To See Our Lives Whole

A sermon I preached last summer that was recorded on DVD and submitted to my Board of Ordained Ministry as part of my materials to be considered for ordination this year. Turns out it could have been broken into two sermons, but I've included the whole thing here anyway. Blessings!

To See Our Lives Whole
Rev. Kerry Greenhill
Highlands UMC, Denver, CO
July 6, 2008

Colossians 3:15-16

I’d like you to think for a moment
about a few questions I have for you.
How often do you experience God’s presence in church?
How about in other settings?
If God is everywhere, always available to us,
why bother coming to a church building
at a specific time on Sunday morning?
Can’t we honor God just as easily
hiking in the mountains
meeting friends for brunch
or spending time at home with our families?
Why do churches have so many different ways
of doing worship, anyway?
Is one style really better than the others?

These questions may sound familiar;
my guess is many of you may have asked them yourself
at one time or another,
or maybe someone in your life
has asked them of you.
They’re reasonable questions, after all.
How would you answer?

For all our preoccupation with worship style today,
a person might begin to think
that the form of worship is of primary concern
in the Bible, from Genesis on down.
But the truth is,
the Bible doesn’t advocate just one specific way
in which we are to worship God.
Oh, there’s plenty of concern
that the one true God of Israel
should be the focus of our worship,
rather than the gods or idols of other nations.
And the temple in Jerusalem,
the central site for Jewish worship
from the tenth century BCE
until its destruction in the first century of the Common Era,
is the focus of many of the psalms of praise
in which the Israelites take delight
in journeying to worship God.
St Paul gives instructions for celebrating the Lord’s Supper,
so that it resembles a ritual more than a free-for-all feast,
and we know that followers of Jesus
met on the first day of the week
to celebrate the Resurrection
beginning almost immediately after his death
and that over time, as more Gentiles joined the movement,
this practice replaced the Jewish tradition
of worshiping on the Sabbath, the seventh day.
We know that there were “psalms, hymns,
and spiritual songs,”
and we can pick out a few of them
from the early Christian writings that have been preserved,
but the truth is that there was a variety of worship styles
from the very beginning.
So the Bible doesn’t tell us very much
about what our worship,
in our time and cultural context
should look or sound or feel like.

If you’ve done a little church-hopping
or church-shopping, as the case may be,
chances are you’ve experienced some of that variety.
But then again, those of us who grow up
in predominantly white mainline Protestant congregations
tend to stick with what we know.
And mostly what we know here
is variations on what today is called
Liturgical Worship.
Sometimes “high-church,” sometimes “low,”
Liturgical Worship focuses on proclaiming the Word
in rational and reasonable ways,
teaching and forming committed Christians
that they might grow deeper
in their understanding of the faith
and more mature in their walk with Christ.
God is most often seen as “wholly other,” transcendent,
worthy of honor and awe:
that’s where we get our word worship,
from the Old English “weorth-scipe.”
The formality of the “liturgical” style,
with its written prayers and order of worship,
its classic hymnody that engages the intellect,
creates regular patterns in the life of faith.
Each Sunday we know more or less what to expect;
each year we move through the same seasons
of the liturgical calendar.
And at best, the Spirit works through all of these
to form our minds and hearts
into the image of God in Christ.

Yet there are those who consider “liturgy”
to be nothing more than meaningless ritual,
rote memorization of prayers or Scripture ,
hymns that are old-fashioned and incomprehensible,
even offensive to the modern—or postmodern—mind.

And so, in the past 30 or 40 years,
the “Praise and Worship” style has emerged,
bringing high-energy music
enhanced by modern technology
to overcome the stereotype of worship’s cold formality
in order to appeal to the emotions.
In place of the classic hymns,
contemporary praise choruses are sung,
with a very different goal
than the rational teaching of Scripture or doctrine:
these choruses seek to create an environment of sound
in which singers lose themselves.
Repetition serves the same function
as a mantra in meditation,
transporting participants from earth to heaven
and shaping one’s life throughout the week
as the words and music come to mind again and again.

There are dozens of other styles of worship,
or variations within the larger categories.
If you’ve ever heard a traditional African-American sermon,
or heard someone speaking in tongues
at a Pentecostal church,
If you’ve smelled the incense in a Catholic
or Anglican cathedral,
or sat in the silence of a Quaker meeting,
you know that God is not limited to any one culture
or style of worship gathering.

But still the question remains,
why is it necessary
to do this weird thing called Christian worship
at all?

It might help to define more clearly
one of the words I used earlier,
and which we use regularly here at Highlands.
Although people commonly use the word “liturgy” or “liturgical”
to refer to a particular style of worship,
or specific pieces of worship,
the origin of the word, from the Greek leitourgia,
means “the work of the people”—
originally it didn’t refer specifically to religious work,
but could mean general public works
for the good of the whole community,
such as building a road
or engaging in legislative action. (p.14)
Whenever people work together
to serve the common good,
they are performing liturgy in its broadest sense.

Of course, the liturgy of the church
has traditionally focused on glorifying God,
expressing praise and awe before the Awesome One,
and humbling ourselves before God.
But I can’t help thinking
that there’s more to it than that.

For one thing,
surely we can express our praise
and humble ourselves before God
in private, just one-on-one,
without having to get up early on Sunday
and drive across town
to sing strange songs and perform archaic rituals.
Right?
That’s what folks who identify as
spiritual-but-not-religious
argue.
So there must be some purpose
in getting together with other people
and doing this all in a particular way,
for the practice to have survived all these centuries
and to be so universally affirmed
within Christian tradition
as a “means of grace,”
to use the language of John Wesley.

But secondly,
that idea of expressing praise and awe of God,
or humbling ourselves before God,
assumes a particular kind of understanding
of the relationship between God and humanity,
and in my mind,
overlooks a great deal
about the reality of our lives.

If the Gospel of Jesus Christ
is truly Good News,
then it must be good news for our whole lives.
And while there can be great spiritual value
in remembering that we are but dust,
and to dust we shall return,
in proclaiming that God is the Almighty Creator of the universe,
and nothing we do of our own accord
will earn God’s love for us,
there are other spiritual truths
that we need to hear,
details of our lives that need the touch of the Holy Spirit,
and seasons when praising God
is the last thing we feel able to do.

How we worship both reflects and shapes
our image of God.

Now, I don’t believe that God is some distant king
enthroned in heaven, far away,
demanding our submission
controlling the events of our lives
like a puppeteer holding all the strings.

And neither is God the stern school principal,
watching our every move
evaluating whether we have perfect attendance
or are breaking the rules.
(No offense, Brian!)

No, we have come to know God as loving and gracious,
revealed in the life, teachings, death and rising
of Jesus whom we call Christ.
God has come out to meet us where we are,
to live among us as one of us,
to love and serve people like us
and even people like those whom we despise.

And so, I believe God does not need our worship
in the way that a child needs our love;
God is much bigger than that.
The Hebrew prophets testify
that God is more concerned
about how we practice mercy and justice
toward one another
than whether we perform the prescribed rituals appropriately.

But God does meet us in worship,
whether we know it or not,
whether we feel it or not.

In some ways, God is the audience of worship.
That’s right, folks,
what Pastor Betty and the musicians and I
do up here in the chancel area
isn’t primarily for your applause or approval.
Rather, we come as facilitators,
prompters to you, as the people of God,
who are the ones performing the work of the liturgy.
All that we do is designed to draw attention
not to ourselves, but to God.
Not to ask you to admire our skill,
but to open a space
for all of us to enter into prayer
and to encounter God directly.

Yet even as we recognize
that God is a primary audience for our worship,
we do want the way that we express our worship
to connect with everyone present.
Of course, our goal is not entertainment
or individual gratification,
but the full participation of all
in a life-giving and redemptive encounter with God
through the gathered community.
For I believe that corporate worship
is one of the primary ways
that we can open our hearts and our lives to God
to be formed and transformed
into the image of God
as we die to the death-dealing forces of the world
and rise with Christ to a life abundant and eternal,
a life of justice, compassion, and love.

When we can bring the whole of our lives before God
and one another
in a way that is honest and humble,
both about our joys and concerns,
our failures and our successes,
our hope and our grief,
our doubts and our abiding faith,
then we may encounter God
in healing and reassurance,
in forgiveness and reconciliation.
We gather with the community of faith
both to receive the gifts and support of others
when we are lacking, lopsided, or losing ourselves,
and also because we are all vital ingredients
in this mystical, ridiculous, half-baked thing we call church,
and there are times when we ourselves
are the gifts that others need.

We come to encounter God,
not primarily, I think, as insignificant peons
before an all-powerful monarch,
But as children invited out
by the Spirit
to meet God on the playground
and to swing side-by-side/
Or as friends invited
to share a feast
at the table and in the home
of a loving and gracious host.

Worship also offers a glimpse into the deeper meaning
of all the ways we live out our faith during the week:
We practice hospitality in offering the peace of Christ
and welcoming all to the Communion table;
we care for one another in our prayers;
we repent of the ways we fall short of God’s will
and lament the brokenness of our world,
even as we commit ourselves anew to working for justice
and the realization of God’s reign on earth.

In taking the ordinary items and actions of our lives—
bread and cup, water, music, embrace, story, song—
and revealing God in Christ through them
during a time specifically set aside for focusing on the holy,
we learn to see how all of life
has the potential to become a sacrament:
preparing a meal, washing the dishes,
welcoming the stranger, laughing with children,
speaking out for justice, or holding hands with loved ones.

At its best,
worship allows us to bring our whole selves,
our whole lives, into God’s presence
and the presence of the beloved community,
to hear the Good News,
to know God’s love,
to strengthen one another,
to see the sacred in the ordinary,
and so to encounter God,
the Holy One who came among us in the person of Jesus
and who comes among us
as Word made flesh still today.

We come to remember who we are
and whose we are;
we come to remember our mission:
to live out God’s love
and so proclaim the Good News to all the world.
We come to remind ourselves
of the Story in which we place ourselves,
God’s Story that incorporates our individual stories
into something much bigger,
full of meaning and glory.
We come to let the word of Christ
dwell in us richly,
to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom;
and with gratitude in our hearts
to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

We come to see our lives whole
and to know that they matter,
to God
and to one another.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.