Laying a Foundation: Worship

September 30, 2007

by Dr. Charles Parker

2 Chronicles 5:1-14; John 4:19-26

I. Introduction

This morning we are going to continue our series of sermons that I have entitled: Laying a Foundation. The series is my attempt to reflect back to you what I have heard in my small group meetings with you about what makes Metropolitan Metropolitan; what the particular gifts and graces are that make our church unique and that need to guide us as we move into the future. We began the series looking at the critical role that study plays in our life, and how that needs to shape us.

This week, we’re going to look at worship. Virtually all of the groups with whom I have spoken have talked about our commitment to excellence in worship as being part of what characterizes us as a community. People have talked about our wonderful music program, our history of exceptional preaching (they often emphasize that particularly for me!), the fact that we have this glorious space in which to worship. So I wanted to spend a few minutes this morning reflecting on the role of worship in our community. And as I mentioned at the beginning of our worship this morning, I’d love to gather anyone who is interested in further dialogue about this to gather up front here after the service.

II. The Nature of Worship

The Hebrew word that is translated as worship comes from the root verb to “bow down” or “bend at the waist” or even to “prostrate one’s self.” And our Scriptural witness clearly carries this sense that when we enter into the presence of the Divine, our natural response is to bow down and worship, to recognize our “created-ness” in the face of the creator, our “derivative-ness” in the face of the source of all life. It seems an essential characteristic of God to be worshipped.

Likewise, it seems an essential characteristic of humanity to need to worship. It seems to be part of who we are that we want to participate in something or someone who is beyond us. In one of my all-time favorite books, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky says, “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.” Perhaps this is why the Scriptures warn us so incessantly about the dangers of idolatry. The writers of Scripture seem to understand that we need to worship and if we’re not worshipping God, we’ll end up worshipping something else instead of God.

So true worship is to be who we are (worshippers) in the presence of the One who is to be worshipped. That’s what Jesus means when he says to the woman at the well in our Gospel lesson this morning that true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: where and how we worship matters less than the conscious effort to come into the presence of the Holy One and to respond as we are bound to respond when that happens. Excellence in worship means creating the space where that can happen.

Now this is an important point, and I don’t want you to miss it. A beautiful space and a fabulous music program and great preaching do not mean that we have excellent worship. They can help facilitate great worship, but they can’t make great worship. We can have all of those things, and we may have a great performance – you may all leave here supremely entertained, and people may even come to join us – but we don’t necessarily have great worship. Likewise, we can have ugly space and poor music and mediocre preaching and still have powerful worship (thanks be to God!).

I even want to suggest – with some delicacy -- that sometimes beautiful space, fabulous music, and riveting preaching can impede great worship, because it can become entertainment. When people ask what makes great worship at Metropolitan, and we answer, “We have such a great music program,” we’ve missed the point. When we say, “We’ve got this amazing sanctuary,” we’ve missed the point. [I’m not even going to say anything about the preaching.] What makes great worship is when we know ourselves to be in the presence of the Lord and when we have no choice but to praise God for whom God is.

Now don’t misunderstand me. Fabulous music may well facilitate that. An inspired word may facilitate that. But the point is to come into the presence of the divine, and when that happens, all the other pieces fade into insignificance. That’s what this passage from 2 Chronicles is about: Solomon has finished building the temple and is bringing in the Ark of the Covenant. Thousands of animals are being sacrificed, the priests have consecrated themselves, and the Levites are leading the music, and the congregation is singing. And then “the Glory of the Lord filled the house” and the priests have to stop ministering. There was nothing for them to do other than to worship God in God’s glory. That’s a wonderful picture of powerful worship: we do all the preparation, and then God enters in and takes the process over.

The Hebrew word for this is “Shekinah,” which is the experience of the presence and glory of God. It’s the cloud of God that descended on the Tent of Meeting in the desert when God wanted to talk with Moses. And you remember that when Moses returned from talking with God, his face shone with the reflected glory of the divine. That’s what great worship looks like: when our faces shine with the reflected glory of God.

III. Creating the Space

So how do we go about creating the space where powerful worship can happen? And please note the phrasing: we can’t create great worship; God does that. But we can help to create the space where it happens, and I want to suggest three tools that can help us do that. Those tools are: preparation, prayer, participation (I thought that a little alliteration would help you all remember them!).

A. Preparation

How do we prepare for worship? Well, most of us prepare by showering and dressing and getting here. [And that’s good; I don’t want to discourage that.] But we do that to get ready for work. What do we do to prepare ourselves to encounter the divine?

The place to start is to expect that God will be present with us in worship. Richard Foster, in his wonderful book A Celebration of Discipline, says “miracles should be expected to occur in worship. Healings, both inward and outward, [should] be the rule, not the exception. The book of Acts [should] not just be something we read about, but something we are experiencing.” How often do we walk in those doors expecting God to do something miraculous in our midst? A sense of expectation is essential to our creating space where great worship can happen.

Next, we need to remove those barriers that we have put up between ourselves and God. This is why Jesus says to his disciples, “If you are on your way to the altar to offer a gift and remember that you have something against a brother or sister, go back and be reconciled to your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift.” In other words, we can’t really be ready for worship if we are carrying around the weight of our sinfulness and brokenness.

Friends, I’m going to tread on some delicate territory here, but there were some wounded relationships that happened over the course of Frank’s leaving this year, and I think that that woundedness impedes our ability to enter fully into rich worship. And I want to throw out the suggestion that if there are people here in our community that you’re feeling anger towards, that’s going to inhibit your ability to experience God’s presence here as an individual and our ability as a community. Preparation

B. Prayer

We need to be explicit about inviting God into our midst and asking God to remove the veil from our eyes so that we might experience His Glory. This is just as essential to the strength of our worship. We have churches in our Conference who have teams of people who are not even in the service, but are closeted away elsewhere in the church praying for the worship experience. That’s a great witness. Of course God is always present when two or more are gathered, but there’s something about actively inviting God’s presence that opens up wondrous possibilities.

What would our worship look like if we all gathered a little early and prayed for God to be present in the service? And if we prayed for the people leading the service? [And not just the usual, “O God, make this week’s sermon better than last week’s!”] What would happen if we prayed for the pastors and the musicians and the liturgists and congregation? I think that our worship would transform. Prayer

C. Participation

Friends, the word “liturgy,” as many of you know, literally means “the work of the people.” For worship to succeed, all of us need to be engaged and active in it. I really do think that this is one of the downsides to our worship space: it’s set up like a theater. Now Jeannine and I have season tickets to the Shakespeare Theater; and when we go, we sit in the audience and wait to receive what the actors give us. That’s what happens in a theater: we go and are entertained. That’s not what happens here. If I never hear another person in this church refer to this congregation as an audience, I will die a happy man.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard did refer to this experience as the “theater of worship.” But you know who the primary audience is: it’s not you, it’s God. God’s listening to our worship. I’m not the actor on the stage; I may be the director. You all are the actors.

Which means that whether you’re singing or joining in a responsive reading or reflecting on God’s Word, you are active participants in this event. Worship is a communal experience. There is individual worship – devotions – but our individual worship grows out of, and is supported by, our communal worship. Quaker writer Isaac Pennington says that when people are gathered in worship, “They are like a heap of fresh and burning coals warming one another as a great strength and freshness and vigor of life flows into all.” And Richard Foster, picking up on that image adds, “One log by itself cannot burn for very long, but when many logs are put together, even if they are poor logs, they can make quite a fire.” Participation

IV. Conclusion

Jesus tells us that the first and greatest commandment is to “love the Lord our God with all of our hearts mind and strength.” Worship is the place where that happens and where we are most fundamentally who God has created us to be. So it gives me great joy when you tell me that excellence in worship is who we are as a Metropolitan community.

But excellence in worship is not about being entertained by great music and a scintillating sermon in beautiful space. It is about all of us together creating the space when we can meet the Holy One and be transformed by that encounter.

Amen