Fairhaven UMC

Well, good morning again. This week we have the final installation of our mini-series on worship. Next Sunday will be the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, which you believe we’re here already, almost in Lent, which also means spring won’t be far away, thank goodness. But before we start with today’s message, there were a couple of anniversary days today in the almanac for February 23rd, and I wanted to share these with you.

First one is that on this day in 1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed the Bible on the printing press for the very first time. Before that, Bibles had to be copied out by hand. Can you imagine that? Also on this day in 1741 was the first ever performance of Handel’s Messiah, and that was a benefit concert. People loved it, but it was considered in those days to be way too dramatic and contemporary to be done in church.

The only time in Handel’s lifetime when Messiah was ever done in a church was 17 years later at the Bristol Cathedral, and John Wesley was present in the audience. How cool is that? All right, so this last couple weeks we’ve been talking about worship and why we worship and who we worship. This week we look at the questions, how do we worship and who do we worship with? And the way we worship on a Sunday morning is in a way designed to be sort of like a covenant renewal. When we first became Christians, we made a commitment to Jesus and to God to be people of God, to learn God’s Word, to live it as best we could.

We committed ourselves to live our lives with and for Jesus. Sunday morning worship is meant to be in a way sort of like a renewal of those vows. We actually do renew our vows literally once a year when we have that renewal of baptismal vows, and God’s vows to us are renewed every year at Easter and also every time we take communion. So given that this is sort of the shape of worship, the United Methodist Book of Worship and our hymnal as well contain liturgies, forms of worship for us to use.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel also had liturgies, which are described in the books of Moses. In the New Testament, the house churches also had sort of a basic order of worship that over the centuries developed into something like the liturgy that we use today. And if you visit other churches in other denominations, the liturgies that they use are related to our communion liturgies, similar but not exactly the same. If you happen to have a hymnal near you, by all means grab one if you would like to and take — join me in taking a look at what we’ve been given to worship with.

Page two of our hymnals, way in the front, page two, which is actually probably about 12 pages in, says the basic pattern of worship at the top of the page there, page two. This outline on page two gives us four general parts to a worship service, the entrance, which might include a prelude, an opening hymn or a prayer. This part is designed to help welcome us into the house of God and to focus our attention on spending time with God. And at this point in the service, we may feel the weight and the concerns of the past week sort of slip off of our shoulders, not because those concerns are gone, but because we are now in the presence of the one who can help us with our concerns.

The second section of the service is proclamation and response, and this might include scripture readings, a sermon, testimonies, music or art or drama, responding to God’s word through prayers and gifts and acts of service. And at this point in the service, we hope to learn more about God. We hope to come closer to God. We may sing songs of praise or listen to others as they sing.

We may pray either together or separately, and all these things are meant to draw us closer to God and make it easier for us to hear God’s words and God’s love for us. The third part of the service is thanksgiving and communion, and this may or may not actually include the sacrament of communion. In this section, we give thanks for what we’ve heard, and whatever we do in this part of the service are actions of the family of faith coming together. And then the last, fourth and final part is ascending forth, and that includes the closing hymn, pastoral blessing, and this prepares us to go back out into the world in Jesus’ name to do God’s will.

This pattern of worship has been used by Christian churches around the world for hundreds of years. It may be expressed differently in different denominations. Some churches, for example, sing almost every part of the service. Some churches put psalms in between the various parts.

Some churches bring in a rock band. There’s lots of variations here, but the pattern itself will repeat in just about every church except for maybe the Baptists and the non-denominational churches. In our hymnal, don’t put them away yet, we’re not quite done. In our hymnal, this pattern of worship is then fleshed out in a way that is specifically Methodist.

And this fleshing out begins on page three, the very next page, where it says, In order of Sunday worship using the basic pattern, okay? And this basically, page three through five, sets up the outline of a service. This is sort of the liturgy right here, pages three through five, which may or may not include communion. You can see you can use the same pattern whether you’re having communion or not. That’s the basic setup.

And this is essentially what we use still to this day. Under this in the book, there are a couple of other variations on the communion service itself. There’s one service of Word and Table number one that starts on page six. There’s service of Word and Table number two that starts on page 12.

And then there’s a third one over on page 26, service of — actually four, it says, service of Word and Table four. This one’s really unique to the Methodist church. This is a service that was designed for right after — remember the Methodist Episcopal Church merged with the Evangelical brethren, the EUB church back in the ’60s. They came together.

And this service contains aspects of the traditions of both of those denominations. So this one’s really unique to the Methodist church, and I really appreciate that. So, all these orders of worship are meant to be tools for us, things that are given to us by the church to help us worship God. And the orders of worship here are given to us, are not meant to limit us.

We’re not limited to what we see here. They’re basic outlines. So these orders of worship are meant to help us find the words to talk to God and to worship God, especially when we’re not quite sure what to say when we come in. The downside of using these forms of worship, which have been time-tested and they’ve stood well for hundreds of years, is that they might start to feel boring, a little bit rote.

And I know Pastor Dylan, when he works out the weekly liturgy, he does his very best to put a few things here and there that are new so it doesn’t get boring. The other downside to something that’s been around for as long as this has is that people get to know it very well. And people like me who thrive on tradition and like to have things the way they’ve been, you know, we run a risk of almost getting hooked on this. If something changes, I might think, Well, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.

But for those of us who love tradition, we have to be careful that we don’t end up worshiping the tradition instead of worshiping God. The purpose of the liturgy is to guide us into God’s presence, not to have us say, Oh, what a beautiful liturgy. So two things I can guarantee you. Number one, God is never boring.

And number two, making variations on the liturgy is okay. The word liturgy is an old-fashioned word which literally means work of the people. So we as the people are expected to add to it our thoughts, our prayers, our hearts for God, our dreams, our concerns, all these things get added into the liturgy and work within the liturgy. And God’s promises to us and God’s word for us and God’s love for us are also expressed here in this liturgy.

But without faith and love between us and God, the liturgy is just words. I should also add that it’s important for the liturgy to leave room for the kind of thing that happened at Asbury not too long ago. You all heard about that, the Asbury renewal. When people kept worshiping for days and didn’t want to quit, they kind of got caught up in the spirit.

Not that I recommend ever trying to deliberately create that, but if it happens that God’s spirit takes hold of the congregation one morning and we want to keep singing praises and don’t want to stop, go for it, do it! So having said all this about the liturgy, let me just share a few thoughts on the scripture readings that we heard a moment ago about worship. We’ll start out with Jeremiah. So Jeremiah, he was a very young prophet by the way. Some scholars say he started his ministry at around the age of 13, if you can imagine.

And the message that God gave him throughout his life was that God’s grief over the sins of Israel, that the people had been worshiping Baal, a false god, and God had warned them many times about this. And as a wise person once said, Human beings have a tendency to become like what we worship. If we worship God, we will become more like God. But if we worship a falsehood, we will become people of falsehoods.

And Jeremiah’s message is in this passage, First off, hear the word of the Lord. So the first thing that people need to do is to hear what God is saying. The second part of Jeremiah’s message grows out of the first. If the people hear God’s word, then they will amend their ways and doings.

That’s a reason, there’s a reason why we have a prayer of confession in the service every Sunday. But that’s really just a beginning. Confession is not necessarily about what we do wrong. Confession is about speaking truth, both about who we are and about who God is.

And we confess sin in order for God to forgive our sin so that our relationship with God can be restored. Why do we do this? Because God and sin cannot coexist. God is by nature perfect and holy and perfect love. And God simply by being God cannot occupy the same space with sin.

Just like light does away with darkness, God’s presence does away with sin. And sin is not necessarily something horribly awful. Sin is just imperfection of some kind, anything that falls short of God. So we come to God and we ask God to take away our imperfections, not because we deserve it, but because this is what Jesus gave his life for.

Jesus lived for us the life that we’re not able to live and died for us the death that we could not bear so that we could be reunited with our creator God. Only God can provide this. Going into a church building does not make a person holy. Going through all the motions of worship without encountering God is a waste of time.

As we come to worship, we pray for God’s presence with us. We pray to hear God’s word. We pray that God would lead us into living lives outside the church that reflect God’s truth and God’s love to the world. God says through the prophet Jeremiah, If we truly amend our ways and our doings, if we act justly with one another, if we do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood, and if we do not go after other gods, then God will dwell with us in this place in the land that God has given.

God is true to God’s word. And for this reason and many others, we worship. And then moving on to our passage from Romans, Paul talks about spiritual worship, which he like Jeremiah sees as being connected to moral behavior. Paul says that we are to offer ourselves for the service of others.

Paul appeals to the believers who live in the imperial city of Rome, the very center of empire, not to live according to the ways of Rome, but to live out the faith on the basis of what God has done through Jesus. Now back in those days, there were people in Rome and elsewhere in the empire who believed that Caesar was a god, or if not a god, then at the very least appointed by and blessed by the gods. And when Paul was writing this letter, the man on the throne of Rome was Nero, the guy who played the fiddle while Rome burned. Imagine thinking of him as a god.

Rather than worship this, the followers of Jesus worship God. And real worship of the living God results in loving relationships between God and ourselves and ourselves and others. So real worship is not just for Sundays, it spills over into everyday life. The way we live shows the world God’s righteousness and God’s love for all people.

Real worship also prevents us from drowning in individualism, which is, I confess I’m as independent as anyone, but us Christians, as Christians, we are all parts of one body. And because of this, we care for each other. When one part of the body hurts, we all hurt. When one part of the body is thriving, it brings us all joy.

And Paul also talks about worshiping with our bodies. Now we Methodists don’t do that so much in the Methodist tradition, but not the way the Catholics do, you know, with the up and the down and the kneeling and the getting up, we don’t do that so much. But there is something about the thought of worshiping with our bodies. And I think that might be one of the reasons why we stand to sing and sometimes stand to pray.

It focuses our attention. Worship also builds us into the body of Christ. And when we take communion, we share Jesus’ body symbolically, but in a very real way. The fact that we all share from the same bread and the same cup, again, symbolically, especially post-COVID, but we share from the one.

And in the sacrament, we are made one. We are made one with Jesus and one with God and one with each other. And because we take it into ourselves, our faith is truly, really embodied. It’s not just theoretical.

Paul then wraps up this passage with a review of faith, hope, and love, those big three that he talks about so often, for strangers and for newcomers, as well as for those who’ve always been here. And speaking of worshiping in the body, I wanted to wrap up today with a very touching story that I read this past week. It’s a testimony of a Christian woman living in Canada who, as she got to know Jesus, she began to think about the fact that Jesus had a body, just like yours and mine. That when Jesus was a kid, he would have run around and gotten dusty and dirty and thirsty and tired, just like kids do.

And when Jesus grew up as a rabbi, that he used his body to touch and heal people. This woman, as she grew in her faith, came to believe that we give to others because Jesus has given to us. And she took this in a very literal way, not recommending we all do it exactly like she did, but she heard the message in church that we should love one another and show hospitality to strangers and contribute to the needs of others, as Jesus did. And as she thought on these things, she felt called to give a very unusual gift.

Her husband had just recovered from a kidney infection, and that experience made her realize just how important our kidneys can be. And she felt called to donate one, not to anyone in particular because her husband was fine, but she realized that she had something that she didn’t need two of that might save someone’s life. Here’s what she wrote. These are her words.

She says, Our bodies are wonderfully made. When you donate blood, you don’t go around for the rest of your life with less blood. Your body replaces that blood within a few weeks. When you donate a kidney, the remaining kidney grows in size to do the extra work.

If you donate part of your liver, in two months your liver will grow back to the same size as it was. And she concluded, I think we all want to live in a world where we save each other’s lives. And that’s the kind of world that Jesus came to tell us about, and he showed us exactly how to do it because he donated his body to us. And we follow in his footsteps.

She said, Take our lives and let them be consecrated, Lord, to thee. She ended up donating a kidney to be used as a transplant. She never found out who it went to, but somebody today is alive and well because she followed where Jesus was leading. And again, like I said, not that all of us are called to donate kidneys, but all of us are called to be a part of the body of Christ in our worship and in our lives.

And as we begin to learn how to do this, we do this as we join together as the body of Christ in worship. In Jesus’ name, amen. Thank you.

Well, this morning we are beginning a new three-week mini-series on worship, which will take us up to the beginning of Lent. Worship is a topic that both Pastor Dylan and I have been looking forward to talking about, and as he mentioned at our recent partnership meeting, it’s easy to fall into the trap of religious routines, he said, and I totally agree. So with this series, we hope to breathe some fresh life and a new spirit into our worship services. And the Christian tradition of worship has many expressions.

If you’ve ever gone to visit other churches and felt taken in how they worship, I love visiting other churches. I love to see how other traditions approach the Lord and learn from the Lord. And I’m glad that we’ll have an opportunity to do this again this coming Lent, to worship with some of our neighbors for midweek services. Worship is something that involves both time spent with God and time spent in the company of God’s people.

We come together to give thanks to the One who has given us everything. And we spend time with the Creator of the universe. Doing this should be anything but routine and boring. But then there are other times when life is difficult, that we might feel a little bit disconnected from each other and from God, and this is normal.

At these times, we may not particularly feel like worshiping, and that’s okay. It’s enough just to be here and to reconnect with God and with each other as much as we are able. We come to church not because we’re obligated to, but in order to be inspired by God and refreshed by God. Because our relationship with God truly is a relationship.

If we were to see a friend who is feeling down, we would give them a kind word, and God is the best of friends. During tough times, God will be there for you. And if we should see a friend who is happy about something, we would join in their happiness, and God does that as well. So what exactly is worship? Well, the word worship comes from the Old English worth ship, which actually had two meanings.

The first was sort of like a form of address, like Your Highness, your worship. The other, though, is a shortened way of saying worthy ship. In other words, a boat that doesn’t sink, a ship that doesn’t leak. And it’s interesting that hundreds of years ago, that’s how people saw the church, as a ship that doesn’t sink, a ship that carries us from the shores of earth to the shores of heaven.

That’s where we get songs like Michael Row the Boat Ashore. Hallelujah. In fact, back in the day, they even built church buildings to look like upside down ships. And you can still actually see a little bit of the pattern of that in the ceiling of this church.

You can see the arches come up like that. And then we have all these beams going across. Basically, I mean, in an older church, that would be more pronounced. You’d have actually wooden sort of like pillars looking across, like ribs across the church.

That’s how they built churches, so they’re all in the same boat together. And that’s how God meant it to be. We can worship by ourselves, certainly. It’s a good thing to read the Bible every day, to talk to God every day, no matter where we are.

It’s a good thing to take a walk and enjoy God’s creation, which in my opinion is one of the best ways to spend time with God. But God also desires that we come together as a family of faith, especially when we gather around the family table for communion. When we come together on a Sunday, we come as the family of faith in this location, in this suburb of Pittsburgh, and we do so knowing that other families are also meeting with God, Lutheran families and Catholic families and Presbyterian families and so on. We also know that other families around the world are meeting with God on this day.

In Africa, in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, our family of faith literally stretches around the world as the earth rotates on its axis, like the old hymn says, the voice of prayer is never silent because somewhere on earth, someone is always praying as the world turns. And our God is worthy of praise. God loves all people everywhere and believes and welcomes all of us into God’s house. To put it another way, all believers make up the body of Christ and each one of us is a part of that body.

So we come on Sunday morning to give God thanks and praise for all these things and for all that God has given us and all that God has done for us, and that’s just the beginning. Of course, the next question is, who exactly is it that we’re worshiping? How does one define God? And this is an important question because not everything that people worship is God. There are lots of idols out there and sometimes they even creep into the church. There are idols like celebrities, sports figures, TV personalities, or impersonal things like wealth or power.

So who exactly is God? Well first off, God is one. There’s only one God. We understand God in three persons, God the Father, also called the Creator, God the Redeemer, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Or to think of the Trinity another way, God above us, God with us, and God in us.

In our reading today from Exodus, Moses asked for God’s name and God replied that his name is I Am. In Hebrew it’s Yahweh, but in English it’s I Am. And that’s the name that God gives Moses. I don’t know about you, but the first time I heard that, my reaction was one of being puzzled.

I mean, my thoughts were along the lines of, You are what? You are great, you are glorious, you are all-powerful, you are all-knowing, and God is certainly all those things. But I was asking the wrong question. God’s name is I Am, just as there’s no uncertainty. God is.

And God is the Creator of all and the Keeper of all and the Sustainer of all. And I think that might be why we feel so close to God in nature, because when we’re outdoors we are surrounded by everything that God has created and sustains. It feels almost natural to worship when we’re in the middle of a forest or when we’re surrounded by mountains. But God also invites us to step into God’s house for worship.

And by the way, as I speak of God the Creator, just in case anyone’s wondering about evolution and how that stacks up, it is entirely possible that our universe is as old as the scientists say. It is entirely possible that evolution is one of many tools in God’s universe-building toolbox. This does not go against what the Bible teaches. And I say this because I have heard some preachers preach otherwise, and I don’t want to get into that debate right here and now.

But if anyone has questions about that, has doubts or issues, please talk to me later, give me a call during the week or something, and I’ll do my best to explain how the two might come together, God the Creator using evolution. For now I’ll just say this, that many scientists agree that the Big Bang, which began all things, was caused by a sudden appearance of light, as in let there be light. So moving on then to Psalm 138, which we read a moment ago. This psalm gives us an example of what worship looks like and sounds like.

It’s full of thanksgiving to God and praise of God. The psalmist says, I called and you answered me. You increased my strength of soul. For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly.

And though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me. When we worship, we tell God how good God is, not because God’s ego needs it, but because when we say thank you to God, we share our pleasure with God, pretty much the same way that we say thank you to our loved ones as a way of sharing pleasure, expressing how glad we are that that person is in our lives. How often do we say things to friends or members of the family like, You look really nice today, or I love this thing that you made, or You know, that thing you did over there, that was really cool. We say these things to people because we love them, and the same goes with God.

In this psalm, King David is worshiping God because he says God is great, God’s love is faithful, God answers prayer, God gives us strength and encouragement, God hears, God protects, God has good plans for us, and God’s love is forever. I think part of David’s confidence in God comes because of the fact that he prayed and then waited for God’s answer. When David finished praying, he didn’t just get up and go on with his day. He actually sat quietly in God’s presence for a while, kind of reaching out towards God with his spirit.

He expected God to answer, and he waited to hear that answer. And this, by the way, is waiting for God’s answer, is part of the idea behind that prayer initiative that they’re talking about, which we’ll be doing during Lent. The initiative is a practice of listening to God as well as praying, instead of just rushing on to the next thing. You’ll be hearing more about that in the next few weeks.

Moving on to our passage from Isaiah, this reading gives us another glimpse of worship, only this one a bit different from David’s experience. In this passage, Isaiah sees a vision of God in the temple, and whether or not Isaiah was actually in the temple when he had the vision is not clear, but in his vision, Isaiah is standing in the temple, and Isaiah sees God, or at least the hem of God’s robe, he says. And the hem of God’s robe fills the temple. Now, this of course is a metaphor to try to describe the greatness of God.

The temple back then was about the size of a city block, and to have a hem, just the hem of God’s robe fills this temple, gives you an idea how big God is. And of course, even that is a metaphor. In the vision, Isaiah also sees seraphs, angelic beings with wings who sing, Holy, holy, holy, which we’ll be singing in a moment. God is the most pure, the most perfect, the most weighty, that’s the holy, holy, holy, and speaking truth about God is a form of worship.

Seeing all of this, Isaiah is overwhelmed, and his reaction is to cry out, Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips. And this doesn’t mean that God’s people are horribly evil. It just, we just don’t necessarily look all that good next to God’s perfection, that’s all, which is true of all of us. But God provides the solution.

God commands one of the seraphs to take a coal from the altar and touch Isaiah’s lips, a metaphor for disinfection and healing. And then once Isaiah has been made right with God, God asks, Who will go for us? And Isaiah answers, Here I am, send me. It’s not unusual during worship, as we listen to God’s voice, to sense questions or to sense things to pray about or to talk to God about. And if that happens, when that happens during a worship service, it’s okay to stop following the order of worship for a moment and just sit and pray quietly and listen to what God is saying to you.

It’s also not unusual during worship to get the feeling that God wants us to do something. And if and when that happens, Isaiah’s answer is a good one, Here am I, send me. And then last but not least, we turn to our reading from Luke. Now this passage doesn’t take place during worship, but it ends with worship.

On this particular day, Jesus and the disciples were standing next to the Sea of Galilee, Gennesaret or Genesaret is another name for Galilee, so it’s the same place. And they’re in a place, there’s a rocky beach, not all that large, but a rocky beach surrounded by high hills behind it. And so the crowd is so large that they’re practically pressing Jesus and the disciples into the water, okay? So Jesus spots a couple of boats on the shore and he borrows them from the fishermen who are washing their nets. And Jesus and the disciples get into a boat, and from that boat, a safe distance from the crowd, Jesus continues to teach.

And the steep hills behind the crowd act as almost like a natural amphitheater so everyone can hear. When Jesus was finished teaching, he said to Simon Peter, whose boat it was and whose fishing team it was, Put out into the deep, let down your nets for a catch. And Peter answered, But Lord, we’ve been fishing all night and caught nothing. Still since it’s you asking, we’ll let the nets down one more time.

And they did. And they caught so many fish that the nets started to break. So they called for the other boat to come from the shore to help them. They caught two boatloads full that morning.

This is where Peter’s worship begins. He falls on his knees in front of Jesus and he says, Go away from me, Lord. I’m a sinful man. Which is not all that different from what Isaiah said to God.

Peter’s overwhelming sense of doubt is not a lack of trust in Jesus, but a lack of trust in his own worthiness. And it’s not all that unusual when we become aware that God is nearby to feel completely and totally unworthy. Not because God wants us to feel that way, but because next to God, any virtue we have kind of looks like dirty rags. When we see Jesus for who He really is, His total perfection and glory can be overwhelming.

And this is normal. In fact, if anyone is not uncomfortable with God’s holiness, I’d be worried. This is why our communion service, the original old-fashioned service, begins with the words that we actually used this morning to begin the service with, Almighty God, to you all our hearts are open, all desires known from you, no secrets are hidden. Sense the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Very traditional opening that goes back hundreds of years, traditional opening to worship. That’s where worship starts. There is no other starting place, really, but it is just the start. It goes on from there.

Jesus says to Peter, Don’t be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people. Just like with Isaiah, God’s answer to our shortcomings is always, I have made you clean. Now go.

God gives us a commission, a task to do. Sometimes during worship, this happens to us. We come to God on a Sunday morning feeling unworthy, knowing that we haven’t always done things God’s way. But when we’re honest with God about this, God forgives us, cleanses us, and then calls us into his service.

And this calling gives us a place of honor in God’s household. By the way, I should also point out that the net result of Peter’s adventure was that he and the other fishermen immediately went and followed Jesus, leaving behind on the shore two full nets of fish, so that all the poor people in the town must have had quite a fish fry that night. And probably the cats as well probably just ate some of that. When we worship God and do what God asks us to do, the result is something that’s a blessing for everyone.

Where it comes to worship, God calls real people with real imperfections and then makes us equal to the task for which we were created. So as we come to worship, we remember all that God has done. We stand in worship in a line of believers that stretches back over 2,000 years and around the world. Second, we listen for God’s voice.

God’s word makes us new and then makes us able to do good in the world following God’s direction. Sometimes in worship we sing the old songs, Holy, holy, holy. Sometimes we sing the new songs. Either way, the songs we sing give praise to God.

And last but never least, we praise God for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, who makes us worthy to stand in God’s presence. So next week we take a look at why we worship. Until then, go with God’s blessing into the week ahead. Amen.

Thank you.