Encountering God in Worship

• Psalm 24 [read online here »]
• Matthew 5:1-9 [read online here »]

Pastor and theologian N. T. Wright wrote a short book titled For All God's Worth. The subtitle is True Worship and the Calling of the Church [Eerdmans, 1997]. He starts the first chapter by asking:

“What is the most beautiful thing you have experienced this week?

“Maybe something you heard. Maybe some beautiful music -- perhaps in church, or in the cathedral.

“Maybe something in the world of nature: the sun breaking through the mist and making the autumn leaves luminous, the curl of a squirrel's tail as he sat nibbling a nut.

“It might be something you smelt: the scent of a rose perhaps, or the smell of a good meal cooking when you were very hungry.

“It might be something you tasted: an exquisite wine, a special cheese, that same meal well seasoned and well cooked.

“Maybe something you experienced in work: things suddenly coming together, an unexpected new opportunity.

“It might be something you experienced in human relationships: a quiet, gentle glance from someone you love dearly; the soft squeeze of a child's hand. …”

Wright suggests this to us:

“Our ordinary experiences of beauty are given to us to provide a clue, a starting-point, a signpost, from which we move on to recognize, to glimpse, to be overwhelmed by, to adore, and so to worship, not just the majesty, but [also] the beauty of God himself.”

Most of us are here this morning to worship God. “Worship” literally means: “worth-ship – to accord worth, true value, to something, to recognize and respect it for the true worth it has” [Wright, p. 6]. In Psalm 24, the psalmist – King David in this case –recognizes and respects the true worth inherent in God – in God’s character.

In our call to worship this morning we asked and responded to two questions. The first one was “Whom do we worship?” We responded with “We worship God the Creator: the One who made us.” It doesn’t seem that a service of worship goes by without our acknowledging in some way that we are created by God and that we worship God as the One who created this Earth and everything good in it – including human beings! Hear the Good News Bible: “The world and all that is in it belong to the LORD; the earth and all who live on it are [the Lord’s]” [Psalm 24:1].

I do understand the difficulty some people have with the ongoing debate regarding creation and evolution. The impression is, sometimes, that believing in evolution creates a barrier to also believing in God especially as Creator. But in a recent article titled “Creation and Evolution,” author Bill Hall caught my attention by writing that “[the discussion between creation and evolution] does not have to be an either/or argument. In fact, it does not have to be an argument at all” (http://tinyurl.com/2dfqvhu). He wrote further:

“We suggest curiosity mixed with humility. There are strident and often angry voices raised on both sides of this question. They only make the argument increasingly bitter and the divide wider. The fact that many scientists can accept the findings of science that point to evolutionary changes in the forms of life, while remaining committed to their Christian faith, should be encouraging to the rest of us. It does not have to be an either/or argument.

In fact, it does not have to be an argument at all. Realistic scientists know that they might never uncover all the mysteries of creation.

And I would add that generous Christians on both sides of this discussion recognize there are mysteries as to exactly how God created the universe including the Earth but that both honour God as Creator.

Bill Hall then quoted two passages from The Message Bible. The first from Job 36:26:

“Take a long, hard look. See how great [God] is—infinite, greater than anything you could ever imagine or figure out!”

The second from Proverbs 25:2:

“God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things.” 

“We may never fully resolve these questions in this life, but it is a legitimate and exciting quest, and we are discovering wonderful things along the way.”

Let us not make science into something it is not meant to be. Let us appreciate science as the marvellous gift it is in seeking to understand the intricacies and drama of all God gives us through creation. God is the giver of all good gifts. This Earth and all the good things it contains are God’s spectacular gifts to humankind. So we confess before the world that we believe God is the Creator. We worship the God who has made us. God deserves our worship because we recognize we and everything else belong to God the Creator – in the best and most loving sense of belonging.

The second question we asked in our call to worship this morning was “Who are we who come to worship?” We responded with “We are those who seek to think good thoughts, to act in right ways and who make no false promises before God.” That was my somewhat simple adaptation of Psalm 24:3 and 4. Here is how our responsive reading of Psalm 24 in the hymnbook put it:

“Those who have clean hands & a pure heart,
who have not set their minds on deceit,
nor made false promises....
Such are those who seek God.” 

Who are those who truly come to worship God? The psalmist says they are those who are seekers after God and who want to be with God. That is the meaning behind the phrases in Psalm 24 about who may “ascend the mountain of God” and “stand in God’s holy place.” These are the kind of people -- as observed in this morning’s responsive reading -- who will receive God’s blessing and God’s righteousness from the God who will save them. In fact these sound like the kind of people who reflect in their lives some of what Jesus taught in the Beatitudes. Listen again to what we heard from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, in the Good News Bible:

“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them! Happy are those who are humble; they will receive what God has promised!

Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully! Happy are those who are merciful to others; God will be merciful to them!

Happy are the pure in heart; they will see God!

Eugene Peterson, in his book Practice Resurrection [Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 143-144], tells the true story of Judith, an artist who worked in textiles such as raw wool and cotton. He writes:

“Judith had an alcoholic husband and a drug-addicted son. She kept her life and her family together for years by attending twelve-step meetings. One Sunday, when she was about forty years old at the time, she entered the church where I was the pastor. She came at the invitation of some friends she knew from her meetings – ‘You need to come to church. I'll meet you there.’ She had never been to church before. She knew nothing about church …. She was well read in poetry and politics and psychology, and knew a great deal of art and artists. But she had never read the Bible ….

“Something, though, caught her attention when she entered this church, and she continued to come. In a few months she became a Christian and I became her pastor. I loved observing and listening to her. Everything was new: Scriptures, worship, prayer, baptism, Eucharist -- church! … [She was so excited]: ‘Where have I been all my life? These are incredible stories -- why didn't anyone tell me these? How come this has been going on all around me and I never knew it!’

After he moved from that congregation, Peterson kept in touch with Judith through letters. Here is part of one letter:

“Dear Pastor: Among my artist friends I feel so defensive about my life -- I mean about going to church. They have no idea of what I am doing and act bewildered. So I try to be unobtrusive about it. But as my church life takes on more and more importance -- it is essential now to my survival -- it is hard to shield it from my friends. I feel protective of it, not wanting it to be dismissed or minimized or trivialized. It is like I am trying to protect it from profanation or sacrilege. But it is strong. It is increasingly difficult to keep it quiet. It is not as if I am ashamed or embarrassed -- I just don't want it belittled.

“A long-time secular friend, and a superb artist, just the other day was appalled: ‘What is this I hear about you going to church?’ Another found out that I was going on a three-week mission trip to Haiti and was incredulous: ‘You, Judith, you going to Haiti with a church group! What has gotten into you?’ I don't feel strong enough to defend my actions. My friends would accept me far more readily if they found that I was in some bizarre cult involving exotic and strange activities like black magic or experiments with levitation. But going to church branded me with a terrible ordinariness.

“But that is what endears it to me, both the church and the twelve-step programs, this façade of ordinariness. When you pull back the veil of ordinariness, you find the most extraordinary life behind it.”

In my own pastoral journey over the years, I have also become friends with some people like Judith. They are people who sometimes have been previous churchgoers and sometimes not. But when they came to a service of worship, they were paying attention and God caught their attention. Then they became [passionate] seekers in ways they had never dreamed.

• They discovered that their ordinary everyday lives became centered and were supported by a most extraordinary spiritual life with God.
• They discovered the blessing, the righteousness and the salvation of God to be true in their own lives just as Psalm 24 states.
• They discovered, as Jesus said, that in their reverence and humility before God, they received what God has promised.
• They discovered that, in their deep desire to do what God wanted, God truly satisfied their spiritual hunger for God.
• They discovered that, in being just (not deceitful) and in being merciful to others, they understood how “astonishingly merciful” God is.
• They discovered that, in their desire for a pure heart – a heart that wants to do what is the right thing in God’s eyes – they saw God! That is, they sensed and understood and experienced God in real and personal ways.

Did you notice the last statement in our call to worship? “So, let us worship the God who reigns in glory!” That comes from verses 7 through 10 of Psalm 24. Our responsive reading stated:

“Lift up your heads …! Lift yourselves up …
that the One who rules in glory may enter.
Who rules in glory?
It is God, valiant and strong.
God, who is mighty in battle.”

The Good News Bible calls God the “great king” while The New Revised Standard Version calls God “the King of glory.”

I know many people have a difficult time with battle or warrior imagery in the Bible. We somehow have a belief that God is not a warrior God. Or that the God we see in Jesus is gentler, kinder and more into loving than fighting. However, one way to respond to God who rules in glory, who is strong and mighty, is to remember that the “King of glory” is also the King who brings in his kingdom. In Mark 1:15, as Jesus began his public ministry, he proclaimed that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” In Mark 3:23-27, Jesus spoke in a parable about binding or tying up the strong man and plundering his house. We get the sense of battle here against all that is evil, wicked, oppressive, unjust and sinful. And that Jesus is the One who will conquer the strong man (Satan, Jesus called him) in order to restore God’s good creation. Scripture makes it clear Jesus came to make God known to human beings. And here is a picture of Jesus as the Lord of glory triumphing over the powers of evil and glorifying God in the process [John 17:4]. Through his life, death and his resurrection from the dead, Jesus conquered and will conquer the powers of evil. Yes, we call his way love but, Jesus’ way of love – God’s way of love – does involve suffering and pain – and battle -- to defeat the influence of sin and wickedness.

So in our worship we recognize

• God is the One who created the heavens, the Earth and human beings and so we hold God in awe.
• We come to God as seekers for the One who came to forgive our sin and to conquer death on our behalf through his life, his crucifixion and his resurrection and so we respond with amazement.
• We come to God to learn God’s ways and seek to live God’s way of doing what is right, of living with mercy to others and so we come humbly.
• We welcome God, the great Creator, Jesus the King of glory, into our lives so that we too, in all we say and do, may glorify God.

So let us give our worship to the only living God who is truly worth our honour, our respect and our love.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller August 22, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto - website »