There is a Baptist church on Louisiana, and their sign says, “Church like it used to be,” and I’ve always wondered by what they really mean by that.One of the 12 different churches that I attended over the past month was the Greek Orthodox Church here in Albuquerque. As we were listening to what is known as the Divine Liturgy, which, other than now being sung in English, although there was also some Greek, that liturgy has been used nearly every week for the past 1500 years or so. But, I don’t really think that is what that Baptist church is referring to when they talk about the way church the way it used to But, even within the Orthodox church, let alone the western tradition, one of the constants about worship is change. The chair arrangement this morning is one of the oldest ways we know that people gathered for worship. Pews as we think of them didn’t arrive in churches until the 14th and 15th centuries. But seeing people across from you is very different, and creates a different worship experience, then everyone facing forward.
In the 12 churches I saw, there were a large range of worship styles and patterns, although some of them were remarkably similar, I think there must be some magazine that gets published that says what to do, especially when it comes to the sound of the band. I don’t know what I was expecting or maybe even hoping to find in other churches, besides just seeing what others were doing. The only thing I was disappointed about was that I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a walk-up song for when I come up to do the sermon, like baseball players do, and if another church was doing it then I could start it here. But, you can all be relieved that no one was doing that, and so I’ll continue to live without walk-up music. The better news is that in seeing what other people are doing, I came away with an even better feeling about the worship services we do every week, especially when compared against the churches immediately around us. But, I also came away with some ways that I think we can make worship better and connect it better to who we are and what we do, and much of that has to do with the very nature of worship itself.
Jewish journalist Harry Golden reported once asking his father why he continued to go to synagogue every week, when he didn’t even believe in God. His father responded, “well people go to synagogue for lots of reasons. Consider Goldberg” his father said, “Goldberg goes to synagogue to talk to God, whereas I go to synagogue to talk to Goldberg.” We have different reasons for being here. We also have different expectations for what will take place in worship and these are dependent upon that is shaped by our personalities, our experiences and our historical emphasis. It’s probably a good idea, perhaps to ask the question, what is it that we want out of worship and why?
And yet, that’s also probably not the right question to ask, because that makes worship be about us, but worship is not about us, it’s about God. In both Hebrew and Greek, the words translated into English as worship literally mean to bow down, to prostrate yourself before someone, or something else, and it’s not God bending down to us, which is how some people too often think of it, or at least talk about it, that God is around to do our bidding. Instead it is us bending down to God, us worshipping God, which should fundamentally change the way we think about, and participate in worship. The Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard made the analogy of worship being like theater, a commonly used metaphor. But the way this is often heard is that the audience of this theater is you, with me and the other worship leaders being the actors, who are prompted by the movement of the Holy Spirit. I can clearly say that there are some churches that hold to this type thinking, where, like Nirvana sang, people seem to be saying “Here we are now, entertain us,” and the churches go right along with it. And I’m not saying that there aren’t some potentially worshipful moments in that, but they miss the overall picture.
Instead Kierkegaard says, the audience of the theater of worship is not us, the audience is God, and we are all the actors, with prompting that comes from the preacher and other worship leaders. But, we don’t come here in order to do work to get God to like us or to get God to do things for us, we come to worship because of the work that God has already done for us. Worship is the response to God’s work, God’s love in our lives. In Acts we read, “the God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortal’s life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24-25) So, our worship doesn’t meet a need in God, it meets a need in us, and so the act of worship, the work of worship, requires our work and our efforts and, yes, even our needs. Because we need different things from God, and we come to worship needing to say or express or receive different things. Some of us come in here this morning celebrating, and some of us come in, perhaps, experiencing the dark night of the soul, and so that means that worship will be different for all of us. But it is the us that makes a difference.
Jesus tells us that where two or more are gathered in his name, that he is in the midst with us. That God is already present for us through the risen Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we come into that presence in worship. That means that every time that we gather that we should expect to experience God, to encounter God. Do you have that expectation when you come to worship? According to the religious polling group Barna, ½ of all adults who regularly attend worship say that they have not experienced God’s presence in worship in the past year. Now some of the work of setting up worship so that we can experience God’s presence is up to me, and others, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. But, much of that work is up to you. That is, I cannot make you worship, all I can do is to give you the opportunity. I cannot make you come into worship expecting to experience God. I cannot make you be prepared to worship. That is all work that has to be done by you. I preached several years ago on how to prepare for worship, and if you would like more information on how to do that you can find that on our website. But it’s not just our work as individuals, it’s our work as a group, as the body of Christ, which is why it’s so important that we gather together, even if we don’t feel like it. Liturgy, which we normally just think of as the words we say in worship, literally means the work of the people. You cannot be the church by yourself, but it’s also true that we cannot be the church without you. It’s the work we do together.
Which leads me into the thing that will be making the biggest difference in what we do in worship. First, is that we will be assembling a team of people to help plan worship and prepare the space and everything we do for worship. And secondly, I am going to be working more on incorporating ways of making sure that everyone is represented in worship, that the ways that we live and learn are represented. In the Protestant Reformation, the sermon was elevated to be the highlight of the service, which preferences those who are audio learner. Simultaneously, the church also began to strip everything out of churches that had anything that might look like Catholicism, leaving the stark white churches that especially became prevalent in America, leaving nothing visually interesting, and some even removed music. That gave preference for what happens in worship to only a small group of people. And yet, Jesus told us that we were to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, all of our minds, all of our souls and all of our strength, which means we need to worship with everything that we are, with our whole body. Or as Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Rom 12:1)
Howard Gardner, a development psychologist, proposed the idea of multiple intelligences, which has been applied to the educational system, but it also applies to worship. There is a certain way that we teach and worship, but what Gardner said was that not everyone learns the same way, that not everyone possesses a linguistic intelligence, which means that people like words, they’re good at reading, and tend to learn through hearing words, which is how schools are based. I am linguistic, which is why I do well at school. But, what Gardner said was that there was a multiplicity of intelligences. Another type is musical intelligence, which are those who have sensitivity to sound and rhythm and tone. Now most churches do okay with those two, but that’s not all there is. There are people who favor spatial intelligence, where visuals are very important. And there are bodily or kinesthetic learners, for whom bodily movement or touch are important. These are areas in which the church doesn’t do well at all. As I was talking to someone about my sabbatical and thinking of ways to incorporate the whole person into worship, he said he had a friend who is yoga instructor, and she can’t keep still. She’s always moving. Now is she going to be comfortable in worship the way it’s normally done? No. So we are not making space for them to worship. Think about that passage we heard from Revelation. It was not static. Where the people just sitting in chairs and listening? No, so imagine what did it look like, what did it feel like, what did it smell like, what was the atmosphere? If that’s the image of worship in heaven, a worship that involves all of us, then I think we have an indication of places where we have room to grow.
And so, this is part of the way we practice hospitality, by open ourselves up to experiencing God in different ways but also giving opportunities for people to experience God in the way that works for them. Part of that hospitality is in knowing that while something may not work for you, it may be exactly what someone else needs, and being happy in that. But before your start panicking and start writing your objection letter in your head, calm down a little. While we’re going to be trying new things, like we have done today, the structure of the services will remain basically the same, it’s the details in between. And so, I hope that you will be open to new experiences not just for yourself, but for others as well, and to remember that if you don’t like something, that most of the things that we do will only be for a season. That worship needs to be different at times, that Lent should not feel like Easter, but more importantly it’s a way to open us up to experience God in new and different ways, to embody our worship as the body of Christ, and to make worship experiences that are moving and memorable, but even more importantly that are transforming. Because what we see in scripture time and time again is that those who have experiences of God, engage God with everything, and they all go away changed. Worship is meant to do the same for us. John Wesley, the founder of methodism, said that worship was a means of grace, that is a way that we communed with God and a way that God’s love is made known to us. So as we engage in worship, and as we try new things, please remember a sense of hospitality, a radical hospitality, that knows that your preferences for worship will be recognized and valued while also being open to the preferences for others will also be recognized and valued, and that as we worship together, we become the body of Christ, and we embody that experience for each other and for the world, and it is the way that we come to experience the risen Christ in our midst, empowered by the Holy Spirit. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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