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Worship: Finding Ourselves

Psalm 100

September 7, 2003

Psalm 100

All Lands Summoned to Praise God

A Psalm of thanksgiving.

¹    Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.

²      Worship the LORD with gladness;

       come into his presence with singing.

³    Know that the LORD is God.

       It is he that made us, and we are his;

       we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴    Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

       and his courts with praise.

       Give thanks to him, bless his name.

⁵    For the LORD is good;

       his steadfast love endures forever,

      and his faithfulness to all generations.

Four buddies were playing a round of golf on a Sunday morning.  They were all playing lousy, and none of their scores were good.  On top of this embarrassment, it began to rain.  The men returned to the clubhouse to wait out the squall, only to learn that the power transformer for the entire club had been hit by lightning, so the restaurant, the lounge and even the locker room, the entire place, was closed.  As the men huddled under the awning in front of the parking lot, getting ready to rush for their cars in the rain and go home, one guy said to the others, “We could have just as well gone to church this morning!”

Another of the men disagreed, “Oh, I couldn’t have gone to church anyway.  My wife is sick in bed this morning!”[1]

 On the way home from church one Sunday morning, a young boy suddenly announced to his mother, "Mom, I've decided to become a minister when I grow up." "Wow, that’s great,” said mom, “but what made you decide that?" "Well," said the little boy, "I have to go to church on Sunday anyway, and I figure it will be more fun to stand up and yell, than to sit and listen."[2]

Why come to church?  What is it about church that makes us get up on a day that most of the rest of North America is either out golfing, or lounging around their homes in their bed-clothes, working on their lawns, headed to the beach or out to the country?

Summer or Autumn, Winter or Spring, Christians everywhere get up earlier than they would otherwise need to,  shower, shave, dress in their Sunday best, pile their family into the car and head on down to church.  Why Sunday Worship?  What for?

In the old days of ocean sailing, a small boy was traveling on a ship with his father.  About once a day usually at dusk, the boy saw the captain stand on deck with a sextant in hand, point the little contraption into the sky, adjust some of the gadgets on it and hurry off, back into the bridge.  One day, the boy said to his father, “Daddy, what is the captain doing?”  His father replied, “The captain is taking our bearings, seeing where we are and finding out if we are going in the right direction.”[3]  What the captain was doing in that instance was called “shooting the stars.”  By finding the brightest star in the sky and measuring the angle from it to the horizon, then grabbing a nautical almanac, and referring to an accurate watch, a good sailor can calculate their position anywhere on the face of the planet.[4] 

Coming to church from Sunday to Sunday is part of the process that helps us to do what that father told his son that the captain was doing on a daily basis, so many years ago.  Worship helps us to  “take our bearings, see where we are and find out if we are going in the right direction.”

What is worship anyway?  And how does it help us to maintain our bearings and figure out who and what we are?

My dictionary defines worship this way: “to render homage, reverence or adoration to”[5]

The Book of Worship of the United Church of Christ says this about worship, “Christian worship is the glad response of total individuals – through “heart, soul, strength, and mind” to the saving acts of God in history.”[6]

Martin Luther, the father of the Lutheran Church said in the 16^th century, that during worship, “nothing else be done, than that our dear Lord Himself talk to us through Holy Word and that we, in turn, talk to Him in prayer and song of praise.”[7]

In Worship, two major things happen.  1. We remember and notice how God acts and has acted and has promised to act.  2. We respond.

After September 11, 2001 many people wanted to lash out in anger, and even perhaps to express doubt, not only at terrorists but also at the policies and actions of national and international leaders but also at God.  How could God have acted to allow such a thing to happen?  Anger at God is an appropriate expression for worship, if God has acted in such a way as to prompt anger.  It’s a valid response we find in the Psalms.  Take a look at Psalm 130, 137 and 22.  However, September 17, 2001, the first Sunday after the eleventh, we didn’t just blindly lash out, we first asked the question and considered, where was God in all that mayhem and horror?  No, God did not cause the horror, but was there with the victims, sending helpers, sending heros and angels to save many who were in need.  Our worshipful response then was for awe and thanksgiving to God for His grace and care, even despite our revulsion and dismay at the world around us.

Worship the LORD with gladness;

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

       and his courts with praise.

       Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the LORD is good;

       his steadfast love endures forever,

says the Psalmist about worship.

This verse speaks of praising and singing, blessing and thanking, why?  Because God is good, God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Coming here, getting together in Christ, finding out how God has been active, hearing God’s word, being told by one another how God has been active, experiencing God come alive as the Holy Spirit fills this place and us, reminds us that God is good, that God loves us and that God is God!  It fills us with thanksgiving and pulls and draws the praise and the worship naturally and spontaneously from our hearts.

The leading scholar of traditional reformed worship, Professor Hughes Oliphant Old, reminds us of two key points relating to worship.  First, we worship because that is what humanity has been created to do.  Professor Old quotes an ancient creed of the western church, called the Westminster Catechism, which says, “Humanity’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”  Then he says,

“There are those today who would justify worship for any number of other reasons.  We are told that we should worship because it brings us happiness.  Sometimes worship makes us happy, but not always.  We are told that we should worship because it will give us a sense of self-fulfillment.  Surely worship does fulfill the purpose of our existence, but we do not worship because it brings us self-fulfillment.  We are often told that we should worship in order to build family solidarity: “the family that prays together stays together.”  [But that’s nothing new, other religions have said similar things before.]  All kinds of politicians have insisted on participation in various religious rites in order to develop national unity or ethnic identity.  Queen Elizabeth I was not the first or the last who tried to consolidate her realm by insisting that worship be in English.  One can always find medicine men and gurus who advocate religious rites for the sake of good health, financial success or peace of mind.  True worship, however, is distinguished from all of these in that it serves above all else the praise of God’s glory.”[8]

Old doesn’t end there however in advocating for worship, he also insists “Not only did God create us to worship him, but he also commanded us to worship him.  The first four of the ten commandments have to do with worship.” 

Here they are:

1.               I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ⁷you shall have no other gods before me.

2.               You shall not make for yourself an idol… You shall not bow down to them or worship them.

3.               You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

4.               Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.[9]

Each of these four have something to do with recognizing God’s place revering, adoring or paying homage to God.

However, with all this praising, all this bowing and worshiping that God requires it of us, what does this say about God?  Does it reveal God to be a megalomaniac, a crazy narcissistic fanatic who insists that we alsoways praise him?

Probably not…

A Hasidic story tells of a tailor who approaches his rabbi and says, "I have a problem with my prayers. I am a tailor, and from time to time people compliment me on my skills. It is very satisfying to hear their praise. One kind word can keep me going for a week. But if people came to me all day every day saying, "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor", "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor", "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor" it would drive me crazy. It would get to the point I wouldn't want to hear another compliment every again! I would tell everyone to go away and leave me to work in peace. And this is what bothers me about prayer. If just once a week we told God how wonderful he is, and just a couple of us did this each week, that is all God would need. Is God really so insecure that he needs us all to praise him morning, noon and night? Hundreds, thousands, millions of people praying, all praising him. Surely this would drive God crazy?!"

The rabbi smiled and said, "Mendel, you are absolutely right. You have no idea how difficult it is for God to listen to all our praises, day in, day out, 24 hours a day. But God knows how important it is for us to offer our praise, and so, because of God's great love God tolerates all of our prayers"[10]

Yes, God has created us to worship and praise him.  It is humanity’s “chief end.”  But God doesn’t require us to praise and worship because it fulfills a need within God somehow.  This worship and praise doesn’t stroke and affirm and fulfill God’s archaic desire.  That’s only true for humans, for us.  We people need praise to feel loved and dignified and appreciated, not God.

God needs us to praise so that we are re-aligned, we are set straight and we remember our place in the universe.

We come to church on Sunday mornings and worship God, because God is good and we give praise and express our thanks, because that is what we’ve been created to do and because God commands us to do it.

As we do it.  As we worship.  We ourselves come into alignment.  We ourselves remember who we are, where we are in the scheme of the universe.  We find our bearings and we realize where we are headed, on course or off course.  Often, we are enriched, rejuvenated and filled with gladness and joy.

So why not stay in bed on a Sunday morning?  Why not just crash on the sofa with the Sports page, like you know I’d be doing if I weren’t here?  Because we can’t afford to.  If we stay in bed, if we miss worship too many times and forget to praise God, forget who God is, what God has done, how God’s grace makes us whole, then we forget ourselves.  We lose our way.  We lose our bearings. 

Many people often feel guilty about not coming to church and missing church.  They come to me after many weeks of absence and apologize and promise they’ll soon be back.

I don’t like guilt.  I know its important sometimes, but I also know how harmful and hurtful a weapon it can be from my own personal experiences. 

I also know what it feels like to miss church.  We too took a few weeks off this summer and after a week or two, I begin to feel a little something in my gut too.  But, I think that feeling isn’t always guilt or shouldn’t be thought of as a negative, terrible thing.  I see it as a healthy pull back to God, a yearning, a need for God that if listened to or honored rather than hid from or ignored, like I so often do from pangs of guilt, will actually pull me back to church, to seek out a church when away from home, on vacation or on a business trip, or make the effort to chase the kids around the house until they’re in the car and finally on the way to church.

I guess its OK to feel guilty about missing church, but its unfortunate because guilt can be so debilitating.  But if we want to do away with that guilt and understand it, its OK also to admit that we need God, to praise him and to allow him to center us and that the yearning, pulling feeling in our gut is just our need to be in God’s presence again, to see God’s people, to sing God’s praises and to love God back as much as we have been loved by God ourselves

For Christians, there are ultimately many components to worship and the Christian life: opening the bible and reminding ourselves of the wisdom and grace of God, joining in fellowship with others to keep accountability with them in our Christian journey, hearing the word of God proclaimed to us, through preaching, teaching, healthy thinking and discussion, centering ourselves in prayer and meditation and focusing on our connection with God and of course, corporate worship and praise. 

In the weeks to come, we’ll look more closely at what makes good worship.  Is it organ music or guitar music or both or neither?  Can you have good worship without good preaching?  How do you create and maintain good worship, that helps you find your bearings?

Come worship for the next several weeks and lets hear God’s word and learn together.

Amen