We Are the People of God! 8-15-2010

The Reading for Today:   Psalm 100—a modern translation

Shout for joy to God, all the earth.

Worship God with gladness;   and with singing joyful songs.

Know that God is God alone.
      

We are made by God—we certainly did not make ourselves!
       We are the people of God, the sheep of the pasture of God.

Here, we come into this place with thanksgiving-- 
       and we flood God’s place of worship with honor;
       saying “thank you” and giving God praise.

 For God is good with a love that endures forever;
       God is faithful to all generations.

God, teach us to worship you in spirit and in truth!  Amen           

                Worship—that sometimes elusive process, that somehow, try as hard as we might—we don’t just seem to get there.  There are at least two ways we worship the God that made us—corporately—that is in communion with other folks and privately—alone with God.  This week I’m going to talk about the worship we do as a group of folks, a circle if you will, and next week I will talk about our private response to the love of God.  Here’s my favorite story about worship—seems like there was this rather large church—well, big enough to have a separate children’s church—one Sunday, the leader decided it was time to take a “field trip” and visit the morning adult worship.  She gave the children all kinds of tips and rules and then they tippy-toed across the courtyard and over to the door.  Just before opening the door—she turned to them and said, “Does anybody know why we need to be quiet and reverent when we go through that door?”  One bright little lad replied, “So we don’t wake up the ones that are sleeping!”  May it never be said that there are folks sleeping at Open Circle MCC.

In the beginning of this adventure, before we had permission to refer to ourselves as an MCC church, we called ourselves “Open Circle Worship.”  It was a brief phase and many of you missed it, but it says to me that we knew from the jump that we wanted to be about the joy of worship.  Since then, we have worshipped together every single week—sometimes different places and sometimes different people—but we have stayed the course on being about worship. 

We’ve begun a bit of a tradition here at Open Circle and you may wonder why.  We greet each other in love at the beginning of the service and then the choir begins to sing:  “As we gather may Your Spirit work within us…As we gather, may we glorify Your name.”   Have you listened to the words yet—we chose this song for particular reasons—“Knowing well that as our hearts begin to worship,  we’ll be blessed because we came.”   And in our summer of blessings, even as it draws to a close, we claim the blessing of worship each and every time we meet.  We’ll change the song from time to time, from season to season, but I trust that we always have a song that calls us into this time of worship—this time we set apart each week to worship as a community.   

                I do a lot of reading about worship—seems like a good thing for a pastor to do.  Ron Rienstra, one of those worship “specialists” lists 7 characteristics of worship and I was fascinated to see how well these characteristics are reflected in the words of our reading today—Psalm 100. 

Shout for joy to God, all the earth.  Rienstra says that worship should be Participative. Seems right, don’t you think?  Makes sense that this time of worship is a time when all of us should participate and want to participate—if the only folks who are worshipping are the ones of us at the front—we have a problem.  God is God of all of us and all of us come together to worship.  But that is sometimes easier said then done—we come as we are—some of us comfortable with worshipping—how shall I say?—“out loud”.  Some of us are not—God nevertheless, call us, as “all the earth” to shout for joy—and so we work together to make our corporate worship a place of safety and comfort for all of us to enjoy—stretching ourselves beyond our comfort zones whether in the quiet, meditative times or the noisy, clapping, hallelujah times. 

Worship God with gladness;  and with singing joyful songs.  Two of Reinstra’s characteristics fit here.  He says that worship is both expectant and Spirit-directed.  Many of us, having gone to “Worship” with a capital “W” for years, no longer come expecting much of anything—thankfully, we’re in the process of changing that for many, many people who walk through this beautiful doors.  The energy that permeates through our service does not and cannot come from me or from our singers, reader, or altar ministers.  It comes from the expectation that God has called us here and so God will meet us here.   Rienstra reminds us that the Spirit blows where it will and so he suggests that we worship with our “sails raised” ready to catch the spiritual energy that happens to, with, and among us as we worship together.   I guess he has a point—a sailboat with its sails tightly tied around its mast is not likely to go anywhere at all—and so we come, ready and eager to encounter God here, God now!

Know that God is God alone.   We are made by God—we certainly did not make ourselves!   We are the people of God, the sheep of the pasture of God.  Rienstra’s next two characteristics fit well here.  Reverence—we know that God is God and we are God’s creations—now some worship leaders I have encountered want to talk about how we need to know our “place” before God, and by that they mean our “unworthy, undeserving place”.  To that I say, not here, not now!  We are made by God and we are made for God.  We are the people of God, we belong to God as sheep belong to their shepherd.  And we worship as whole people—Holistic worship is what Rienstra calls it—worshipping by bringing all of ourselves to worship—our bodies, including our sexuality, our past and present, our heart, soul, and mind—we bring our fears and dreams, and our doubt and belief—for we—all of us—are made by God exactly according to plan—our worship must embrace and celebrate not only who God is but who God made us to be!

Here, we come into this place with thanksgiving-- and we flood God’s place of worship with honor;  saying “thank you” and giving God praise.   Rienstra’s sixth characteristic is expansive.  He says, and this time I’m quoting him, “ We make creative use of words, music—and more!—from many times, places, peoples, and cultures to enlarge our vision of God’s kingdom and situate ourselves properly within it.”  And I say, we are called by the psalmist to come with thanksgiving—to literally flood this place of worship with honor and praise.  We do this in the many ways we both bring to this place and discover along the way.  God is not limited by our limitations and we are encouraged by the very God who made us to discover more ways to bring praise and celebrate—both God and ourselves.  This is why we focus on the grace-full and loving working of God in our midst and the joy that we experience as God’s people gathered together to praise and worship.  This does not always mean that we will agree.  As one pastor told me about her church—the congregation decided that it had so many differences that one worship service just wouldn’t do, so they decided to have four worship services each Sunday.  There was one for those new to the faith.  Another for those who liked traditional worship.  One for those who had lost their faith and would like to get it back.  And another for those who had a bad experience with church and were complaining about it.  They have names for each of the services: FINDERS, KEEPERS, LOSERS, WEEPERS.   Think about it!!!

 And finally, For God is good with a love that endures forever;   God is faithful to all generations.  Rienstra calls this final characteristic covenantal. This implies that worship is both a part of and a celebration of the covenant that exists between us and God.  When we celebrate communion we often talk about the cup as representation of the new covenant—the covenant that God made with us through the sacrifice of Jesus—that we have no barriers between us and God.  Jesus is the bridge that makes that covenant possible for all of us.  Worship then is conversation without barriers between God and us and us and God—our praise, our petitions, and our celebrations!

These 7 characteristics lead us to one very important conclusion—genuine  worship of God—free from  the barriers that have been erected between us and God or that we have built ourselves—this  kind of worship will change our lives—your lives and mine.  And it is changing the life of this church.   God calls us to this place of worship and we answer with our whole selves—with our whole lives—with all that we are singing songs of joy—going forward, now and forever.  Amen and amen.