"In Spirit and In Truth"

Sermon Transcript for March 11, 2001

By Rev. Mike Beck

Scripture Reading: Psalm 150

 

In Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John, Chapter 4, He makes this statement in the 24^th verse. He said to the woman, "God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Coming out of church, a lady asked her husband, "Do you think Mrs. Johnson is tinting her hair?" "I didn’t even see her," replied her husband. "And that dress that Mrs. Hansen was wearing," continued the woman. "Really, don’t tell me that you think that’s proper apparel for a mother of two!" To which the husband said, "I’m afraid I didn’t notice that either." "Oh, for heaven’s sake," replied the woman. "A lot of good it does you to go to church!"

Friends, that humorous story has a great deal to teach us as we reflect together today about what is to be taking place when we come together on a weekly basis for what we call worship. Allow me to share some personal examples as "food for thought" concerning this matter of "worship". It’s always a struggle for a pastor prior to worship because, hopefully, pastors like people and will enjoy visiting with people and so forth. But as you try to do that, invariably somebody will bring up some business matter connected to the church and totally throw your thinking off of what’s going to be taking place in the next hour. Or you’ll have a person say, "I’m having a hard time worshiping today because the chancel furniture was arranged differently than normal." Or I’ve had this happen, you poured yourself throughout the week into your sermon, and you felt that it was a wonderful, spirit-filled service. But it ran five minutes over. And a person at the door says to you, "Preacher, don’t you own a watch?" And, it kind of kills the inner spirit at least.

In the introduction to this week’s Christian Believer series, their lesson, are these words. I’m going to put them on the screen and I’d like for you to read them with me: "The primary calling of believers is to worship God. The primary business of the church is worship. When we truly worship, we regain the finest part of what we are, the image of the divine." Continue reading with me. "Worship is the heart from which everything else in the church flows. Worship should bring us into the presence of God and then send us forth to passionate service in the name of Jesus Christ."

The corporate time of worship is where we as a church, as a body, most often come in contact with others. For that reason we must honestly, from time to time, take a good look at ourselves and ask, "How are we doing?" in terms of this critical area of worship. Now if you remember a few years ago, I preached a series of sermons on the elements of worship. And those of you who are doing the Christian Believer study, that will be the primary focus of your week of study. But for us in this setting today, I want to make use of an inventory that came across my desk a few weeks ago with a number of questions under the title, "Evaluating Your Worship". And I’d like to use three of them to focus our thinking today.

Does our worship generate joyful anticipation, or is it more of a task to be accomplished? Did you come to worship today with the anticipation of experiencing God, or was your focus on something else? In the humorous story that I used to begin today’s sermon, the focus of the wife was obviously on other things! But I often chuckle, you can literally see it on people’s faces as they come in for worship if there isn’t a bulletin or if the bulletin doesn’t contain much information in terms of what’s going to be happening. And a lot of people would feel totally lost because there’s not that routine that’s going to tell them in advance everything that’s going to happen. And in that first question it talks about joyful anticipation. Now, without a doubt, there’s certainly a place for quiet and reverence in terms of our worship. The Scripture tells us that we ought to worship with a sense of "order". And the bulletin and liturgy help us to do that.

But recognizing that, where do we get the idea that joy, or excitement, or clapping or laughter, (which are also gifts of God), have no place within our worship? I’ve got an idea that a lot of you, following both the choir anthem and the handbell choir anthem, there was something in you that wanted to respond. But we were so reserved and what in the world would the neighbor say if I clapped or if I said "Amen". Well, response is a part of the worshiping community. Worship is not a task to be accomplished. It is to be a time when we anticipate experiencing God in joy, in spirit and in truth.

Is our focus in worship on Jesus Christ or on a particular way of doing things?

Now again, please hear me carefully. There is great value in every element of worship. And when I refer to the "elements" of traditional worship, I’m speaking of things like the Gloria Patri, the Doxology, the Lord’s Prayer, the Pastor’s robe, the delivery of a traditional sermon. And here at Grace Church, "traditional" worship (which is defined in many different ways), but is nevertheless our dominate style of worship. Along with many of you, I can experience God in a wonderful way through singing the great hymns of the church accompanied by a pipe organ. My background and church experience allows me to experience God in great liturgy, in the Gloria Patri, or in an expository sermon.

And at our 8:30 and 9:30 services, if you would look at an entire year, you would find that in terms of the "elements" of worship, probably 80 percent of our worship services at 8:30 and 9:30 follow a very regular pattern in terms of the elements of worship. But friends, if we get all bent out of shape because on some Sunday the Lord’s Prayer is not recited, or if the offering plates are not brought forward, or if the Gospel is presented through music or from the lips of our children and youth instead of a traditional sermon, then we perhaps need to be asking the question, "Is my focus in worship on Jesus Christ, or has it become misplaced on a particular way of doing things?

Tradition has great, great value, but it is always possible that tradition itself becomes an idol that we worship. And the Lord said, "You have no other God’s before me", including your traditions. We worship the living God in spirit and in truth with our focus on Christ.

And in terms of those folks who come to the 11:00 a.m. service. They will hear me say this today. If their attitude is that they are probably more spiritual because they sing "Praise Choruses" and raise their hands instead of singing traditional hymns, then they also have totally missed the boat of what is to be happening in worship. Worship is ultimately about God. It’s not about us or a particular way of doing things.

Are we at least equally concerned about creating opportunities for meeting the needs of persons outside our walls as we are about meeting the needs of our members?

Again, please hear me carefully. For the pastors and the leaders of the church have a God-given responsibility to provide meaningful worship experiences for our members. We have a responsibility to provide opportunities where you can be growing spiritually. We need to make sure that care-giving is provided to our members and provided well when it is needed.

But having said all of that, if the majority of the church’s decisions and its focus begins to be based on us, than we are no longer being faithful to the challenge that Jesus left with us to "win the lost". So much of what I know about ministry, I learned from my father. It took me years to even begin to grasp this quote that you’ve heard me share before. The quote goes like this, "The church exists primarily for those who are not yet a part of its fellowship". The church exists primarily, not for us, but for those who haven’t yet walked through our doors.

Mike Slaughter says it this way. He says so often in the church the preacher is inclined to look out at the congregation and see them as the "customers" to be served. He said, that is totally unbiblical. The people who sit in the pews are not customers to be served. Rather, if you are sitting in the pews this morning, you should have come as a servant to be equipped and get your marching orders for the coming week to go out and witness for Christ in the world around you.

Persons walk through our doors seeking spiritual guidance and help who have absolutely no church background. We forget that. I bet a lot of you would raise your hand who have been to church for over 50 years. You understand the church backwards and forwards. And because of that we have a tendency to forget that there are a lot of people out there who don’t have the foggiest idea what the Gloria Patri or Doxology are. It wasn’t very long ago a young man that was new to our church came up to me and said, "Thank you for printing the page number of the Lord’s Prayer in the bulletin. I don’t know that. Every other church that I went to I didn’t even know where to look. So they’re all praying this prayer, which is new to me."

The taste in music and worship styles of the persons who walk through our doors many times are very different than our own. And hopefully the needs of those persons are important to us. That we don’t say to them, "You’re welcome here as long as you become just like us and like everything that we like." The last I checked John 3:16 doesn’t say, "God so loved the church." John 3:16 in my Bible says, "God so loved the world." And the world out there needs to be our concern because it’s God’s concern.

Let me illustrate this last point in two very practical ways. One is right over here. Talk about different tastes in music. We’ve got a marvelous organ and piano. But you’ll notice in recent years we’ve also added a synthesizer. And if you listen to popular music in our day, it’s the sound that that instrument can create that is behind most of today’s music. We’ve tried to camouflage it real nicely, but I’m sure some of you have spotted it anyway. There is a small set of electronic drums behind the piano now. Don’t worry, you won’t hear those hardly ever at 8:30 a.m. or 9:30 a.m., but they’re going to be used in a couple of weeks starting at 11:00 a.m. because, friends, most persons under 35 do not count it music if they can’t hear percussion.

And in our responsive reading today, I’d urge you to re-look at that if you’ve got a problem with those drums. Because although the scripture said, "Praise God with pipe". It also said twice, "Praise Him with clanging cymbals." And clanging cymbals aren’t particularly my taste in music; but they are for many people for whom Christ died.

That’s why churches no longer better try to get by with just one time to worship or one worship style. Our attitude has been one of not taking away but adding to. There are a number of you hearing my voice now at 9:30 that I need to say thanks again to you because you really prefer to come at 11:00 but the doggone preacher made you change your time for worship so that we could reach some other folks. And we have done that for the glory of God. And you need to be commended for it.

Friends, for the most part, Grace Church has done an outstanding job in terms of your openness to change and outreach for the sake of the kingdom of God. But we have to continue to ask these kinds of hard questions, in terms of our worship. Is it a task to be accomplished or a joyful experience of God? Is our focus on Christ or on a particular way of doing things? And are we concerned that unchurched persons, who may not share our tastes or backgrounds, be able to experience God in ways that are meaningful to them?