March 22, 2015 9:00 am Sermon The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:31-34 Written on the Heart My first piano teacher was an eccentric and scary woman who lived back off the street in a tangle of trees and undergrowth and vines. Her small house reminded me of the witch s house that Hansel and Gretyl almost cooked alive in which was a MOST scary story to a small child. As scary as this piano teacher was, she had quite the following of students. Her recitals at the Washington County Museum were three-hour shows that included acting, singing, and, of course, piano solos and duets. We ended every recital by dressing in choir robes with smocks and singing hymns. I had no idea where she went to church. She was just old and scary but she could play the piano and teach. I learned early with her that she didn t believe in asking us to memorize piano pieces. She wanted us to know them by heart. She didn t want robots that had been drilled and drilled. She wanted us to feel the music and embrace it. A lot of our first songs had words. She would make us sing them as we played them. My first song was Here we go, up a row, to a birthday party. My second song was Dolly dear, sandman s near. You will soon be sleeping.
My third song was Come on boys, join the fun, baseball days have begun. The last song in every beginner book I ve ever seen is an Indian Song. It s probably politically incorrect, now. This eccentric old woman knew something that we didn t: if you learned a piece by heart, it wasn t a mere playing from memory. It was something that flowed from your being. An airplane has something called automatic pilot. It is something that holds the plane on one course and allows the real pilot to move and stretch. Most of our cars and trucks now have cruise control. Once thought to be a luxury, now it is standard equipment. Cruise control has saved every ONE of us tickets on our nation s highways, especially the road from Richlands to the interstate. They even have cruise control devices for motorcycles which I never had. Cruise control is wonderful. It can also be dangerous. Using cruise control in wet roads with front wheel drive can kill you. It spun me off the interstate years ago. We were coming back from a meeting in Garner last Saturday when I saw a car in the ditch with airbags deployed and all these emergency vehicles there. It was raining hard and I m sure he spun off the road. Alas, the human being is a creature of habit. We do the same things every day. We worship in the same way every week. People who live longer lives invariably will tell you that doing the same thing day in and day out allows them to live that long. We know that if we play a piano piece enough times, we develop muscle memory. It s why we
drill and train. Disgusting people can read something one time and memorize it. The rest of us have to read it again and again. I developed a way to cram for exams in college. I was shocked when I got my exams back and they had A s on them but I couldn t remember writing them. I would cram them into my brain until 3 or 4am, take a nap, wake up and take the test. From drill instructors to church liturgies, we know that constant preparation and practice makes for good results. Our automatic response to things is epic and reaches into the center of our existence. A church was trying to raise additional money for its budget. The pastor said that he wanted to people to consider giving an extra hundred dollars every month and the pianist would play some music while people thought about it. When they considered they would do, they were to stand. Unbeknownst to the pastor, the pianist played the Star Spangled Banner. She got a raise. (music ) 1: Time to go. 2: Again? 1: Weekly worship is important. 2: It s always the same thing. 1: It is? 2: Song, question, songs, announcements, children prayer, song, sermon, song. Every week. 1: What about Communion? 2: Except Communion. 1: They are different songs.
2: But we ve sung most of them before. 1: The sermons are different. The scriptures are different. 2: But they re all from the same witty pastor who makes us laugh. 1: People enjoy that. 2: It s still the same old thing. 1: Different people are there. 2: But most of them are still the same people. I still have to put up with that confused woman who always asks me if I m new. 1: She asks everybody that. She s confused. All the time. 2: Well, kick her out. The pastor should just unload her. 1: He says every church has one or two strange people that we know and love. 2: Blah, blah, blah. He s just a bleeding heart. 1: So what do you want? 2: Something different. 1: We can go to another church. 2: It would be the same thing there eventually. 1: We could ask to sing new songs. Will you sing a new song? 2: I don t LIKE new songs. 1: Why not? 2: I don t know them. 1: So you re basically lazy. You don t want to invest the energy to learn them. 2: Worship is worship. There s nothing new under the sun. 1: Where did you read that? 2: In Ecclesiastes. 1: How did you know that s in Ecclesiastes?
2: Because I ve heard the pastor say it enough. 1: So you actually learned something 2: Now wait just a minute 1: What does white symbolize? 2: Victory 1: What do the two candles on the altar symbolize? 2: The humanity and divinity of Christ now wait 1: Are any of those written anywhere? 2: Well 1: No. You learned them. Because they ve been repeated again and again. 2: But when will we learn something new? 1: It s happening every week in worship. You just don t realize it. A fool returns to his folly 2: Like a dog returns to its vomit. And before you ask, it s in Proverbs. 1: Did you know any of this a few years ago? 2: No. 1: Let s go to worship. Something new is always happening.
The danger of any worship, the danger of ritual, the danger of memorization of church knowledge is that it becomes automatic. We can pray the Lord s Prayer without thinking. I ve remembered during any number of Lord s Prayer that I forgot to say something beforehand. We are automatic on many things in worship from The Lord be with you to May the Road Rise to Meet You to not really taking the first song (or prelude) seriously. I ve just laughed to myself and other members of the praise choir when your conversation just keeps right on going no matter what we sing. There was one woman in this church (who has since gone on to glory) who complained mightily about everyone talking during the prelude. She wanted things Gestapo quiet. We went around the block a few times on that one. But the fact remains, ritual can become automatic, almost Pavlovian. The prophet Jeremiah envisioned a time when people wouldn t need to be told about God. He saw a time when the love of God would be so evident, when the precepts of God would be so followed that there would be no need of priest or prophet. No longer would we be urged to Know about God it would already be written on the heart. There wouldn t have to be confirmation exams, instructions on how to do Communion, prayers that had to be prayed, rituals that had to be accomplished, or exhortations from preachers. It was the intent of God that we would know God so intimately that worship, love, peace, and grace would simply flow from our hearts. It was a most noble idea. His hope was that everyone would know God.
Alas, even the most faithful people in the world can become indifferent. We can become so wrapped up in our faith that we forget the world that lies beyond these walls. Christian educators and pastors work hard to teach the faith. We will employ every bit of technology, every bit of language, every educational gimmick to help teach. We have used every kind of music to get the message across. We use constant repetition, visual images, schmulzty stories, object lessons, current events, humor, and fright. There are Christian comedians, Christian magicians, Christian athletes, Christian rock, Christian cruises, Christian dating sites, Christian colleges, and Christian websites to go along with all of this. Preaching professors at Dear Old Duke would have my head if they knew I was using powerpoint to help with sermons. But that s how it is. John Wesley said to do all the good you can by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can at all the times you can, to all the people you can as long as ever you can. The Apostle Paul said that he would be all things to all people that by all means he might reach some. But while religious knowledge is important, it is not the end of faith.
The end of faith will always be a matter of the heart. It is up to us to make sure that our hearts are in some good places. We can be catty, jealous, demanding, judgmental, petty, stubborn, convinced of our own righteousness, back-biting, selfish, and thinking that nowhere is better than Duke! But I m telling you, those are not the good and faithful places for our hearts to be. So if your faith stems from any of these, it is best to think again. The faith in our hearts should always arrive out of love, forgiveness, peace, hope, joy, patience, and Duke. (OK I tried to slip that last one in.) But when we speak our faith from those perspectives (other than Duke) it will be good. We must never be afraid to say what we feel about our faith. However, it will not always be understood. The world lives on violence and greed and fear. It will have a hard time understanding the faith that is written on our hearts. But it will be there. And it will be good beyond measure because it will come from our hearts.