What Can I Give Him? My Worship

Transcription

1 What Can I Give Him? My Worship by Greg Smith-Young (Elora-Bethany Pastoral Charge) Second in an Epiphany Series about the Gifts of the Magi John Januar y 13, 2013 This Samaritan woman is talking with Jesus. Jesus is focusing on some painful realities in her life. So she steers the conversation to something much safer... disagreements about worship. Nothing contentious about that! Jews and Samaritans were family, ethnically and religiously. You know how family feuds are the most vicious, and disputes among people with similar spiritual traditions the most intense. This woman bravely plunges into a big one. Jews insisted that the heart of worship was the Temple in Jerusalem. Samaritans like her said no, the holiest place was on Mount Gerizim. Jesus, your way, or my way... which is right? They call them worship wars, a very ugly phrase for the conflicts that can tear us apart. Should worship be traditional or contemporary. Hymns or praise choruses? Informal or formal? Stuff like that. Worshipping with you, here today, are people with different tastes and preferences, traditions and expectations, different ideas about right worship. We need wisdom! The Magi were wise. They brought gifts to the Saviour Jesus: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Last week I looked at how gold can symbolize our wealth. How can we wisely bring our wealth to Jesus? This week, the second gift: frankincense. 1 They make it from the resin from Boswellia trees, the best of which grow in Yemen and Somalia. People have traded frankincense for more than five millennia. One of its main uses was in worship. People burned frankincense as a flagrant offering to God. So today, I want to think about worship. The Wise Men brought their gift of worship to 1

2 Page 2 of 5 Jesus. 2 How do we wisely offer our worship to the Saviour God? II Think about a play performed on a stage. Different people do different things. Writers craft the script. Directors coordinate the action Actors perform the play The audience watches it. Who is most important? The writer? Those on stage? The director? The audience? Who is the play for? Can I suggest the audience? Everyone else does their part, hoping to bring pleasure to the audience. Now, imagine that worshipping God is a theatre, a dramatic performance. Different people play their parts. Louise, Barb and me. Our choir and praise team. You, the congregation. And God! What are the parts we play? Who is the audience for worship? The way our space is set up, it seems to be you, the congregation. In a theatre, you would certainly be the audience, facing the screen. But in worship? Who are the actors? Those of us up here, on stage? But is this the stage in worship? Here s are our roles in worship. You are the actors, you in the congregation, the choir, the praise team. You are the ones worshipping. We leaders are like directors, putting it together, helping you to do your parts well. But we are actors too. Sometimes the director is in the movie too. We direct 2 Dale Bruner discusses the worship the Magi gave to Jesus. Matthew: A Commentary Volume 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 63f.

3 Page 3 of 5 worship, and worship with you. What about the writers? I d say we write it together. We bring our lives, our experiences, our joys and struggles together in worship. Sure, most of the words come from things I ve written, or song writers have composed, and especially from Scripture. But each of us you and me we pour ourselves into it. But who is the audience, then? Not me. Not you. The audience for our worship is God. We offer our worship, to give delight to God. Here is another way to think about it. Worshipping God makes us eccentric. III Not eccentric as in odd, though it might do that too. Worshipping God is not the most normal thing to do these days. I mean eccentric in the word s literal sense. Every circle has a centre point. Something is ec-centric when it is off-centre. Our tendency is to put us at the centre. When we are babies, we are inescapably focused on ourselves. Part of maturing is realizing that it is not all about us. So we learn to share. We learn to wait. We learn compassion, and to see things through others eyes. We learn to be eccentric, not at the centre. But we are constantly trying to put ourselves back in the centre. Sometimes on purpose. Usually by habit. We do this in worship. I do it in worship. How often have I left a worship service, including ones I ve led, saying things like this... I didn t get much out of that. or Worship felt great today. I don t like those hymns. We should sing more contemporary stuff? or I don t like those new songs. We should sing more hymns? or The music today made me feel great. That sermon bored me... angered me... confused me.

4 Page 4 of 5 or That sermon inspired me... challenged me... gave me stuff to think about. Please don t misunderstand. Nothing wrong with any of those things. But it is wrong when I think that worship is about these things. That worship is for me. That worship is about me. When I put how I feel, what I get out of it, at the centre, that is where I go wrong. God is the audience. Worship is for God. God is at the centre. We worship when we are ec-centric. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: IV The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. What does it mean to worship God in Spirit and in Truth? I don t think it means there is one correct spiritual place to worship God. Or one true style to worship God. So many things about worship we squabble over are somewhat beside the point. Worship is about relationship, our relationship with God. God is spirit, and the Holy Spirit draws us into worship, into precious times when we can celebrate with God. Worship centers us on the truth, the living Truth who is at the heart of all things. In the Gospel of John, where we find this encounter between Jesus and this woman, truth is intimately connected with Jesus. In Jesus, we see the glory of the Father s Son, full of grace and truth. Grace and truth comes through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, the life.

5 Page 5 of 5 Jesus says, Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. 3 God s delight is when we rest in Jesus.... When we find our true selves in Jesus... When we listen to the true Voice whom God has sent us, Jesus. That s true worship. In worship we bring ourselves to God. Our lives. Our celebrations. Our heartbreaks. Our struggles and our victories. We bring our faith. We bring our wrestlings. We bring ourselves to God, as gifts to God. Above all, we celebrate God. God is at the centre. God is the audience for our worship. We celebrate who God is. What God is like. We remember with thanksgiving what God has done. We hope with expectation in what God will be doing. And we bask in the wonder of what God is doing now. If we do this, in our halting, stumbling, imperfect ways, then our worship is good. Truly and spiritually good. The Magi wisely brought frankincense, their gift of worship to the Saviour. Next week, we ll reflect on the meaning of their third gift, myrrh. 3 John 1.14,17; 14.6;