Reflections on “What I Need from My church: Worship” Psalm 99

this sermon affirms the central role worship in the life of the church and our individual lives of discipleship. 

“What I Need from My church:  Worship”  Psalm 99;  SAPC, Denton; September 26, 2021; Fall, 2021 series

Introduction:  We continue our fall preaching series reflecting on what we need from our church.

As I mentioned last week, the question is not asked because we believe the church’s task is to give us whatever our hearts desire, but because the church’s task is to give us what we need to grow in our faithfulness and our discipleship.

We need worship.

As the pandemic began, we here at St. Andrew (along with lots of other churches)  asked the question:  what must the church find a way to do no matter what?

a.  We learned, of course, that we could do lots of things, but at the outset the one thing we believed we could not give up was worship.

We had to find ways to do it differently.

we  took a brief sabbatical from the Lord’s Supper until we could figure out how to do it;

we took a longer sabbatical from baptism until it seemed safer;

But from day one, we believed that worship had to happen in some form or fashion.

Years before the pandemic, John Westerhoff, a Worship professor, noted: “There remains to the church only one unique and peculiar responsibility:  the conduct of public worship.  If the church does nothing other than to keep open a house, symbolic of the homeland of the soul, where in season and out, women and men come to reenact the memory and vision of who they are, it will have rendered society and each of us a service of unmeasurable value. So long as the church bids women and me to participate in the liturgies of the Christian faith community, it need not question its place, mission or influence in the world.  If it loses faith or is careless in its rituals, it need not look to its rituals to save it.”  John Westerhoff

We affirmed that truth -  like the Israelites in the day of the Psalmist, we worship; like in the vision of heaven described in Revelation, we worship.

a few reflections on why we need to worship. 

Move 1: We need to worship because that's what God calls us to do.

a.  As some of you may know from some other settings, I have been fascinated for several years now about the role of worship in the Exodus story.

1. When God sends Moses and Aaron to talk to Pharaoh about why Pharaoh needs to the the Israelites go, the main reason given is so that they can worship God in the wilderness.
   

2.  If we back up to the why the Israelites were crying out to be rescued from slavery in Egypt, we get this strange dialogue – the Egyptians are demanding more bricks and more work from the Israelites, and the Israelites cry out, “let us go and offer sacrifices to God.”

3.  How do those two fit together?

4. Or remember the words for which Moses is famous "let my people go.” do you know what the next part of the sentence is? “Let my people go so that they may worship me in the wilderness” (Exodus 7:16)

5.  Loses some of the drama of the moment. No wonder they left it out of the movie!

6., and what do the Israelites do as soon as they cross the Red Sea and are in the wilderness? Break out into song and sing praises to God. They are free, let the worship begin.

b. Why do they need to go to the wilderness to worship God?

1. couldn't they have tried to get Pharaoh to let them worship God in Egypt?

2. Is this God's way of reminding the Israelites how important worship should be to them?

3. God in sort of a round about way saying, “hey your worship of me is so important I will lead you out of slavery!”

c.  I worked with a young couple several years ago as they explored where they wanted to go to church.

1. The wife had a Presbyterian background and the husband did not really have a church background.  I married them because of her background with the Presbyterian church. 

2.  They have their kids and decide it is time to start going to church.  

3.  They visit a very large church in the area. There is a lot they like about the church – lots of different programming; they can worship Sat. night; Sunday morning early, or Sunday late morning;  there is babysitting provided any time there is a function at the church.  They love the upbeat, contemporary music.  But, they never feel the sense of community they long for – too many people; changing faces each time they attend a different function. They never seem to meet the same people twice.

4.  So they try a smaller membership church. There is much to like about the church.  Each week they see the same people sitting in the same pews; the people are friendly and inviting;  they feel a sense of community and connectedness they do not feel at the larger church.  But, those traditional hymns are kind of boring and the formality of the worship (the minister even wears a robe) is less exciting that worship at the larger church. And, with worship only on Sunday mornings and Christian education only on Sunday mornings, their busy schedules with the kids make it hard to make it to church.

5.  So, they ended up going nowhere.

6. Interestingly enough, they have gone to church on-line some during the pandemic.

7.  We have lots of reasons to go to worship and lots of reasons not to go - most of which revolve around our schedule, the value we think worship give us, to 

8.  But do not forget that God calls us to worship. 

Move 2:  We need to worship because it shapes us as people of God.

1. I hear comments about why people come to worship.

1. “Get my week started right.”
1. after the long week, I need a place to come and get recharged.
   
2. Gas station model for worship – come and get filled up for the next part of your journey.

4.  Good stuff.  We like to hear how important worship attendance is to people.

b. But worship is more than being filled for the moment - worship shapes us.

1.  We take our liturgy seriously!

2.  whether you are here in-person or on the livestream, together we move through the same pattern of worship.

3.  It is an intentional pattern - meant to shape us.

4.  Part of community - gathering.

3.  Centered on God’s Word.

3. Response to God’s Word - offering, sacraments, minutes for mission.

4. This pattern gives shape to a life a discipleship - being a disciple means being part of community; means centering our lives on God’s Word; it means responding to God’s Word

c.  Sacraments

1.  Baptism - God’s claim on us;

 the role of the community in supporting us - when we stand with Regan today we live out our calling as a community of faith; 

the power of God’s Spirit to be at work in our midst - the mystery of splashing water on a young child’s head and declaring that we have entered the waters of baptism can only happen by the power fo the Holy Spirit.

2. Lord’s Supper - God’s gift to us of Christ;

the presence of the Risen Christ;

the table where all are invited and we are reminded of how we are connected in Christ.

We need to worship to be shaped as disciples of Christ.

Move 2: We need a place of worship because worship provides a foundation for what we do as a church.

a. Worship helps us put what we are doing as the body of Christ into its proper context.

1. Word moves us to respond.

1. Mission -NT Wright:  mission without worship generates into various kinds of do-goodery, following agendas that may be deeply felt but are by no means necessarily connected with Jesus” (The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, 208)
   

1. Of course, Wright also reminds us that our worship also leads us to act or else it becomes a form of self-indulgence (and might even imply worship of a God other than the one revealed in Jesus);
   

b.   Just as worship gives shape to who we are as disciples of Christ, worship gives shape to who we are as a community of faith.

Move 3: We worship because of who God is.

a. Donald Miller writes in his book Blue Like Jazz: When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe.” Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller, 202

1. Worship gives us the opportunity to engage and be engaged by the God who is beyond all our definitions. 

1. God has proved again and again to be worthy of our praise.
   

b. We work hard to make God accessible to people in our worship.

1. you don't have to wear a suit and tie if you're a man or a dress if you're a woman to worship God. 

1. In fact, if you are on livestream we do not even see what you are wearing, or if you’re sitting at rapt attention in your living room or hanging out on the back porch enjoying the fresh air.
   

1. We encourage bringing to worship so that they might discover God, and be shaped as we are.
2. Even have a time with Young Disciples to make God's word more accessible to kids.
3. We try to break down barriers to God.

4. we don't need a priest to mediate for us in our relationship with God (I wont' turn my back on you in worship).

5. Ironically, in that effort to make God accessible, we may also have taken some of the awe out of worship.

1. As we read Psalm 99 this morning, we read the words that would have been uttered in the worship context and perhaps feel some of that awe.
   

1. the Psalm is broken into three sections, all of which end with a refrain of praise (Bobby Morris, Adjunct Faculty, The Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies Jerusalem, Israel, Israel http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1534)
   

2. We worship God because the only appropriate response to the majesty and mystery of God is worship and awe.

Conclusion: In a world with lots of options for worship, lots of demands on our time, I am glad you are  in worship with us this morning.

I hope our worship has filled you and shaped you and given you the opportunity to turn to God and give yourselves over to the one who is worthy of our worship.  Amen.