January 22, 2017
True North | Worship
- Acts 16:11-34
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
Last fall we started our True North Series by talking about what we believe as followers of Jesus Christ. We looked at topics like who God is, who we are as humans, what our identity is, how we understand the Bible, what is salvation, why is it important for us to think about eternity. One of the common threads through our looking at what we believe is that God is a loving God who created us and who, even in the midst of our brokenness and sin, sent Jesus to this earth in order to reveal his grace and love through the life, death and resurrection of his son. God’s love and grace precedes anything that we can do and our call is simply to open our arms and receive him as Lord and Savior.
That’s critical for us to remember because we tend to be a people who want to begin with what we can do rather than what God has done. We are a people who struggle with either wanting to earn God’s love or with thinking that we are too far removed from God (because of what we have done or left undone) to ever be loved by God and so we begin with the hope and promise that God loves us first and foremost.
But what happens, we believe, is that as our hearts are changed, as we realize that our identity is found in the love and grace of God that our lives also begin to change. That we begin to act differently, not in order to gain the love of God, but in response to that love and grace. These are, as someone has coined it, resurrection practices, and over the next 10 weeks we are going to look at some of these practices of those who follow Jesus. If the journey of discipleship, as we said last week, is a long one with ups and downs, what are the practices that we can engage in that help to shape us more and more like Jesus?
And the one we are beginning with this week (and the reason for the different format of today) is the practice of worship. Worship literally means to give worth to God. In other words it means that we set time apart in order to remember that God is God, that we are not, and to give God praise for that reality. Worship is a time for us to re-orient ourselves around God. We wrestle in our society with being told internally or externally that we are the center of the world or we wrestle with an inclination to believe that we don’t matter at all in this world. Worship reminds us of everything that we talked about last fall; that we are not the center of the world, but that we have worth because we have been created by the triune God of love.
In thinking about how best to talk about worship we thought that it might be helpful to simply take a look at what we do in our worship services here on Sunday mornings. It’s easy to assume that everyone knows exactly why we do what we do in our services and, if we’re honest, it’s also very easy for most of us to just go through the motions with little thought of what we’re doing or why. The story that Presbyterian pastor Scott Dudley told that continues to stick with me is with the college aged student who came to him because she was doing a project where she was supposed to do something she’d never done before and she chose going to a church service. So, she went to the worship service and after that, when she and Scott got together the first question she asked was, “Why do you sing?” That has stuck with me because I had never really thought about it, quite frankly. I mean it’s just what you do, right? At worship services you gather together on Sunday mornings, you sing, you make announcements, you meet and greet, you pray, you take up an offering, you listen to someone preach… As the Geico commercial says, “It’s what you do.” Well, maybe it shouldn’t just be something you do, but something that you do with thoughtfulness and reflection so that it is genuinely worship that reorients us around God and that changes not just what we think, but who we are, what we do, and what the world around us looks like. And so, that’s what we’re going to do. Rather than listening to one longer sermon, we’re going to have our normal service, but we’re going to talk about why we’re doing what we’re doing and to help us with that we’re going to look at Acts 16. But first, I’d like us to stand up and find someone near you and ask them what they’re favorite part of worship is.
(Read passage)
Let me quickly begin by pointing out what Paul tells the jailer which is that he needs to believe in the Lord Jesus. Another way to say that is that he needs to believe that Jesus is Lord, which as we just got done saying, is what we are doing in worship. We are proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and Savior. But one of the other things that we see in this passage is that these scenes, whether they be the two travelers, Paul and Silas or at the prayer service at the river or even at the jail or jailer’s house are not done in solitude. That these things are done, that worship is done, in community. God has always worked through the lives of others. This is just like what we talked about a couple of Sundays ago when Jesus sent them out two-by-two, that following Jesus (including worshipping him) is done in community.
That’s not to mean that one can never worship God on one’s own, by no means, but it does mean that a Christian journey includes worshipping with others. And as we see in this passage, I think it also means that we worship best when we are with a variety of different people. In this scene you have converted Jews, you have a wealthy woman who was probably Greek, you have a Philippian jailer and you even have a slave girl who is changed by the worship of Paul and Silas. Because we think it’s important to worship God together as community we do things here in order to build community. If you’ll notice that’s why our announcements are often about things which build community. So, next Saturday we will have a women’s gathering that you can sign up for and from what I hear the speakers are going to be great. We want people to come because it builds community and we think that stronger relationships with one another makes for stronger relationships with God as we worship as one. It’s also why we announce things like home groups (that begin this week!) that allow us to worship together in the study of scripture. We ask together what it means to reorient our lives around Jesus. We also make announcements like the Installation service that will occur next week here at 3:00, though that’s mostly just so I won’t be here alone which would be really awkward.
Community is vital for worship and our life in Jesus and so that’s why we gather each Sunday here and it’s also why we do the meet and greet at the beginning of most of our services. Now, I realize that for some this is the part of the service they really don’t like and I get it, but it’s important to know that we don’t do this solely to make you uncomfortable, but again because we think it’s important to know who it is that you are worshipping beside. Much like the women at the prayer gathering in our text who welcomed Paul it is important that we be a worshipping community that welcomes others, especially the stranger in our midst. And so, as a body of Christ, let us stand and sing.
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Singing
When Paul and Silas were in prison they began doing two things at midnight: they sang and they prayed. As the college-aged student I mentioned earlier asked, why do we sing and why were Paul and Silas singing? In reading about their singing and praying it is often pointed out how remarkable this is and many commentators talk about how strong their faith was that even in chains and having been imprisoned unjustly they kept singing. That certainly could be the case, though I also wonder if perhaps the reason they were singing and praying is because of the fact that their faith may have been faltering and they sang in order to strengthen their faith. The truth is that we sing, I believe, for both reasons. We sing when we are overjoyed with gratitude by God and we sing when we are struggling to believe.
Still though, why sing? How does that reorient us when we could just speak words of praise normally? In one sense we sing because we are commanded to. Both the Old Testament and New Testament tell us to sing. The psalmist proclaims, “Sing unto the Lord a new song, Sing unto the Lord all the earth.” Paul, in Colossians, tells the church to sing psalms, hymns and songs of praise. One of the powerful aspects of song, as I mentioned during Advent is that the words stick with us like the spoken word simply does not. The hope is that the songs we sing in here will be songs that remain on our lips after we have left this place.
I also think that singing is something that we were created to do. I’ve thought about this much when it comes to our children. When music comes on there is something from a remarkably young age that just seems to connect. When our oldest was barely a year old we would put her in high chair and as soon as she sat down she would point up to the stereo and say, “Mukik.” And even now our almost two year old will randomly start singing a song that she heard her older sisters sing in Sunshine Singers. She only does the first word, but she just starts singing, “Happy, Happy…” Singing connects with each of us at an early age because, I believe we were created not just to sing, but to sing to God.
The other aspect of singing that I am struck by is how it forms us. A couple of years ago I talked about the Estonian revolution and how it was called the Singing Revolution because of the role singing played. The Soviets, it seems, knew the power of singing, and so they outlawed the Estonians being able to sing their folk songs, but between 1986 and 1991 they began to sing more and more. And what struck me about this was what people said about the importance of singing. Here are three comments, the last one being from a New York Times columnist.
“The powers in the communist party were afraid because these songs ignited the passions of the people.”
“Singing brought Estonians together and gave them the courage to rebel.”
“In bold acts of singing they reclaimed their identity.”
Look at the words I italicized. Singing ignites passion, it brings people together and gives them courage to rebel and it helps people to reclaim their identity. We sing as an alternative community because it stokes our passion, because it helps to bring us together as a body, because it gives us courage to rebel against the world that does not believe that Jesus is Lord and in order to remember and reclaim our identity as loved children of God. When we sing together we are unified and strengthened to proclaim the glory of God. And so, brothers and sisters, let us sing!
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Praying
As we said, Paul and Silas sing and pray when they are in jail. We also see that earlier in the passage they are looking for a place of prayer. Why is this important? Why is it important that we pray and that we do so in our community worship service?
One of the greatest things about prayer is that it forces us to stop our busyness and to reflect on God, on ourselves and on our world. There are few things that illustrate whether we believe that we are dependent upon God and that Jesus is Lord, then our willingness (or lack thereof) to pray. Prayer is an amazing witness to the fact that we realize we cannot do this on our own and that we are not in control. The simple act of praying reorients us around God.
And yet, if we’re honest, it is something that many of us, if not most of, struggle with which is why it is so important for us to take the time at every service to pray in community. One of the more important aspects to understand when it comes to our worship service, as we’ve talked about before, is that it is practice for our everyday life. When we take the time to pray in our worship service we are saying to one another that prayer is vital to our Christian life. The hope, of course, is that the more we experience it here the more it will be a part of what we do when we leave this place. Because prayer, as Richard Foster points out, takes work, takes practice if it is going to become a habit.
I was thinking about that when it comes to Liesel, who will be two next month. When she was first born we would put her in her crib and put our hand on her back and pray for her (mostly that she would sleep through the night!). As she got a bit older we would say, “Okay, let’s pray” and she would fold her hands. After another few months we would do the prayer and then we would say, “In Jesus name…” and she would say, “Amen.” And then just a couple of weeks ago when Megan asked if she wanted to pray she just started talking herself. “Mama, Dada, nose, hands…” My point is that it is a slow process learning how to pray, but that our hope is that what we are doing in here every week is a process of beginning to learn how to pray, how to remember our dependence on God. At ZPC one of the things our children learn is the Lord’s Prayer and so we are going to pray now and at the end of that we will say the Lord’s Prayer, hopefully the children will pray along, and then they will be dismissed. And so with that, let us pray.
Offering
One of the more interesting parts of this passage is the scene with the slave girl and her owners. This girl is subjected to a spirit that her owners are fully taking financial advantage of. She seemed to understand, more than most, what Paul was about and she kept following him around and yelling out that they were slaves of the Most High God who were proclaiming salvation. Finally, Paul got tired of it or as the scripture said, he was annoyed. (Which, as a quick aside, is a great reminder to me that I always think that something about worship should annoy you and if nothing every annoys you in our worship service then it might be a sign that we are just doing things to make you comfortable and happy, rather than to try and reorient you and your world around God. But that’s another sermon for another day.)
Well, after Paul sets this slave girl free by the power of Christ her owners, not surprisingly, are dismayed (to put it lightly). Now I’ll admit this may be pushing the passage further than where it is intended to go, but if nothing else it does remind us that when we re-orient our world around God, when the Spirit of God moves through us and casts aside those things which are pressing down on us (spirits of different names) that it should affects us financially. In other words, when the power of God is near and when we are truly worshiping and being reoriented around God, there will be ramifications for our wallets and that may bother, not just us, but those around us. I really think that the way we spend our money as Christians should catch people who are watching by surprise and, at times, challenge them. We include giving of our finances in our worship as a sign that a life reoriented around God shapes every part of our lives, not just those parts that we want to be reshaped. And so we give sacrificially in this space as a sign that everything we have and are is a gift of our Creator. And so let us take up our offering now.
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Sent
As we worship we are reminded again and again that there is a world outside of ourselves. Paul and Silas, as most of you know, were in the midst of traveling the known world in order to tell others that Jesus was Lord. As we see in our passage, they would go anywhere, whether it be in a synagogue, in a place down by the river where there’s a prayer gathering, in a prison or in a prison guard’s home, in order to worship and proclaim who Jesus was. There’s a firm commitment to the reality that there is no place on earth where God is not alive and no place on earth in which we cannot worship. We also see, of course, in the healing of the slave girl that we are called to not look past those who are enslaved and lost and we see that we are called to proclaim God even in, perhaps especially in, difficult places like prisons.
One of the things we do with some regularity here in our worship services are to tell you all of what God is doing in the world, oftentimes through ZPCers or through people and ministries that ZPC is supporting. We do this in worship because we are proclaiming that Jesus is Lord of the whole earth. We do it because it orients ourselves around our love of neighbor and the world and we do it as a reminder of our call to care for those who enchained, be it physically, emotionally or spiritually.
Just as it so happens today we get to hear from a couple of ZPCers who went to Brazil a couple of months ago in order to see what God is doing there and to care and love the people there. And so, we worship by hearing more about God’s work in the world. [Call people forward.]
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Worship as Witness
One of the more exciting parts of this passage, especially when I was a kid learning this story, is the earthquake that occurred as Paul and Silas were worshipping. Paul and Silas, enchained and seemingly without hope, begin to sing and pray and all of a sudden the earth shakes, the chains are busted and the prison doors are opened. It would be hard to conjure up a more beautiful image of what happens when we worship. And perhaps more strikingly, it is an image that proclaims that worship should shake and change not just us, but the community and the world around us.
One of the reasons why every week we read from scripture and then talk about it in a sermon or a teaching is because scripture will continue to challenge us in our understanding of God, the world and ourselves. If left to our own devices we easily deceive ourselves in so many ways. One of the ways we see this, and it’s remarkable ironic, is when it comes to worship. It’s remarkable really at how easily worship, which is supposed to be about God and reorienting ourselves around God, becomes about us, about what we like and what makes us feel good. One mistake that we so easily make is that we begin to measure worship solely by what happens in here and we forget that the worship that occurs in here is connected to what is happening and to what we are doing out there. As Mark Labberton puts it, “Worship sets us free from ourselves to be free for God and for God’s purpose in the world.” Just like we see with the jailer in our passage, our worship is a witness to the world of who God is. As a pastor friend of mine says, our community should be different or changed (it should be shaken up) because of our worship in here. If we measure how good worship was only by how many goose bumps we got or didn’t get, then we’ve only understood half of worship is about.
Ultimately, as a worship team our hope is not that this hour will be markedly different than the rest of your week, but that this hour will be a microcosm of the rest of your week. That as we gather together here, it is a reminder of our call to be hospitable and welcoming when we go out there. That the songs we sing in here will propel us to have the words of God on our lips when we are out in the world, in great situations or in situations that feel prison-like. That our prayer in here will spark our memory so that during the week we will take time to stop and to pray, an action that could easily lead to a change in how we are living. That as we give money during our worship that it will cause us to ask in what other ways might we spend money differently because Jesus is Lord. That hearing what God is doing in the world in places like Brazil or Romania or Mexico will prod us to go to places that are outside of our comfort zones that we might be witnesses to God’s love and grace that covers our world.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, we worship God not in order to gain God’s love, but out of a response of praise for the love and grace that God has already given to us. We worship in here, we gather and pray and sing and give and celebrate as a sign of our love for God and as a sign to others of what God has done, is doing and will continue to do. Let us be a people who come together each Sunday to proclaim the greatness of God and might our praise and worship spill into every crack and crevice of our lives, this church, our homes, our community our country and our world. For the glory of God and for his glory alone. Hallelujah! Amen!