Saturday, May 11, 2013

Living into the wisdom of our worship: part two...

NOTE:  My worship notes for Sunday, May 12, 2013; part two of a worship

series re: Living Into the Wisdom of Our Worship using the guidelines of our Sunday worship bulletin:  a) gather b) engage c) reflect and d) bless.


Introduction
Here’s a question for you that just aches to asked on Ascension Sunday:  How do we present Christ to a consumer-oriented, sex-crazed, self-preoccupied, success-focused, technologically sophisticated, light-hearted, entertainment-centered culture?  I think Douglas Webster – a sociologist in the Protestant tradition – cuts to the chase with this question wondering if the American church of the 21st century even knows how to distinguish between authenticity and attractiveness – integrity or excitement – the way of discipleship and paths of perpetual distraction?

·       In his study of American popular culture and religious habits, Eyes Wide Open, William Romanowski notes that when it comes to movies, television, music, pornography, video games and all the rest researchers were unable to distinguish any discernible difference between those who follow Christ as Lord and those who do not. 

·      What’s more, as the largest evangelical church in the United States – Willow Creek outside of Chicago – discovered, there appear to be no significant differences between the cultural habits and practices of so-called conservative Christians and their more liberal cousins. 

Romanowski concludes that “the attitudes, desires and values of materialism are a powerful force in North American life (for the religious and non-religious alike.)  After all, while 40% of Americans say they attend church every week, 70% visit a mall.” (p. 178) Cut to my presenting question: How do we present Christ to a consumer-oriented, sex-crazed, self-preoccupied, success-focused, technologically sophisticated, light-hearted, entertainment-centered culture?

·      Another way of asking that question that isn’t so provocative might be:  how can we live into the wisdom of our worship in our generation?  How can we embody the counter-cultural values of Jesus?  How can we pass on our faith to our children and loved ones? How can we share the good news of God’s grace?

·      Well, a growing consensus suggests that worship is the best way to both present the upside-down grace of God in Jesus Christ to the world and pass on and train others in an authentic faith.  Worship – where we practice gathering together as God’s people – learning how to be centered in prayer and praise and engaging in God’s grace; worship – where we reflect upon the Word of God made flesh within and among us and then open our hearts and minds to all of the costs and joys of discipleship.

Worship is where we are trained in God’s ways – not the addictions of our atavistic culture – but rather a sacred alternative wherein the last shall come first, the wounded made whole and all sinners given a taste of God’s forgiveness.  That’s what today’s psalm is telling us:  when we are together as God’s people – clapping, singing, praising, praying, lamenting, listening and sharing – we are touched and nourished by joy.  Worship is essential to forming authentic faith…

Insights
But that’s not a popular thing to say these days: we are so captivated by the idol of consumption and the lure of self-fulfillment that many can no longer differentiate between their feelings about God and actually picking up the Cross to follow Christ as Lord.  Many believe that if we think and feel that we are being faithful, well then it must be true, right?

Small wonder that our Protestant Reformers “maintained a deep reserve about the self, about the reliability of human reasoning and… about human feelings and perceptions… The Reformers held that human beings should be loved but, because they are sinners, they ought not to be blindly trusted.  They granted that personal experience is powerful because it is intense, but they insisted that we should not allow this power to delude us into thinking that experience is always right.”  (Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, p. 71)

·      Did you hear that:  we insist that we should not allow the powerfully intense feelings we know delude us into thinking that they are always right?  That’s why we’ve started this series concerning worship – with a clear emphasis on how to live into the wisdom of our worship – because worship offers an alternative we can practice if we are paying attention.

·      And with the risk of offending someone – which is not my goal - I’ve found over the years that sometimes we don’t fully know how to pay attention to the very different parts of worship.  We DO them – we sing the hymns of praise, we say the prayers of confession and pass the peace – but we don’t really know WHY we are doing them.

And if we don’t know why these practices are important in worship, it is unlikely that we’ll know how to live into their wisdom once worship is over.  So last week we considered the wisdom of the first part of worship:  gathering.  It is all about being centered and quiet, open to God’s grace and then proclaiming with joy that we are the Lord’s beloved.  Remember when we practiced using water to keep us aware that “We are the beloved of God and our lives have meaning?”  Well, that’s part one of worship in our tradition.

Part two – engaging – is equally important but in a very different way.  If you have been paying attention to our worship bulletin, you’ll know that under the second heading – ENGAGE – there is another brief invitation that tells us this is a time to share our prayers – spoken and silent – with God and one another. 

·      Do you sense the rhythm in how these two parts fit together?  It is the inward/outward journey of authentic faith:  we come in from the world to be centered in God’s love and then in the safety of God’s embrace we go out into community with shared prayer.

·      Are you with me?  Do you have a sense of what I’m talking about here?  There is an ordered movement to our lives and worship when the Spirit leads us that is both inward and outward – almost like your breath - which is, afterall, the same word the Bible uses for the Holy Spirit, too.

Now there are three distinct parts to being engaged to God and one

another in this portion of worship:
  our prayer of confession, the assurance of God’s forgiveness and the sharing of the concerns of our community.  Each is unique, each requires practice for worship and each has a portion of sacred wisdom that we can carry and apply to our lives beyond worship, too.  So let’s talk about each of these elements and see where the Spirit leads us, ok?


When we pray our prayer of confession early in worship – using the spoken word as well as silence and song – it is a recognition of our sin.  Notice we don’t START with sin in worship – we begin with grace and joy – but because we’re honest sin is never far away.  It can be personal sin, social sin, horrible and unspeakable sin like was discovered this week in Cleveland, hidden and invisible sin as so often happens in war or just plain and simple, ordinary and seemingly inconsequential sin like white lies or bragging.

I rather like the way theologian James Gustafson describes human sin as having to do with "mis-placed trust or confidence, wrongly ordered objects of desire, and corrupt rationality and dis-obedience."  There’s no wiggle room here – and that’s important – and here’s why:

·      All people hate the notion of sin – and we hate being reminded that we are sinners even more – so it is easy for us to play games that go something like this:  We know that WE haven’t done things like Hitler – or Saddam Hussein – or the latest mass murderer – so WE aren’t horrible people.

·      And if WE aren’t horrible people – and most of us aren’t – then we really have no interest in thinking of ourselves as sinners because sinners are those who do horrible things – and that’s not us.

But that’s just where we get into trouble because, you see, sin is not a moralistic judgment based upon what we do.  It is not, as Eugene Peterson says “a word that places humans somewhere along a continuum ranging from angel to ape, assessing them as relatively good or bad.  Rather, sin designates humans in relation to God… sinner… (does not mean that we are) hypocritical, disgusting or evil… Rather sinner means that something is awry between us and the Lord.”  And it applies to everyone – Republican and Democrat, women and men, gay and straight, adults and children, rich and poor and everybody in-between.

How did St. Paul put it:  all have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God – all.  Is that clear?  Am I making sense to you here?  Sin is NOT so much about what we DO, but about our condition as people who not only miss the mark in our daily lives but willfully wander away from God’s love.

That’s why every week we have a prayer of confession – said together so that no one is left out and no one can pretend they aren’t included – it serves as a reminder that all have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God.  We also use the spoken word as well as song and silence to help us grasp, experience and own this truth.

·      Why is silence important during our shared prayer of confession? How does music take this deeper?

·       You know we use two key musical prayers – the Kyrie and the Lamb of God – and what are they telling us about sin?

The first part of engaging God and one another in prayer involves confession – but it doesn’t stop there because we could not own our sin if we didn’t trust that God brings forgiveness – sin and grace are united in our worship.  That’s why we always have an assurance of God’s pardon that is spoken by a worship leader and then affirmed by passing the peace and singing the “amen.”  As soon as I remind you that by faith God gives us all grace for the forgiveness of sins, I invite you to share a sign of this peace.

·      Why does that matter?  What do you experience at this time?

·      And what happens when we sing the amen after the peace:  why is this important?  Do you know what AMEN means?  Truly… we are using the sounds of joy in our bodies to affirm that beyond our sin God’s grace is more powerful and real.

In our worship, we ENGAGE first with confession, second with an assurance and affirmation of God’s grace and third with… sharing the concerns of our community.  These are more than mere announcements – this is a time when we give some shape and form to how we are living out our mission of grace and joy in the community – how the Word of the Lord is becoming flesh within and among us.  This is engagement in the most incarnational way – nothing abstract – just reality.

·      What do you think about that?

·     Sharing our concerns about mission and ministry is NOT the place for a mini-sermon nor is it the place to argue about a commitment:  it is a sharing born of the Spirit at work in the church – an invitation for you to go deeper into the work of grace in this time and place – ok?

In this morning’s text Jesus promised his first disciples – and by faith you and me, too – that we will receive power from the Holy Spirit to be faithful if we wait upon the Lord.  Our concerns of the community are the fruit of this waiting.  And like the scripture continues to say - after he had said this, he was lifted up as if in a cloud in the heavens… the disciples stood their gazing in confusion until two angels dressed in white robes said:  Disciples of Christ, why do you stand there with your head in the clouds – our concerns offer you a way to move into concrete action born of grace.

Conclusion


When I was an adolescent in church I hated all talk about sin:  not only was it depressing but I didn’t believe it applied to me.  I detested saying the prayer of confession each Sunday in unison and often asked my pastor, “Why can’t we just make our confession in silence?”  And he said, “Because we’re all in this together.”  For a long time I didn’t get what he meant but then, like the Apostle Paul said so well, “when I was a child I thought like a child and spoke like a child and acted like a child; but when I grew up I put childish things away.”

That is to say, after I spent way too long trying way too hard trying to ignore and excuse my own sin, I began to see how important it was to be reminded and called into confession every week. I need that to stay grounded in grace – to face my wandering nature – to sing it and share it and own it.  I need to cry out, “Lord, have mercy.”  I need to know trust that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.  I need to know that my sin has been forgiven – healed and cleansed and released – so that I can move back into the hard realities of life on God’s terms.  Not my terms.  Not the culture’s terms.  Not sin's terms – but God’s terms.  Once upon a time Jesus put it like this to his first disciples:

Everything I told you while I was with you comes to this: All the things written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms have to be fulfilled.  So he went on to open their understanding of the Word of God, showing them how to read their Bibles this way. He said, “You can see now how it is written that the Messiah suffers, rises from the dead on the third day, and then a total life-change through the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in his name to all nations—starting from here, from Jerusalem! You’re the first to hear and see it. You’re the witnesses. What comes next is very important: I am sending what my Father promised to you, so stay here in the city until he arrives, until you’re equipped with power from on high.”  He then led them out of the city over to Bethany. Raising his hands he blessed them, and while blessing them, took his leave, being carried up to heaven. And they were on their knees, worshiping him and were able to return to Jerusalem bursting with joy.

And what was true then is true now:  worship is how we best meet and present the fullness of God, learn how to trust it and share it in ways that are filled with joy.
 
credits:
2) blog.sketchinglove.com
3) www.havenplacemusic.com  
4) www.123rf.com
5) taolifestudio.com

No comments:

an oblique sense of gratitude...

This year's journey into and through Lent has simultaneously been simple and complex: simple in that I haven't given much time or ...