It is like the video clip we just
watched (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZugkzkgjDk). People from different
nations singing together, walking the same path for a while, and working
together to build not only a church building but also the community that is
such an integral part of Christianity. And
music always seems to make the journey go faster.
It is like an experience I had on
the second day of my recent 60-mile breast Cancer walk when I had about 30
miles under my belt. The route had
entered a concrete tunnel that ran under the road above. It was the kind of place where the sound of
footsteps – my own as well as those ahead of me reverberated up and down the
length of the passageway.
When I was in the middle of in the
tunnel, a group of perhaps a half dozen walkers entered behind me and began to
sing. “You are my sunshine, my only
sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray….” Their joyful notes echoed
off the walls and bounced from the ceiling, filling the concrete channel with
glorious song. Music always seems to
make the journey go faster.
It is like when you were a kid,
perhaps in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, and your troop would go hiking. Inevitably at some point the way would seem
especially long and arduous. That was
when someone always started a song. “I
love to go a’ wandering along the mountain track, and as I go I love to sing …” Music always seems to make the journey go
faster.
And so it was in ancient times when
Jews would travel great distances to Jerusalem.
When their feet were tired and there were still miles to go before they
reached Zion, they would sing because music always makes the journey go
faster. And many of the songs those men
and women sang are the psalms that we still read even to this day because they
are found in our Bible.
Psalm 84 is one of those songs. It is called a Psalm of Pilgrimage because it
was first sung when groups of people from all over the surrounding areas made
their way over grassy hills and through desert valleys to the Holy City. This psalm most likely originated in the golden
moments of Israel’s history, when the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were for a
brief time united, perhaps when the great King Solomon sat on the throne.
Every
year crowds of people would flock to Jerusalem, making their way from every
part of the outlying territories, attempting their pilgrimage to the Holy City
so they might worship at the Temple and be in the presence of Yahweh/God.
Baptist pastor Randy
Hyde describes the journey this way: “You are an ancient Jewish pilgrim, on your way to
Jerusalem... Zion, the Holy City. Can’t you just feel the sand between
your toes? You have never visited this holy place before, and the
anticipation of doing so has raised in you an excitement you haven’t felt in a
long, long time, if ever.
You are not alone, of course.
It is far too dangerous to travel in this part of the world by yourself.
You are in an entourage of fellow travelers, which means you are able to
share your excitement and anticipation with others. All conversations are
about what you will do when you reach Jerusalem, where you will go, why you
have decided to come.
Obviously, you have to tend to
practical matters. You talk with the others about where you will stay,
how much it will cost, whether you will have any funds left over with which to
buy souvenirs. But once these kinds of conversations find suitable
solutions, or at least possible answers, your thoughts always go back to the
reasons why you have come in the first place.
The chances are, your purpose has to
do with a religious festival of some kind. Perhaps it is Passover, or it might
be the Festival of Lights. The Jewish calendar afforded the faithful
numerous opportunities to come to the Holy City and live out the mountaintop
experience of praising God with like-minded believers. As you travel,
your thoughts are not on the incessant heat, the dust, the varmints, the
thirst, the danger... you are thinking of one thing and one thing only: your
destination.
All the elements of this stimulating
journey give rise to an emotion you have never felt before, and your heart
breaks into a spontaneous song...
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, yea it faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Soon, your fellow travelers pick up
the refrain of your singing, and join in.
It becomes the hymn, the chorus, that signifies for all of you the very
reason for your pilgrimage, not just to the Holy City, but to the very heart of
God.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
Wow!
Imagine having a group of people like that coming to church each
Sunday – men and women so passionate, so excited to be sitting in these hard
pews praising God, feeling as close to God as they do to one another. Surely that is a preacher’s nirvana dream!
A Sunday School
teacher once asked her older students to talk about what going to church meant
to them. It took a while to get past the
silly, attention getting responses to answers that were more serious and
heartfelt. Finally, one young woman
spoke up and said, “Coming to church is like walking into the heart of God.” Coming to church is like going home. No wonder those ancient Israelite pilgrims joyfully
sang as they traveled to the Temple.
Better is
one day in your court than a thousand elsewhere… One day spent in your house, this beautiful
place of worship, beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches. I'd rather
scrub floors in the house of my God than be honored as a guest in the palace of
sin….as
one modern Biblical translation expresses it.
Oh, that worship in
our modern times might generate such enthusiasm and passion! Yet, we all have seen the statistics. According to national
studies, if we are a typical congregation, seventy two percent of us will go
away feeling that we have not encountered God and that our lives are not much
changed from when we walked into this sanctuary this morning. Is it any wonder that worship attendance has
dropped significantly over the past few years in all mainline churches if most
people feel that worship is no more significant an experience than a Sunday
morning athletic contest or a second cup of coffee and the newspaper?
How do you
feel about attending church? Do you love it? Do you look forward to coming to
church? Do you get a thrill out of coming to worship? Do you miss it when you
can’t attend? (www.tillhecomes.org)
Those are all questions that this Psalm ought to raise for us.
Someone
once said that “at church we
get a glimpse, a foretaste, an appetizer for heaven. If you are looking forward
to heaven, then you should also look forward to attending church.”
Of
course, most folks out there still in their jammies think of church as a place
where you have to show up - on Sunday morning, no less - to fake a few
smiles, listen to dirge-lie organ music, and half-heartedly sing a few songs,
and then, to top it off, suffer through a long-winded sermon…Given those
presumptions, they can not help but have some sort of idea that heaven is going
to be one long, unending church service., a never-ending sing-along in the sky,
a celestial organ playing one old hymn they never knew after another, forever
and ever, amen.
And
most people, when they conjure up that image, want nothing to do with it. They
think, “That’s it? That’s heaven? That’s the good news?” We know we don’t want to go to hell, but
we’re not sure we want to go to heaven either.”
(www.tillhecomes.org )
Well,
I certainly do not believe that is what heaven will be like, and I also do not
believe that is what worship should be like either. Like most churches, we stand at a crossroads
in this congregation. We are at a
pivotal point in deciding who we are and who we want to be.
I
attended a clergy workshop here in Maine this past spring, and the new President
of Bangor Theological Seminary was speaking.
He began by asking us 30 or so pastors of local churches if, given the
current demographics of our congregations and presuming no significant changes
occurring, how many of us believed that our church would still be in existence
in 20 - 25 years. Only one person raised
a hand.
What
does it mean to “do church right?” What
does it mean to make this place – our sacred place – feel like home to not only
those who have been members for decades but also to those who walk in for the
first time? These are the questions that
as a congregation we need to grapple with if we are truly committed to growth
and particularly if we see that growth coming from young families.
As
your pastor, I do not have all the answers here – and it would not work even if
I did – because this is not my church – it is our church – and
unless we are all committed to flexibility and change, whatever I might say or
believe is not going to fly anyway. You
see, “doing church right” is not solely my responsibility, but it is the
responsibility of each and every one of us.
However,
as your spiritual leader, I will throw out a couple of things to think
about. Overarching this concept of
“church done right” is the fact that change is inevitable. Even if we do nothing and if our church is
still around in 20 years, it will look different than it does today. That is a given. Either we will have done church right and we
will be thriving, or we will have a dying congregation.
I
believe that “doing church right” is going to involve acting in ways different than
the manner our church has acted within our collective memory. ”Doing church
right” is going to involve thinking outside the box. So –
here are some thoughts and questions to mull over and talk about with your
families and church friends.
First,
those young families we hope to attract were raised in a different world than
we were. The Portland Press Herald ran
an article this past week on the Beloit College Mindset List which chronicles
the social landscape as seen by incoming first year students. Two items struck me – and they characterize
those young families we are talking about as well.
One
was that the class of 2016 “has no need for radios, watches television
everywhere except on actual TV sets, and is addicted to ‘electronic
narcotics.’” They communicate through
Facebook and other social networking sites.
They listen to podcasts. They
blog. They are used to interactive and
instantaneous communication. As a group, they do not sit in
pews and listen to someone speaking at them and sing songs that reflect a
theology that is foreign to them.
The
other item that struck me is that they are much less likely to identify with a
specific religion. Biblical terms that
are so common to us, such as “forbidden fruit” and “Good Samaritan” are unknown
to most of them. They do not come with
strong church backgrounds. Many of them
come with no religious background at all.
In a “church done right”, how do we make them feel at home in our sacred
setting, part of our blended and diverse congregation?
Second,
I would caution us all that making someone who ventures into worship feel at
home is far more than a welcoming smile and an invitation to coffee hour. It also involves feeling at home – or at
least engaged - during the full hour of worship. The generation we are seeking to attract does
not care how things were always done because many of them do not know how
things were always done. Those who
venture into churches are interested in having their children learn the social
values they do not often learn in school.
They are interested in changing lives and are not sure, but do wonder,
if perhaps a church might be the way to do that. They have an ongoing passion for issues of justice
and for peace. They want to talk about
them. They want their worship experience
to reflect a commitment to them. They
want to act upon them.
They
are seekers, perhaps trying to make sense of the real truth behind those oftentimes
hard-to-believe Bible stories. They are
intent on deepening their relationship with God but perhaps in ways that are
different and foreign to us. They do not
come to worship so much to be comforted as to be challenged. They
sing different songs. They make music
differently. They think that the organ
is an outdated instrument. In a “church
done right”, how do we make them feel at home in our sacred setting, a part of
our blended and diverse congregation?
Finally,
I wonder whether people need to connect to this community through formal
membership or even Sunday morning worship at all? In a “church done right”, is the size of the faith
community determined by the number of people who enter the sanctuary on Sunday -
or might it be determined by the number of lives that church regularly touches? How important is worship to the overall life
of a faith community? Right now, most
people who do not attend worship regularly also do not play an active role in
this faith community. But could people
play an active role and not participate in worship? Or would they be considered second-class
citizens, so to speak. I don’t
know….something to think about.
These
are the types of questions your Core Group on Growth will be raising with you in
the next month or so. It is an exciting
time for us – and certainly a journey to find the truly holy places in our life
together – and so I challenge you to become engaged in the process. And if it seems overwhelming or
beyond your comprehension, remember that we need you on this journey –
whether you are 28 or 88.
And
remember that we do not journey alone or without a GPS. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us and the
Gospel Message and Way of Jesus as a reference point before us, ready to lead
us home to God, so that our hearts can sing as the ancient Israelites did
before us:
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, yea it faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
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