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"Worship: Where God Meets Us"
Pentecost Vb (special
series)
July 5, 2009
In the name of Jesus. Amen. In a congregation I served some years ago, the chair of the worship committee, starting long before I was Called as senior pastor, had for years sat in the front row every week, with a stop watch, literally timing every segment of the liturgy, and noting it on her bulletin. At planning meetings, she would tell pastors such things as, “You have to say the Prayers of the Church faster so we can get them down to no more than a minute and a half.” Or “Peoples’ attention span is only as long as a segment of a TV program between commercials (which is typically what, 7-9 minutes?), so your sermons can only be that long or you’ll lose your ‘audience.’” [Pause...] I’m waiting for an Amen here…! Or “The service went 63-1/2 minutes last Sunday – we have to get it down to 60.” This poor woman was so obsessed by her stopwatch that it began to feel like a race, like the Kentucky Derby, every time we began the invocation – “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And they’re off...!” Somewhere along the line, this dear woman had lost the sense that worship is where God meets us, and the movement and inspiration and work of the Holy Spirit in worship is not captive to a stopwatch. Traditionally, for Lutherans, the only thing that truly matters in worship is God’s word that is “read in the Scriptures, proclaimed in preaching, announced in the forgiveness of sins, eaten and drunk in Holy Communion, and encountered in the bodily presence of the Christian community.” Lutheran worship centers on the word of God. Martin Luther was absolutely passionate about this. It wasn’t sufficient for him that the priests knew it, as they celebrated the Mass in Latin which none of the average German parishioners understood. It was crucial to Luther that every worshiper hear and understand what is being spoken, chanted, and sung – that is, the Word of God. Most of the words of the liturgy, itself – “Lord, have mercy,” “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth,” “Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain,” “Christ is risen!”, “for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign, Alleluia!”, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,” “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” the Words of Institution (or Thanksgiving at the Table), “Lamb of God you take away the sin of the world,” the Lord’s Prayer, “The Lord bless you and keep you…” – all is taken straight from Scripture. Luther observed that even if the Bible was not read and there was no sermon, simply by worshiping one’s way through the liturgy, a worshiper would hear the Word of God – the power, the law, the grace of God -- proclaimed. THAT is why Lutherans so fervently embrace liturgical worship. If you want to explore this more, turn to p. 1154 in the back of your hymnal, and you will see the biblical sources of all the different parts of our liturgy. Liturgy is where God meets us. When we gather in this space, or any room or space (even outdoors), to worship our God, we enter a sacred space and time, as Pastor Bruce spoke of so eloquently last Sunday. We enter into a holy time, God’s time, which transcends calendars and clocks which are, of course, purely human inventions. When we place our heads over the baptismal font, God meets us in the water and the Word, and makes us his own, committing himself to us beyond time – forever. When we hold our hands out for the Lord’s Supper, God meets us in the bread and the wine and the promise to be “in, with, and under” it in Luther’s words; and we are joined beyond time with the communion of saints – the faithful people of every time and place. When I hold my hands out for the holy meal, I am there with my grandmother, my mother, Merle’s brother, all of our loved ones who have died, just as you are joined as well with all those whom you have loved who are now celebrating the “feast of victory” in glory with the Lord. For some, God meets them most profoundly in Confession and Forgiveness; for others, God meets them most profoundly in the passing of Christ’s peace, highlighting the importance of people reconciling with one another before sharing the sacred meal. For others, it’s in the music. For some, it’s in the meal itself. For some, it’s in the reading of the Bible; for others it’s in the preaching of the Word. For some, God meets them most profoundly in the gathering itself, in all the different kinds of people, different personalities, different ethnicities, different colors, different experiences, different gifts and abilities – the gathering itself is where they experience God meeting them. Even having affirmed and celebrated all of this, we can be a bit glib when we say, “Worship is where God meets us.” Think with me for a few minutes about how staggering that assertion is. It is nothing less than a weekly miracle, really, that God humbles himself to meet us here. He has Called and entrusted the reading and preaching of his Word, and the administration of the sacraments, to a particular brand of sinners called pastors, who sometimes stumble over words, skip portions of the liturgy without realizing it, or, as I did one Sunday, have us recite the Apostles’ Creed TWICE – once during a baptism, and again later in the service. Or even leave their sermon at home on the kitchen table one Sunday morning. What a miracle that God meets us in the imperfect efforts of imperfect pastors. God meets us here to receive our worship even when worshipers are physically sitting in the pew but mentally distracted by personal matters which make it hard to focus on worship – a crisis, an annoyance, a worry, a grudge, a preoccupation with judging someone gossiping near them, or even distracted with plans for the rest of the day. It is not surprising that a traditional prayer of pastors as we enter to lead worship is this ancient prayer: “Receive our worship Lord, not as we ought, but as we are able…” It is nothing less than a weekly miracle that God meets us here, even in our distractions and preoccupations. And with human communication being such an intrinsically complex thing, think of the gamble God takes every week when pastors all over the world enter the pulpit, or stand before the congregation, to proclaim God’s precious Word, and the congregation prepares to listen. A sermon isn’t merely a few personal thoughts on a particular topic or biblical text. The title of one of my preaching textbooks in seminary scared the bejeebers out of me. The title? “As One Who Speaks for God.” What an awesome task, a sacred trust, to not just give a speech, but stand before you with the responsibility of preaching the Word of God. To make it even more intriguing, I would guess most of us here this morning have had the experience, in more routine conversations, of carefully saying one thing, but the person you were speaking to “heard” you say something else; or of someone saying something to you, and you are later accused of not really listening to them, of hearing only what you wanted to hear; or, perhaps you used a word or phrase which you had no idea would trigger an emotional response in your hearer who subsequently didn’t hear another word you said. All kinds of things go on between the word spoken and the word heard even in every day conversations between two individuals. If all of that happens in ordinary conversation, what is God thinking to meet us here in this both powerful and, at the same time, fragile form of communication between believers called preaching? But, thank God!, it is nothing less than a miracle that God promises to meet us even here, not only within the hearts of both preacher and listener, but in-between the preacher and the listener, in the very process itself of speaking and hearing. According to Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, it is nothing less than God’s Holy Spirit that both brings us to faith, and moves us to join with other believers in a place like this, to worship. Remember the words? “I
believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus
Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me
through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and
preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens and
sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in
union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church
he daily and abundantly forgives all my sins, and the sins of all
believers, and on the last day he will raise me and all the dead and
will grant eternal life to me and to all who believe in Christ. This is
most certainly true.”
Every worship service is a series of unfolding miracles, where God chooses to meet us in one another; in His Word proclaimed in liturgy, proclamation, and music; in the assurance of forgiveness; in reconciliation with one another; in the Sacraments. As we’ve been saying for a few weeks now, when we come here on Saturday evening or Sunday morning, we don’t just come “to church,” we come to worship, to witness and to participate in a staggering miracle every single time – the miracle of meeting God. Amen. Rev. Joan Gunderman, Senior Pastor
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, Minnesota |
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