Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
“The Voice of Love”
Each one of us is known in particular ways by particular people. Those who love us, husband, wives, and lovers know us and reflect that identity to us—hopefully the most intimate relationship we have. Parents reveal the view of us that is probably one of the most long-term reflection we have—but I’ve noticed that it is sometimes limited in scope. For example, with my mother a favorite food could never change, once you loved spiced grapes in green Jello at 5 years of age, you always love spiced grapes in green Jello. We are sometimes known by friends whose knowledge of us might rival that of a spouse, and hopefully we are honest in those relationships, too. And we are known by friends who are mere acquaintances—those who see the barest reflection of our public selves. There are multitudes of combinations of those who know us—hopefully we know ourselves well enough that each person we meet knows an honest version, if not a completely intimate version of ourselves.
Those who can speak to us honestly and reflect what we say and do are those we can trust to love us honestly. We can be free in those relationships, free to be honest and still be loved.
Wendell Barry wrote a poem about that kind of reflection.
Look in
and see him looking out.
He is not always
quiet, but there have been times
when happiness has come
to him, unasked,
like the stillness on the water
that holds the evening clear
while it subsides
– and he let go
what he was not.
It seems to me that the reflection he writes about reveals the perfect law—the law of liberty that we hear in the epistle James 1:25 “those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” In other words, those who hear and do are those whose inside and outside match. In Wendell Barry’s words, “he let go what he was not.” What do we see when we look in the mirror? Do what we feel and what we do and what we are match? Let us be willing to move toward that kind of congruity.
I’ve heard of an exercise that is suggested for those who don’t find much of worth in themselves. One is told to look into a mirror and, being as objective as possible praise one’s self for what one can see. “You have beautiful eyes; you have beautiful hair; your nose is perfect for your face, etc.” Rather than looking into the mirror and seeing what one doesn’t like, one is encouraged to see the gift that God has made—God obviously likes the eyes God gave and the nose God created. God likes the dimples in those cheeks and the twinkle in the eyes God made. In the reflection that we see and affirm, we are encouraged to live as that beautiful person—not falsely, but truly. In the freedom of a real reflection of who we are, we can really hear that God made us and actually live like we believe that we were not only made by God, but redeemed by God from the slavery of self-delusion and sin through Jesus Christ because we are loved. That is the reflection we are called to see—that reflection of liberty and freedom.
The law of liberty is freeing us to be the whole person God has called us to be rather than the law of limitations that tells us what cannot be. The law of limitations narrows who we are rather than broadens to include all that God made us to be. Instead of only taking a narrow view of who we are, why not broaden our view to include the best that God intends? Let us listen for the voice of love giving us the freedom to live as that love calls us to live.
The most apparent voice of love in the biblical witness is that of the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon as it is also known. In it, most modern biblical scholars, hear a song of erotic or what we might rather call romantic love. The poetry of this book of the bible is written in the voice of a woman described only as the Shullamite woman in chapter 6. One scholar, Renita Weems, also describes her this way from the portrait described in all 8 chapters. “She is headstrong, passionate, gutsy, and willing to risk the approval of those around her to pursue her own happiness. The feisty, unnamed woman in Song of Solomon is every woman who prays to God for a soul satisfying life, only to turn around and find God forcing her into situations where she must come to grips with her role in making her prayers a reality.”
The woman who speaks throughout this book actively seeks out her shepherd lover and talks about sneaking away with him for rendezvous—she describes his, well, “romantic” words to her with sexual frankness. There have been those through the ages who have wondered why the bible includes such a book. There are also those who have decided that it is an allegorical story in which God is the lover and the church is the woman pursued, yet it is still frankly erotic poetry about physical and romantic love.
My understanding is that it helps the bible reveal the full spectrum of what it means to be a human being—the woman’s frank, open, talk of love, passion, desire and longing remind us that we aren’t just spiritual, rational creatures. We aren’t just high-minded Sunday morning people with proper pretensions. It reminds us, among other things, that sexuality is as old as creation itself—and that God created that part of us, too.
This short book contains the voice of a loved person from beginning to end—and it is unique, too, in that it speaks with the voice of a woman from beginning to end as she describes her love and the words and actions of her shepherd lover. We are reminded in this book that genuine love creates a freedom in us to be who we are—that, to me, is the theological basis for this book in the biblical canon.
While the love that is expressed is not the love that exists between all people—it is a particular kind of expression, it reminds us that love can be frank and honest with the beloved because love guides our words. We can learn, from this book, how important and wonderful it can be to be authentic with all the people we love, including spouses and lovers.
When we love someone or many “someones,” when we share love within a community of common belief and faith, we can honestly share our fears without exaggeration. And we can live accountable to one another without fearing that that accountability will be used as a weapon. I remember saying to someone once that I want to be accountable for my actions—and I was looked at like I was crazy, this person didn’t believe me. Now, I don’t want to be criticized just for the sake of criticism, but I do want to hear and see how it is that my actions are honestly perceived by people. For example, I rarely intentionally hurt people, but I don’t doubt that sometimes what I do is hurtful without me realizing it. I believe that’s true about almost everyone. With the voice and intention of love, can we express those hurts to all those we love and who love us?
The love that is expressed in the New Testament letter called James and the love of the Song of Solomon are different kinds of love—no doubt—yet love in all of its forms calls forth the best from the beloved. Each calls lover and beloved to treat one another well and with kindness, with honesty and hope, with passion and excitement—though with different goals in mind.
In each of these places, the voice of love expresses the desire for the fullest kind of life to be lived—not in activities that destroy, but in action and purposes that build and promote life. The rosy blushes of love and the decidedly less romantic words of righteousness and doers of God’s word still echo with the sound of loving relationship calling forth the delight that God enjoys in all things God has created.
The voice of love speaks from a place of enjoyment. When God calls to us as beloved and we call to one another in expression of that love—God can revel in the love we receive and bear toward one another because it is the most faithful reflection of God’s image in us. With love as the purpose of our choices and action, God knows—and we do, too—that we are more likely to be who God wants us to be. When we fear, which often leads to hate, or are motivated to act out of greed, envy, or obsessive desire we move away from the image that God has created in us. When fear, greed, envy or desire govern us, we don’t express love, but the twisted notion that our sincere and honest self is not what God wants.
The voice of love can be distorted by us because of past experiences like abuse or neglect, by disease or addiction that changes how we perceive or by choices we have made that have pushed those we love away from us. The voice of love from another human being is rarely expressed in exactly the way we need it to be. We can dwell on the limitations of those we love—or we can accept the love we are given by the imperfect spouses, lovers, friends and family members, even with their limitations. Love means saying you’re sorry and knowing that someone will forgive you—and it means hearing true remorse and forgiving.
The voice of love between human beings is never spoken or heard with perfect ears, yet with the love of God in our lives we can move and be flexible in those relationships because we know that we are love with a perfect love by one who knows us inside and out. We can hear the voice of love in the sound of rain falling softly on the field—even when we’re pretty sure we’ve had enough of it—because we are aware that God loves the world that God has created. We can hear the voice of love as we begin to understand the relationships within nature, those of birth, life and death—even in those times when we are forced to mourn the death of loved ones. Love means an honest willingness to face the cycles of birth and life and death with an eye to the everyday miracles instead of the denial of reality.
Let us find at least one way this week and each week to listen for the voice of love in our lives—whether the perfect love expressed by God or the somewhat more flawed love that another human being offers. Let us make an intentional attempt ourselves to reflect those we love in our words, inviting them to hear the love we have for them in whatever form it takes: as friend, acquaintance, husband, wife, father, mother, grandparent, child or grandchild. In other words, show others your love this week—if in no other way that in a very real belief and knowledge that you are truly loved.
In the name of our loving God: creating, redeeming, sustaining love. Amen.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sermon August 23 2009
1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
“Trusting in Uncertain Times”
In conversations with people over the years, I have realized that my experience of home and family is not universal. I was born to parents who wanted me from conception and welcomed into a family who had been excitedly awaiting my arrival. And most children are born to parents who want them—but sometimes those families are in situations where children feel less than welcome.
Sometimes parents feel pressure from their parents or other family members because of financial insecurity or relationship problems. So children may feel insecure because of personal relationships within families themselves. And sometimes children feel insecure within families because of issues beyond the control of individual families. Over certain periods of history some children have been born into cultures that were slowly disintegrating or actively being destroyed. For example, within recent Australian history, young Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents, forever labeling them as the stolen or homeless generations. And this country has similar legacies attached to earlier times when Native American children were removed and “reeducated” in schools that sought to remove native languages and cultures. A home and shelter, it seems to me, are a basic right of every human being, yet in many places in the world and in history it still seems to be something that people have to earn or something to be worthy of.
All of this talk of home and security—of having a shelter and the means to maintain it—reinforces the reality of having a home in God. Having a secure home—or not—as a child can strengthen the desire of security as we grow into adulthood. One of the ways that God can be experienced is that assurance and knowledge of security. Even when we are stripped of security in all other ways, God’s promises of belonging, of security, of hope and of home can carry us through deeply desolate times and places of severe want.
Sometimes when we are panicked, that desire for security can compel us to seek shelter and safety in questionable places and practices. Western culture’s practice of taking native or aboriginal children was one of those practices. Because our ancestors were encountering so many new practices and peoples they didn’t understand, they set out to fix those practices and people to make the strange people more like themselves.
Yet when we really accept where home is and with whom we most belong, we know that God is our home and that God’s household is with whom we most belong. What often may confuse us is how God has invited all to live in and with the community and household that God is building. We may be confused out of a lack of worth for ourselves—if that “wonderful” person is beloved of God, then how can God love me? Or, we may be confused by God’s invitation because we feel that we belong with God and others are so different that they cannot—this isn’t necessarily out of arrogance, we just can’t understand how people so different could be loved by the same God.
But how can we trust God unless we do believe, truly believe, that God loves us unconditionally—despite our weakness, sin, addiction, conceit, or any other thing we are or do. And we can trust that God will do as God has promised—and that those promises are eternal.
Honestly, that’s what makes me feel most at home with God—more at home with God than when I am in the presence of almost anyone else. As I have told others before, I can trust that God understands why I do certain things and make certain choices, I’m not sure other people will understand or give me a chance to explain. Knowing that God loves me and that I can trust God with all the thoughts and feeling of my mind and my heart means that every thought and feeling is a prayer to God in some way. I want to be more intentional and systematic in my prayer life—for my own sense of discipline and structure—but I know that God hears me whether or not I take the time to do it. What conscientious and systematic prayer can do is build our awareness that God is listening to us throughout the day. It’s almost a paradox—we pray on a regular basis, not because God isn’t listening all the time, but because we need to be reminded that God is always listening.
Trusting God and feeling at home in God’s presence can be bolstered by building that relationship—I’ve said it before and I will say it again and again and again, “You can’t know someone you haven’t spent time with, communicating with, sharing your deepest feelings and thoughts—that’s why we pray. And we need to know God’s feelings and thoughts, too, that’s why we study scripture—to hear how others have experienced God’s word and presence in their lives. We need to know God to trust God—and we know God the same way we know others by talking to and listening to God.”
As we know God by staying in relationship with God, we hear Ephesians suggest that praying in the Spirit means being centered in the place and/or person where one belongs, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. . . Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” This is the opening and closing—the description of wearing the armor of God was Paul’s way of describing how it is that the church could within the strength and power of God. In other places Paul speaks of wearing a new person after baptism—here he continued that way of describing the life of faith in stronger language—speaking of armor and weapons. I read this and heard it this way.
Use what God has given you so that you will survive times of torment and weakness, inside and out. Stand tall so that you can wrap truth around you, holding you together. Live with thoughts and actions centered in Jesus to keep you distant from evil choices, if possible. Wear the comfort of hope and possibility—to reveal the serenity and peace that God gives. Shield yourself always with the faith that you bear—assuring you of God eternal presence, no matter what else may happen. Rely on salvation to protect your heart and grasp firmly the word, knowing it well.
If we pray in the Spirit out of sense of belonging to the body of Christ—the community of the faithful—Paul writes that will awaken compassion as we pray for a minister to all the saints, which are all of God’s people. I believe this means caring for everyone because I believe that everyone belongs to God whether or not they know it. And it requires being centered in a place and being where we belong because compassion takes risk—we risk rejection, loss and pain. When we have compassion, we are with another—from the “com” of the word—in the midst of their feelings of pain, sorrow or other feeling or “passio.”
To have compassion means having the courage to step out into the lives of other people and it means caring in ways that they need, not just in ways that we want to care. Courage means having the heart or “cour” to do something. Though we may think of courage in times of war and violence, courage is necessary in moments where we are called to love and care for as well. In the last few months, I’ve reconnected with several people from high school and have learned about some courageous acts from people I hadn’t heard about for years. One was the little brother of a woman who was in my high school graduating class. My school was smaller than Cuba High, there were only 13 in my class, so I knew most of the high school. Anyway, I saw that he was talking about traveling to Kenya in Africa and had adopted orphaned children there. At one point, he described how his young son had died after a long battle with diseases associated with AIDS. I would never have predicted that kind of courage of him only knowing him as a young kid. In my eyes, that kind of centered compassionate courage can come only from a deep and real relationship and sense of belonging to God. When I asked his sister if he was in ministry, she said, not officially, but yes, that’s how she saw it.
To live the kind of life to which God calls us takes trust in God. In my life the people I trust the most are the relationships where I cultivate conversation and connection, so to cultivate my trust in God, I feel that it is important to be in conversation with God and connect to God regularly. I continue to work on that conversation and connection, not only in prayer time, but in the other ways that I live. We need the courage in difficult and challenging times to reach out in connection rather than to isolate ourselves in survival mode. We have to trust that God has put us here for a reason—other than survival—and continue to educate, minister to and care for people we meet as those who live in the body of Christ have always done in different ways at different times.
When the body of Christ and the life of Jesus are internalized by each of us and by the community we accept our mission as the embodiment of Jesus in a particular time and place. Or as the gospel of John says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” We abide in Jesus, not simply because our salvation depends upon our faith and connection, but because we are given life to share, life to give, life to extend toward others. We have a home through the life of Jesus so that God’s intentions for all of humanity can be carried out through us and through all who accept God’s life-giving intentions for creation.
How is it that your connection to Jesus has given you life that can be shared? It’s sometimes hard in the middle of heartache, desolation, loneliness, depression or loss to recognize, but as we look back we realize that our trust in God was affirmed, though it may not have been in the ways that we thought. When a loved one has died, the first desire is to have that person restored to us, to go back to a time before the loss; what God often does instead is weave within us a tapestry of memories that we can experience and learn from. Through the pain that we feel, we are strengthened to minister to others in the midst of their grief and loss if we have allowed ourselves to accept death as an integral part of mortal life. God can heal us; God gives us eternal life; yet God also makes us resilient when we do experience the deaths of loved ones, not only comforting us through the knowledge of resurrection, but revealing truths about ourselves in those losses and giving us strength to grow beyond them.
Our lives in Jesus Christ can be full of life if we allow the heart and hope of Christ to fill us, trusting in the promises that God made thousands of years before and trusting in the promises that we life in now. Let us recall that God’s statement of delight at the sight and sound and taste and touch of creation, “It is good.” And—the implication—it will stay that way with out stewardship. We recall God’s promises of survival to Noah, a promised land and a son to Abraham, a nation to Moses, a throne to David and his descendents and place of belonging for each of the faithful is affirmed throughout each covenant. We can trust in the promises of God—though we may not always receive what we think we want or ask for. But we can trust that God’s love for us is where we belong.
In the name and in the love of God: Life’s Source, Savior, and Sustainer. Amen.
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
“Trusting in Uncertain Times”
In conversations with people over the years, I have realized that my experience of home and family is not universal. I was born to parents who wanted me from conception and welcomed into a family who had been excitedly awaiting my arrival. And most children are born to parents who want them—but sometimes those families are in situations where children feel less than welcome.
Sometimes parents feel pressure from their parents or other family members because of financial insecurity or relationship problems. So children may feel insecure because of personal relationships within families themselves. And sometimes children feel insecure within families because of issues beyond the control of individual families. Over certain periods of history some children have been born into cultures that were slowly disintegrating or actively being destroyed. For example, within recent Australian history, young Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents, forever labeling them as the stolen or homeless generations. And this country has similar legacies attached to earlier times when Native American children were removed and “reeducated” in schools that sought to remove native languages and cultures. A home and shelter, it seems to me, are a basic right of every human being, yet in many places in the world and in history it still seems to be something that people have to earn or something to be worthy of.
All of this talk of home and security—of having a shelter and the means to maintain it—reinforces the reality of having a home in God. Having a secure home—or not—as a child can strengthen the desire of security as we grow into adulthood. One of the ways that God can be experienced is that assurance and knowledge of security. Even when we are stripped of security in all other ways, God’s promises of belonging, of security, of hope and of home can carry us through deeply desolate times and places of severe want.
Sometimes when we are panicked, that desire for security can compel us to seek shelter and safety in questionable places and practices. Western culture’s practice of taking native or aboriginal children was one of those practices. Because our ancestors were encountering so many new practices and peoples they didn’t understand, they set out to fix those practices and people to make the strange people more like themselves.
Yet when we really accept where home is and with whom we most belong, we know that God is our home and that God’s household is with whom we most belong. What often may confuse us is how God has invited all to live in and with the community and household that God is building. We may be confused out of a lack of worth for ourselves—if that “wonderful” person is beloved of God, then how can God love me? Or, we may be confused by God’s invitation because we feel that we belong with God and others are so different that they cannot—this isn’t necessarily out of arrogance, we just can’t understand how people so different could be loved by the same God.
But how can we trust God unless we do believe, truly believe, that God loves us unconditionally—despite our weakness, sin, addiction, conceit, or any other thing we are or do. And we can trust that God will do as God has promised—and that those promises are eternal.
Honestly, that’s what makes me feel most at home with God—more at home with God than when I am in the presence of almost anyone else. As I have told others before, I can trust that God understands why I do certain things and make certain choices, I’m not sure other people will understand or give me a chance to explain. Knowing that God loves me and that I can trust God with all the thoughts and feeling of my mind and my heart means that every thought and feeling is a prayer to God in some way. I want to be more intentional and systematic in my prayer life—for my own sense of discipline and structure—but I know that God hears me whether or not I take the time to do it. What conscientious and systematic prayer can do is build our awareness that God is listening to us throughout the day. It’s almost a paradox—we pray on a regular basis, not because God isn’t listening all the time, but because we need to be reminded that God is always listening.
Trusting God and feeling at home in God’s presence can be bolstered by building that relationship—I’ve said it before and I will say it again and again and again, “You can’t know someone you haven’t spent time with, communicating with, sharing your deepest feelings and thoughts—that’s why we pray. And we need to know God’s feelings and thoughts, too, that’s why we study scripture—to hear how others have experienced God’s word and presence in their lives. We need to know God to trust God—and we know God the same way we know others by talking to and listening to God.”
As we know God by staying in relationship with God, we hear Ephesians suggest that praying in the Spirit means being centered in the place and/or person where one belongs, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. . . Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” This is the opening and closing—the description of wearing the armor of God was Paul’s way of describing how it is that the church could within the strength and power of God. In other places Paul speaks of wearing a new person after baptism—here he continued that way of describing the life of faith in stronger language—speaking of armor and weapons. I read this and heard it this way.
Use what God has given you so that you will survive times of torment and weakness, inside and out. Stand tall so that you can wrap truth around you, holding you together. Live with thoughts and actions centered in Jesus to keep you distant from evil choices, if possible. Wear the comfort of hope and possibility—to reveal the serenity and peace that God gives. Shield yourself always with the faith that you bear—assuring you of God eternal presence, no matter what else may happen. Rely on salvation to protect your heart and grasp firmly the word, knowing it well.
If we pray in the Spirit out of sense of belonging to the body of Christ—the community of the faithful—Paul writes that will awaken compassion as we pray for a minister to all the saints, which are all of God’s people. I believe this means caring for everyone because I believe that everyone belongs to God whether or not they know it. And it requires being centered in a place and being where we belong because compassion takes risk—we risk rejection, loss and pain. When we have compassion, we are with another—from the “com” of the word—in the midst of their feelings of pain, sorrow or other feeling or “passio.”
To have compassion means having the courage to step out into the lives of other people and it means caring in ways that they need, not just in ways that we want to care. Courage means having the heart or “cour” to do something. Though we may think of courage in times of war and violence, courage is necessary in moments where we are called to love and care for as well. In the last few months, I’ve reconnected with several people from high school and have learned about some courageous acts from people I hadn’t heard about for years. One was the little brother of a woman who was in my high school graduating class. My school was smaller than Cuba High, there were only 13 in my class, so I knew most of the high school. Anyway, I saw that he was talking about traveling to Kenya in Africa and had adopted orphaned children there. At one point, he described how his young son had died after a long battle with diseases associated with AIDS. I would never have predicted that kind of courage of him only knowing him as a young kid. In my eyes, that kind of centered compassionate courage can come only from a deep and real relationship and sense of belonging to God. When I asked his sister if he was in ministry, she said, not officially, but yes, that’s how she saw it.
To live the kind of life to which God calls us takes trust in God. In my life the people I trust the most are the relationships where I cultivate conversation and connection, so to cultivate my trust in God, I feel that it is important to be in conversation with God and connect to God regularly. I continue to work on that conversation and connection, not only in prayer time, but in the other ways that I live. We need the courage in difficult and challenging times to reach out in connection rather than to isolate ourselves in survival mode. We have to trust that God has put us here for a reason—other than survival—and continue to educate, minister to and care for people we meet as those who live in the body of Christ have always done in different ways at different times.
When the body of Christ and the life of Jesus are internalized by each of us and by the community we accept our mission as the embodiment of Jesus in a particular time and place. Or as the gospel of John says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” We abide in Jesus, not simply because our salvation depends upon our faith and connection, but because we are given life to share, life to give, life to extend toward others. We have a home through the life of Jesus so that God’s intentions for all of humanity can be carried out through us and through all who accept God’s life-giving intentions for creation.
How is it that your connection to Jesus has given you life that can be shared? It’s sometimes hard in the middle of heartache, desolation, loneliness, depression or loss to recognize, but as we look back we realize that our trust in God was affirmed, though it may not have been in the ways that we thought. When a loved one has died, the first desire is to have that person restored to us, to go back to a time before the loss; what God often does instead is weave within us a tapestry of memories that we can experience and learn from. Through the pain that we feel, we are strengthened to minister to others in the midst of their grief and loss if we have allowed ourselves to accept death as an integral part of mortal life. God can heal us; God gives us eternal life; yet God also makes us resilient when we do experience the deaths of loved ones, not only comforting us through the knowledge of resurrection, but revealing truths about ourselves in those losses and giving us strength to grow beyond them.
Our lives in Jesus Christ can be full of life if we allow the heart and hope of Christ to fill us, trusting in the promises that God made thousands of years before and trusting in the promises that we life in now. Let us recall that God’s statement of delight at the sight and sound and taste and touch of creation, “It is good.” And—the implication—it will stay that way with out stewardship. We recall God’s promises of survival to Noah, a promised land and a son to Abraham, a nation to Moses, a throne to David and his descendents and place of belonging for each of the faithful is affirmed throughout each covenant. We can trust in the promises of God—though we may not always receive what we think we want or ask for. But we can trust that God’s love for us is where we belong.
In the name and in the love of God: Life’s Source, Savior, and Sustainer. Amen.
Sermon August 16 2009
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
“Worship—Beginning of Wisdom”
What is worship about? That was the first question one of my professors asked. So, I ask you, what is worship about?
We walk into worship, not to receive, but to give. We come to give God praise for the world and creation in which we live. We come to sing of God’s wondrous acts of redemption, salvation, and resurrection. We come to pray and thank God for each breath that we take and each beat of our hearts. We come to worship, I hope, to give rather than receive.
Over the last several decades, beginning almost a century ago now, there was a sense of entitlement in worship. When people walked into the doors of a church, each was looking to receive a word that would bolster his or her soul, a moment that would lift the sorrow from their heart or a time when the hand of God would take the pain away. About a century ago, a trend of preaching for healing made its way into the mainstream of Christian thought. One prominent preacher whose name eludes me said that each sermon he preached should solve some problem for his church members—if not all then some. He preached a kind of counseling sermon, designed to apply biblical truth to psychological, social or even physical problems. There’s nothing wrong with that—on occasion.
What he brought to the tradition of worship was a way of teaching and learning within a worship setting. He may not have been the first, but he certainly wasn’t the last. I think that’s where the danger may begin. If you go home and turn on your TV you could probably find several preachers who are speaking that kind of sermon this week. “You have this problem? Well, then, this scripture tells you that God will fix it in this way.” That kind of expectation has become common, I think.
There have been many trends in preaching over the years, but whatever the sermon purports to do or not do, the purpose in gathering together is not to serve ourselves, but to bring glory to God.
So, if worship is about giving glory, praise and thanks to God—how are we entitled to anything as we worship? Why are we disappointed if the preacher didn’t make us feel good or the songs weren’t uplifting? Or were we upset because we weren’t made brought to tears out of contrition? Is it about me? Did we praise God for simply being God? Did we thank God for the abundant blessings we have received? Do our hearts burst with the joy we feel in God’s presence?
Each of today’s texts conveys a relationship between the worship of God and the experience of God’s wisdom. So, each one reveals the truth we experience—that without the experience of God in our lives, truth or wisdom is hollow and empty. We also know that with God in our lives, truth isn’t a static, unmoving, nonliving thing—it is a dynamic movement. Just as our relationships with one another—as parents, spouses, friends, offspring—change as we move into and out of different contexts and situations. When someone we love hurts us, for example, we may not quit loving them, but our love and trust shifts and moves as that relationship changes. And when someone we love pleases us beyond our expectation, we also may be opened up to love even more. And that love may abound beyond that particular person into other people who may be in our lives. The truth and wisdom of those relationships develop and so does our relationship with God.
Times when we gather as a community for the purpose of worshiping God often have times of teaching, too, where we are encouraged to grow closer to God in some way. We can come to a service of worship intending to learn as well as experience God’s glory—that’s what sermons and other teaching times are intended to do. Yet the focus in those times, too, is building our relationship with God as well as learning how to reveal that relationship to others.
The text this morning from 1 Kings tells the story of how the wise king Solomon, the warrior David’s heir, became wise. In this text, we are told that King Solomon was in the habit of worshiping God in places other than in Jerusalem where his father, King David, had moved the tent of meeting (or the tabernacle). And there is no condemnation for this, though his actions are explained. He liked to go to the different altars, or high places, to worship and it was at one of these that God decided to come to him and talk. After his sacrificial offering, he heard God ask, “What do you want?”
He seemed to have come to worship with the expectation that this was a possibility, so Solomon answered God very clearly and with certainty. I wonder sometimes if we ever come to worship with that clarity and certainty. I wonder sometimes if we come to worship expecting an encounter with God. I don’t have to wonder about myself—honestly, I sometimes forget why I have come.
I received a reminder almost two weeks ago as I attended General Assembly. Though I sometimes get caught up in the leadership of worship while I am here, I was able to be swept away while I was there. I have known myself to get swept away here, too, so, I know it’s not just the almost 6000 others worshiping God with me. As I sang some well known hymn that I can’t even remember the name of, I felt a connection to God that I don’t feel all the time. It wasn’t the choice of hymn or the words—there was simply a heartfelt knowledge in and through me that I was in presence of God and that I always am. Though I love leading worship—that moment reminded me that I need to let go sometimes and let God lead me in worship, too. I needed to ask for and accept the wisdom that is in the worship of God.
That’s not the only wisdom to be gained through the worship of God, but as the psalmist wrote, “10The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Knowing God is God and no one else is God IS the place and time and thought where wisdom begins. Respecting that God is God and no one else can be is the place where we begin to understand our places in this world. The “fear of the Lord” is simply the willingness to let go and let God be God. This is wisdom and truth, it is the basis of worship—the reason we gather and give God praise—and it is a very difficult truth to live in every day.
Wisdom, as described by some, means knowing your limitations and realizing, not that you are worthless, but that your worth depends on acknowledging the boundaries and edges of who you are. It means discerning what you can do to live God’s word in your life and what is beyond your capabilities and letting God do what you can’t.
And in the life of faith that we live as Christians, we cannot simply look at wisdom as a controlling agent that is set upon us sinful humans—like some view the 10 commandments—wisdom and truth are written within us as disciples of Jesus, the embodiment of God’s wisdom and word.
Parker Palmer, a Quaker theologian calls Jesus . . . “a paradigm, a model of this personal truth. In him, truth,[ . . .] takes on a human frame. In Jesus, the disembodied ‘word’ takes flesh and walks among us. Jesus calls us to truth, but not in the form of creeds or theologies or world-views. His call to truth is a call to community – with him, with each other, with creation and its Creator.”[1]
As disciples of Jesus, we are called to imitate Jesus’ embodiment of truth, but not as individuals. We are called to be the imitators of truth and wisdom in the body of Christ, the church—that is the way that we are most faithful. That is the only way we accomplish the will of God—and that is the way that we most faithfully worship God—as a community.
The word in John’s gospel this week is one of the times when we must realize that deep spiritual nature of gospel of John. In the text from this week and last, Jesus refers to his blood as drink and his flesh as the bread we are to eat. As I read and paraphrased it in my studies this week, I wrote it this way, “Those who drink in my life will live; I will give them life again. My body is the true life and my blood is the true life. I will live in them and they in me. The life of God is in me and I live because of God—so my life needs to be in you and you will live because of me. I am the bread of life that God sends to you—not bread to satisfy the body for a day, but bread and life to sustain life for eternity.”
As we gather into a body when we worship, we constitute the body of Christ in this place—and that body changes from week to week—from day to day as we move into and out of a particular worshiping body. Each week this body is slightly different as some member attend and others are absent, yet it is a complete body each time, worshiping God whose truth and wisdom was made flesh in Jesus.
We gather to worship because we know that in and through the community, the body of Christ, our needs are already met—not because we need to feel good. We may gather in the body of Christ and find that we are more clearly able to see our sin and thus more able and willing to ask for forgiveness. We may gather and begin to understand more clearly how it is that we have not listened to the wisdom of God. We may gain from the times when we come together and worship God—but the purpose of the worship of God is to give God glory, anything else is icing on the cake.
For Solomon, his worship of God brought forth the question “What do you need of me?” from God. For the psalmist wisdom of awe was made real in the contemplation of the goodness of creation and the wonder that exists all around. In Ephesians, we understand that the wisdom we gain in that worship and wonder translates into the choices we make and in the behavior that reveals who we are. And when John’s gospel reveals Jesus’ word of flesh and blood, we can realize that God’s mysteries are meant to guide us closer to the one who is the source of all life and wisdom.
Within our worship services, we will learn and gain encouragement and understanding—yet I hope that we allow ourselves to be open to the experience of God, awesome and wondrous beyond any word we might hear and understand. I hope that we are reminded that the delightful power of God accompanies us when we gather as a community of six, sixty or six thousand.
In the name of our God: wisdom, friend and comforter. Amen.
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