Our Beliefs

September 23^rd, 2012         “Our Beliefs”       Rev. Heather Jepsen

Sermon Series: The Theology of Worship

(Based on A More Profound Alleluia  ed. Van Dyk)

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Philippians 2:5-11

          This is the fourth sermon in our series about how and why we worship the way that we do on Sundays.  We have talked about the opening of our worship; gathering together in the name of God, we have talked about the confession and pardon; reminding ourselves of our sinful nature and God’s promise of forgiveness, and we have talked about the sermon; how our worship always centers around reading and hearing God’s word in Scripture and proclamation.  This morning we will talk about creeds and their tradition within our denomination.

          Some churches in the Presbyterian tradition recite a creed or statement of belief every Sunday.  Some churches only recite creeds when they celebrate the sacraments of baptism and communion.  Some churches recite creeds when folks become new members or are ordained as deacons and elders.  The truth is that I haven’t been part of this church family long enough to know when specifically you like to say creeds; but I do know we haven’t done it since I got here.

          The practice of reciting creeds or the group statement of a singular belief has roots deep in the Jewish and early Christian traditions of our faith.  In our New Testament reading we find Paul reciting what many scholars think of as an early Christian Creed about the person and work of Jesus Christ.  This idea that Christ emptied himself in service to God was an important theme in the early church.  The phrasing in Philippians suggests that Paul is sharing a common statement of faith that would have regularly been read, recited, or even sung in the early worshipping communities.

Our Old Testament reading this morning is an example of a historical creed said by the people of Israel.  This statement of belief served to remind the people of God’s saving acts throughout their history.  I find it particularly moving that the speaker is called to remember something that might not have happened to them personally but rather is the story of their ancestors, the story of their people. 

          This practice of reciting our beliefs as a group is no longer common in our culture so why do we still say creeds?  Theology professor Ronald Byars reminds us that “President Dwight Eisenhower once urged Americans, in the 1950s, to have faith in something, it didn’t much matter what.  During that era in particular, the romantic notion flourished that one ought to have faith in faith itself.  The early twenty-first century version of that notion seems to be faith in spirituality, which either has no specific reference or is a sort of cafeteria from which the seeker selects a little of this and a little of that.” 

          You can see this practice all around us today.  Perhaps you have a friend who considers themself to be spiritual but doesn’t go to church.  Or you may know people who pick and choose from various church traditions to craft their own form of Christianity.  The truth is that the Christian faith has concrete content.  “We believe in certain things about God, about human beings, about the created world, and about their relation.  The specific content of the Christian faith is expressed in our creeds.” (Byars)

          In the Presbyterian tradition we have a Book of Confessions that is a collection of creeds, confessions, and catechisms that we believe state our faith and bear witness to God’s grace in Jesus Christ.  Within this volume you will find historical creeds that are part of the greater church tradition such as the Apostle’s Creed.  You can take a look at it with me in your hymnal on page 14.  Though we haven’t recited any creeds while I’ve been here, I’m going to guess that most of your experience is with the Apostle’s creed.  I know we have talked about it a bit at brown bag. 

          In your hymnal you will also find The Nicene Creed which is another historical church Creed that Presbyterians have adopted. The Nicene Creed was developed in the fourth century at a time when the church needed to make a clear statement about the identity of Jesus Christ.  I am going to read the creed and I invite you to follow along on page 15 in your Presbyterian Hymnal.  Though the language may seem stately and foreign, this creed can serve as a reminder to us that we are grounded in a tradition of believers that is centuries old.  I will be reading the Ecumenical version as that is the one that is in our current Book of Confessions.

          One exciting thing about our faith and about the Presbyterian Book of Confessions is that it is a living document in that is always being addressed and changed.  Currently in our denomination there is discussion regarding changing the language of one of the creeds, the Heidelberg Catechism due to translation issues and a desire to be true to the original 1563 version. There is also discussion regarding adding a new creed, the Belhar Confession which comes out of the struggle in South Africa in the 1980s.

Another wonderful thing about the Book of Confessions is that it contains creeds that not only are contemporary to our time, but are specific to our Presbyterian faith.  One example of this is The Brief Statement of Faith which was adopted by the church in 1983.  You will find The Brief Statement of Faith printed in your bulletin and at the end of this sermon we will recite this creed together.

          One advantage to saying creeds in worship is to remind us that being part of a church requires a serious commitment on our part.  Americans have a certain affection for choosing to belong to private associations like clubs, but the church is not like these groups.  The church is part of the gospel.  You can not claim to be in Christ unless you are a part of the body of Christ.  The two simply cannot be separated; one is not possible without the other. 

          In our American culture, “many construe the church as just another social organization, not unlike our service clubs and civic groups.  When the church is conceived simply as a volunteer organization, an affiliation one makes for the sake of companionship in faith, or mutual reinforcement, or finding allies in the service of a common cause then one wears the relationship lightly.” (Byars)  

If we don’t take our relationship with the church more seriously then we take our relationship with the Lions club, then it makes it just as easy for us to leave it as it is to leave any other group we belong to.  We need to remember that the church is here not simply to fulfill our personal needs of the moment, but rather the church is here to help form us into a people of faith for a lifetime.

          While clearly a traditional act of faith, saying a creed together in worship is now a daunting task for some.  In fact “Saying a Creed together in worship can be an uncomfortable moment for many Christians.  But I believe that is because most of us live with an insufficient doctrine of the church.  Some people have the mistaken idea that the creed is meant to articulate the faith of individual persons.  They think that if they say the Creed aloud, they must know what it fully means and they must fully agree with it.  Anything short of this constitutes personal perjury.  But this idea betrays a mistaken understanding of the church.”  (Byars)

Kathleen Norris tells this story about an Orthodox theologian’s visit in a seminary classroom, “A student stands up and asks, ‘What can one do when one finds it impossible to affirm certain tenants of the Creed?’  The student’s question may have been in other words, ‘May I stand politely, but silently, while the congregation recites the Creed?  Or shall I say aloud only those lines that I’m sure I believe?’  The priest responded ‘Well, you just say it.  It’s not that hard to master.  With a little effort, most can learn it by heart.’

          … The student, apparently feeling that he had been misunderstood, asked with some exasperation, ‘What am I to do when I have difficultly affirming parts of the Creed?’  And he got the same response, ‘You say it.  Particularly when you have difficultly believing it . . .’

          The student raised his voice: ‘How can I with integrity affirm a creed which I do not believe?’ And the priest replied, ‘It’s not your creed, it’s our creed,” meaning the creed of the entire Christian church . . . ‘Eventually it may come to you,’ he told the student. ‘For some, it takes longer than for others . . .”

          “Just as we do not each invent our own words for the hymns, we profess the faith of the church in the words of the church.  When the church is summoned to profess its common faith, it does so not in a cacophony of simultaneous personal testimonies, but in words that belong to the community of saints, including both the living and the dead.  The creed represents the faith of the church – the faith with which, mature or immature, we have to do.  If, for now, these affirmations seem beyond us, we continue to say them nevertheless.  They are not our words but the church’s.  Our work is to say them until we grow into them.  Eventually it may come to us.  For some it takes longer than others.” (Byars)

          “This does not mean that we are to swallow our questions or stifle our dissent.  It does mean that the purpose of our questioning and the purpose even of our dissent is that we all grow to the point where we embrace this faith and internalize it rather than too hastily writing it off because it is alien to the contemporary mind.  We grow into the church’s faith; we reserve the right to understand it differently than some others may understand it, as well as the right to understand it differently then when we first encountered it.  The creed remains, however, a verbal expression of the church’s faith, with all the limitations that implies, but nevertheless rightfully claiming our respectful attention and lifelong reflection.” (Byars)

          Friends, the point is that the creeds and the Book of Confessions are not the possession of any single individual; they belong to the whole body of the church, called and chosen by God.  The Presbyterian Church is a denomination that is founded in tradition and history.  It is a church that believes in certain concrete things.  It is a church of declared beliefs, and it is a church of Creeds.  Thanks be to God that rather than flounder on our own, or attempt to go in our own direction, this church is grounded in a history of belief.

          In closing, I invite you take a moment and recite with me the words of The Brief Statement of Faith which you will find printed in your bulletin.  Let us unite with the whole church and say what we believe . . .

The Word of God

September 16^th, 2012        “The Word of God”          Rev. Heather Jepsen

Sermon Series: The Theology of Worship

(Based on A More Profound Alleluia  ed. Van Dyk)

John 1:1-5, 14 and Acts 4:31-35

          This morning’s sermon is the third in our sermon series on how and why we worship the way that we do each week.  In our first sermon we learned about the opening of our worship.  God calls each of us to this time and place, and we begin our worship by singing praise and adoration to God; acknowledging that true worship comes from God alone.

          In the second part of our worship service we come humbly before God in confession. We are called to acknowledge who we are as individuals and as a community before God; sinners in need of redemption.  We hear the assurance of pardon and are once again reminded that we are made new in Jesus Christ.  We sing the Gloria, praising God for the gift of grace.  And we share the good news of forgiveness with each other by passing the peace of Christ. 

          This morning we will talk about the center of our worship service; the children’s sermon, the prayer of illumination which I am adding in, the reading of Scripture, and the sermon.  This is the part of worship that centers most clearly on the Word of God and is the very heart of what we do on Sunday mornings.

          When we talk about the Word of God, we are referring to our experience of God in several different ways.  Reformed theologian Karl Barth suggests three forms for the Word of God.  “The Word of God, first and foremost, is Jesus Christ.  Second, the word of God is Scripture, as it witnesses to Jesus Christ.  Third, the word of God is preaching as it finds it source in Scripture.  Barth’s purpose in formulating the threefold form of the Word of God was to make clear the relationship between Jesus Christ, Scripture, and the sermon.” (Van Dyk)

          The Word of God is first and foremost Jesus Christ.  In John’s gospel we read that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  To talk about Jesus as the Word of God is to talk about all that God is; living on earth among us.  It is to talk about Emmanuel – God with us.  It is to talk about a specific time and place in human history, a story of particulars, about one child in one time in one place; the infinite God in the midst of the finite world.  And it is to talk about the way that we come to know God and hear God’s voice through the actions and words of Jesus Christ.

          “The good news of the Christian faith is that God did not “keep still silence.”  God spoke.  God spoke through prophets and through God’s law to God’s covenant people.  And God’s people spoke right back, in worship and praise and prayer.  Then, in God’s good time, God uttered a Word that pierced the silence of our ignorance and confusion, a Word that became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.  Jesus Christ is God’s Word to a world deaf to the truth.  Jesus Christ is God’s Light to a world blind to the truth.  In worship, we hear that truth and see that light.  When we gather for worship, Jesus Christ is truly present with us in each of our hearts and among us as a body of faith.” (Van Dyk)

          The word of God is also used to refer to Scripture.  Theologian John Burgess helps us think of several ways that the Bible specifically is the word of God for us in worship.  “First, the Bible sets forth revealed truths about God.  These truths might be theological, such as “God so loved the world that God’s Son came into the world to save sinners.”  Or these truths might be ethical, such as “Envying what your neighbor has is wrong.”  (Van Dyk)  This is probably the way that is most familiar to you when thinking about the Bible as the word of God.

          When we say that the Bible is the word of God, we also think about the Bible as a source of symbolic revelation about God.  “The Bible is a repository of symbols and stories that express the religious longings of the human spirit and help us interpret our own religious longings.  The Bible is the word of God, then, in the sense that it helps us find the word of God in our own experience; it points to the word of God that we discover in our own lives; it may offer analogies, metaphors, and markers to show how God is speaking to us now.”  (Van Dyk)

          Burgess also talks about the Bible as the sacramental word of God.  “As a sacramental word, Scripture is not only a witness, however unique or authoritative, to the revelation that has taken place in Christ; rather, Scripture as Scripture also sets forth the living Christ.  It draws us into Christ’s presence and invites us to be transformed into his image.  It opens the possibility of relationship between the divine and the human.”

          When Scripture is read and proclaimed in worship, Christ is presented to the community.  That is why we read Scripture every Sunday.  You will never ever come to this church for a Sunday worship service, or a special holiday service, or a wedding, or a funeral and not find Scripture at the heart of worship.  It is in the Bible that we meet our Lord Jesus Christ.

          In the Reformed tradition, when we talk about the word of God in worship, we are also talking about the sermon.  Scripturally, we can find this idea in the book of Acts.  When Luke writes about the disciples being “filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking the word of God with boldness” he is talking about preaching.  Of course to consider the sermon as the word of God puts both the pastor and the congregation in a delicate space.

          Leanne Van Dyk describes it best when she says, “Preachers who are even marginally self-aware know keenly the paradox of the comfort and the scandal of the sermon.  The comfort of knowing that the sermon can and does become the word of God for the people is what gives the preacher, despite fears and failings, the courage to face the congregation each Sunday morning.  The scandal that the word of God is housed in the poor words of the preacher and then set free by the Spirit is a stumbling block as well – a stumbling block to the preacher, who may feel discouraged; to the believer, who may sense the poverty of the sermon; and perhaps even to the nonbeliever, who does not, or does not yet, hear the good news of the gospel.”

          Personally, I find one of the amazing things about preaching to be God’s continual presence among us during the sermon.  On the Sundays when I think I have a real zinger, I am likely to miss the mark.  By contrast, on the Sundays when I think I have nothing but a flop, many in the congregation are deeply touched.  Often people tell me they hear some profound message in the sermon that I am pretty sure I didn’t say.  Somehow, the Holy Spirit comes among us in the process of words leaving my mouth and landing in your ears and intervenes, making it a moment of the word of God.  Even on the Sundays when you are bored out of your mind, like today perhaps, your mind wanders in God ordained ways and you may get a message simply through your day dreaming.

          The sermon is the audible experience of the word of God in worship.  The sacraments are the visible signs of the word of God.  We are reminded of the visible word of God every Sunday as we gather around the concrete signs of baptismal font and communion table.  Last week, as we celebrated communion, we had the opportunity to know the word of God in what we saw, what we touched, what we tasted, and even what we smelled.  For those who are looking, the word of God can be present to all of your senses in worship.

          This Sunday I am adding a prayer of illumination to our order of worship.  This is a time when we deliberately turn to God in prayer and ask that the word may fall fresh among us and be present in the reading of Scripture and in the sermon.  This is another one of those centering moments in our worship service, reminding us why we have gathered together.

In our worship every Sunday, we experience the word of God.  We experience the word of God in the children’s sermon as both children and adults experience God’s message at a beautifully simple level.  In the prayer of illumination we ask God’s blessing on our reading and preaching.  As we read Scripture, we experience the word of God through the words of the Bible.  After reading the Scripture, we declare our beliefs and offer thanksgiving stating that yes; this is the word of God.  Then during the sermon, the Holy Spirit comes among us, and the word of God travels from my heart and my mouth into your ears and your heart. 

In all of these ways, Jesus Christ is uniquely present to us.  This is the heart of our belief and the heart of our worship service.  The Word of God is the center of everything that we do on Sunday mornings.  Every Sunday we gather together in God’s name and every Sunday we hear God’s word.  Through the ancient words of Scripture to the fresh words of the sermon, we hear God’s message to us.  From here we then go out to be bearers of the word in the world.  Thanks be to God for the blessing of God’s Word.  Amen.

 

The Importance of Confession

September 9^th, 2012   “The Importance of Confession”   Rev. Heather Jepsen

Sermon Series: The Theology of Worship

(Based on A More Profound Alleluia  ed. Van Dyk)

Psalm 103 and 1 John 1

          Will Campbell, a Baptist preacher sums up the Christian faith saying, “We’re no damn good, but God loves us anyway.”  This morning we are going to talk about just that – our own failings and God’s love for us.  This morning’s sermon is the second in a series on how and why we worship the way that we do. 

Last week we talked about the opening of our worship service; gathering in God’s name.  We begin our worship with God’s call to gather us together in this moment and place.  Once here we take time in music and song to call the whole of our being to this time of worship, we share words of greeting and news of this church community, we share in a call to worship, and we praise God with singing.  It is God who works in and through us throughout our worship service.  This morning we will talk about that prayer of the day, and why I feel it is important to form it into a more traditional prayer of confession.

          Theology professor William Dyrness says that “true worship does not come naturally to us.  There are many things that keep us from worship – either from coming to church at all, or, having been persuaded to come, from actually engaging in genuine worship.  Our natural inclination, in fact, is to sit in the back of the church, or indeed to stay outside the church altogether.  We might feel that we are not good enough to worship a holy God, or we might be overwhelmed with the painful failures that have bedeviled us during the previous week.  Or perhaps we feel too good to go in and sit down; feeling in some way that we don’t need what the church has to offer.  Or, on occasion, we might feel we would not be welcome, or that we would not feel at home in church – the songs and rituals and vocabulary all seem strange to us.”

          The fact is that worship does not come naturally to us for one fundamental reason.  We are all sinners.  All of the relationships in our lives, with God as well as with friends, family, and acquaintances are damaged by sin.  We live in a world of broken relationships.  “When asked why we do not feel like worshiping God, our natural response is to point to someone else’s failure; the minister’s, or some Christian we once knew.  We do not usually connect this with any failure on our own part.” (Dyrness)  No matter what issues we may have with others in or outside of our church, the fact is that it is our own sinful nature that makes it hard for us to come to worship.

          Of course, the Bible has a lot to say about sin.  “The Old Testament has many ways of describing humanity’s rebellion against God, each of them shedding a different light on the barriers to worship.  There are several Hebrew words for sin which refer to the various ways that we miss the path that God intended for us in his law and instruction.  Two other Hebrew words for sin stress the deliberate human act of defiance.  A range of others refer to the puzzling persistence of sin that seems built into us.”   (Dyrness)  

          Our sin causes a gulf between us and the holiness of God.  In Leviticus believers are encouraged to confess their sins and to bring an offering before the Lord for atonement.  In our Psalm reading for today we heard that “The Lord is merciful and gracious . . . he will not deal with us according to our sins . . . the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting . . . for those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.”

          In the New Testament the story of sin revolves around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  “Christ’s death is variously pictured as the offering for sin, as a great exchange, and as a deliverance of the believer from evil powers, along with other New Testament images for salvation.  All the rich biblical images proclaim that Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, has initiated a new era in which sin and death have been decisively defeated and righteousness has been established.” (Dyrness) 

          The way of our salvation moves from meeting the demands of the law to having faith in Christ, because it is only through his actions that we are saved.  The writer of 1 John points out that “if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

          In classical theology sin was thought of as a strictly personal issue.  Sin was a distorted will and misplaced pride.  As theology progressed, sloth and falsehood were also common understandings of sin.  In modern theology several new discussions of sin have developed including a focus on the sins of community or corporate sin.  “These broader perspectives allow theologians to focus not only on discrete personal sins but also on social sins and structural sins, not only on doing what is wrong, but also on failing to do what is right.  Sin in all its multiple and insidious forms not only infects our individual lives but also disrupts community, deforms institutions, and even damages creation itself.”  (Dyrness) 

          The reality is that even believers in Christ continue to sin and therefore must continue to pray for the forgiveness of sin.  That’s why a prayer of confession is such an important part of the worship service.  Follow along in your bulletin with me please.

First you will see I have added in a call to confession.  This is a time when we are reminded that all of us are sinners and therefore all of us are called to confess our sins as we come to God in worship.

I have relabeled our prayer of the day as a prayer of confession.  In the prayer of confession, we recognize that by our own strength we are unable to worship God.  In the prayer of confession we acknowledge the guilt that we have for our sins, and the gratitude we feel for the saving work of Jesus Christ.  In acknowledging our sinful nature, we come clean before God, and prepare our hearts for the next portion of worship, hearing God’s Word. 

          Because we are sinners, confession is not only a necessary part of worship; it helps to reorient us to reality.  It is all too easy for us to ignore the reality of sin in our everyday lives, especially because we live in a culture that is so blind to sin.  “While the world around us may try to convince us that we are really OK, in confession we acknowledge that we constantly go astray, that even our good works are marked by sin, and that apart from God’s grace we are lost.”  (Dyrness)  Just as our opening worship is a response to God’s love and call, our confession is a response to the declaration that we are sinners and stand in need of redemption.

          An important aspect of our prayer of confession is that it is communal; we all say the prayer together.  This recognizes that even our community itself is broken and fractured by sin.  We say the prayer not only for ourselves but on the behalf of our community of faith.  In the prayer of confession we acknowledge not only the broken relationships in our personal lives, but the broken relationships in our church, and between our church and the greater world.

          We confess our sins in worship not only to be honest with ourselves and God, but to hear the good news that through Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.  That’s why I’m adding the assurance of pardon to our worship service.  For believers, confession is always followed by the acknowledgement that we are forgiven in Jesus Christ.  The words of good news are words that we all need to hear each Sunday.  The practice of pardon, just like confession, is significant for the community.  The Scriptures make clear that forgiveness by God is linked with our forgiveness of each other.  “The fundamental relationship that needs restoration is that between us and God.  But the Scriptures do not allow us to separate this relationship from those others that structure our lives, especially those in the body of Christ.”  (Dyrness) 

          After we receive the assurance of pardon, we sing the Gloria Patri.  In singing this ancient doxology or hymn of praise every Sunday, we have the opportunity to celebrate our forgiveness and praise the triune God.

          New this Sunday, we passed the peace of Christ after singing the Gloria Patri.  I believe that this is a more meaningful time to greet one another in worship.  Having been reconciled to God in Jesus Christ, we are asked to share the unity and love that comes from God with each other.  It is a visible sign of the bridge that forgiveness makes in our lives.  This is the time when the community shares in the pardon given through Christ. 

I encourage you to take this time not only to welcome one another but to really look at each other, shake hands, and say “the peace of Jesus Christ be with you.”  In doing this, “we extend to one another the reality that, having been reconciled to God; we are also reconciled to one another.  The act suggests that we do more than simply forget their slights and trespasses against us; we actually reach out to them in love and communion.”  (Dyrness)  I want to try this new pattern of worship for a while and I am eager to hear any feedback you may have on how this affects your worship experience.

          In the simple practice of confession and assurance we are led through the entire story of redemption.  We are called to acknowledge who we are as individuals and as a  community before God; sinners in need of redemption.  We hear the assurance of pardon and are once again reminded that we are made new in Jesus Christ.  We sing the Gloria, praising God for his grace.  And we share the good news of forgiveness with each other by passing the peace of Christ.  This section of worship has much to say about who we believe God to be and God’s work in our lives.  It is my hope that this new order of worship will be meaningful to you as individuals and to us as a church community.  Amen.

               

"Gathering in God's Name"

September 2^nd, 2012   “Gathering in God’s Name”     Rev. Heather Jepsen

Sermon Series: The Theology of Worship

(Based on A More Profound Alleluia  ed. Van Dyk)

Psalm 111 and Matthew 18:15-20  

Since my arrival we have spent most of our Sundays with readings from the Lectionary.  Today we are making a shift and leaving the lectionary behind for a while to move into a series of sermons about how we worship.  It’s back to school time so we are going back to class together as we study our worship service.  My goal is to spend a few months walking us through our traditional worship service. 

We will talk about how we do things and the significance of each part of our worship and the order of worship including how each part relates to the other.  We will be changing the order of worship a bit and discussing those changes as we go.  We will also discuss why we do the things we do, namely the theological basis that is the foundation of our worship experience.  I am basing this sermon series on the book A More Profound Alleluia: Theology and Worship in Harmony and I will quote materials from the book throughout the series.

          So, why study our worship practices?  Author John Witvliet tells us that “Christian corporate (or group) worship is an integrating practice at the center of the Christian life.  It both reflects and shapes our view of God, the world, and their relations.  It grounds, sharpens, and humbles the work the church does in every sphere of ministry, including education, pastoral care, evangelism, and justice.  And it gathers up every facet of our lives before God’s face – at work and play; at home and school, and marketplace; in times of joy and sorrow – and sends us out to live in obedience and joy.” 

In other words, everything starts here.  Everything from the formation of our faith to the way we live outside the church walls is influenced by what we do here in the sanctuary.  So, it makes good sense to take the time to study just why we do what we do here on Sundays and what each part of the worship service is about. 

Our time of worship is powerful.  Worship is the center of our Christian life and is worthy of our thought and study.  Worship is where we come to meet God.  We bring the whole of our lives to this time and place and in turn we are shaped from the experience and go out into the world with a new and different view.  Genuine worship changes us.

          Every part of our worship experience is about God.  It is God who calls us to worship, God who meets us in worship, God who helps us to worship, God who sends us out into the world, and God who goes out with us to change the world.  Our basic Trinitarian understanding of God, God relating to Godself through the three persons of the Trinity, informs our experience of God in worship. 

          C.S. Lewis describes the Trinitarian worship experience best when he says, “When an ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say their prayers, they are trying to get in touch with God.  But if a Christian, they know that what is prompting them to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside them.  But they also knows that all their real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God – that Christ is standing beside them, helping them to pray, praying for them.  You see what is happening; God is the thing to which they are praying – the goal that they are trying to reach.  God is also the thing inside them which is pushing them on – the motive power.  God is also the road or bridge along which they are being pushed to that goal.  So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal being is actually going on where an ordinary Christian is saying their prayers.”

          The three parts of the triune God are active with and within us whenever we gather to worship.  Theologian Thomas Torrance puts it this way, “In our worship the Holy Spirit comes forth from God, uniting us to the response and obedience and faith and prayer of Jesus, and returns to God, raising us up in Jesus to participate in the worship of heaven and in the eternal communion of the Holy Spirit.”  John Witvliet points out that “The picture here is not of God as a passive being up in heaven, waiting for us to sing a little louder and pray a little harder before conferring a blessing.  No, God is active in prompting our worship, in receiving it, and in perfecting it.”  God is both the object and the actor in our worship experience.

            All of the actions of our worship service say something about what we believe the nature and person of God to be.  The first part of our worship service is not the welcome and announcements as you may guess, or even the prelude music.  Rather, it is the congregating of all of us together in a certain place at a certain time.  Worship begins the moment we make the decision to join together as a community for the purpose of meeting God.

          Our Sunday worship service begins with a grand processional.  Sometime in the morning all of us leave the places where we live.  We come from the breakfast table and from the garden, from the shower and from the couch.  We come from town and we come from the country, on foot or bicycle, motorcycle or car.  We come on windy roads and straight, paved roads and dusty gravel.  Every Sunday there is a grand procession of people coming together to meet God, coming together to call out to the Very One who created the cosmos.

          We find the spirit of this gathering in our scripture readings for this morning.  In our reading from the Psalms, the psalmist compels us to praise God.  How do we do that? By gathering in the company of the upright, in the congregation.  God is great and worthy of our praise and so each week we leave behind the comfort of our homes and gather here in community to praise our God.

          Similarly in our gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus teaches that he is present with us whenever the group gathers in his name.  Before we read the beloved verse 20, promising the presence of Christ, we must wade through verses 15 on which remind us that to come into this place we must come in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.  God meets us here, because we have already done the work of God in seeking reconciliation and justice inside and outside the church.  The presence of God comes to the gathering of people; the presence of God comes in the spirit of reconciliation.

Of course God is all about relationship to self and to other.  The Trinitarian God is present in our gathering together.  It is the Holy Spirit which moves each of us to get up and get out the door to church.  It is the Spirit which prompts us to gather together.  Jesus Christ is the person we gather around as we come together around the concrete things of pulpit, font, table, and cross.  These are the elements that remind us of his person and message.  And of course, we gather together to address God, the one who makes our worship possible.

          Turn back to the beginning of your bulletin and follow along with me.  Careful readers will note that the language here has changed.  What once read, “Our order for the worship of God” now reads “Gathering in God’s Name”.  This makes clear what we are doing during the first part of the worship service.  At 10:45 worship begins with the prelude music.  This is a time to fully draw ourselves into this time and place.  Though we may physically be present in the sanctuary, we have a tendency to lag behind mentally and spiritually.  We are thinking about the Sunday school discussion or where we are going to lunch after the service and not thinking about gathering together in the name of God.  The Prelude is a time to sit still, to listen, to meditate, and to bring the whole of yourself into this worship space. 

The first words of worship are a greeting, from the pulpit each person receives a welcome to this time of worship and our collective desire for the service is expressed, that you might find Jesus Christ here.   We share our announcements as a community at this time as well.  It is important to get the business of gathering and church work out of the way so that we can more fully tune our hearts and minds to the business and spirit of worship. 

Right now you see the passing of the peace and minute for mission after the announcements but in a few weeks those things will be moving to more appropriate places in our worship service.  Soon, the announcements will be followed directly by the introit.  This too works to calm our minds and bring us fully into the worship space.  After all the busy details of announcing the church activities, the introit serves not only to draw us into worship; it calls our hearts to begin the praising of God.

Now we come to the call to worship and I believe that this is a time when we should stand.  As believers we are called to come to worship, to stand in the presence of God to offer prayer and praise.  In doing this we make clear where the lines of communication are.  At its best the call to worship “reinforces both the vertical dimension of our worship (that worship is an encounter between God and the gathered congregation) and the horizontal dimension of worship (because worship is fundamentally communal).” (Witvliet)  The call to worship is exactly that, a call to this time of worship together. 

          Following the call to worship we sing an opening song of praise to our God.  From the dawn of time, people have praised and worshiped God with music and singing.  Our hymns of praise are not simply our way of saying “yes” to God, they are the way we say “no” to everything that is not of God.  “Every act of praise is a strong act of negation as well as affirmation.  Every time we sing praise to the triune God, we are asserting our opposition to anything that would attempt to stand in God’s place.”  (Witvliet) 

I encourage you to pay attention to not only the words of our praise songs but all of our worship hymns for though the music is lovely and a joy to sing, it is the words of worship, theology, and praise that are the reason we sing the songs we do.  Each week I don’t randomly pick songs out of a hat, rather I strive to pick songs that speak to the message of the day.  You will notice that today’s hymn of praise: “Gather Us In” is all about the gathering of different folks from different spaces of life to worship God together.  “Gathering in God’s Name”.

Our gathering together for worship is an expression of our beliefs as a church.  The Trinity is the pattern of our unity and we gather together knowing that God will meet us.  We begin our worship with centering music, with words of welcome, and by calling ourselves to this moment and place, declaring our intentions, and praising God with singing.  It is God who works in and through us throughout our worship service.

          Our hymn of response this morning is #132 “Come, Great God of All the Ages”.  This is a wonderful hymn that points out the action of the Trinity in our gathering for worship.  Before we sing I want to invite you to follow along in your hymnal as I read the words of each verse.