Wednesday, February 16, 2011

6. Being Presbyterian -- The Lifeblood of Worship

 
      What is the most boring experience you’ve ever had in your life?  Perhaps it’s a bit oxymoronic to ask you to try to REMEMBER your most boring experience.   I remember as a young kid, may around the age of 8, that we would visit my grandparents on my mom’s side.   Often during a visit, we’d go downstairs into the basement where my grandfather would give a slide show of my grandparent’s trips around the old country of Hungary.  Cartridge after cartridge of slides.  At the age of 8, it was pulverizingly boring.
I’m not going to beat around the bush.  What I really want to know is whether you have EVER fallen asleep in worship.  Of course we’re not talking about any time in the last 13 months.  But BEFORE that, has there ever been a time, during an anthem,  perhaps during an extended prayer, during the offertory, or yes, during the sermon, when your eye lids got the best of you and you suddenly nodded off?   
While that may have happened to you – and I confess it HAS happened to me – I STILL will make the claim this morning that the hour or so that we spend in worship each week is the most extraordinary, life-giving hour of our week.  It is the hour when together we meet our creator God and through the gift of the Holy Spirit Christ is present among us.   As Psalm 95 exclaims, 
1O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
6O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
As we draw near the end of our series on what it means to be a Presbyterian, I want to spend one sermon exploring what our worship means to us and why we worship the way we do.
A first surprise to get out of the way is the idea that we worship on the sabbath.   We were in Genesis chapter one last week and you’ll remember that God created on days one thru six and then RESTED on the seventh days.     So the people of Israel were commanded to “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”  Our Jewish friends observe the sabbath beginning at sundown on Friday and then carry it into Saturday, the LAST day of the week. 
Christians, on the other hand, moved the sabbath and our principal day of worship to Sunday which is, of course, the FIRST day of the week.   We do this because we are worshipping God on the day of resurrection – the day that Christ was raised. 
In our reading from Acts, we hear “On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them”.  This is the first mention in scripture of the Christian practice to meet for a meal and worship on the first day of the week.
      Our Presbyterian form of worship, like much else in our denomination, grew out of the Protestant Reformation.   If you walked into a cathedral 500 years ago before the Reformation began, as a worshipper, you would encounter a screen in the front of the church which separated the priest from the people.  The priest would be facing the cross and would be saying the mass in Latin, a language most people didn’t understand.   And while the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, was celebrated at each service,  most of the people actually only received the bread once a year.  Only the priests ever took the wine.
      In Geneva, John Calvin took steps to reform worship so that it centered on the Word in scripture and the Word proclaimed in sermons.  The reformers had translated the Bible into local languages so that for the first time the common people could read the Word of God.   And when the pastors read from the Bible or preached the word, they did so in German or French or Dutch or English or whatever local language was appropriate.  Benches were placed in churches for the first time so that people could sit and listen to the Word.  It was revolutionary.
A key idea of the Reformation which we haven’t spoken of is that of the priesthood of all believers – which is the idea that all of us are ministers in God’s service.   So the Reformation saw for the first time the involvement of the lay people in worship.  The screen separated the chancel from the rest of the church was removed.  And Elders and Deacons participated in worship – just as we do now.  So imagine.  As a medieval worshipper, you NEVER received the wine during commuion.  Only the priest did.  But in the new Protestant churches, the congregation received both bread AND wine during communion four times a year.  And the elements were often distributed by elders, lay people.   
Calvin developed an order of worship that we largely follow today.  Calvin’s order has four parts:  gathering, proclamation of the Word, the Lord’s Supper, and the sending.  In our bulletin, if you look at the headings that are centered on the page and have the squigglies on either side, we have five parts of worship:  “The Community Gathers” “The Community Worships” – Calvin would fold these first two together. 
Then we have  “The Word is Proclaimed,”  “The People Respond” (which is where we have the Lord’s Supper like Calvin) and then “The Community Departs to Serve.”     
I’m not going to talk about every single element of our worship service, but I do want to point out a few key things about what we do and why.  Our first heading in our bulletin is actually probably mislabeled.  We say:  “The Community Gathers.”   But it would be more appropriate to say “The Community IS Gathered.”  That’s because we don’t believe we come together of our own accord.  God calls us to worship.    That is the reason why in the Call to Worship I prefer to use actual scripture, and typically a Psalm, rather than just my words – to emphasize that it is God, not a pastor or any other member of the church who calls us together.  
We spoke about sin last Sunday and noted how the prayer of confession is an important part of our service.  But you will always hear in our CALL to confession, as Carol offered it,  not just the call that we confess our sin, but the acknowledgement that we do so before a merciful God who by grace alone forgives our sins.   So while sin is serious, it isn’t the last word.      
      The next main block of worship is the Proclamation of the Word.  We first read from the Bible because it is the fullest and most reliable form of God’s self-revelation.     In Presbyterian tradition it is appropriate every Sunday to read from a Psalm, a Hebrew Bible or Old Testament reading, a gospel and an epistle.  We usually have three out of four, when you include the Call to Worship. 
Our habit is then to follow the scripture reading with an anthem.   We believe that music itself can be a form of proclamation.   One line we walk as Presbyterians is that while we enjoy enormously music when it glorifies God, we seek to avoid cases where we are praising the musician instead of praising God.   That’s the reason why in many churches, including ours, the choir is seated in the rear of the church.  And it’s also why in part our style of worship is often a bit more reserved and gives us the reputation as being the “frozen chosen.”  But I believe that there are many ways to express our devotion to God.  And I welcome applause or other outward expressions in church.  Can I get an Alleluia from the people?
      Now my wife knows that I’m going to say this.  There’s a custom in the black church in which people, when they feel particularly convicted by what the pastor is saying or by an anthem or other piece of music, they may suddenly STAND, stand to show their solidarity with that Word and praise of God.  Now my wife hasn’t done that yet which, frankly concerns me.  But I KNOW she has wanted to on a few occasions, but she wasn’t sure that you were ready for that!  So now if you see Janet suddenly stand, you know what’s going on!
Which brings us to the sermon.  We believe that when the pastor diligently studies the scripture and prays, the Word proclaimed IS the Word of God.  As a pastor, that’s a very daunting idea.   Fred Craddock, who is a tremendous preacher, recounts one of the times he gave a sermon that he thought was downright bad.   But at the door, a parishioner said to him that it was the best sermon they had heard and that it really touched them.  To which Craddock, who says he just couldn’t help himself, blurted out “You must be joking!”  But that just points out that God is able to use the words brought by God’s very fallible servants and use them for God’s purposes.   So whether it be the gospel of Acts or some other flaw, God is able to use us all.  
      After the proclamation of the word, Calvin’s next section was the Lord’s Supper.  We term this next section, “The Community Responds” because this section could include the Lord’s Supper, a baptism, a hymn, our offering, and prayers of the people.
      When it comes to the sacraments, the Catholic Church in Reformation times and today observe 7 sacraments – the Lord’s Supper, Baptism, penance, marriage, anointing of the sick, confirmation and ordination.  Calvin opted to retain the only two that were commanded by Jesus – the Lord’s Supper and baptism.
      As Presbyterians, we understand the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grace.   We believe that people can be baptized at any time in life.  We do practice the baptism of infants because it reflects the theological view that God is the initiator in all things.  Before an infant can do anything, like Brendan Marti last week, God claims Brendan and adopts him into the family of faith.  The child’s active choosing of their faith is critical, and we do that in our tradition through confirmation.  But if there are any older youth or adults here who have never been baptized, that is a JOY and I’d love to talk with you about that.
The Reformation brought in a dramatically different understanding of the Lord’s Supper.   In the Catholic tradition, this is an altar.  What do you do on an altar?  You make sacrifices.  And in a Catholic church, you will always see Christ hanging on the cross.  Catholics believe that during the mass, the priest re-enacts the sacrifice of Christ and the bread and wine are LITERALLY transformed into the body and blood of Christ.  Christ is believed to be crucified anew during each mass.
      For Presbyterians, like other protestants, we don’t have an altar, but instead a Communion Table and an empty cross.  We believe that Christ made a one-time sacrifice for all time on the cross which need not be repeated.  What we celebrate at communion is God’s act of resurrection – hence the empty cross.  
Now within the Reformed family, there’s a range of interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.  Our Lutheran friends follow the Catholic understanding that the bread and wine are literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ.   Some other Christian bodies believe that Christ is present only symbolically in the supper.  Presbyterians are in the middle.  We do not believe the bread and wine become literally the body and blood of Christ, but we also don’t believe that it’s all just symbolic.  We believe that in the course of communion, by the work of the Holy Spirit, and this is a mystery, Christ is truly present among us and nourishes and sustains us through the sacrament.
      The offering is a part of the people responding to the Word of God.  People offer themselves to God in many ways, with gifts of time and talent.  And that is crucial.  But we also believe that an important part of following Jesus is to dedicate a part of our earnings to the ministry of God.  We embrace the practice of tithing, giving 10% of our income.  Some people in the congregation tithe, others do not.  We value tremendously all gifts and recognize the different circumstances that people face.  But I also want to encourage everyone in your efforts of putting God at the center of your life.  We’ll celebrate that in a few minutes when we bring our offerings and pledges forward.
The final act of worship is the sending.   Worship for us as Presbyterians is not just a head and heart thing.  It’s also a hands thing as it calls us to respond in service to the world.   Worship which has no connection to the outside world isn’t true worship.
Paul taught and preached well into the night.  And poor Eutyches just couldn’t stand it any longer.  He fell asleep, and then fell three stories.  They thought he was dead, but no, he was very much alive. 
We have been gathered here.  We may at times get a bit drowsy.  We may seem a bit frozen at times, but by the grace of God, we are very much alive. 
I would argue that we are never MORE alive than when we join together to sing to the Lord, to worship, to hear the Word proclaimed – and then to leave and carry this precious Holy Word out into the World.
                                                                                                 Amen