Isaiah 43:18-20 "More on the Meaning of Worship" (Part 2)

 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         In a moment, I am going to ask you to think about what church was like for you growing up, particularly if you grew up or had a young family in the 1950’s and early 60’s.  If that is before your time, I will try to fill you in on a few of the details.

         Perhaps you came from a Catholic family, and so you ate fish sticks on Friday – every Friday – and you attended mass in Latin because if you did not attend mass, you were on the road to sin and perdition.  You memorized the Baltimore catechism and did not find out until decades later that being an altar boy was not always everything it was cracked up to be.  

         Or perhaps you grew up in a mainline Protestant church – Methodist, Presbyterian, or Congregational.  Your Sunday School grade alone had 20 - 30 kids.  You sat in the balcony on Sunday morning and looked down on a sanctuary where every seat was filled and on Easter every man was dressed in his Sunday best and every woman wore a flowered hat.  You listened to the preacher lecture, the organ boom, and the choir perform. 

        Or perhaps you grew up in a more evangelical atmosphere.  You went to tent meetings and revivals.  You watched as dozens of men and women came forward for altar calls every week, and you sang with great gusto about being washed in the blood of the lamb. 

         Whatever your experience, however, there was a sameness to it.  It was an anchor of sorts and a source of comfort.  So take a moment now – and whole long minute – and remember what church used to be like…..

         Then one day, out of the blue it seemed to you, things changed.  Suddenly the priest was facing you and speaking English.  Nuns were playing guitars.  Looking down from the balcony, you saw more and more empty pews with every week that went by. 

         Easter hats and Sunday best gave way to baseball caps and T-shirts that said “Windham Soccer.” And the sameness was gone, and the comfort was gone.  It was like the rug was pulled out from under you.

         And yet, you were just expected to go along with the liturgical dancers and praise bands – as if all that change was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  And that was hard. 

         And it is still hard – not so much the change itself as the transition from what has been part and parcel of who many of you were as church people to whatever it is that the church will become.  And it is hard because you never really had a chance to say goodbye to the old, to grieve at its passing, to acknowledge that for the time that you were growing up, for the most part, it was good. 

         That is part of what I want to say this morning – that, for the most part, it was good.  Even though the church will not look or be that way again, it was good.  In that time and in that place, it worked. 

         And it is OK if a part of you wishes it could be that way again.  It is OK to grieve for what once was – as long as you do not become entrenched in that grief and longing, as long as you do not complain and grumble in the parking lot about how the church is changing.  Because, you see, the other part of what I want to say is that with God, with Christ, it is all about change.  

“Do not cling to events of the past or dwell on what happened long ago.  Watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already—you can see it now!”

        That is what the Prophet Isaiah said.  And look at those Old Testament characters, Abraham and Sarah – both in their 90s and enjoying retirement when – oops! - Sarah gets pregnant, and the two of them leave all that was familiar to travel to a new place and, in the process, to beget a nation.  And Jesus?  Well, everyone who came in contact with him seemed to change: The blind saw all the colors of the rainbow, the lame danced, and lepers were rubbing elbows again with family and friends.

         It is ironic, you know.  When it comes to advances in medical technology, we embrace them.  No more leeches for us!  

         And diets? We are all over the latest ones that US News and World Report rank orders when it is not rank ordering colleges and universities: The Flash Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, the Flexarian Diet, the Ornish Diet.

         However, when it comes to worship and church – when it comes to good health and food for the soul – oh, we resist transformation, we resist the new. 

         Why can’t the organ play every hymn?  Because many of our hymns are based on folk tunes and were never meant to be played on an organ. 

         "Why does the choir have to play drums with that hymn?" we bemoan.  Because African music is meant to be played with drums. 

         Why do we have to sing African music? We are Americans, after all.  Because the Christian church is not an American church, it is a global church of which we are a small but integral piece. 

         Why does the preacher have to talk so much about money and justice and peace and poverty?  Because money and justice and peace and poverty lie at the core of Jesus’ gospel. 

         Why can’t church be like it used to be?  Because our God is a God of Transformation, our God is a God of Change.  That is what we discovered and affirmed last week.

         And so that notion brings us, for the second week now, to the vital worship grant for which we are applying through the Calvin Institute of Worship.  The seven of us on your Worship Grant Team will be putting together a proposal over the next couple of months outlining a year long congregational study of worship that will include the tools we will need to experience worship in new and vital ways and the resources it will take to share our attempts at meaningful worship with the broader Raymond community.

        We believe that developing well-planned worship that engages our diverse congregation is one of our church’s responsibilities.  We also believe that such worship should be designed to potentially engage the larger community, especially (but not exclusively) those men and women and families who are seeking a place to reflect on their own sense of spirituality. 

         It is not an easy task that your Worship Grant Team has taken on.  You see, we understand that engaging the larger community is difficult because those on the outside do not have the same emotional attachment to music and style and worship as those on the inside do.

         This grant program encourages folks like us to explore what meaningful and vital worship could look like.  Now some of you will find that prospect exciting, and others will find it absolutely terrifying. If you fall into the latter category, hopefully I can put your mind at ease by answering a few questions.

         If we are awarded this grant, will we be throwing out all the old?  Of course not! There is such value in ritual and tradition.  If we are awarded this grant, will every service be new and different?  Absolutely not!  If we are awarded this grant, will there be opportunities to learn more about worship?  Will we be able to reflect on what we have known and loved about worship and what we might someday know and love as well?  Yes!  If we are awarded this grant, can we have a hand in creating worship here at church?  I hope so!

         Right now though, your Worship Grant Team needs your help as we continue to reflect on what makes for vital worship, for meaningful worship, for worship that touches not only your intellect but also your very soul.  Last week we asked you to respond to two questions.  This week, we have two more questions.

         Now, I know we preachers do not usually let the congregation talk in church (after all, worship is the preacher's show, right??  Ha, ha - just kidding!), but I am going to ask you this morning to look to your neighbors – to people sitting near you – and form little groups of 3, 4, 5 people and talk about these questions for 8-10 minutes.  Please introduce yourselves if you do not know one another. Write down your thoughts as you discuss.  Someone will then collect your responses. 

         The questions are:

           1.  1.   Why do you worship?  What is the purpose of worship for you?

    2.  When during worship do you feel closest to God?

          The questions from last week are on the backside of the insert as well.  If you were not here, the Worship Grant Team would still love to have your input, so feel free to write your responses to those questions as well – even if you need to leave the insert in the baskets after worship.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.), Raymond, Maine

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-8 "The Meaning (and Meaningfulness) of Worship" (Part 1)

 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         Our God is a God of transformation, a God of change.  Really!  Don’t believe it?  Look at the story of Moses that we have been reading together these past six weeks. 

         At the outset, Moses is a helpless Hebrew infant doomed to death by drowning in the Nile River.  Rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh, he is transformed into – tah dah - an Egyptian prince. 

         However, when he embraces his Jewish heritage and flees his adopted homeland, he is changed into one who voluntarily exiled himself to Midian for most of his adult life. 

         Then he encounters that burning bush high up on Mt. Sinai with the voice of Yahweh/God/The Great I Am booming from its midst, and he is altered into one who – albeit tentatively– answers a call from the Almighty.  And so he emerges as a reluctant ambassador of the Holy One.  

         Not longer after that experience on the hillside, Moses stands in Pharaoh’s court demanding the release of the Hebrew slaves, who had been, of course, the foundation of the Egyptian economy for over 400 years.  Moses, even with his propensity for stuttering, speaks with a power that he did not seem to have previously. Before our very eyes, he has morphed into a prophet, a mouthpiece for God/Yahweh/The Great I Am.

         And then we find him standing on the shore of the Red Sea –endless water before him and his motley crew of fleeing Hebrews, the mighty Egyptian army closing in behind them.  Surely they are between a rock and hard place – nowhere to go. 

         However, it is there that Moses emerges as the true leader of the Israelites.  He raises his staff, the wind gusting furiously about his head and whipping his robe in all directions.  With such faith, and in such great high hope, he looks to God/Yahweh/The Great I Am and, as if by magic, parts the waters and triumphantly walks the Israelites to safety on the far shore. 

         Once in the wilderness, Moses sees to it that the Israelites are fed and that they have water to drink.  He listens to their complaints and when that grumbling becomes even too much for him to bear, he is re-created once again – this time as the perceptive theologian, the one who realizes that, beneath all the complaining is a deep, profound – even existential - question:  Is God with us on this difficult journey, or has the Holy One left us in the lurch?

         Moses:  His whole life is a constant permutation.  In these stories in the Book of Exodus, we see him go from doomed and helpless Hebrew infant to voluntary exile to prophet to leader to theologian.  Our God is a God of transformation, a God of change.

         Moses has come a long way.  That is for sure!  And as we end this cycle of his stories today, we find ourselves once again with him on the heights of Mount Sinai.  He has left the Israelites at the base of the mountain as God had commanded him to do. 

         And there in the midst of trumpet blasts and thunder and lighting and smoke (smoke as might come from a furnace, we are told), all these dramatic conventions unfolding so that the Israelites would know that when they heard what Moses had to say upon his return, they would believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that the words Moses spoke were the words of God/Yahweh/The Great I Am and not a bunch of stuff he had made up himself.

         We often think that Moses obtained just the Ten Commandments up there on Mt. Sinai and that they were carefully written in King James English with Roman numerals to highlight each one.  However, according to our Biblical tradition, God presented Moses with way more than the Big Ten. 

         Moses received a whole system of laws that were the basis of the covenant or relationship between God/Yahweh/The Great I Am and the Israelites.  These laws are all described in a couple of chapters in the Book of Exodus as well as in the Biblical Book of Deuteronomy.  There are laws governing the treatment of slaves and laws about violence and justice and fairness.  There are laws about what festivals to celebrate and laws dictating the Jubilee year when the fields were to lie fallow. 

         Today, however, our Scripture reading does focus on the Ten Commandments – or, at least, on two of those commandments. 

I am God, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of a life of slavery.  No other gods, only me.

No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim.  No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.

and

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

        

         This particular combination of Sacred Law sounds like the basis of worship to me – a recognition of who God is and a call to observe a regular holy time, a sacred hour of praise and listening and remembrance and thanksgiving. 

         As a congregation, I hope that we can really carve out some intentional time to reflect upon worship and upon what makes for a meaningful worship experience – both this morning and in the weeks and months ahead.  To that end, our church is applying for a Vital Worship Grant through the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, “an interdisciplinary study and ministry center based in Grand Rapids Michigan that promotes the scholarly study of the theology, history, and practice of Christian worship and the renewal of worship in worshiping communities across North America and beyond.”  (Mission Statement)

         A small group of us here at RVCC have been meeting to talk about worship and to begin the process of creating a proposal for a year-long experiential study of worship and how we can make worship a more meaningful part of the life of our church family and the Raymond community. 

In addition to myself, our Worship Grant Team consists of Lori Lambert, Tom Wiley, Lois Waldron, Brian Walker, Karen Strange, and Martha Morrison. 

         However, before we as a church community can even begin to discern what vital and meaningful worship might be for us, we need to collectively understand what worship, in and of itself, really is. 

         Webster’s Dictionary says: “Worship is to honor with extravagant love and extreme submission.”  As worship consultant Delesslyn A. Kennebrew notes, “Worship is not the slow song that the choir sings. Worship is not the amount you place in the offering basket. Worship is not volunteering in children's church. Yes, these may be acts or expressions of worship, but they do not define what true worship really is….True worship…is defined by the priority we place on who God is in our lives and where God is on our list of priorities.”  To put it a bit more bluntly, for Killebrew at least, both our choice to come to worship and the care with which we plan worship says how much we think God is worth in our lives. 

         Church of Scotland pastor, worship consultant, and theologian John Bell reflects on the meaning of worship this way:  “I see worship (he says) as the offering of ourselves to God, and the honoring of God by intentional time and devotion – which may happen individually, but which also is expected by God to happen in the company of other people. Worship is a means by which, corporately, we celebrate our relationship with God.”

         He goes on to say that “in any relationship, there has to be variety… music is certainly one component; but there are other things that enable the magnificence of God to be reflected.

         Silence can be as important a part of worship as sound, and symbolic action can be as important as singing….There’s an arrogance in Protestantism (Bell says) which believes that the word of God is only open when somebody preaches it.  (However, he maintains,) people can be converted or illuminated or changed as much by what is sung or by what they do experientially as by what is preached.”

         He goes on to say that worship is a dialogue.  It is not just praising God, but also listening for what God has to say to us. After all, as Bell points out, God is not “some kind of sad deity who needs a liturgical tickling stick to help him to get through the next week.”

         Vital and meaningful worship is bigger than that.  It demands honesty (a recognition and affirmation of where people are in their lives) and imagination.  After all, if we are striving to enable people to “envision something beyond themselves then there has to be a use of symbol and color and movement and song and illustration, which doesn’t just speak to the intellect but which somehow gets into our very soul.” (Bell)

         Because most of us come from religious traditions where the preacher preached, the choir performed, and the congregation listened (or at least looked, for the most part, as if they were listening), the idea of experiencing worship differently may be a new idea.  As we move forward with our grant process, my hope is that we can embrace the new - not as an enemy of faith but as a catalyst of faith – thereby affirming that our God is indeed a God of transformation, a God of change, and knowing in our heart of hearts that we are called not to seal ourselves in the past but rather to be agents of this holy transformation and sacred change. 

         Our worship grant team wants each one of you to be invested in this congregational discovery of vital worship.  We value your thoughts and perspectives. We want to be sensitive to your questions and concerns. To that end, we have set aside some time in worship this morning for you to tell us about your meaningful worship experiences.  You each have an insert in your bulletin with two questions on it: 

1           1.   What worship experiences at RVCC (and elsewhere) have you found especially meaningful – and why? 

      2.  What is needed for you to effectively worship?

         We are going to take 10 minutes now for you to write down your thoughts about these questions.  There are no right or wrong answers.  We do not want to know your name. However, we do want you to be honest (you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings by what you say), and we want you to be specific.  The more details you can give us, the better.  We want to know the sorts of things that make worship a meaningful experience for you – and what you need in a worship service to feel that it has, as John Bell said, touched your very soul.

         So – write away, and after 10 minutes, two people will collect your inserts.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine 

         

Exodus 17:1-17 "Let the Waters Flow"

 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         From the very beginning, water is an image that figures prominently in the cycle of stories about Moses, the greatest of Israel’s leaders.  We have been reading these narratives for the past six Sundays now.  In the first couple of weeks, we found images of water in abundance while, in later tales, we encountered water in its seeming scarcity.  However, always the image of water has been illustrative of the power and might of God/Yahweh/The Great I Am. 

         Let’s go back to the very beginning of these Moses stories and see how water figures into them.  First, as an infant, Moses was set afloat in the waters of the Nile River in Egypt in his mother’s desperate attempt to save his life in the wake of the Egyptian king/pharaoh’s command that all Hebrew male babies were to be drowned.  By the grace of God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, Moses was found and raised as the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter.

         As an adult (a senior citizen actually), Moses confronted the Pharaoh and argued his case for the release of the Hebrew people from slavery. To punctuate these debates, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am sent a series of plagues upon the Egyptian people, not the least of which were a zillion frogs leaping out of the waters of the Nile and showing up in the most outlandish places – beds, buckets, cooking pots. 

         Another one of the disasters that befell the populace was that the waters of the Nile itself, the primary source of hydration, irrigation, and the fish industry for the entire country, turned to blood and became unusable.  “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,”

         And, of course, Moses led the freed slaves through the Red Sea to safety on the far shore.  Tradition has it that God/Yahweh/the Great I Am, in a swirl of wind, blew the waters apart, so that Moses and the Israelites walked across the seabed and barely got their toes wet.

         Once on the other side, however, the Israelites no longer found water in abundance. The image of a lot of water evaporated (no pun intended) and was replaced by its opposite, the image of water as a scarce commodity.  It is at this point that the Israelites’ penchant for complaining (grumbling as some Bible translations term it) really comes to the fore. 

         First, they complained about the bitter water they found at the oasis at Marah.  “Moses, what are we going to drink? The water here tastes funny.” So Moses, under the direction of the Holy One, threw a large branch into the stream, and the water tasted not bad really.

         Then the Israelites wanted food – and complained some more, this time a bit more vociferously.  They dreamed of a chicken in every pot – and a good loaf of bread to go along with it. “Moses, we were better off in Egypt.  At least we had food to eat and maybe the work was not so bad after all.  Why did you make us leave?” 

         So God/Yahweh/The Great I Am arranged for flocks of quail to fly down at night – theirs for the taking – and for that flakey substance called manna to appear like water – or dew – on the grass in the early morning, and their hunger is, for the moment at least, sated. 

         Today, when we meet this band of Israelites and Moses, their leader, they had been walking in the hot, arid, merciless desert for months now and were not feeling as if they were making a whole lot of progress toward this so-called Promised Land, the land of their dreams, the acres overflowing with milk and honey. 

         Did Moses even know where he was going?  Their feet were tired.  The kids were cranky.  The manna was boring because you could only cook that stuff so many ways. 

And most of them thought that if they even saw another quail, let alone noshed on one, they would probably scream – or do something worse.

         And besides that, they were thirsty – not just a little bit thirsty, but seriously dehydrated.  They feared for their children’s lives.  They feared for their own lives.  They could live on quail and that manna stuff, but they could not live without water – and there was not a drop of water in sight here at Rephidim, the god-awful place where Moses had made them stop for the night. 

         How serious was their problem?  Very serious!  It was like the two characters in Eugene O-Neill’s one act play entitled “Thirst.”  The play is about a couple of victims from a cruise ship disaster afloat on a life raft.

         One says, “This necklace...  is worth a thousand pounds. An English duke gave it to me. I will not part with it. Do you think I am a fool?”

         The other replies, “Think of a drink of water! (They both lick their dry lips feverishly.) If we do not drink soon we will die. You will take your necklace to the sharks with you...  For my part, I would sell my soul for a drop of water. “

         Values change as dehydration takes over.  So it was for the Israelites as well.  Once again, there at Rephidim, they grumbled and murmured and complained among themselves, and then a group of them approached Moses, all cranked up and madder than a flock of wet hens. 

         The appointed ones took Moses to task, and their demand was simple: “Give us water to drink.”

         But Moses said, “Why pester me? Why are you testing God?”

         Maybe that was not the most empathic way for Moses to respond. Maybe that was why a couple of them picked up rocks and tossed them threateningly back and forth in their hands – and continued to complain to Moses, “Why did you take us from Egypt and drag us out here with our children and animals to die of thirst?”

         Moses eyed the stones nervously, mumbled something incoherent but enough to put them off for a bit, and retreated for some personal prayer time and conversation with the Holy One.  “God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, I really need your help here.  What can I do with these people? They don’t trust me.  They don’t seem to trust you.  Did you see those rocks they had?  Any minute now they are likely to stone me!”

         In the midst of Moses’ fear for his life and generalized despair for his situation, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am unveiled a plan.  “Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. And go. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”

         And so Moses did, and so it happened.  And the Israelites were once again satisfied.  Their thirst was quenched.  End of story? 

         One might reasonably think so – the point being that God will provide if you whine long enough and hard enough – and carry a few threatening stones to boot.  However, the story really does not end there.  There is a far deeper truth to be teased out of it, and we need to look to the last verse of the passage to find it.  In a way, the final verse is the most important one in the entire narrative.

         You see, for all Moses’ shortcomings and steep learning curve as a leader, when push came to shove, in this instance at least, he was a great theologian.  We know that because before he and the Israelites left the next morning, he took it upon himself to rename this place that since ancient times had been called Rephidim. 

         Moses gave it a new title - Massah (which means “Testing-Place”) and Meribah (which means “Quarreling’) because of the quarreling of the Israelites and because of their testing of God when they said, “Is God here with us, or not?”

         Moses knew that the issue with which this band of former slaves had confronted him was not really about water.  Ok – it was true:  They were thirsty.  However, Moses knew that the real issue was about God/Yahweh/The Great I Am. 

         The conundrum was not, at its core, about having enough to drink.  It was about whether or not God/Yahweh/The Great I Am had left them in the lurch to face the terrors and difficulties of the wilderness on their own. 

         The question that is the essence of this story about water gushing from a rock is this:  As Methodist Pastor, Alex Joyner wrote, “In the midst of harshness and emptiness, is God really present at all? In the middle of muddles and messes and major disappointments, is God there or not?”

        And in this little vignette about water, the Israelites got what they had asked for – in abundance.  They got water.  It flowed from a cliff side.  And they got their deeper question – their real question – answered as well.  God/Yahweh/The Great I Am provided them with water but also provided with them with a profound reminder of that sacred presence in their lives even in times of trouble.

         As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens writes, “Their deep question is answered: yes, the Lord is among us after all. God really is reliable; God is faithful; God will not leave us without the resources we need to thrive.

         The story does not try to explain the water coming out of a rock, any more than the Bible tries to explain Easter after Good Friday. It just declares that God’s presence is sufficient for us to meet whatever a day may bring. God is a water-giving, rock-splitting, life-sustaining Creator who loves humans even when we complain and blame and gripe and grumble and fume.”

         Is the Lord with us or not?  That is the existential question. Is God here in this crazy mixed up world we live in? Surely, at one time or another, we all have asked – or will ask – that question – even if it is some 4000 years after the Israelites first raised the issue with Moses. 

         Isn’t that the underlying thing we all want to know when we have our backs to the wall and no place to go, when we are deep in the wilderness thirsting for something we can not seem to find?  Is God here or not?

         Isn’t that the question we ask when we seem so alone and life seems to be one meaningless chore after another?  Is God with us or not? 

         Isn’t that what we want to know when we are at the end of our rope and all we can do is cry out,  “Where are you, God?  Help me.”  Is God with us or not?

         And, you know, when we finally get to the point in our own personal deserts and wildernesses where we can honestly ask that question, when we can look to the Provider instead of only to the problem, the answer will come, the water will gush forth – from a rock no less.

        Oh, we all want definitive evidence that God is here – an amazing healing or an image on a piece of toast.  As Methodist pastor, John Holbert wrote, “Or how about fantastic church growth? ‘We began with a few families, and now we worship with 9000 people each Sunday; we know that God has been with us!’ You can imagine your own…equivalent of water rushing out of dry stones after the sharp whack of a magic wand….(But) what about those not healed,…those who worship with the same 25 souls each Sunday? (Because, you know,(and this is important)) even after the magic rock trick, (the Israelites) still ask, 'Is YHWH with us, or not?’ Well?”

         Maybe we will always question (Is God with us or not?) – and maybe that is OK – because maybe such questioning is part and parcel of being human.  Maybe we will never quite believe – but only can aspire to believe - that it works this way over and over and over again. 

         God finds a way to bring transformation, healing, life itself – no matter what we do, no matter how much we grumble and complain and approach the Holy One with rocks ready in our hands. In the end, when all the questions have been asked, all the grumbling and complaining has been made, when there is only silence, then, if we listen carefully, we will hear the Spirit whispering the words of the deep and profound truth that this little story about water from a rock illustrates:  In the end, “healing wins. Life wins. God wins. Love wins.
Again….And God brings refreshment to the thirsty.” (Kirk Moore)

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.), Raymond, Maine