Hundreds of Ways 9-9-12

The Reading— Ephesians 5: 18a-20

Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Special Reading--Rumi

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.


The Gospel Reading: John 4: 23-24

"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Creator is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship God must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
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A Hundred Ways 9-9-12
O God, our God, we are so different from each other and, yet, here we are—gathered together as your people—hearing, singing, breathing into your holy presence. Help us learn to love each other with the same love as you love us. May I speak your truth and may our hearts be turned to you. Amen

We’re in a sort of informal series of sermons surrounding the topic of worship. How often we say that we are going to worship and we usually mean that we are coming to a place such as this or this place at a particular time each week. We may give a great deal of thought to what we expect and even need; or it may be an action that we take because it makes us feel good, gives us a place to gather with God’s people; or, for some of us, it is the lifeline which keeps our heads above water for the week to come. There are many, many reasons we come to worship and, while we may sometimes examine our hearts and minds regarding worship, it is a conversation that we—as a church—must encounter and explore with each other.
Last week we talked about the ‘what’ of worship. We talked of longing for holy ground and the availability of the ‘holy’ at all times, but, particularly during this hour we call worship. We are called here—I truly believe that. I do not see any reason for any of you to get up on Sunday and come to this place unless you are called. Now, it may not be an audible call, but the call is there—everything from a quiet little tug at your heart to the cries of a deeply wounded person looking for a place of healing and rest. And, just as there are many reasons for coming, there are many more expectations, hopes, and desires all placed upon this one hour of the week. Here’s the rub—all those expectations, hopes, and desires can come crashing into one another and cause us to slide a little backwards on this holy ground upon which we stand.
One of you sent me an email this week so I can’t take credit for this story; but it fits right in to today’s study of who we all are in worship, in the beauty of difference,. I am always amazed at the simple ways God’s Spirit shows me where we are all headed together. You may have received this same email—listen to it with new ears. It seems that it was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, thought they had a good idea. They decided to group together to keep warm. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After awhile, they decided that the pain was too intense so they decided to distance themselves one from the other to keep from hurting each other and getting hurt. They began to die, alone and frozen. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.
Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others. This way they were able to survive. This story finishes with this simple truth—the best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities. And, as much as I would like to deny it, we all have quills. Some of us have quills of pain and grief. Some of us have grown quills in the scars of past hurts. Some of us have quills of defensiveness born of a deep fear that we are simply not good enough to be here in this place with these people. Some have quills of sadness, or bigotry, or fear, or hate birthed long ago by some imagined or real offence. But they are quills nevertheless and we will hurt each other along the way when we gather close together to pray or study, sing or share our stories. And some will ask “Why?”—why get that close when one risks the painful prick of disagreement or misunderstanding. Because, my friends—the alternative is a kind of spiritual death born of isolation and loneliness.
Our reading from Rumi is one of my favorites. In its truth, perhaps, lies the secret to what we try to follow in our worship planning—“there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” You see, in MCC, we talk a lot about honoring diversity and facilitating an environment where everyone can feel and experience God’s radical welcome. And, we say, “Come, just as you are”. But, this is a lot harder than it looks or sounds. Why? Because it is really, really hard to set our own prejudices and preferences aside long enough to celebrate those expressions of authentic faith by someone who doesn’t know and may not care about our preciously held traditions and habits. The brief passage from Ephesians 5, if we really read it for understanding, should open the door to wonderful conversations about what worship looks like. But here’s the amazing thing—Paul never really describes what liturgy the church should use, how to evaluate the theological significance of our hymns and songs, nor whether the preacher should preach from notes, a manuscript, or walk around speaking, as some would say, as the Spirit leads. In other passages Paul insists on order in worship to honor God’s Spirit which is not a spirit of confusion. Within the parameters of order, however, Paul here gives us all complete permission to worship “from our own hearts to God’s” with little to no explanation of what that actually looks like.
In our Gospel lesson, from the Gospel of John, Jesus makes it clear that who we are and how we live out our lives is what matters to God. Your worship, says Jesus, must speak to your Spirit who leads your heart in the pursuit of God’s holy truth. God wants people to be “simply and honestly themselves” in their worship. Because God is being itself—that is—Spirit, we must worship from the core of our being, our spirits, who, since they are our true selves, will lead us in adoration of God. We will worship, as Jesus says, “in Spirit and in Truth”. When our worship is true worship, authentically connected to the core of our beings, we will be drawn to the Divine Holy—to God, who embodies the very meaning of diversity in a Sacred Trinity, made up of three persons, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. True worship will result in a sacred fire in our hearts, fueled by the direct interchange of God’s Spirit to ours and ours to God, and will lead us to action and response. In other words, within the context of authentic worship, our hearts will be ablaze with the desire to share with others the wonders of simple honesty before the God who made us.
Now, I would like to suggest that being “simply and honestly ourselves” in worship is a bit of a puzzle for some of us. We are called to engage with God on a spiritual level—and so our worship must touch us in our innermost places, our spirits as well as our bodies and minds. How does this get us back to porcupines and the quills that stick and sting others along the way? Quite simply, it calls us to allow our own preconceived ideas regarding the nature of worship to be pricked by the needs, wants and preferences of others. It says to us that living together and loving together is more important than any single decision about form or style of worship. It says that staying warm—sharing the Very Good News that God loves us and accepts us right where we are—is more important than a prick now or then, when we might struggle to find meaning in a particular moment in worship.
Rev. Elder Lillie Brock says this about styles of worship in MCC churches—and I am paraphrasing: “there will always be elements of the service that not everyone finds meaningful or worshipful. That is the time to remember that what fails to set your heart on fire is igniting the heart of the person sitting next to you.” And so, we sing and celebrate with each other, welcoming the new and traditional, young and older, and rejoicing in the fact that together we open ourselves and each other to the light of the Gospel made plain in the diversity of the Triune God in whom we move and live and have our being. Amen and Amen