I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me...

I was Glad When They Said Unto Me... (September 25, 2005)

The Great Ends of the Church - Part 3

“I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” Psalm 122:1

In Gautier, Mississippi, elder Richard Poole stood on the grounds of the Presbyterian Church and pointed to a creek: “The source of our damage is a little creek over there,” he said. There’s a little inlet that comes up, and wiped out houses over there. It’s off the river. When the storm came in anything that had water in it came right up.” The congregation had installed a new carpet – just as we did – a month ago, and renovated the pews. “It was mind boggling,” Poole said. Now both are gone, even though the church is a mile from the Gulf and 20 feet above sea level. The sanctuary walls have been ripped out and the pulpit has been removed, but last week the congregation was worshipping at a camp site and one of the worship leaders was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Rick Ufford-Chase.

Today we come to the third of our series on the Great Ends of the Church. The third is “the maintenance of divine worship”. We have talked about the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind and we have talked about the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the people of God. Now we come to the third: the maintenance of divine worship. The people of Gautier had lost their church but they were continuing to worship God.

Hurricane Katrina is of course an extreme case, but Presbyterians always feel that no matter what happens the regular and faithful worship of God should continue. Notice the word “maintenance”. If you don’t “maintain” something – your car, for instance, maybe your work-out schedule, your health, your checkbook balance, you name it – bad things happen. In every Christian tradition, not just the Presbyterian, corporate worship is at the top of the list of Indispensable things. Sometimes churches have gone so far as to make attendance obligatory; those days are fortunately past, at least for Presbyterians. St. Paul wrote “there is no compulsion in religion”.. But what has happened, I’m afraid, in our culture is that public worship is considered just an option, on a par with going to the mall.

Especially in New York many secular people or people who are some other religion don’t have a clue that Christians just might have something else to do on Sunday morning. Years ago local leaders were shocked when several of us ministers in Forest Hills protested moving a parade to 11 AM Sundays. They didn’t understand why we would have a problem with that. Eventually,, they moved it to noon.

I remember many years ago after Sunday school I saw a father and his son leaving church before the service. The boy had an invitation to a birthday party. For 11 AM. When you get an insensitive invitation like that, why not say, Johnny will be happy to come to the party -- after we attend church? It’s a witness about what is a priority.

Herndon Lackey is a member of our church and a Broadway actor. They are doing Scrooge this Christmas and he was offered a part. Then he found out they would be having performances on Sunday mornings. Herndon told them he would be happy to do the part as long as an understudy did the Sunday morning performances.

I have often heard of people through the years who have gone out of their way to make sure their employer gives them Sundays. People who are nurses such as Ingrid Anthony have a particularly hard time, but Ingrid has let them know she is a Christian and she is here every other Sunday. This is a witness, and a testimony to this Great End of the church.

If people like Herndon and Ingrid can do this, so can everyone.

The psalmist said, “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’” Note, the psalmist didn’t say, “I told them we had to go to a birthday party when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

There is only one recorded instance in the gospels of Jesus being angry. It had to do with the house of the Lord. “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers,” he thundered, as he drove the money changers out of the temple. In brief, as we say today, Jesus was ticked.

When we have officers training the first item we have always put on the list of the essentials of being a good officer in the church is “faithful participation in worship”. When officers regularly are absent it has the same effect in a church that absentee landlords have in an apartment building – it lowers morale. If officers don’t care enough, why should others?

John Calvin defined the “true church” as “wherever the Word of God is truly preached and heard and the sacraments rightly administered.” This is a wonderful definition, and it clearly emphasizes corporate worship. The test of being “true” is not a formula of belief or rigidity of thought but that it is in worship that one discerns the marks of the true church. The two marks are explicitly communal – people together, hearing the Word and participating in the sacraments. Calvin cared far less about intellectual abstractions or right doctrine than about simple preaching and hearing of the gospel – the first of the Great Ends -- and far less about liturgical niceties or theory than about actual celebrations in the community of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper – which is why Baptism is never a private affair in our tradition, but always in the church service, and Communion is never private either, unless it is connected to the Communion which has been celebrated in the congregation.

Worship should be worship of God. It is praise to Almighty God for his mighty works in creation and in history, for God’s revelation of himself in Scripture in his dealings with the people of the covenant in the Old Testament and his coming among us in salvation in Jesus Christ. It is gratitude to God for his saving help to us now – just as for the people who gathered in Gautier, Mississippi, and petition for God’s help for those who need it. It is not first and foremost about ourselves, and the first question we should ask should never be “what do we get out of it?”

I had a wonderful time last year visiting the churches of our presbytery and preaching and sometimes administering Communion in many settings. But there were several discouraging moments. I think the worst was one service – and I won’t mention the church – where the Call to Worship was given by a member who talked for five or seven minutes about the changes she had undergone in her life and how bad things had been for her. I thought I was in a meeting of Worshippers Anonymous! Worship does have benefits for us, but it is not supposed to be therapy, it is centered on God. Testimonies may have their place, but not at the start of worship. We begin with God, and we should end with God. Worship should pull us out of our endless self-preoccupation and narcissism.

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands, serve the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God, it is he that has made us, and not we ourselves…” Note, the psalmist didn’t say, “Come into his presence talking about yourself.”
Maintaining divine worship takes work. Last week I mentioned some of the folks who have been so involved in deepening our church’s commitment to “shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship” in the prayer warriors, the retreats, the coffee hour, and many other things promoting our life together.

Today I want to do the same for divine worship. You have to have a choir and an organist, and we have a great organist in David Yurick and a dedicated choir. We have a committee on the session dealing with worship. It is now headed by Nadina Grants. Before Nadina was Ann Marie Pulwarty-Ramkeesoon, and before Ann Marie there was Karl Stayna. They have all been terrific in scheduling who is doing what, in keeping things going, in taking care that it is done right. When Karl stopped he specifically made sure Ann Marie understood all she needed to know about the job. And of course we should say we have a wonderful parish associate in Rev. Ruth Boling with her children’s talks. There are also the people who usher, who greet at the door after church, who take care in setting things up, such as the flowers and candles, done by Richard Paz, and the increasing number who volunteer to read or receive the offertory. And those who have given leadership in the summer. All of this is because many people in our church take very, very seriously this Great End of the Church: the maintenance of divine worship.