WORSHIP

Dr. Richard J. Henderson May 2, 2004

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Psalm 150 (responsive)
Ephesians 3:14-21

Introduction

When you woke up this morning, you had several choices: first, you could go back to sleep. Laying there with your eyes still closed you remember the lawn has to be cut. The house still needs to be picked up, the car needs to be cleaned, then there's the garage, and we won't even think about the basement. Plus, we haven't gone out for breakfast in a long time.

Or, we could go to church. Why would we go to church?

I

We are here to worship God. I hope that we continue to make that abundantly clear in everything we do. This time together is not about us - it's about God. That's why we call it worship. We are here to worship God.

We do talk about ourselves here - our sins, our forgiveness, our concerns, even our understanding of God and what God is doing in the world. We are here to grow in faith, but it is all in the context of God. It is because of God that we are here. This time together is for God, about God, and our relationship with God.

II

Getting outside of ourselves in worship is unique in our world. We live in a world that claims to be about us. We are surrounded by people who claim they want to please us. We hear sales pitches that flatter us with what we deserve from Cadillacs to hair conditioner. They pump up our egos by telling us the things we want are really things that we need. We are always being asked how someone can help us.

In your hotel room you see a letter from the manager saying, "You must be satisfied. If anything is not to your satisfaction, call me immediately." We go to restaurants that promise to exceed our expectations. You begin to feel like you are the center of the universe.

III

To be in worship is to look at the world differently. Here it's not all about us. Worship is different from the rest of the world. The wonderful thing about worship is that we get outside ourselves and center our attention on God.

I'm afraid that some attempts to make worship more relevant lose what is most important - the "throw out the baby with the bathwater" syndrome.

The second time this fear struck me was at a contemporary worship seminar. It began with worship. We started with a praise song which consisted of the same brief phrase sung over and over again, six times. It wasn't a particularly helpful phrase - something like, "you are above us and come from above." By the time we were half way through the second verse, I was bored already! We had four and a half more verses to go!

I thought of the hymn "O God Our Help in Ages Past" and the verse that goes "Time like an ever rolling stream soon bears us all away." I missed the beauty of that kind of subtle image. I missed a song that took us from one place to another, and helped us think about our faith.

That was the second time I worried that we were losing something important in our rush to be relevant. The first time was a more positive experience. A young woman who is one of the newer members of our church, did an extensive search of other churches in our area, and then joined Faith Community.

She said, "I can hear rock music anytime of the day, any day of the week. I only get this wonderful music in church."

Isn't it appropriate that worship be different from the rest of the world - what we are doing here is different. We get outside ourselves, we open our lives to God, and we center on God's will - that doesn't happen much in the rest of the world.

IV

Other parts of the worship service are different too. Isn't it unique to sit in reverence after the choir has presented a magnificent offering to God? That silence can be more moving than breaking into applause. If we go to a high school band concert or a Britney Spears concert, we clap after every song. It was a good performance. Doesn't it make sense to react differently to an anthem offered to God on our behalf? Isn't there value in listening to a talk and letting it to sink into your soul rather than clapping?

All this reminds us we aren't attending a show or a speech, we are offering ourselves to God. Should worship try to imitate a rock concert, a play, or a musical?

I was at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College last week. In workshops and seminars, we heard one brilliant speaker after another relating how their faith affected their writing. Everyone went to hear the same speaker in the evening, so the college had to find a place large enough to handle more than 2000 people. They chose one of Grand Rapids huge mega-churches - The Sunshine Community Church.

The auditorium seated about twenty-eight hundred people. On each side of the stage were enormous screens. When the presenters spoke, that room people was absolutely silent. They held the audience by the power of their message. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

In the middle of one of these presentations, I looked over at the huge screens on each side of the stage. They weren't being used, and it occurred to me if they had been, it would have detracted from the words of the speaker. An outline of their talk, or pictures to illustrate their words would have drawn away from what they were saying, not added to it.

These visuals in worship may be a sign of weakness. We can't keep people's attention with our words, so we supplement them with pictures or fill-in-the-blank outlines. Where there is a powerful message those illustrations not only aren't necessary, they detract from what's being said.

I worry that much of contemporary worship is catering to the "dumbing down" of America. Can't we write a song with more than one thought in it? Can't we communicate gospel without providing outlines or pretty pictures to help people through?

V

Are contemporary services training people for a wrong understanding of what Christian worship is? We are here to worship and praise God. If worship is entertainment centered on us and on our needs, then we mislead people. We call it worship, but really, it is religious self-help in an entertaining format. The praise of God is often lost in the entertainment.

I once was at a family's house where their two boys were playing with toys. During their play, the older brother broke the younger brother's toy, and that child began to cry. I watched in amazement as the father went over and crushed the older brother's toy with his heel. He said, "Don't break your brother's things." At best, the boys got a horribly mixed message. He was telling his son not to do something while he did it himself!

If we say we are worshipping God and the whole time is geared toward our entertainment, we are at best sending a mixed message and at worst are distorting what worship is really all about.

VI

Having said all that, it is important that worship be understandable and speak from our lives. It doesn't make any sense to go back to worshipping in Latin. That would not be worship we understand or that comes from our hearts. We worship God as the people we are, from where we live.

Hopefully, more people will write good hymns in contemporary language that take us from one place to another - good hymns with metaphors and subtlety. Our closing hymn is a good example. Written by Jane Parker Huber a little over twenty years ago, it is completely directed toward God. It moves us as we praise God and deepens our relationship with God. We need more of that.

Conclusion

As we make worship more contemporary, we need to be sure we hold to our purpose. The reason we are here is to praise God. We want to do that in modern language and in ways that are relevant to our times. We don't want to be so carried away with our relevance that we forget why we come to worship in the first place.

Amen.

©Richard J. Henderson 2004