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- | tye TENSION OF WORSHIP BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
| tsaiah 641-8 LAFAYETTE, INDJANA
woh 1:165, 14 JOHN M. BUCHANAN

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lta delightful new book ,Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner, has provided some

amusing and provocative definitions of words that are common in the Christian vocabulary.
—_——-, >

The entry under Worship’ reads as follows:
"To Worship God means to serve rin. Basically there are two ways to do it.
One way is to do_things for him that he needs to have done ~- run errands
for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and

so ond\ The other way is to do things for him that you need to do - sing

songs for him, create _beautiful things for him, give_things up for him,

tell him what's on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him

and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools
———— — —==_

of themselves for the one they love" (itehte thiniings t theotogicot ABS POTS)
™

What we do on Sunday morning falls into the second category - things we need_to do for

— Eas

God. | ane at this hour a rather substantial number of people are doing those things:
singing songs, giving things up, praying, listening.\ Although | would hasten to add,

Ww without much self awareness \ For while corporate worshipis the most common characteristic

—— =

v of Christians everywhere, | and while the same basic things happen whether you are sitting

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ye “- High Mass, a Presbyterian family service or an Evangel istic,Revival ,\and while all the
; books say that worship is the very focal point of the church's life, there are probably
few other typically Christian activities about which we know less and which are victims
a bees | =
_of the same degree of misunderstanding, personal whim and private preference.
er ea, Presbyterian worship rests on some rather clear assumptions.\ The way those assum-
sot yl’ ptions are acted out is expressed in your bulletin insert.\ They are that:
Mee yt Worship Is something people do together: i+ is a corporate activity that the

» church does regularly and which absorbs our individual worshipping.\ It is an

ye activity - something people do, not something done for them or to them.\ It

—=——s

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is thus, participatery.\ That is to say, you may listen to good music and
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hear a great sermon and not necessar I ly have worshipped,

Worship is, secondly, essentially a response\ It is something we do because
—_——__, _—_[ =,

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God has dons something tiese.|14 may be for some of us a way of looking for

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God or forgiveness or meaning or just something to do on Sunday_morning.

But essentially it ts the act Christians have felt constrained to perform

in grateful and joyful response to God's prior act - namely Jesus Christ,
eT ater alienated

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Worship, in the third place, is - for Presbyterians a process with a

beginning, middle and enging.\ 14 is not erbitrary\it demands thoughtfut
understanding. \ 1+ ought never to be stlp-shod.\ Because it Is_the way we

Y a respond to God, we ought to know why we are doing it, and we ought to do it

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as wel! as we ara able.
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Now let's prob@_oa [ittle deeper. \ the Ofd Testament Lesson this morning has always

been held up as a prototype worship experience.\ Isaiah was in the Temple and he had a

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ie os . .
ws rather remarkabie vision.| He saw God's mystery and holiness in a new way | He was
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aot frightened and made aware of his own smallness and hunaness | But then one of the six

vv winged-seraphim flew to him and touched his I!ps with a burning coal from the altar.

The up-shot is that God ‘gave him something to ao\ 14 we can add some analytical words

to the Biblical account the experience began with the awasome otherness of the divine;
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what the Thecloglans call the "mysterium tremendum". \H moves then to the intimacy of
amigos rhea, Sy

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the divine:\god draws near and touches the man.\ it concludes with misglon - an assignment.
re! ee itil ey

Add to that now the New Testament Lesson, the familiar preface to the fourth Gospel.
Meteors, THE Cesena |

it too begins with an affirmation of God's otherness, his eternity, creativity and power:

("i The beginning was the Word..." ) And then it moves to the Immedtate, the intimate,the

Seeinary (A the Word became flesh and dwelt among uss.) Bod ie eke tes

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The tension between those two ideas - the distance of God ~ and his nearness is
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necessary to any understanding of the Biblical affirmations about God \ And it is also

that same tension that informs and moves through our practice of corporate worshiph When
‘Surprises. :

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the tension is broken: \wnen God's distance is emphasized at the expense of his closeness,
ee nT Cael ; —- Soma

or when his immediacy outweighs his otherness, we have gotten off the track.

Let's Jook at them separately beginning with God's distance.\ The assertion that

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there Is a God is really an astounding assertion, although we've gotten rather accustomed
been] rare, ee

‘to it. \ every now and then we need to fet it slap us in the face to regain our attention.
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There is a con That vast universe out htere is Inhabited inceed \ 4 is the reflection:
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and handiwork of an eternal force that at the same time pays attentlon to sparrows and
rr SESE, ( EETETIEN

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crysanthenuns. | If there is a God, he is hoiy, that is to Say -octher, apart, separate,

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different.) In the Biblical idiom f{'His" ways are not our ways .\ If there is a God, then
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he !s essentially unknowable to the mind of man except as he choses to reveal himself to
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us.\ We could pursue this ad infinitum. \ The point is that the starting point of worship

_
is Isatah trembling in the Tompte:\woseg removing his sheosibefore the burning bush ‘| you
and | walking into this sanctuary and being reminded that there is a Ged - A God who

defies description;\ who Is_beyond our superlatives,|o God who is God.

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And right away we have a rather gritty problom. \we don't want fo be overwhelmed by
one CT heen en

os
(oF alyrininieniec decibel Tidal ie

enyihing.| Wifliam Stoane Coffin Checituthtabaghotininaaaodaage) has suggested that modern
man has been so overwhelmed so many times by what he sees happening in the world that he
dogged! y resists being overwhelmed by anything.\ Ina relatively short period of time we

have had to adjust. fo the reality of space travel - and the fact that most of you donft

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know the names of those three Americans riding around in Skylab shows how casual we have
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become -| We have had To adjust to thinking about hundreds of billions of éollars.\ We have

had towatch hundreds of thousands of human beings starving right in our own Living rooms.

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And as a consequence we've done a rather natural thing:]we've constructed an internal,
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spews
amotiona! defense against being overwhelmed by onything.\ We try to take things in little,

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mangeable chunks \ The more comp Jex and overwhelming Watergate becomes - the more the
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American People seem to want to pretend that it didn't happen \ or if it did, it's of no

consequence.\\ The more frightening The 70's become,the more intrigued wa are with the
Sr ial — a eriieap eee cial

Semeieiinn ed

manageable 50's. \We don't care to be overwhelmed anymore ~ by anything | Even God.
be ae Se

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In addition, we are - all of us ~ children of a scientific, technological culture

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that seems to be teiling us that man is self-sufficient; \that belief in anything other

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than the objective , documented reality of the laboratory is mere superstition and ought

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now ta be put to rest4j Man, we are told - in a gross misuse of Bonhoeffer's phrase, has
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come of age and no longer needs the primeval myth of a heavenly tatner \ Ong weiter
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observes:{"The goal toward which both scientist and philosopher are working is a state

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in which there wili be no more aystery". | Just man_- standing utterly, nobly alone.

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o yin x The trouble with that it that It's been an unmi tigated disaster whenever it has

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na been followed to Its conclusion [Breve and brilitant men ere languishing in Russian
Lnenieniniiinmeeninimmnal oneal ee

prisons for insisting that there is more to existence than what meets_the eve And in
seein mil middie Small ehh te

an excellent editorial in the Journal_and Courier recently Gary Wills observed with

devasting accuracy shat \ "Mon is often at his lowast,... when he thinks he is the peak
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of creation...If we have learned anything since 1955, it is that the 'Uebermonsch' is a

midget \ By contrast, the whole experience of prayer and poetry... suggests the mysterious

way man frees himself by voying,| nd grows by bending the knee." Seemed Gat)
Man needs God ip oraer fo be ren\ Man needs to be always in relation tothe mystery

and grandeur of the whole created order ~ just to keep things in peespective.
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A passage from one of Vincent Van Gogh's letters reads :("1 can do very well without

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God, both in my life and my painting, but | cannot, i\f as 1 am, do without something

—,

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that is greater than 1, which is my life - a power to create

Wenders P= Ptt)
And Dag Homnarskjo!d:| "sod does not die on the day when we cease to believe ina
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personal deity,|but we die on the day when our lives cease to be iflumined by the steady

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radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

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(Maribngs;~P. 56) fhe panel
And President Hansen, addressing the County Ministerial Association, as the head of
a menial RS

one of the greatest_institutions of science and technology in the world literally pleaded

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the same case. (tre Job of religion he suggested is to force all men to keep both eyes

open -\re see that truth is not defined by scignce alone} that there ig mystery, wonder,

goodness and truth in the universe absolutely: that is to say - we've made a serious
=, rs eC er i ra

mistake when we put all our eggs in the one basket of mants ability to save himself.
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So

Well, corporate worship, ought to begin by hitting us with that \14 ought to remind
us that God is.\ There ought to be something of the Burning Bush in it and the mystery
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of the six-winged serephin. \ 14 ought to suggest majesty, g lory, holiness, distance.

But - and now we have to look at the other pole of the tension ~ what makes worship
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specifically Christian is The more astounding assertion that this same God of mystery,
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eternity and holiness has anddges come near -\ He is jike a fotner:\e is intimate and '
Fe eaiminmenaniie

et Od De creer

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loving and caring. | He is aspersonal as a new born baby Ina nanger:)s real as aman dy=
tops . Selah

ing on a cross on a Friday afternggn | ! came across a vignette recently that said it
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comptetely\ An elderly man allowed that when he got depressed he turned to those long

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lists of names in the "begat" sections of the Bible for inspiration| Because, he
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explained, here was a list of totally ordinary people, who never did anything spectacu har

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who lived their small tives and passed out of history, but who were remembered and known
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by God = by name,

There ought to be some of that In worship roo: |some of the eternal God who knows and

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loves us as a father foves his own chi !dren;| some of the compassion and caring for indivi-
a bel aiiinne ins ame ann Lei

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duals that so characterized the life cf Jesus christ.| Worship ought to provide time to

affirm the Intimacy of a God who likes to be called Father.

The two in tens ion:| God far - God near | Gou the omnipotent - God the loving father:

God the "mysterium tremendum" - God the friend of little children.
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x ~~ What usually happens is that we break the tension and go too far in one direction

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re or the other |at the time of the Reformation God's distance had been emphasized at the

expense of his neapnass. [14 was all mystery and holiness_and sistance:|and part of what the
Reformation did was to rediscover the other half of the Good News;\f.e. that In Jesus
me eee - —_—

Christ God makes common cause with common men.
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Cathedrals inspire me. | For me, They aremonuments toman's Indomitable spicit and
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his inspired genius.\ They contain the history of Western Civilization tn their very
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walls. \ They do not, however, help much by way of affirming God's nearness. [ We visited
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quite a few:{St. Paul's in London, Sir Christopher Wren's mastergieces| a mammouth ,
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incredibly beautiful building that became an inspiration to the whole world during the
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bl tz. | We stayed for Evensong on a Wednesday afternoons a brief worship expertence
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traditional in the Church of England. \ we sat a full one hundred yards from the priest and

choir) The music was in the modec a Gregorian Chant - it echoed hauntingly through the
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building and | couldn?t+ help but reflect on the mystery and majesty of God who could so
p ystery ane ma

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inspire a people for all these centuries \ Aesthetically it was beautiful) | loved it:
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spiritually it fet? me cold. | affirmed nothing about God's immediacy - nearness, at

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least nothing that my Presbyterian antennae picked up.
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The same expertence follqwed us ~- to Canterbury, for instance, The historic seat of
English speaking Christianity, the place memoralized by Speer and in which Thomas a
Becket, The Archbishop was murdered Again, there are tew words to describe the thril}
of standing in_it\ 1+ makes the spirit scar But if is so magni ficient you cannot see

the altar - where the action is - from the chairs in the Nave.
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The tendency in our day - fn our culture - is In the opposite direction The God

wef American piety is almost too near, and a typica! American worship experignge Is

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YY almost too couy. | we have systematically domesticated God In our culture by Invoking his

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presence at footbal | gone, |P-LA. pactings, [ana every session of congress. | tn the

name of relevance we have become ginmiciy\ tr the name of intimacy we have become maudlin
a miata ie Smee Si

Lord of Creatin -
and syrupy.tAnd left_out of it al! is the holy. God of righteousness, justice, peace and

morey\ tn his place we would substitute the "man up stairs"; |the God of the White House
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who blesses the irrational bombing of Asian peasants \ the God who saves individual souls

but has nu concern with society as a whole. cs MeL Beclteed - ore sludd., weshe -

Ove Sera’

The purpose of worship Is to put people In touch with a God who is terrible in his

hol ines \ majestic, Layosone, perfect - but whe, in gracious love comes near to his people
4 —, a — cee qexutbarers

ro touch thetrlives in ways thet are marvelously persone! That's what it's about -

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and tf you don't experience both - youfve been cheated.
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Often, tT seems to me iL the two separate experiences come together. one seems to pro-

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voke the 2 othor | For ge, me, at ieast, a tremendous experfence with nature - a walk Through
a misty moor in Scotland for instance, almost inevitably moves me to think of the miracle
ve, | HT eee ee ee manal

of a God whe somehcw knows Lim walking there, knousmy name and walks with me.

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The most intimate and personal experiences ~ the birth of my child, for instance,
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inevitably leads mc to reflect on this mysterious force of life bullt into the very nature

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of things;\this incredible miragie that I've been given to experfence and yet which has
—_—, . <a bmn

been happening for thousands of years, billions of times.

ere

—_——

God tar: |God pear: |W ideas in tansion.\ worship intends fo put you in touch with

both.\ In touch, that is to say, with the essence of the Gospel \thot God in his almight-
i Leena bent tracert

iness, his mystery and holiness - knows you and loves you and comes to you. AMEN

Father, we don't always think through our reasons for bellg here. clive US some sense of
your majesty. And then, help us to know your nearness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN