worship — Andy James

Worship in Spirit and Truth

July 17, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on John 4:5-24
preached on July 17, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Something special happens when God’s people gather for worship. We may do things very much the same week after week, following the same basic order of service, sharing very similar words, singing some of the same songs, greeting many of the same people, receiving the same offering, even hearing very similar words of dismissal, but there is something special going on each and every time we gather here.

The church has understood this since its earliest days. The disciples, after all, had gathered in the evening on the first day of the week when Jesus appeared to them after his resurrection, and the New Testament recounts several other instances of the early church gathered for worship, not to mention that much of the New Testament was written as letters to be read to the community gathered for worship. Debates over the nature and content of worship were an important part of the reformation impulses of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others some five hundred years ago. And in a file cabinet downstairs, we have files upon files of worship bulletins, everything from last Sunday’s service to special anniversary celebrations and even from the first worship service of this congregation in 1871, reminding us that the first official act of this congregation was to worship God together.

In all these times and places, the church has gathered for worship, most often on the first day of the week, to give praise to God, hear the Word of God, offer prayers for God’s world, and experience the presence of God in one another and in sacrament. So it is no surprise that the third Great End of the Church as adopted by our Presbyterian forebears is “the maintenance of divine worship.” To a certain extent, it is surprising to me that this is the third Great End and not the first, because in many ways it is worship that sets the church apart from so many other institutions. Our worship is rooted in the rich praise of ancient Israel shared with us in the psalms and has grown through millennia of practice before and after the time of Jesus even as we continue to maintain and celebrate it today.

Our scripture reading this morning from the gospel according to John gives us a glimpse of the culture surrounding worship in the time of Jesus through the lens of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. This encounter raises all sorts of interesting questions about interaction between people of different cultures, the impact of tradition and legend on present practice, and the role and status of women in New Testament times. As we examine the meaning of the mission of the church in “the maintenance of divine worship” today, though, it gives us a very helpful glimpse into how Jesus understood the meaning and purpose of worship.

This encounter took place in Samaria, a land between Galilee and Judea that was viewed by residents of both as dangerous and “other.” The people of Samaria were descended from those who had been sent into exile by Assyria in the eighth century BCE, and even though they had returned to their homeland, they were viewed as very different by their neighbors. Samaritans worshiped the same God as the Jews and shared many traditions, practices, and beliefs in common, but they worshiped at Mount Gerizim rather than in Jerusalem. Galileans and Judeans used this to justify treating Samaritans as second-class citizens—impure, foreign, and other—even though they lived well within the boundaries of historic Palestine.

The theme of worship therefore loomed very large in the context of this encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well. They first exchanged words over Jesus’ desire to get a drink of water, ending with Jesus explaining to her that he could offer her living water that would quench her thirst forever, for it “will become in [everyone who drinks it] a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” When she expressed her desire to receive such a gift, Jesus then began to comment on her family situation, suggesting that she bring her husband back to him in order to receive this living water even as he knew that she had had five husbands and was currently living with a man who was not her husband!

In light of his seeing the truth about her, the woman named Jesus as a prophet and finally put the issue of worship that divided Jews and Samaritans on the table: Why do the Jews exclude the Samaritans because they do not worship in Jerusalem? Instead of trying to answer her question, Jesus suggested that bigger changes were afoot:

The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

He then moved on to offer her some deeper principles about this worship for the present and future:

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

All the divisions that had led to such separation between Jews and Samaritans would no longer matter because the real unity of worship in spirit and truth would change it all for everyone. This new pathway that Jesus suggested was deeply compelling to the woman, so much so that beyond our story today she started telling others about her encounter with Jesus, and they believed his message for themselves.

Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman about worshiping in spirit and truth ring loud and clear across the ages as we explore what it means to live out “the maintenance of divine worship” in the church today. What does worshiping in spirit and truth look like for us today? First, worship in spirit and truth reflects the wonder, grace and mercy of a God who comes to us in Jesus Christ. In worship, we encounter God in Christ just as the woman encountered Jesus at the well. In worship, we hear the Word of God proclaimed. In worship, we see the presence of God in our sisters and brothers who gather with us here. And in worship, we find God meeting us in the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to give us the sign and seal of God’s presence in our midst. The spirit and truth of God are present in our midst as we worship because we encounter God here, offering us living water and amazing grace so that we might go forth in new pathways of life each and every day.

Second, worship in spirit and truth reorients us to the presence of God in our world. Worship is not just about getting together for an hour a week on Sundays. The things that we do here to experience, understand, and praise God do not simply stand on their own. Worship in spirit and truth helps us to see God more clearly in the everyday, to learn more about what God is doing in our lives and our world, to see God at work in ways beyond the assumptions we may have made along the way. When we leave this or any place where we worship, the spirit and truth that lie behind our acts guide us to think differently about the world beyond these doors, reminding us that God’s presence is not just trapped here but must also be visible to us and through us beyond any place of worship.

Finally, worship in spirit and truth means that we open ourselves to God’s transformation in our midst. In her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman’s spirit and truth were both put on full view. The truth of her past was very much visible, but her spirit of hope for something different was also very clear. And so too in our worship, God reveals the truth about ourselves, showing us a new pathway of truth and hope and inviting us to live in ways that embody transformation and new life. Similarly, worship shows us the truth about our world—and even more what God is doing to transform it—so that we might be a part of showing a new and different spirit beyond what we have seen for so long.

Our call to “the maintenance of divine worship” suggests that we are to worship in spirit and truth, to trust that God is actually doing something through the things that we do when we gather Sunday after Sunday here, to proclaim the truth of the transformation that we have encountered and experienced through God in Christ, to let this time together be the beginning of the new thing that we proclaim as we live in the light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All these things begin in the sacrament of Baptism. In Baptism, we encounter Jesus at a well in our time, in our own lives, asking us questions, naming the truth about who we are, inviting us to share new life. In Baptism, we are washed and made new, transformed beyond a simple human form, claimed as God’s own once and for all. And in Baptism, God offers us the living waters of Christ so that we might go forth to share that new life each and every day with everyone we meet. In a few moments, as we remember and reclaim the promises of the baptismal covenant, I hope and pray that we will encounter God in our midst, worshiping in spirit and in truth as we are transformed once again for new life in the world.

So as we make our way into the world this week, may the worship we share here help us to live each day in spirit and in truth, participating in the wonder of transformation made possible in God’s world by the power of the Holy Spirit, encountering God in Jesus Christ anew each and every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Gathered

June 21, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Micah 6:1-8; John 4:19-24; Psalm 100
preached on June 21, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord. (Alexander Gondo, transcrb. I-to Loh)

For countless generations, women and men of all ages, all around the world, have gathered to praise our Maker and worship the Lord. The shape and form of worship has changed and shifted in a variety of ways, adapting to local customs of words and songs, adjusting as we have come to think in new and deeper ways about God, and guiding us to more faithful and hopeful ways of living out our faith and our worship in the world. So over the next several weeks, we will take a step back from the lectionary readings and begin pulling apart the worship service, looking at the meaning of its various parts, thinking more carefully about why we do what we do, and trying to sort out how we embody in our worship God’s call to gather in this place and go out to serve.

Just as our worship begins with the gathering of God’s people, so too this journey begins as all God’s people come together to praise our Maker. Our readings today lift up different elements of why and how we gather: the command from the prophet Micah to bring a different kind of offering of justice and kindness and humility to our worship; the instruction from Jesus to gather for worship in spirit and in truth; and our sung psalm that directs us to “sing to the Lord with cheerful voice” and “enter then his gates with praise.” But whatever the reason for our being here, whatever we bring with us, whatever we do when we arrive, when we gather for worship we come together in the presence of God.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

Coming together is an important thing these days. Our world is an increasingly lonely place, and coming together seems less and less important. We live in a day and age when we can limit our interactions with others by doing things online with a few clicks rather than by phone or in person. Especially in this large city, we can easily avoid the sorts of social interaction that were once the norm and make it just fine, it seems, on our own. We so easily become consumed with our own affairs that we miss the ways in which we can and should interact with others along the way. We allow ourselves to become comfortable with the way things that we become afraid of the differences we might experience with others. And all this culminates in the attitude shared by so many that it is just fine to worship on our own on Sunday mornings, maybe with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Times, maybe with a leisurely and relaxing morning without the stress of getting ready by a certain hour, maybe with time shared by choice with our favorite family or friends.

But the core of our worship of God begins as we come together across all our boundaries, beyond our families of origin and choice, stepping outside our comfort zones, to worship as God’s one people. Coming together to worship shakes us out of our complacency in thinking that we can make it through anything and everything on our own. Coming together to worship reminds us that we gain strength for living our faith as we gather together. And coming together for worship gives us the energy and courage we need to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

Coming together for worship might seem to be an easy thing, but this isn’t always the case. Just ask Jesus’ disciples, who even on the night of the resurrection gathered together under cover of darkness in locked rooms for fear of who might find them out. Just ask the early church, who were gathered for worship underground, in secret, for decades in the face of persecution. Just ask those who sought reform in the church over the centuries, who were challenged and even killed for trying to shape worship as they saw fit. Just ask the slaves of nineteenth-century America, who gathered under cover of darkness when their human owners told them that they could not worship as they pleased. Just ask our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, who were looked upon with suspicion in our own country for centuries because of their commitment to a particular way of worship and leadership that seemed unusual to others. Just ask the victims of the Holocaust, who were forced into gas chambers because of their heritage of prayer and worship. Just ask our Muslim friends, who gathered to pray alongside suspicion and spies for years after 9/11 because others were afraid of what might be said there. And just ask our sisters and brothers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, who gathered for prayer and study this week and even welcomed a guest into their midst only to have him murder nine of them after their conversation.

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

In the face of all these challenges, confronted with all these fears, we keep coming together for worship, trusting that God will be present in our midst. It’s not that this is the only place where we see God at work; it’s not that we think that God lives here in the church, nesting somewhere in these rafters or bunking next to the boiler in the basement; it’s not even that we find that something special happens when we gather here. We gather to worship because we know of no better way to be in full and deep and real relationship with our sisters and brothers and no better way to show our gratitude and thanksgiving for all that God gives us along the way.

So just have you have come to worship today, keep gathering here in this place, trusting that God will be here with us and that in sharing this time with one another we can worship in Spirit and in truth, offering our praise and thanks to the God who made us and who makes all things new. Thanks be to God!

Come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come all you people, come and praise your Maker;
come now and worship the Lord.

Why I Go to Church

July 12, 2012 By Andy James

Being on sabbatical has already provided a space for me to ask some important questions about my life. What is my ongoing call to ministry, both in the congregation I continue to serve and beyond? What do I really do with all my time at “work”? How does my work impact my daily life and living?

the interior of St. Bart’s Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan, July 8, 2012

Most importantly, though, I’ve wondered a bit about why I go to church. I’ve now had two Sundays where I had no responsibilities to lead worship, and yet I still went to church. Some of my friends – in church and otherwise – were a bit astonished at this. They suggested that on my sabbatical I should actually try living like most of the world does, sleeping in, reading the Times, enjoying a favorite morning beverage in my pajamas at home, etc. While I might still try this out sometime in the eight Sundays that remain of my sabbatical, I think I’ll most likely end up in church every week.

Why, you might ask? Well, here are four good reasons.

Repetition. There is something important about setting aside regular time to gather with a community – even an unfamiliar one – to sing praise, listen to God’s Word proclaimed, and spend time in prayer for God’s world. Sometimes even the most familiar words can speak in a new and different way to the experiences of the moment. All this repetition makes worship a very important part of my week, and something feels off if I miss it.
Tradition/Habit. I’ve worshiped nearly every Sunday I can remember. In high school, in a time when my parents were not active in the church, I kept going. I can count on one hand the number of Sundays in college I was in town that I missed worship. For better or for worse, my life doesn’t feel the same when I’m not in a church for at least a little while on Sunday. Normally, “we’ve always done it that way” is a really awful reason t0 continue practices in the church, but in this case, I think it is a valid and reasonable way of thinking.
Community. I grew up surrounded by a very personal orientation of faith, where the individual’s actions and perspective were incredibly important and participation in a community of belief and practice was not nearly as important. Over the years, though, I’ve come to believe that I can’t take this walk alone. There remain times when the faith of the community “bears me through the swelling current.” Worship reminds me that I do not walk this road alone, that I have companions on this journey whom I may or may not know, and that I can trust God to keep working and keep speaking beyond my understanding and even my comfort zone.
Preaching. I’m a good Presbyterian, so this comes as no surprise. Wherever I worship, I need the Word to be proclaimed in faith, hope, and love. As I plan my worshiping communities this summer, I’m not beyond checking church websites to see who is preaching and what the text might be! Still, I trust that what I will hear is inspired by the Spirit and will open me to what I need to hear on a particular day. I found this very much to be true this past Sunday as I worshiped at St. Bart’s Church in Manhattan. Their current priest-in-charge (very similar to a designated pastor in the Presbyterian system) is also a native Mississippian, and his words about home resonated so well with me in my thinking about my home state and even my understanding of home in the Presbyterian Church (USA) after attending General Assembly last week. I couldn’t have asked for a better word in the midst of these times, and I was beyond grateful for it.

So over the course of these two months, I plan to keep up my practice of worship as best I can. There’s also the reality that I am doing reading and thinking about worship revitalization while on sabbatical, so experience worship in different styles and forms will be incredibly important all around. There will likely be a week or two where I can’t do this for practical reasons, but on the whole I plan to be quite the churchgoer for a New Yorker in July and August! Look for more on these things as the sabbatical progresses.