Question of the day, if we were to apply resurrection power to our worship experience, what would it look like, feel like, sound like?
I suspect the answers would be all over the place because our individual understandings of worship, as well as our preferences are all over the map.
None-the-less, I think it’s worth a think, because we have an amazing opportunity right now in these weird circumstances to apply resurrection power to worship.
Now, keep in mind, that is exactly what got Jesus in trouble with the Pharisees, scribes, and priests of his day. Because he, the incarnate presence of God, was challenging some pretty rigorous standards for worship with resurrection power. He was challenging Sabbath!
Many of us often think that Jesus was mad at the Pharisees because they were idiots. Be honest now! They were old fuddy-duddy stick-in-the-muds and they were ruining Jesus’ good fun.
While that may be a convenient way to think about it, it really misses the point of Jesus’ arguments with them.
The problem wasn’t that the Pharisees weren’t unfaithful, or weren’t doing their best to maintain the wonderful traditions of the Jewish worship of Yahweh in the most trying of circumstances, they were!
And I think Jesus admired some things about the Pharisees, especially their faith and their devotion to scripture. But they were missing the power of worship precisely because they were so worried about keeping the form!
Understand, in the midst of occupation after occupation, they were desperately doing everything they could to codify and regularize Jewish devotion so it wouldn’t be destroyed and washed away by the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Romans.
They loved God, they wanted to do right by God. They were just, according to Jesus, getting it all upside down.
They were so concerned to preserve, and codify and regularize worship, that they were in danger of removing God’s power, God’s joy, and God’s delight in his people right from it.
They made the mistake so many others have when they take their faith and make it concrete instead of abstract.
I know I’ve said this before but children start out mentally thinking about the world in concrete terms. They have no ability to think abstractly, and so don’t.
I play steal Noah’s nose. I grab it with my fingers (and yes there is some risk) and then tell him I stole his nose. And he thinks I actually have his nose.
He can’t conceptualize the idea that I am faking him, pretending to have his nose when it is still plainly on his face. So, when I pop it back in place, he laughs to think that somehow I stole his nose and put it back.
Later in life, we begin to think less concretely, and can begin to understand ideas that are abstract, like devotion, love, compassion, and eventually, maybe, trigonometry, although not all of us do it very well.
And for some of us, it is easier to revert to concrete thinking in times of great stress, than deal with the abstract.
Like those Pharisees!
Keep the law and keep the tradition, exactly. Put your hope is in keeping things the same, even if, as Jesus points out, those concrete traditions no longer represent the love and joy and compassion of God that they originally were meant to demonstrate.
So, what would worship look like, feel like, sound like, if we applied resurrection power to it today?
Well, for one, we wouldn’t start with the tradition, we would start with God! We would start with Jesus, with God’s presence among us. And we would start with us, trying to figure out how we can worship God with our whole hearts in a wildly changing world.
One of our members stopped by this week to hand me a church envelope. Now I know what you’re thinking. She could have used tithe.ly (https://tithe.ly/give?c=52802) and not stopped by!
True, but that wasn’t my point, although maybe it helps make the point. Instead my point was this.
She is living with her mother in Port Jervis, taking care of her. And getting up and getting to church was a problem. But now, church is at her house each Sunday, and for that matter any day of the week she chooses to watch online at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/otisville.presbyterian) and Youtube (https://www.youtube.come/otisvillepres) .
She can’t see all the people she would love to see until she gets on Zoom, but she can see worship, sing the songs, pray the prayers and now, participate in the Lord’s supper with whatever she has in the house.
Resurrection power, worship in new circumstances.
So, for example, instead of being Pharisees about the whole thing, worrying about whether the bread on the communion table is the right bread and the liquid in the cups is the right liquid, we can instead worry about whether we have gathered around the table as many as we can possibly fit!
And then we could focus on what our meal together represents, abstractly, God’s love, God’s gift, God’s presence.
We are not alone. God is with us!
We are not without means. God has gifted us!
We are not unloved or unlovable. God’s loved us so much, he offered his own son on our behalf, that through him, we might have eternal life.
We worship, out of a sense of joy, delight, and amazing love.
We are jubilant, as Sheila Moore says!
It doesn’t matter that on the Sabbath day we come to worship him in PJ’s or dressed up, with our hair uncombed or in a brilliant braid, and breakfast as the perfect worship accompaniment. What matters is that we come.
Just like those disciples on the way with Jesus on the Sabbath. What mattered was not that they ate the grain they had picked as they tried to keep up.
What mattered was that they were with him!
Amen.
She can’t see all the people she would love to see until she gets on Zoom, but she can see worship, sing the songs, pray the prayers and now, participate in the Lord’s supper with whatever she has in the house.
Resurrection power, worship in new circumstances.
So, for example, instead of being Pharisees about the whole thing, worrying about whether the bread on the communion table is the right bread and the liquid in the cups is the right liquid, we can instead worry about whether we have gathered around the table as many as we can possibly fit!
And then we could focus on what our meal together represents, abstractly, God’s love, God’s gift, God’s presence.
We are not alone. God is with us!
We are not without means. God has gifted us!
We are not unloved or unlovable. God’s loved us so much, he offered his own son on our behalf, that through him, we might have eternal life.
We worship, out of a sense of joy, delight, and amazing love.
We are jubilant, as Sheila Moore says!
It doesn’t matter that on the Sabbath day we come to worship him in PJ’s or dressed up, with our hair uncombed or in a brilliant braid, and breakfast as the perfect worship accompaniment. What matters is that we come.
Just like those disciples on the way with Jesus on the Sabbath. What mattered was not that they ate the grain they had picked as they tried to keep up.
What mattered was that they were with him!
Amen.
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