STRANGERS IN A FAMILIAR LAND Sermon by Paul R. Powell St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans Sunday, April 22, 2012

Transcription

1 STRANGERS IN A FAMILIAR LAND Sermon by Paul R. Powell St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans Sunday, April 22, 2012 Sometimes in conversations I say to people that I wish they could have known New Orleans in the 60s. That s when I first moved here to attend Baptist Seminary and although I grew up in Louisiana, I had been here only once. I remember how fascinated I was with the city, its architecture, its people, and even its sleaze. The French Quarter had a special appeal and some of us seminary students spent a lot of our free time roaming around down there. Yet when I drive around Gentilly or other areas of the city, I feel as if I am a stranger wandering around in places that look but don t feel familiar anymore. It s the same feeling I get when I walk around in the French Quarter. On a different level, I get the same feeling about Christianity, the Church, and especially Worship in today s culture. The scriptures, the words, the buildings, the ministries are still there, but I feel as if I don t belong anymore, like a stranger in some other realm of experience than the one which I have known and loved and served all these years. So, in today s sermon I want to speak to you about contemporary worship. I ve spoken briefly about this several times, but you must surely be aware that Christianity has undergone a monumental change in its worship and ministry practices in the last twenty or more years. Some have called it a Pentecostal Reformation no less radical than the Great Reformation of the 15 th and 16 th centuries, and I have a tendency to agree with that assessment. I begin these thoughts with the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. Moses is going about his usual business of tending the flocks when he comes across a bush that has caught fire, but this bush just seems to burn on and on without ever burning up. That catches Moses eye and he turns aside to see what s up, only to hear God call out to him to take off his sandals because the ground on which he walked was holy ground. Moses is scared out of his mind, of course, but does as God asks, and then God tells Moses he needs someone to lead his people out of Egyptian bondage, and Moses is his man. Moses remembers how horribly his own people, the Israelites, had been treated as slaves of the Egyptians, but although he felt sorry for them he had not done anything to free his people. So God stepped in and demanded that Moses do something. 1

2 Now, this story is quite literal and one which the Jews celebrate to this day as one of their great Holy Days. But as with all Biblical stories, there s more to it than the obvious. The Israelites had become so familiar with slavery that they no longer desired freedom. And even after Moses freed them and led them out of Egypt they complained bitterly about how much better their lives had been under the Pharoahs at least they had good food, cucumbers and melons and the like rather than the plain but nourishing manna which God provided them in the wilderness just for the gathering. Don t tell me that after Katrina you didn t feel the same way wishing for some good old red beans and rice or gumbo or just about anything other than a baloney sandwich and a bag of chips. Far more than physical freedom, the Israelites needed spiritual freedom, and if there s anything the Church needs in our own day and time, it is spiritual freedom, in my opinion. What, you might ask does this Burning Bush experience have to do with contemporary worship? To me it says that any place where we meet God is Holy Ground, and like Moses we should approach that place with respect and reverence. Take off your shoes, shake the dust off your feet, and tread lightly for you are in the presence of God, the creator, and you are the created. Somehow, we have failed to pass on to our younger generations the sense that church is a very special place, different from everywhere else with experiences totally unlike anything the world has to offer. Where is that special sense that when we walk through the doors of the church we are entering someplace really special, holy ground where God calls out to us to worship Him and to listen to what He says to us? And if it is such a special place, then what we do here ought to be very special as well. Looking elsewhere in the Old Testament, we find Psalm 105 which reads: O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, Make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him, sing praises to him, Tell of his wonderful works. Glory in his holy name, Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and his strength; Seek his presence continually, Remember the wonderful works he has done 2

3 There is nowhere I feel more like a stranger in a familiar land than in the world of contemporary Christian music. The words seem familiar, that is, they talk and sing about God and Jesus and worship, but what they do in the process seems so strange, so unlike anything that I have come to know as worship. One of the popular contemporary Christian songs has the phrase I m coming back to the heart of worship without ever really explaining what the heart of worship is or how the worshipper comes back to whatever the heart of worship is. Sing to the Lord, sing his praises sounds good, but how can you direct your mind and heart to the Lord when all around you there is a continual banging of drums and twanging of electric guitars, dancing and swaying and shouting that looks for all the world like a rock concert in which the rockers are the center of attention, not God! But before you get even the least bit arrogant about the superiority of traditional worship, need I remind you of a day not so long ago when preaching was the very center of what we called worship, not the actual worship of God. And that, in my opinion eventually led to bored congregations who were all too eager to accept with open arms the growing pentecostal or contemporary style of worship. The truth of the matter is that all worship is traditional and all worship is contemporary. If we read Scripture, we pray, we sing, we preach, we give offerings we are being traditional. And if we use contemporary language in reading or praying or singing or preaching, we are being contemporary. Time and again I have been told that if contemporary worship gets people to come to church, then it must be good, but it is my opinion and observation that contemporary worship is more contemporary than worship. Any performance done for the glory of the performer rather than the glory of God is not true worship, no matter whether that performance be traditional classical music, or rock or jazz or gospel or whatever. The same could be said for preaching. True worship centers on God and lifts the worshipper up to God. True worship does not bring God down to worshippers. We do not get into the spirit the Spirit gets into us or else there is no worship! And the Spirit of God does not direct our attention away from God, but toward God! True worship is not judged true because you or I or anyone else says it is or isn t, but by what happens in the lives of worshippers after the service is over. An anthem I used several years ago began with these lines: O come and be among us Lord, today, 3

4 O come and be among us Lord, we pray; We are gathered in your name and we ll never be the same How can we truly come into the presence of God singing and praying and listening to his Word without being changed for the better? Is there any possibility at all of being touched by God and not being changed forever? In Matthew 16 we have that strange little dialogue between Jesus and the Apostle Peter. Jesus had been trying to warn his followers that he would soon undergo suffering and crucifixion at the hands of the religious people but be raised from the dead on the third day. Peter would have none of this and told Jesus God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you. But Jesus responds bluntly, Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. Jesus goes on to say that true followers of his must deny themselves or lose themselves in order to find their true lives. And that s very much like what I feel about contemporary worship. I want to say to those who are waving and shouting and dancing about to get behind me Satan and look toward God. They claim to be getting in the spirit but what I see is that they are merely getting into the spirit of the occasion or the music and by doing so they are denying the true Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to get into their hearts and minds. They become so full of themselves that there is little chance of the Holy Spirit breaking through to their hearts and minds. Ulrich Zwingli was one of the Great Reformers, and although his doctrines influenced virtually all of the other Reformers, he took a completely opposite viewpoint of most things than did Martin Luther. Luther took the attitude that whatever the Scriptures didn t expressly forbid was ok when it came to worship, but Zwingli felt only that which the Scriptures expressly allowed was ok. Consequently, he took a very dim view of anything ostentatious in worship. In his view, and in his church, all the trappings of Catholic worship were stripped away right down to having plain, wooden utensils for the serving of communion and the collecting of the offering. Men and women sat on separate sides of the sanctuary. Psalms were the only text allowed for singing, and not much of that. And even though Zwingli was an accomplished musician, he felt that music was just too sensual to be included in worship. In fact, the organ was removed from 4

5 his church in Zurich and it would be some 300 years later before an organ was once again allowed in his church. Marcus and Tom give careful thought to their selections for our worship, and I try to select hymns whose texts are primarily cast as prayers to God, connecting the worshipper to God. And even those hymns about God should lead us to think about the reasons we worship God, thus becoming vehicles of worship. Over the entrance to my home church and many others appear the words, Enter to worship, Depart to serve. To me there is a direct relationship between true worship and true Christian living. The two are as inseparable as the bread and wine in Communion. One without the other leaves the experience incomplete, not quite right. True worship will always lead to true Christian living. True Christian living feeds on true worship. Romans 12 tells us: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all Do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. How on earth could you do any of this without having first worshiped the ONE TRUE AND LIVING GOD? Is there any better motivation for living the Christian life than having turned aside from the ordinariness of our lives and entered into a Holy Ground experience with God which we call worship? When we truly worship God, we will never be the same AMEN. 5