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Rev. Mark
Tusken Validation of the resurrection:
On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. Luke 24:1-10 I want to think for just a moment about a so-called scientific discovery that was made a few years ago. There was great news and fanfare in some of the newspapers and scientific magazines, because someone claimed to have discovered a process for cold fusion. Do you remember some of that? Cold fusion was a great hope for the world because it would mean an inexhaustible, non-polluting supply of energy. And then something happened. We didn't hear anything more about cold fusion, because as other scientists tried to replicate the findings, they couldn't do it. It couldn't be repeated. People began to realize that there really is -- at least at this point -- no process of cold fusion. Now, why would I bring this up when talking about the resurrection? Because it brings to my mind a principle that we all deal with in our own lives as modernists, and that is we base our lives on scientific, empirical data, whether we're aware of it or not. If you can't prove it, repeat it, or design a test that proves it, then it becomes suspect to us modernists. That's one of the problems we face regarding the resurrection. You can't repeat it, or offer a scientific proof for it. When we come to a day like today, those who don't believe are quite suspect. In fact, think about the different miracles that you are perhaps aware of. In the back of your mind, you might tend to explain them away, or to find some other possible explanation. I know that in my own life (probably because I'm a pastor), people have come to me and shared with me very intimate details of moments in their lives where they knew God was there and had touched them and changed them. I remember the first story that was shared with me. It was told to me by a much older man. You know what he wanted from me, as a seminarian? He wanted validation, that what he knew as God, was God. He knew that something had happened, and he didn't want to believe for a minute that it was by chance or accident. In my own ministry, the list could go on and on of the stories I've heard. I'll list just some of the miracles that I've encountered. There are persons in this church today that have survived car crashes, who know that God was there with him. There are persons in this church today who have survived plane crashes, and they know that God was there with them. There's a person I know in this church today who survived a shipwreck, and he knows God was there with him. I know a man who was swept out to sea with his two sons, and God was with them. I know literally dozens of persons in this church who have been touched by God and healed from some infirmity or some disease that had hold of them. There are babies that have been conceived; there are marriages that were in impossible places that were restored; there are lives that have been given direction; there are jobs that people have received at just the right time and in just the right way; and all of those, when they happened to those persons, they saw God's resurrection power there for them. But we live in a skeptical age. Even when God touches us individually, there's still that question that runs through the back of our minds: Was this really God? Because you can't prove it. You can't recreate that moment. The man who was in a shipwreck was in the sea for 1-1/2 hours, waiting for help, with waves six feet high and no other boat in sight. At just the right time and in just the right way, just the right person came and pulled him out of the water. You can't reconstruct that, but God was there. I think that if we're honest with ourselves, this skepticism so bombards us that it touches all of us. Even as a man of faith, it hits me at times. Some of you know the story of when I was at my second church. There was an older woman at the church who had had surgery, from which complications developed. It meant that the doctors were going to have to do some corrective surgery. She didn't want to happen, so she called me, the young priest of the parish, and asked me to come pray for her. I went, and I prayed, and I admit that I thought the healing would come through the doctors' hands that day. But I said the prayers, because she asked me to. I was skeptical. I drove back to the office, and as I came in, the phone was ringing. It was the woman on the line, although at first I didn't recognize her voice because she was talking so fast. Then I realized, she was saying to me that after I had prayed for her, and they were wheeling her down for x-rays before the surgery, she felt God touching her. She felt some shifting and movement in her stomach. When the x-rays were taken, there was no problem! She didn't need the surgery. I cannot prove that God is about the miraculous. But I know it. The same perhaps would be true about the resurrection. I cannot prove to you this morning the resurrection. I can't recreate it; I can't set up some sort of design that would show me a resurrection principle; but I've seen it again and again and again in my life and in yours. I want us to think today -- for the skeptics in our midst, and even ourselves -- about validation of the resurrection. The first validation of the resurrection that I would offer today is that there were eyewitnesses. The New Testament tells us again and again again, there were people who saw Jesus after he died, and he was alive. Ten times at least in the New Testament this is reported. He doesn't talk to the same people; he sees individuals, groups, people in twos and threes. At one point, he sees a group of more than 500 people together. I can't prove the resurrection, but the eyewitness accounts are a validation for me. How would 500 people come together? What would that have been about? Last week, when we met at the courthouse steps for the Palm Sunday celebration and proceeded to march down the street, there were about 500 of us. In my mind's eye, I can imagine a group of people who would listen to Jesus as a teacher. They had experienced the miraculous with him after his death, and had heard the rumors of his resurrection. They had come together, and all of a sudden, there in that place, he is alive. I can't prove it, but the eyewitness account validate the resurrection. Even the accounts themselves help me to understand how real it is. If this were a myth, and I was just making this up as a writer at the time of the New Testament, I wouldn't have done it like this. Who were the witnesses? Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women. Ladies, in Jesus' day, you were not aloud in the court room as a witness. Your testimony was invalid. Yet, each of the gospel writers take the hard step and say that it was women who first saw him. I can't prove it, but I believe the resurrection, because of the eyewitness accounts. Another thing: It's an embarrassment when you read the New Testament documents. Nobody recognizes Jesus at first. They think he's a gardener; they think he's a stranger. If I were going to write this story myself so that it would be believable, they would all be falling on their faces before him. It just doesn't happen that way. But the eyewitness accounts ring true, because they weren't expecting to ever see him again. Nobody has ever been that dead and come that much back to life. I can't prove it, and I can't duplicate it, but I know the resurrection is real. Secondly, a great proof of the resurrection for me is that there is no body. The Roman government had placed 16 soldiers in front of the tomb to stand guard, because the rumor had gone out. He had said that after he died, he would be raised up, and so the Roman authorities decided that they had better put a guard there, so that if the disciples tried to steal the body, we could stop them. The rumor spreads through Jerusalem, that Jesus is alive. All they would have had to do to stop that falsehood is to produce the body. But they don't, because they can't. Some people explain it away by saying that the disciples stole the body, and hid it so well. But think about that. First, you have the Roman guard; and second, each of those early believers went to their death individually because they were certain that Jesus was alive. One doesn't die for a lie. So, I can't prove it, but the fact that there is no body validates the resurrection for me. Thirdly -- and this doesn't hold much weight for us modernists, but I suggest it anyway -- in each one of the accounts, there are angelic witnesses who in effect say to the disciples, "What did you expect?! Why are you here among the dead, seeking the living? He is not here! He is risen, as he told you he would be!" It's almost as if God doesn't trust this great word to us mortals. We'll blow it. So the angels are there to underline the truth that he is gone, that he is risen. I can't prove it, but the angels validate it. Fourth, and this one's very important to me personally, there's a dramatic shift that takes place almost immediately in the lives of Jesus' followers. Who are all of Jesus' followers? They were Jews. What day of the week do Jews worship on? Saturday, in effect; from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. Why? What does the commandment say? "Keep the Sabbath holy." Immediately, from the time after the resurrection, the disciples begin to gather together for worship on Sunday. They broke a commandment. Because something happened -- not on the last day of the week, when God rested, but the first day of the week when God acted. I can't prove it, but the change of worship validates the resurrection. I could go on all morning long, but I promise I won't do that! I would simply say that also our own experience validates the resurrection. Is there any other belief like this? We could discover that Buddha didn't exist, and his teachings would still be important for his followers. Confucius and his beliefs could stand on their own without the man. Islam, without Muhammad, could still exist. But you take Jesus Christ out of Christianity, and the fact that he lived, died, and rose again, and without that we would have nothing. Our experience 2000 years later continues to validate that. I was telling Vicky this morning that I sometimes worry around Easter that perhaps no one will come to the services! I know that's a lack of faith! We all show up, because he is alive. Some of us in this room know that more than others. We can't prove it, but we know it. One last note of proof and validation: Jesus said, "I'm going to be killed. I'll be dead three days, and I'm coming back." And it happened. There is no body. The eyewitnesses have seen it. We experience it in our own hearts and lives -- not just this day of the year, but every day, when we have a need. I'll just close with this thought: Cold fusion -- does anyone in this room remember who it was who made this so-called "discovery"? I didn't even bother to Google it. The reason is, it doesn't exist. An idea like that, when it's not true, it comes and it's gone. But the resurrection -- that's real. That's the truth. That's why we are here today. |
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Rev.
Tony Welty How to be an honest doubter:
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if your retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach our your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. John 20:19-31 Last week, many of you who were with us will remember that Mark talked about very important things about our faith, the Christian faith. One of the most important things that he pointed out was that the center of our faith as Christians is a miraculous event. Many times, that is a problem for us living in the 21st century, because of the way we've been formed, and the culture that we've grown up in. For a lot of us who have been to many different colleges around the county and world, a lot of what we've been taught is that we cannot believe anything that we can't test and prove and recreate. For those of us who are operating out of the worldview, we come to the cornerstone of the Christian faith -- the resurrection -- and we may have some doubts. We might say, "You know what, I want to believe that this is true, and I want to share this with my friends and family, but I can't prove this is true. What that stirs up in us is maybe the same thing that was stirred up in Thomas. Because the center of our faith is a miraculous event, what that means is, we're people of faith. Because we live in the 21st century, and we're removed from the actual event of the resurrection, we are by definition people of faith. We believe something to be true, even though we didn't see it with our own eyes. If I would ask everyone in here today what the definition of faith is, we'd probably have a hundred different answers. One of my favorite stories is about a Sunday School teacher who was trying to engage her class. She asked a bunch of these little kids to define faith. A couple of them gave some answers, kind of sheepishly, but finally one of the little guys said, "I know what faith is." So the teacher asked him, and he said, "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." A lot of us have been in that place in our lives. We may have had a childhood faith, where we were taught something, and we said "yes, we believe it's true," but we weren't in the place in our walk with Christ where we knew it was true -- a place where we could say, "I know that I know that I know that it's true." St. Paul offers a different definition of faith. He says, "Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and being certain of what we do not see." As believers in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are by definition in that place of faith. We are certain that Christ rose from the dead, even though we didn't see it with our own eyes. Yet, many of us, at some point in our walk with Christ, have entertained doubts about something in our faith. Doubt, and an honest doubt, is much different than hard-headed skepticism. That is what I was referring to when I talked about being in college in a secular school, where we were taught things scientifically. Listen to what this one professor of philosophy from New York University said: "I want atheism to be true. I am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally hope there is no God; I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that." That is not an honest doubt. That's unbelief and skepticism. That's not where Thomas was, but that is where a lot of our culture is. What does an honest doubter look like? Thomas is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, doubter in the scriptures; but he's not the only one. We go back into the Old Testament, and we see Gideon, who doubted God's plan, because he saw himself as being too small. He was asked to go fight against a vast army of Mideonites. "Who am I, to do something like that?" he said. Gideon doubted, because of who he was. Peter doubted. When Jesus asked him to come out on the water towards him, he began to do it -- until he looked around at his own circumstances, then he began to doubt, and ultimately sink. There was Moses, who God spoke to in a burning bush, a supernatural event. Moses doubted God's plan for him, again because of who he knew himself to be. "Who am I, to do this great thing?" Self-doubt caused him to doubt God's plan for his life. Abraham and Sarah doubted each other. God said they were going to have a child when one of them was 100 and the other 90. They looked at each other, and doubted. "God, I don't see you pulling this off!" In each one of these cases, these were honest doubts, because of their outcome. These were people who were led to greater faith, not less faith. These were people who were led to a stronger belief, not a diminished belief. These honest doubters were led to Godly action. They were open to the truth; they heard the truth, and then they acted on it. That's the difference between someone like Thomas, an honest doubter, and someone who is just a skeptic, and says, "I refuse to believe what I don't want to believe." Doubt is a very interesting word. It comes from a Latin word meaning "two". To believe in something is to be in one mind about it. If you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, you believe it with one mind. If you disbelieve in something, you disbelieve it wholeheartedly with one mind. But to doubt something is to be in two minds about that one thing. You're held in that tension between belief and doubt. That's what doubt is. Oz Guinness has said that to doubt is to waver between the two; to disbelieve and to believe at once. In our culture, and certainly in our church, doubt usually carries a negative connotation. "Don't doubt; just believe," we often hear. The culture will say that about different things. But like Thomas, a lot of us in our walk with Christ will at some point want to know more deeply that Christ is who he says he is. And so we have those doubts. That's where we find Thomas. The scenario was, Jesus had appeared to the disciples and proclaimed his peace, and gave them their mission, which is a very scary thing. He said to them, "As my Father has sent me, so I now send you." But we have to remember what had just happened to Christ. His Father had sent him to be brutally crucified on a cross, and so now he was sending them. Christ then breathes on them with the Holy Spirit, and empowers them for their task. If he doesn't do this, they cannot fulfill their mission. And so, since the cornerstone of our faith is a miracle, Thomas needed to see it for himself. He needed to know that this is absolutely true. It's instructive to us that Jesus responds to Thomas and that doubt with grace and truth. The grace part is that he receives Thomas and answers his doubts point by point. "Thomas, come here, and take your finger and stick it in my wound," he says. We have no evidence that Thomas actually did that, but he did fall on his knees and say, "My Lord and my God." The apex of faith. Jesus also responded to Thomas in truth. After he had shown him, and met his doubts completely, he then said, "Thomas, stop doubting and believe." So there's grace and truth. Many people have entertained doubts in their with God. The great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky said, "It is not as a child that I believe and confess Christ; my Hosanna has passed through the furnace of doubt." It's not an infant faith based on knowledge, but going into the valley of doubts and emerging as an honest doubter on the other side as a stronger believer. Oz Guinness reminds us, "Too often, we forget that the great men of faith reached the heights they did only by going through the doubts." Doubt is not a place to stop and stay; it is transitory, a place that we move through to greater faith. As 21st century Christians, how do we manage doubts when they present themselves to us? There are three ways to do that, and that is to adopt the characteristics of an honest doubter. That first characteristic is that honest doubters are truth-seekers. They are not hard-core skeptics, who don't want certain things to be true. Honest doubters say that they want to know the truth, but just don't understand. "Lord, help my unbelief." That's an honest doubter. John Stott tells a story of one young man who came to his office after he had begun working and left school. He told Mr. Stott that he had stopped going to church, because he could no longer say the creed. He felt like a hypocrite, because he no longer believed it. John Stott asked him, "If I were to answer your questions to your complete satisfaction, would you be willing to alter your manner of life?" The young man smiled sheepishly, and blushed. Stott knew that his real problem was not intellectual; his problem was moral. It's not that he couldn't believe; it was that he didn't want to believe. He didn't want his life to change. That's the opposite of an honest doubter. An honest doubter is also humble, somebody who has a teachable spirit. If fact, that word for disciple is "learner." Thomas' doubts were met, and he was led to the apex of faith. He was the first disciple to really get it. Not only is this our Lord, but he is God in the flesh. Thirdly, an honest doubter is someone who has a servant's heart. This is someone who has received the truth and acted on it. Gideon acted on his faith. Peter passed through his doubt. Abraham and Sarah did as well. Moses did. Thomas did. They were honest doubters. The objective of any honest doubter is to grow in intimacy, and to grow towards an understanding of God and his ways. Hidden doubts are those doubts that we try to suppress and bury. The safest place for those doubts is outside of ourselves, and put them into the hands of God, and let him work those doubts through, just as he did with Thomas. Our God is a God of grace and truth. He'll confront us with the reality of truth, but he'll also approach us in grace, as he did with Thomas. I'll leave you with perhaps the greatest antidote for doubts, and that's to remember who we are and where we are. We remember that we are lumps of clay, molded by the hands of a loving Creator, the Potter. We remember that we are people who cannot even begin to fathom the depths of God, a God whose ways are not our ways, whose thoughts are not our thoughts. I want to share with you a doxology from Romans 11:33: "Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable his judgments and his paths, beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? From him and through him and to him, are all things. To him be the glory forever, Amen." |
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Rev. Mark Tusken Worship: A command, a reason, a way, a result
Psalm 100 This is a shofar -- one of the oldest instruments that has ever been played. It is a ram's horn, and sounds somewhat like a trumpet. There is a mystery in instruments, whether it be the shofar, or the oboe which we heard this morning, or the organ that we hear every Sunday morning. There's a reality that relates to the science of wind instruments. We know and experience the reality of the music made by these instruments, but we cannot explain the science behind them. New York Times columnist William J. Broad speaks of ancient instruments: "Flutes and their kin, including whistles, ocarinas, recorders and pipe organs [and shofars], are among music's oldest and most versatile instruments. Yet science has long had trouble understanding all but the most elementary aspects of how they work. Now, however, researchers are starting to learn some of the secrets. In a way, science is glimpsing the soul of a very old machine. 'These instruments seem very simple,' said Marc-Pierre Verge, a leader of the research. 'But from a physical point of view, they're very complicated, much more so than the piano or violin.' The key to these music makers seems to be turbulence. Jets, eddies, and waves of air pressure come together at the heart of wind instruments to form the complex vibrations heard as agreeable tones and appealing tunes." I would simply say this again: I cannot explain how these things work, but I know they are true. Just as we have been saying during Easter, whether it is the resurrection, or our mission work, we could never completely explain them, but we know they are true. The same could be said of worship. It's a mystery. I can't completely explain worship, but we all have experienced it and know that it's real. The 100th Psalm gives us four marvelous realities about worship that I'd like us to discover today. First in verse 1, we have a command to worship; in verse 2, we have a reason for worship; in verse 3, we are given a way to worship; and in the fourth verse, we have a result of worship. I must offer this one caveat, however: I have a lot to share today, because I've wanted to preach this sermon since I was five years old! Even as a little boy, in the Episcopal church that I grew up in, we had Morning Prayer most Sundays, and that meant every other week I was either singing or saying these verses. It was the first piece of scripture that I ever really memorized without knowing it. First, the command: "Be joyful in the Lord." You might see it in some of your translations as "make a joyful noise." That gets closer to the Hebrew. In the Latin, this is referred to as the Jubilate. Be joyful, and make that response to God. In the Hebrew, the closest phrase that you might think of is to "make a racket." I like that! There are different places in the Old Testament that this phrase is used to describe the noise of battle, or the energy and excitement of a crowd. There is a sense that we are commanded to come into a place where we acknowledge who God is. That is worship. We don't have to apologize for singing that out, or making that noise. In fact, I would suggest that at the heart of worship is relationship. We, with our God, and his desire for us to enter into that relationship. It's a place of intimacy, it's a place of love, it's a place of vulnerability. It's a tender place, a soft place. It's even a place that can make us uncomfortable. I want to read for you a bit from a book that describes the relationship between a mother and her son, and I think you'll see as I read the need for a relationship to have this aspect of communication. That's what happens for us as we worship. This is from a book by Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks called Three Weeks With my Brother. In it, the brothers travel around the world and write autobiographically about their lives. Nicholas and his wife are raising a son with special needs, and one night they have one of those heated arguments that married couple often have, and finally his wife shouted him down. "'Look,' she finally ground out. 'I know your year has been hard, but do you want to know what my year has been like?' She paused to draw a ragged breath. 'I wake up every morning, and I think about Ryan, and I look at my beautiful child, a child that I love more than life itself, and I wonder to myself whether he will ever have a friend. I wonder if he'll ever talk, or go to school, or play like other kids. I wonder if he'll ever have a date, or drive a car, or go to prom. I wonder if he'll ever get married. I spend all day driving from doctor to doctor, and no one can tell us what is wrong, and no one can tell us what to do. He'll be four years old in a little while, and I don't even know if he loves me.'" In any relationship, there needs to be this sense of conversation and intimacy. The rest of the story is astounding. The dad, Nick Sparks, at that point determines that he will help his son speak. He gives six hours of his life every day towards this project. "On the first day, after six hours of angry, frustrated, heartbreaking cries on Ryan's part, my son said in a tiny, whispered voice, 'Apo'". He had been trying to teach him the world "apple." "For a long moment, all I could do was stare at him. It had been so long, so exhausting, that I didn't believe he had actually done it. I thought I heard him wrong, and I said the word again, and Ryan repeated it. When he did, I jumped up from my seat and began dancing around the room, whooping for joy. I moved toward Ryan and offered a hug, and though he didn't respond to my affection, he said the word again." That's a moment of thankful worship and praise between that father and his son, as he is whopping and dancing around that room. That's the command for us, in Psalm 100. Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands. "The next day I worked with Ryan for another six hours, and that night I called my wife in Hawaii [that was where she was when they had the argument on the phone]. I apologized again for the argument that we'd had, and I put Miles [their other son] on the phone so he could talk to his mom. When I got on the phone again, I said casually, 'By the way, Ryan has something to say to you.' I put the receiver up to Ryan's head, held out a little piece of candy [that's how he was teaching him], and mouthed the words I wanted him to say, the words we worked on all day long. And into the receiver, Ryan said, 'I wuf you.' I love you. These were the first words Cat, my wife, had heard him say." You see, worship is about entering into relationship and expressing our love for the Lord. Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with a song. Now, there's a reason for us to worship. It's there in verse 2: "Know this, the Lord himself is God; he himself has made us." I still remember singing this as a boy. "It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." I would suggest to you the reason for our worship is that our identity begins and ends in God. It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. During the reformation, the catechism that came out reflected this identity that we have, our very being in God. One of the catechisms says, "What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God." Or this question: "What is your only hope in life and death? My only hope in life and death is that I am not my own, but that I have been bought by the precious blood of my Lord and Savior." You see, we find the reason for worship is because we discover who we are, as we relate to our God. There is this sense of promise that as we worship, God enters into our midst. When Bach was 48 years old, he acquired a 3-volume copy of Luther's translation of the Bible, and he wrote in it his own notes about how he was relating to those passages. Near 1 Chronicles 25, which is a listing of David's musicians: "This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing music." In other words, it takes people who love the Lord, and who are willing to offer their gifts, so that God is pleased with their worship. And this, in 2 Chronicles 5:13, which speaks of the temple musicians praising God: "At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence." When you and I enter into worship, and acknowledge our God, and begin that conversation of love, his promise is that he will draw near to his people, the sheep of his pasture. There is a third aspect in Psalm 100, and I can't exactly explain it, but we need to at least explore it. There is a way to worship. "Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise." I would suggest therein lies one of the keys to our worship -- gathering together. This was one of the royal Psalms spoken as people entered in to worship in Jerusalem. There is a sense in which we need to worship together, and we need to worship in sacred places that have been set apart for that practice. Enter his gates, go into his courts with thanksgiving and praise. I know that you experience God at the top of a mountain; I have too. And I know that you experience God at the seashore with the sun rising, as I have too. And I know that you can experience God on the golf course -- I haven't ! But there is something that happens when believers come together, and God honors our coming together. Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Praise and thanksgiving is there in the catechism, on page 857 in the Book of Common Prayer. I just want you to have these definitions of worship and praise and thanksgiving. "What is adoration? Adoration is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, asking nothing but to enjoy God's presence. Why do we praise God? We praise God not to obtain anything, but because God's being draws praise from us. For what do we offer thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is offered to God for all the blessings of this life, for our redemption, and for whatever draws us closer to God." I would also say that in this direction of how to worship, we're also reminded that worship is very personal. "As we call upon his Name." Now, I've been in some church services, and perhaps you have too, where we are drawing away from the names of God, and we no longer address him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Those places of worship fall flat for me, because it's not a moment of personal intimacy. It's not calling upon the name of the Lord. It's a generic expression of something, that for me at least, falls short of worship. We have a command, a reason, and a way to worship, and finally in verse 4 we have a result of worship. "For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his faithfulness endures from age to age." The best of worship also combines the new and the old. If you went on a picnic, you'd want to have fresh bread and aged wine. The two together make the picnic. You wouldn't want to have old bread and new wine. In our own worship, we try to bring the best of both of those together. The first hymn that we sang today comes from a hymnal that was written in 1551. It went through 68 different editions over time, and that is the last psalm that we still sing out of that hymnal. The old and the new are brought together, as the generations are brought together. Some of you were here for Good Friday, when Fr. Ted spoke. There was hardly a dry eye in the room, and especially touched that night were the young people, as Fr. Ted began to describe what it meant for him as an infantryman in Korea, and as a very young man, knowing that it was God and only God who saw him through the horrors of battle. As we come together in worship, we come to see the faithfulness of God from generation to generation. A church is always suspect to me that only has one slice of demographics -- the baby boomers go here, the gen-xers go there, and the old folks are somewhere else. That's a dangerous place to be. We need each other, and as we worship together and discover how God has touched his life as an older person, or how God has touched her life as a younger person, we're all built up. We're back to where we began, the mystery of our wind instruments, and the mystery of trying to describe worship itself. I would finish with these words: The music is Danny Boy. I cannot tell why He Whom angels
worship But this I know, that He was born of Mary And myriad, myriad human voices sing, Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands. Gracious God, let your joy be in our hearts this day, and forever, Amen. |
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