Sermon: "Worship"

Third in the "Nomads and Pilgrims" Series,
Delivered February 27, 2005 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Theme: Worship: It's not enough that we want to offer God something or the other, whatever, whenever we want--on our terms only. That's because worship expresses a relationship, and any relationship has to have 2 willing partners. It has to express what each brings to the relationship.

See the study guides that go along with this sermon series, a prayer response for this week and News & Views: Worship.

The audio file of this sermon is available for download and listening in MP3 format.

Click to Download & Listen (3.7MB)

Well we have been talking for a number of weeks now about being in a nomadic culture; the differences between being nomads and pilgrims. Everybody is on the move, but a nomad is going from place to place, never really expecting a whole lot of an answer in any one place, really not expecting much of an answer from God, but going place to place looking for something to come out of that next experience, maybe something that will add in to life and make it more full. We live in a nomadic culture, always on the move, nobody really at home, always looking to the next experience, the next place, the next relationship to bring that extra something that will make our hearts thrill. And since we are not looking for any one answer in one place and we are not really looking for an answer from God, it's not the answers that nomads celebrate or focus on, what they focus on is the journey itself and so nomads wander: one city to another, one job to another, one relationship to another and from one religion to another, because especially in the area of spirituality, nomads wander.

Now nomadic cultures throughout history have had family gods and tribal gods, so in a nomadic culture often inside a tent there would be some kind of shrine, some kind of recognition of a deity and then you pack that up, put it on your pack animal and move to the next place. And maybe in your wanderings there would be certain areas, streams, particularly beautiful places, mountains, places that had special spiritual significance and you would worship a god there and then you would move on your way and put that god aside and move on to the next place, which would have its own god.

Now in our nomadic culture, people still carry their own gods around. People have their own private little family gods that go with them from place to place. I would like to introduce you to one of the nomads: a woman named Sheila. Sheila was a young nurse when she was interviewed a number of years ago and this is what she said about her faith. "It's just, try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess to take care of each other." See, Sheila had struggled to come up with some kind of idea of God and as they interviewed her, it turned out that she had invented her own custom religion where God was whatever fulfilled her needs and she carried this idea of God from place to place in her wanderings.

Now it's not just Sheila. I would like to introduce you to another nomad. How about this 26-year-old disabilities counselor. She is the daughter of a Methodist minister and this is how she describes herself. She describes herself as a Methodist, Taoist Native American, Quaker, Russian, Orthodox, Buddhist, Jew. Okay? This is normal thinking for nomads. Now in case you think this is extreme, I would like us to watch one minute of a little film clip where some college students are being interviewed.

• "Why do we exist? Um, because we are very very lucky."
• "Because we're here; because that's what happened, I think."
• "I think people should be here just to do as much good as they can."
• "Some rock got moved to the side which caused some blade of grass that some cow was going to eat to not eat it and then that cow died."
• "I guess we are here to help other people"
• "To have as much fun before we go."
• "Don't read any Bible or any scripture from any of those religions."
• "I am pretty scarce. I have my own ways of doing it."
• "Evolving to the more individualized and personal religion where everybody has their own conception of what is good and what is bad and what is right and what is wrong."
• "I would like to be a good person in my own relative terms."
• "I have my own little traditions, like my own rituals, but nothing that like has a name or people affiliated with it or anything like that.
• "You know it's karma based - it's give and take."
• "My own voodoo or something you know."

Now these are some people that we don't know. Let me give you a few quotes from people you might recognize. Here's the first quote.

"I believe in God. I just don't know if that God is Jehovah, Buddha or Allah."

That's actress Halle Barre. Here's another one.

"Eastern thought western mysticism. I really dig the whole Hindu pantheon and I just pull from all kinds of things."

That's a quote from actress Meg Ryan. In the 1990 interview on 60 Minutes, Madonna said this: "I go to the synagogue. I study Hinduism. All paths lead to God," and then she has her son baptized in an Anglican Church. This is normal thinking for nomads, because this is the way our neighbors think. This is the way some of us think too, because we live in an era of the remote control. If you don't like what you are seeing, just change the channel. If we don't like what we find in a religion, we will just take what we do like and change the channel and move on to something else, something that you like better.

Now this type of thinking is very different than the thinking of a pilgrim. In Psalm 122 we have the mindset of the pilgrim. A picture of the pilgrim arriving at the gates of Jerusalem and the kind of response that that person has to this whole idea of going to Jerusalem and so let's take a look at Psalm 122 and here the words of the pilgrim.

"I rejoiced with those who said to me "Let us go to the house of the Lord."
Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together.
That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
to praise the name of the Lord according to the statue given to Israel.
There the thrones for judgment stand, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels."
For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, "Peace be within you
." For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity."

Let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you for your Word and pray now that as we think about it together that you will show us what's important for us. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now this Psalm easily breaks in to three parts. Those of you who are actually looking at it in the pew Bible or in your own may discover that it's already separated in to three paragraphs. Each one deals with a different thought. The first, verses 1 and 2 deal with the joy of being invited to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and that feeling that they have right as they come to the gates of the city. Now verses 3 to 5, the center section, deal with the fact that Jerusalem is the place that God has chosen for the people to worship, chosen it to be central. Now the third section: because God has chosen Jerusalem, verses 6 to 9 talks about how the Psalmist is willing to seek the prosperity and peace of Jerusalem, willing to put out effort to see the city prosper. It starts and ends with a personal response from the writer. It begins by saying I rejoiced when people invited me to do this. And then it ends with, "For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say peace be with you. For the sake of the house of the Lord thy God, I will seek your prosperity." There is that commitment at the end, personal response and the reason for that response is the center section of the Psalm. God has chosen that place. God chose Jerusalem. God chose the temple. These ways, these festivals with these people: that was God's choice and so the writer, submitting to that, responds with joy and with commitment.

Now this kind of thinking is very different than the way nomads think. For the nomad, a nomad views themselves: their wisdom, their taste, their experience, as the final judge for what should be kept and what should be thrown away. Their own experience, their own wisdom, their own taste is the final judge. And so, it's a totally normal thing for the nomad to say "you know I like this. I will worship this way, at least this week." That's a normal thing. And the whole thought that God would chose a way or a place to worship and limit their options is a repulsive thought.

You know sometimes I can't say that I blame them, because there has been so much evil in the world as people have judged one another and gotten violent over that, saying "you don't worship God right." There has been so much violence done that way that its understandable on a certain level that people think, "you know come on just leave me alone and let me worship God in my own way." I can understand that, but when we come to Scripture despite what people have done with it, despite the violence and bad blood at certain times in history, the Bible assumes that God has a choice in this matter of worship, that we can't just offer whatever we want, whenever we want, whatever way we want. We can't just do that and expect that to be accepted by God.

Now this is true because worship in the Bible is an expression of a relationship between persons and in any healthy relationship there has to be a contribution and an agreement that comes from both parties. Now you might have a marriage, but it's not a good marriage if someone in that marriage says, "well you know, this is how I want to relate to you this week. Take it or leave it." That's not how a good relationship is built and that's not how the relationship expressed in worship is built. So God in the Old Testament expressed his relationship to his people and he said to them that he loved them and that he would forgive them for all the selfishness and godlessness for all the ways they had alienated other people and had alienated him through the way they had acted in their lives. He would forgive them for all of that, but only one way. They would have to come in to the religious life of Israel, centered on Jerusalem, a religious life that reminded them every day that God loved them, that God was the one who provided for them, provided for their ancestors and provided for them now, again and again in the life of the year, the worship year they were reminded of that. They were reminded again that he was the one who provided for them and not other gods. They were reminded again and again that he was radically different than they were, and that there was a distance between the people and himself, and that something needed to be done to breach that because that had to do with our selfishness, our self-centeredness, our sin. And finally in this religious life again and again they got a picture of the coming day when God would do something decisive to deal with the issue of their rebellion and alienation. Because in the life of Israel there were a pattern of sacrifices of sheep and goats, certain kinds of birds that were sacrificed, but it wasn't these animals that dealt with this issue of alienation. It was a picture, it was a picture of how costly an upcoming cosmic event would be when God himself did something decisive to deal with our sin. And so again and again they were reminded of that. Again and again this picture of just how costly, how bloody, how serious this issue of sin was, was brought back to mind.

And so here we are thousands of years later on the other side of that cosmic event, because Jesus Christ has now come. Because it all talked about him. He is the sacrifice. He is the one who was offered to take our place. He died for our willingness to ignore God. The picture intended to point to Jesus has served its purpose. Jerusalem and the temple. Jerusalem and the temple are not the center of everything anymore. So what then does something like Psalm 122 teach us as Christians about God and worship? Even though Jerusalem is not the center anymore there are some things we can learn from these words of the pilgrim. The first, is that God still calls together a community to worship him. This begins with a call, a community call. I rejoice with those who said to me, join us. Let's go to the house of the Lord. And then it goes in verse 4, this is where the tribes go off, the tribes of the Lord to praise the name of the Lord. It's a community thing that God has called in to being and all these different tribes from all over the nation gather together in this one city, Jerusalem, to pray, and to praise the Lord.

Now in the New Testament we know that its not just the tribes of Israel, but every tribe and nation is invited to come to the Lord and worship and in fact history is going to end with a corporate worship service with people from every tribe, language, nation and even now everywhere in the world where Christ is named, there are groups that gather. It might be small groups in house churches in China, it might be groups of 100,000 or more in Korean churches, but groups and group worship is part of the experience of Christians all over the world, because that is the way that God called it in to being, because we are called in to one body. And so it is still a right and normal part of our religious experience to come together in worship, to invite other people to come with us, to be thrilled at the thought that we could praise God together and to get something extra and special out of that experience. And that's also why, even though we are called to be a church without walls, even though we know that we are the church where we live, where we work, where we play, that out there it's important that we represent Christ, that we serve well, that we love well, even though all of that activity is happening out there, there will always be a need for us to assemble and worship God together. This is the way that God intended it to be. It's an expression of the fact that we are one body and we need one another. So that's the first thing that we see here.

The second thing that we can learn from Psalm 122 is God still calls us to worship on his terms. Jerusalem is no longer the center of worship, but that doesn't mean that we can offer worship any old way we choose. Worship is acceptable to God only one way. Through Jesus Christ. It's the only way. Jesus said, "I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. No one comes to the father, but through me." It says again in another place in Scripture in the New Testament, it says that "there is no other name under heaven by which people must be saved." Again in another spot it says, "there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism." God still sets the terms and the term of a relationship with him is in sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. To be in him. To have faith in him, to follow him. Now that one way has nothing to do with the building, the shape of the building. It has nothing to do with whether we have a nice pipe organ or not. It has nothing to do with whether we have a worship band or, however wonderful they are, drums. It has nothing to do with that. We can come with incredible diversity, in creative ways. We can come to God, we can meet him anywhere in the world, we can sing songs in any style that we choose, we can dress in our own country's form of dress, in any language at any time of the day and even on any day of the week, we can worship freely, creatively, but only, it's only acceptable because Jesus died to deal with the breach between God and us. That's the limitation. He died so that we can live. He became sin for us so that in him, through faith in him, we might actually receive and live out the glory of God and the righteousness of God in our lives. This is the transaction that God has done. He has taken that initiative and he said, "I have done it. It's complete. It's full. There is nothing you can do to improve it, but to neglect it means that you reject me." God still sets limits on us. We can only worship on God's terms.

The third thing we can learn from this is that God still calls us to seek the peace and prosperity of his body. This Psalm talks about particularly in the final verses, "for the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity." This is wonderful response to being confronted with the magnitude of what God is doing and this time it was just in Jerusalem and in seeing that he says, for the sake of my brothers and sisters, for the sake of the glory of God, I will seek your peace and your prosperity. And so that means for us to love God means that in part, it means that we have to love his body, the church. With all of its faults we have to love its church. In Jesus Christ, God has called people in to one community and to one body, to worship and to serve him and the peace, unity and purity of the body is important to God. And so that means that as Christians we could have all kinds of impact in our private lives, in our homes and all be being wise, by being gentle and thoughtful, by being nice to people we can have an impact there. But if we can't then assemble together and live in love and unity, we bring scandal on God. The unity of the body is important. We are one body.

So that means on a local level that we can't have gossip. We can't have judging one another going on in the life that we have together. It just can't be done. We are called to accept and forbear and uphold one another. It also means that as we are called to a larger relationship with a denomination it means that there is a role for us to seek its peace, its unity and its purity in the midst of all of its problems, we have a role and there are things that we are supposed to do to honor God for their sake and for the glory of God.

And it also means though that we have a relationship with Christians everywhere. There are incredible Christians that are downtown in Baltimore, that are reaching places that we can't reach. They are bold in ways that we are not bold. They are taken seriously by people who would never give us a second thought, and we need to rejoice in that. We need to support them in that. We need to seek their peace. We need to seek their prosperity. And this is true in our relationship with churches all over the world. We are called in a large body, a worldwide body, and for the good of our brothers and sisters, and for the good of the glory of God we are called to responsible relationship locally, and with churches all around the world.

Now what that means for us, one of the basic lessons then we have to get out of this, living in a nomadic culture, is that worship is not the private thing some people would make it out to be. Certainly there is a private part, but worship also involves a public face, a community expression and that comes from God; through one God, through one Savior is calling the whole world, anyone who will in to one body looking forward to the day that he restores the world to what it should be and that day is described as a day of worldwide worship.

So I would like to close by reading to you again from this Psalm, but I am going to paraphrase it just a bit, from the beginning and from the end of the Psalm.

"I rejoiced with those who said to me come, let's go and worship the Lord. For the sake of my brothers and sisters and friends, I will say peace be within you. For the sake of the glory of the Lord our God, I will seek the prosperity of the church."

Let's pray. God, we thank you. We thank you that even though you set the terms of our worship, there is so much freedom there, because in Jesus Christ we could really be ourselves and in that freedom and joy we come to you in worship, so we pray now that we might seek the peace, the purity, the unity, the prosperity of your church: this body and the church universal, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt.
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org