August 12, 2007 - Meaningful Worship

The following is a text copy of Greg's sermon with opportunity to post your blog response at the end -- jwa


Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 11
August 12, 2007
W. Gregory Pope

MEANINGFUL WORSHIP:

LIFE-TRANSFORMING ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD

Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 12:1-8

We are thinking these days at Crescent Hill about five practices of vibrant, growing, faithful congregations. Last week we talked about the practice of radical hospitality, where congregations offer the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ so that people experience a sense of belonging, connection, and acceptance. We do that because we believe a part of God dwells in each person. Namaste.

But for what purpose are we practicing hospitality, inviting and welcoming people to this place, providing sacred space for belonging, connection, and acceptance?

We will answering that question over the next few weeks. The part of the answer we will talk about today is the practice of Meaningful Worship. We extend hospitality in the hope that the people who accept our invitation will encounter the living God in ways that will transform their lives.

DISSECTING THE SERMON TITLE

Worship

Worship is one of the most significant spiritual practices God uses to shape souls and open hearts and change minds and behaviors and lives. Worship can also create a desire to grow closer to Christ. “I am the vine,” Jesus said, “and you are branches.” Worship connects the branches to the vine; it keeps us connected to the source of life, and helps us grow in Christ.[1]

We gather in community for worship because worship supports and nourishes all other ministries of the congregation, giving life, vision, direction, and encouragement to the whole Body of Christ.

Meaningful

Meaningful Worship connects us with God and with one another. It opens our lives to God’s grace and to the hearing and doing of God’s Word, and forms us as the Body of Christ.

Meaningful Worship is authentic, engaging, alive, creative, passionate, and understandable.

It takes tradition seriously but it doesn’t follow tradition blindly. We should not do something in worship simply because the historical liturgy of the church says it should be done. However, we should pay attention and give thought to what the church has done in worship for over 2000 years, as well as what Israel did 2000 years before that. It is arrogant to assume we have nothing to learn from the history of the church’s worship. At the same time, it is meaningless to do something just because it has always been done or because the official liturgical police (whoever they are and wherever they are hiding) say it must be done.

We are here to worship God, and every action and ritual, every song and sermon, reading and prayer, silence and gesture should have purpose and be done with intentionality.

Life-Transforming

Meaningful Worship offers the possibility of an encounter with the life-changing presence of God in the presence of others.

Our scripture lesson this morning from Romans calls upon us to “be transformed.” Hospitality extends the welcome of God to all just as we are. Worship helps transform us into who we were created to be.

Meaningful Worship changes people and changes the way we experience our whole lives. It changes how we view ourselves and our neighbors. It deepens our understanding of life and our relationship to God. “An hour of [Meaningful] Worship changes all the other hours of the week.”[2]

“God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change, inspire compassion, and bind people to one another.”[3]

Meaningful Worship includes those “aha” moments that change and mold us, “the touch of transcendence that pulls us out of ourselves.”[4]

But the transformation that happens to us in worship depends in large part upon what we bring to worship. The attitude and expectation we bring to worship will shape our experience as much as what we find in worship. Meaningful Worship requires a preparing of the heart, mind and soul before attending worship.

What kind of attitude and eagerness do you bring with you to worship? Is there a love for God? Is there an eagerness for relationship with God? Is there a desire to open yourself to God’s grace? Are you here to be changed?

Many times we unconsciously enter worship in the evaluative posture of someone preparing a movie critique. But we are not here to observe and evaluate. We are here to receive what God offers and to offer our best in response.

In order for worship to be meaningful and carry with it the possibility of transformation, we must always have an ear to what God is saying to us . .
.....through the words of scripture, even if they are read imperfectly
....through the sermon, even if the illustrations are weak
....through the prayers and Holy Communion, even if there are stammerings and stutters.through the unifying power of music, even if it’s not your favorite style, or is not the best you’ve ever heard.

The question to consider before worship is this: Am I intending to allow God’s Spirit to form me, change me, transform me through these actions of worship, or am I intending to evaluate the quality of entertainment?

And the question to consider upon leaving a service of worship is not: “What did I get out of it? but rather “What did I leave at the altar? What offering did I make? What part of myself did I give to God? And what difference will it make in my life?”

Not every worship service will transform your life. But the hope of worship is that little by little, week by week, small changes will take place that will help you follow Christ more closely, examine your life more deeply, and listen to God more clearly.

A lyric in a hymn may become more true for you. A line in a prayer or a sermon may become the words of your heart. God may speak in the silence. The swelling music may lift you out of your despair - if only for a moment, or the week, or a season. Wounds old and fresh may begin to heal.

James Finley writes: “The call of God is like a gradual, subtle, stirring that grows within us, perhaps unnoticed, like a small flower unfolding in an enclosed garden.”[5] Worship is like that sometimes.

And sometimes, as with Paul something might happen that knocks us to the ground. God’s voice may become so clear, an encounter with the living God so overwhelming - that your life dramatically changes. We might have to call it an F.R.E. - Frankfort Road Encounter.


Encounter

That leads to another word in the sermon title - Encounter. That word was intentionally chosen over the word “experience.” There is a danger in worship that we seek an experience of God rather than God.

To quote Finley again: “It is not an experience of God we seek but the living God inherent in, yet transcending, all experience.”[6]

If we focus on the experience, we will continue to find ourselves in need of experiences to sustain our spiritual life. When God is who need most.

God

God is the focus and theme of every service of worship.



Encountering the Holy Otherness of God - Praising / Exalting God

God is clearly the focus of Isaiah’s encounter in the temple.

The text that called us into worship today illustrates the essence of true worship. As Isaiah tells of worship, God is encountered as Holy Other. Eyes are covered. Smoke fills the holy place. God’s presence is too illuminating to be fully seen with the human eye. And the angels sing: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

Note that Isaiah is not at the center of this encounter. God is. Worship is about who God is and what God is calling us to be and do. And so, we praise and exalt God for who God is and what God has done in the world and in our lives.

Confession

In such an encounter with the holiness and grandeur of God, we are reminded of the ways in which we have failed to be and do all that God has created us to be and do. And so, like Isaiah, we are moved to confess our sins.

We do so as a community and as an individual.

Community

Isaiah confessed the sinfulness of the people of which he was a part. He said, “I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” In worship, we confess the sins of the world, even those sins we did not commit. We acknowledge before God, on behalf of the world, actions that are wrong.

I know some of you do not like corporate confession because you are perhaps being asked to confess sins you did not commit. But worship is not just personal. It’s about the community and the world of which you are a part. As the body of Christ we are members of one another, and we often share in the sins of others by association.

It is important that we acknowledge our sin as a people, whether or not we have knowingly participated in the particulars. I say knowingly because there is sin we often participate in without our knowing. And confessing our sins as a community may help us confess things we would not normally confess or realize we need to confess.

Personal

And then there must be time for the personal confessing of our own sins in times of silence and response. Isaiah said, “I am lost. I am a person of unclean lips.” Personal confession.

The purpose of confession is not to evoke shame or self-hatred. The purpose of confession is honesty. Confession bridges the chasm between what God already knows and what we are willing to acknowledge about ourselves.

Forgiveness

And our honesty is met by God’s forgiving grace. God’s pardon frees us from guilt and empowers us to live lives of truth and righteousness.

We need worship because worship is, I believe, the most likely setting for people to encounter the opportunity for a renewed relationship with God. It is not the only setting, but perhaps the best. Where better is a person likely to speak honestly with God and at the same time realize that she or he is pardoned, forgiven, loved, and accepted by God.

Worship is an invitation to truth and grace.

The Invitation to Act

Worship also includes an invitation to act. In Isaiah’s encounter with God he heard God ask: Who will go into the world for me? Who will speak and serve in my name?

Worship is not a sweet hour of prayer that calls us from a world of care. Worship is a dangerous and surprising hour of prayer that calls us into the world to care for the world and act in the world. Scripture, song and sermon call us to faithfulness and invite us to live for God in the world, doing what God needs done, saying what God needs said.

And so, every service of worship calls for a moment of decision.

I ask you now to open your bulletin and look down to everyone’s favorite part, the moment the sermon ends. Well, that may be everyone’s second favorite part, second to the postlude, which many worshipers understand as the dinner bell.

Up until the moment the sermon ends, we have been called into worship, to praise God and exalt God as Creator of the universe and the only rightful Lord of our lives. We have invoked God’s presence, welcoming God into our midst for the purpose of receiving our praise and changing our lives. We have listened for God’s Word through song and scripture and sermon, including the voices of children.

Silence and Prayer

Following the sermon, we pause in silence to reflect upon what all of this might mean for our lives. Opportunities for decision are going to follow the prayer. So we need to listen to God.

The silence is for listening to the Spirit of God. In the silence God may say what has not yet been said in worship. Or God may return our thoughts to what has already been said. In the silence, you may even want to look back over the order of worship to recall what has happened, or in your heart and mind think back over the service - the songs that were sung, the many profound things you heard in the sermon (too numerous to count) - and prayerfully consider what God might be saying to you through these actions and rituals of worship.

And the Prayers of the People, often voiced by one person, give voice before God to the concerns and needs of our world, our congregation, and our own individual hearts.

Following the prayer, the order of worship is going to change from how we’ve been doing it. We’re trying this change in order to be more intentional about how respond to God in worship.

Three invitations will be given. Who says we’re not evangelical?

Invitation to Discipleship and Community

There will be the invitation to discipleship and community.

You may decide to commit yourself to being a disciple, to walking in the way of Jesus. It may be a first time commitment to be followed by baptism at a later date. Or you may renew your commitment to discipleship. Every week, in some way, should include a renewal to walk more faithfully in the way of Jesus.

You may decide to enter into community with this congregation. Discipleship is lived in community. We do not walk with Jesus alone. We walk with one another.

During the hymn of response is the time we make public our decision to be a disciple or to enter into community with the congregation.

Invitation to Serve

Following the hymn of response comes the invitation to serve, to minister.

This is where I would ask you to listen carefully.

No matter how you have seen this time in the past, I want to share with you my intention for this time.

You may have noticed I shared a few announcements at the very beginning of worship today. We called that point in the service “The Greeting and Life of the Church.” From now on we will use that time to announce any meetings or change in schedule.

During the time following the hymn of response we will extend invitations to serve. Anything you come forward with needs to be presented as an invitation to serve. If you are uncertain as to whether what you have to say is an announcement or an invitation to serve, please call me and we can decide together. In fact, it would be helpful, if you would let me know during the week if you want to extend an invitation to serve, so that I will know in advance, or Bill or Josh will know if they are leading this time.

Grace will flow freely today if you have an announcement to make since you did not know of this change ahead of time. But let us seek to be more intentional about this crucial moment in worship as an invitation to serve. As a time when we are listening for ways to be the Body of Christ in the world. As a time of considering how our worship of God and the gifts God has given us are lived out in the world, the community, and the larger life of the church. If what we do in here doesn’t extend beyond the sanctuary, then all we have done is play church.

At this time you will also hear who within our congregation needs your prayers and your acts of compassion this week.

Invitation to Make an Offering/Commitment

Having heard the invitations to serve, and having listened for the Voice of God’s Spirit throughout worship, you are given a third invitation - to make on offering of yourself and your possessions.

This is a time to respond as faithfully as you can to the question: What is God calling you to do?

What is God calling you to give? And you are provided the opportunity to give of your possessions as the offering plate is passed.

Where is God inviting you to serve? What commitment is God calling you to make? We are providing space for you in the bulletin to write down what you feel God is calling you to do. Keep the bulletin with you and pray about it in the upcoming week. Use the time of offering to make a personal commitment to God.

Doxology

Then we will rise to our feet in doxology, praising God from whom all blessings flow, the God who deserves our very lives.

Benediction

And then we will be seated to receive the benediction, literally “good words,” words of blessing. In benediction, we are sent out of the sacred space of sanctuary as the blessed people of God to live the commitments we have made.

Silence

And in the final silence, we bask in the blessing of God, renewed to follow Jesus and serve in his name.

CONCLUSION

Worship is not a presentation by others. It is not a self-help seminar. Worship is not about what we receive from God; worship is about giving ourselves to God, making God the center of our lives. Meaningful Worship is a lifting of our hearts to God in praise, confession, and commitment. It is an encounter with the God who transcends us, yet graciously meets us in this hour with divine presence, with words of guidance, with the purifying flame of forgiveness, and the call to be transformed, to be our true selves, to be who we have been created to be.

What offering will you make today? What part of yourself will you offer to God?

___________

1. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 53

2. Ibid., 40

3. Ibid., 34

4. Ibid., 43

5. James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, Ave Maria Press, 1978, 88-89).

6. Ibid., 79