.  Only we can act against nature.  It's both our blessing and our curse.

The thing about choosing to worship is that it requires time.  For many of us, time is our most valued possession.  It's a possession that, like the rest of creation, is a gift from God.  How we use time, just as how we use any other possession, says something about our priorities.

As the church, we come together to worship our God who is Trinity.  The very nature of God speaks of community.  I can remember a time when I felt like I didn’t need the church; I didn’t need the people of God.  To be honest, I thought church was for losers.  I figured I could worship God all by myself while walking through the woods, and that’s all I needed.  I was one of the people the epistle to the Hebrews has in mind when it warns about “neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (10:25).

So as the church, we come together for worship.  And we come together in a certain place, in a certain space.  We don't have to worship in a church building, but it does make sense to build structures that are conducive to worship.  Again, the scriptures provide the example.  The Israelites constructed first the tabernacle, then the temple.  Later on, the early Christians established places to worship the Lord.  We, too, set apart space for the worship of God, and the setting apart of space itself can be worship.  In a way, even a building can worship God.

But we also set apart time for the worship of God.  While it's true that we can worship at any time (as well as any place), it's also true that setting aside time for the worship of God is built into creation itself.  It's been that way from the beginning.  "So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation" (Gn 2:3).  God hallowed, God made holy, God set apart the seventh day.  Sabbath is built into creation itself.

It is in the very nature of things to set apart time for the worship of God.  But as I said earlier, we humans have the capability to act against our nature.  We can decide that Sabbath and the worship of God are unnatural, that they go against the normal order of things—especially when it seems that there are so many more important things to occupy our time, things more important than God!

This past week Banu and I unearthed a journal I had when I was an undergraduate student at Middle Tennessee State University.  It comes from the period of time when I was first becoming seriously interested in things spiritual.  I spent many hours on that thing, writing down quotes from many different books¼as well as some of my own reflections.  (Now those are some real jewels of wisdom!)

Anyway, looking through its pages, I came across a passage from the book Light of Christ, by Evelyn Underhill, who lived from 1875 to 1941.  From a chapter on "The Need of Retreat," she writes:

"Our so-called civilization gets more and more complicated, more and more noisy.  It is like one of those mills where the noise of the looms makes it impossible for the workers to hear each other speak.  And if we go on at it long enough without a break we begin to think the looms are all that matter, and we are merely there to keep them going."

If Underhill were writing today, she might replace her reference to noisy factory machinery with the drive to reduce everyone to the level of consumer, as well as the false sense of worth we get from being encouraged to consume ever greater quantities of…stuff!

Pumping dollars into an economy dominated by multinational corporations provides neither meaning nor mission in life for those who find their identity in Jesus Christ.  Our Book of Order has something to say about that.  (By the way, the Book of Order is about more than just church polity; there's some good theology in there, too!  We'll get some more of it during the affirmation of faith.)

Anyway, here's a different take on the meaning and mission in life:  "God calls the church in worship to join the mission of Jesus Christ in service to the world.  As it participates in that mission the church is called to worship God in Jesus Christ, who reigns over the world" (W-7.1002).  That's a powerful statement.  Even when it seems that the world is being taken over by Coke and Pepsi, Disney and Mickey D's, among others—even if the entire earth gets covered with corporate logos, Jesus Christ still rules.

A couple of weeks ago, during "Thinking About Worship, Part 2," I asked if our worship is "dangerous."  I wasn't quite sure how to explain what I meant.  I said something about worshipping in such a way that really gets the attention of the world around us.  But maybe I can do a better job of explaining it now.