GOD FAR ~- GOD NEAR

September 27, 1987, L1:00 a.m. Worship Service

John M. Buchanan

rt

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
[suiah 6:1-8
Jolin 1:1-5,14.

“And the Word. became flesh..."
~John 1:14 (RSV)

The late C...S. Lewis was a very traditional. churchman. When there
was a change in clerical leadership in his parish church he quipped, wryly,
"I don't care. what order of worship the new rector uses, provided he
doesn't change it." .[See David H. C. Read, Grace Thus Far, p. 70} When I
read that last summer, I knew I had my entree’ to.a sermon that had to be
preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church, on September 27, 1987.

'

I considered opening with Martin Marty's prediction that the last
seven words of the church will be - “But we always did it that way." But
that sounds a little defensive, so [ decided not te use it. ,

T thought about quoting Arthur Schlesinger's. fine new book. The
Cycles of American History, in which he observed - “The accumulation of -
change enables us to perceive life as notion; not as order... For people
of buoyant courage... the prospect is exhilarating... Others, in the midst
of flounder and flux, strive to resurrect the old. ways."

Fo even thought about using Schlesinger's trenchant comment... "In
Limes of change everyone becomes his own Landmarks Preservalion
Commission,” [Porward, p. XI} but decided that was a loaded and suggestive
comment Chat might be misunderstood.

f considered invoking Alvin Toffler on the “end of the stable state
and the futurist movement to the effeet. that the onty predictable reality
is that all bets are off, nothin is predictable any ware, fiuidity,
flexibility and change are the only thiaps you can count on...

Hut f decided that all sounded brash ane A Little defensive and more
Chania Lit le nervous. Resides. the bivvest media event of the year
happened two weeks ago ground the Visit af a religious leader who Lried to

Yen enir

Jews around the Passover Table,

Mass in Dodger Stadium,

Pentecostals speaking in tongues,

Base Communities in El Salvador, talking freedom,
House Churches in Peking (Bejiing), praying secretly.

In a perfectly delightful book, Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner
writes, “To worship God means to serve Him. Basically, there are two ways
te do it. One way is to do things for Him that He needs to have done - rut
errands... carry messages... fight on his side, feed His lambs, and so on.
The other way is te do things for Him that you need to do - sing songs for
Wim, create beautiful things for Him, give things up for Him, tell Hin
whal'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." [Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC,
p. 97-98]

Worship Falls in the second category —- things we need to do. That,
it seems to me, is elemental. We worship because of our need, not any
longer because of societal expectations; not because an ecclesiastical
council says we must worship; not because there is a heavenly truant
officer who takes attendance every Sunday. The need is ours. It has
something to do with a very basic need to express love. Even if we
Presbyterians aren't exactly spontaneous about it, in fact wouldn't think
of allowing ourselves to appear publicly out of control - foolish — there
is in it a deep and profound love for God and joy in God's presence and.
happiness in God's promise. Once all of that is acknowledged we
Presbyterians do have some specific ideas about worship.

We believe that worship is, first of all, an activity. . Worship is
something which we, the people do. Part of the Protestant Reformation
was about participatory worship. In the Middle Ages worship had become
pretty much a spectator activity, performed by professionals which peaple-
watched. How ironical that after a few hundred years we seem-.-to be back
where we started, with clergy doing it all, laity watching. Reformers
would not have liked the fact that in most Protestant churches clergy do
most of the praying.

Soren Kierkegaard, Danish theologian, characterized Protestant
worship in a way that retains its accuracy, unfortunately. People po to
church, Kierkegaard proposed, in the same frame of mind with which they
altend the theater or a concert. They gather to sit as an audience, ta
have something done for them, to Jdisten, to watch. The main actor in the
drima ts Che preacher, the supporting cast consists of choir, Liturgists,
orfanists, ushers. God is. the prompter who, one hopes, on occasion helps
Lhe cast with the performance. Whether it works or not, Kierkepaard
observed acidly, depends on haw the performance goes and how the audience
feels when it is over. Uf the people have been entertained, inspired, made
to laugh oro cry, if the music has been heroic and beautiful, worships lias
Worked. But if the performance has been poor, God forbid, the sermon
lackiusler, the anthem sour, Che organ too loud, worship doesufl work aud
Peaple spead the rest of the day critiquing it - as if Lhey had just speat
Forty adlotlars for a theater seat.

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Now this is not an apology for shoddiness or carelessness. If
worship is for God's sake then it should and will be done here with as much
excellence as we can muster. But Kierkegaard was surgically precise, I
believe, in his analysis. The theater metaphor is accurate he said, but in
worship the people of the congregation are the actors and God is the
audience. The prompters are minister, choir, organist, liturgists. Their
job is not to perferm — but to help the congregation worship. People come
to worship, in this scenario, not to be entertained but to do something, to
express something that needs to be expressed, to give something of
themselves to God.

There is a dangerous heresy abroad in American Protestantism -— writes
Donald MacLeod of Princeton. It is that you go to church to get something.
It results in a common response to public worship: namely "I didn't get
anything out of that," which, MacLeod maintains, is only possible when you
put nothing of yourself in it. Worship is a verb, an activity which
worshipers do,

We Presbyterians also understand it to be a corporate act, ‘
something people do together. Now, next to "I didn't get anything out of
it," which we might call] the consumer theology of worship, the next American
heresy is the theology of rugged individualism. It sounds like this: "I
don't have to go to church to worship. I can worship alone. In fact I
find the first tee at the club at 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning quite
worshipful, thank-you." Beginning with Jolin Calvin. who understoed worship
as something the gathered church does, and in which scattered individuals
become a church, we Presbyterians have insisted that while you can pray,
meditate, appreciate the world and sing hymns alone, you need someone else
to join you for it to be worship. It is, by our lights, no more plausible
to worship alone than it is to play a set of tennis by yourself.
“Protestant theologian W. Paul Jones, in an essay on worship wrote, "Weekly
worship focuses not so much on personal problems or on creating energy for
the coming week as on being reconstituted by losing ourselves in the
meaning of the whole. © Our enormous trivia is put into perspective."

[Weavings, 9/10/82, p10]

Worship is an act. It is corporate. And it is orderly. There is an
internal logic to it. One thing leads te another for a discernible
purpose, One of our oldest documents, The Directory for Worship, says that
in Presbyterian public worship thines are to be done “decently and in order
and that careless worship may be an offense to God and a stumbling block to
His prople."

We believe that there is an orderly process of worship and that it
has been dictated, basically, in that magnificent sixth chapter of the book
of the prophet Isaiah and is something like this: —

First, praise, aderalion of God, followed by a confession of the
distance between ourselves and God, and that followed by a declaration of
God's prace, forgiveness, reconeiliation. Then the Word’ -- read, sunp,
Spoken -a corporate aet oof listeniog: Calbowed by a corporate response to
what hes been affirmed and spoken... iu The Creed. the prayers of God's
people. And finally, an aet both symbolic aud real: bath ritual hat alse.
existeolisl; aa acl which from the very berinninp of dsracdts worstite has

9/27/87

been the climax, the high point - the purpose of it all ~ the offering of
gifls including our lives, hearts, souls, minds, bodies, to the service of
Christ and Christ's Kingdom on earth.

That is the pattern we have adopted: Praise, Confession, Word,
Response, Self-giving. It is the pattern of the Churches of the Reformation.
Jt is not only not new, it is our oldest worship traditian.

Worship is an act. It is corporate. It is orderly. And finally,
worship. intends something astonishing: to put us in touch with God --as a
gathered congregation, and as individuals sitting in our pews for a
thousand differcat reasons, with a thousand different agendas and
expectations; with a thousand different understandings.’ Worship, quite.
simply, intends to bring yau inte relationship with-the one who created you
and gave you life: the one who has provided for your salvation: the one
who promises to stand with you forever. That is no small purpose. That is
no modest agenda.

God Far and God Near. The God beyond creation, the God beyond
anything we can think and imagine; God who comes to us, loves us, heals and
Saves us - personally.

In the Isaiah passage we heard this morning both of those ideas find
expression... The prophet was in the Temple and had a remarkable vision of
God's majesty and holiness and mystery. That experience also revealed the
man's humanity, his finiteness,-in a new way. “Woe is me, 0 Lord... for I
have sceu the Lord of hests.". ‘Then God comes near; Isaiah's lips are
touched with a burning coal and God commissions him for a life of
discipleship. In. the Bible worship begins with the awesome otherness
of God, what Rudolf Otto called the “mysterium tremendum," with the smoke
and incense — mystery and holiness, and then moves to a dimension that
could only be called intimate.

; So also, in the New Testament Lesson, it begins with God's otherness,
mystery and eternity. “In the bepinniag was The Word.” And then moves
quickly to the inmediate, the intimate, the human. “And the Word was made
flesh and dwelt aaony us."

Worship begins with an-idea so big it is essentially inexpressible
except by metaphor and poem and song. Worship begins with Isaiah trembling
in Che Temple, or Moses rouoving his shoes before a burnings bush. Worship
Starts wilh something nat quite fear but not far from Et; with a lump in
the Cheoat, with you and 4 walking into this sanctuary and being reminded
of the most aslonishing of uf} supeestions - there is a God. A God who
defies descriplion, a God wha wild not ultimately be confined ta our
creeds, our hymns, secmons and prayers,

Simply by beiap here you have mace a powerful stalement. Ttmust. be
read avaidast the backeroand of a secular culture which pays only lip
service Co it. The pti fosophers have a wonderful German ward they use to
deseribe Chis Choweht of a cud lane, They cakl Git the Zeitgeist - the spirit
Of the Limes. The 4cttpeistl is seendar. We are or like to Chink weoare

Children of a seleatlifie, fechnoborieal cublure Chat very mech wants. us
boo Kisow cae sebe subPicieuey, Chat there are uns myederios we canal

~

9/27/87

understand, that we stand alone in this universe, tall, proud, defiant,
supermen and superwomen, autonomous, independent.

Yet, if there is anything history teaches us with consistency it is
that human beings need a God in order to be human; that left to our own
devices we come up with the demonic horrors of the Third Reich or the
appressive grayness of the People's Republic or the mindless materialism of
American consumerism. We need nothing so much as a sense of mystery of the
unfathomable and inexplicable, just to remain fully human.

Art helps, which is why totalitarianism Systems keep a careful eye on
the artists. Vincent Van Gogh, who wrestled with traditonal religion all
his life wrote once: "[ can do very well without God, both in my life and
in my painting, but I cannot, i]l as I am, do without something that is
greater than [, which is my life - a power to create." (Sam Keen, An
Apology for Wonder]

‘And Dag Hammarskjold: “God does not die on the day I cease to believe
iu a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be
illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of
which is beyond all reason." (Markings, p. 56]

Worship begins here for all of us with the simple, yet astonishing
idea that God is. Worship begins with six-winged Seraphim and full organ,
and the smoke of incense in the Temple - with God Far. ;

And it proceeds, in counterpoint, with that next most astonishing
idea: namely that God Far has come Near: that the God of infinite
complexity has come among us in infinite Simplicity; that mystery and
power have cxpressed themselves in a baby born in a manger; that. the power
behind earthquake,, wind and storm was best revealed in a young man bravely
dying on a cross on a Friday afternoon. ;

Hans Kung, in a recent. book comparing our Judeo/Christian Traditions
with the great world religions says: “Our God can be reached in prayer. and
meditation, praised in joy and gratitude, accused in distress and despair.
God is a God before whom we can genuflect in awe, pray and sacrifice, make
music and dance." {Christianity and The World Religions]

When all the theelogizinyg and philosophizing is done, when we have ~
Lhought and analyzed and exegeted as thoroughly as we know llow, our dearest
aml most profound faith ‘is that God can be reached -- not ouly thought about
bul experienced. When we've said everything our considerable intellects
allow us to say, there remains the God whose realm is above and beyond: our
intellects, who dwells in mysterious light and whe bends low to come Lo us,
whose spirit is present with us as closely and intimately as the air we
breathe.

That's why we're here. TL might take us a Jonge time to be able. to
explain it, and maybe we never could gel all the reasons. Bet something like
Cliarl ois thee reasean why most of us fave up ia perlecliy gvoad Suaday mariing
af tame with the Newspaper and it second cup of coffee or a walk along the
Parkes cach pact oan our Sunday best and came to this lace with yraat
tXqertiat paws

6
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Ne

We hope to meet God. [t's a “hunger for holiness" soneone said
recently... and it is deeply a part of our humanity.

[I experience it regularly whenever [ miss a Sunday or two...

Something is Missing, slightiy out of sync, the rhythm isn't there... Oh,
E know about strong force of habit (remember my grandfather setting his
alarm clock?)... And J know personally the legendary conditioned response

system of the preacher which on a Sunday morning fuels and fires us like
thoroughbreds on derby day, or a hound dog on the first day of hunting
Season. [t's a little of that but it's a lot more as well.

It's a hunger: a need of mine. When I'm away a while ] miss it. [
stark thinking about it, anlicipating it, looking forward to the weight of
worship that Falls benevolently, graciously on my shoulders whenever TIoam
privileged to sit down in the midst of God's people and pray with them and
sing “Holy, Holy," and hear about God's Word with them. - ~

in the middle of an extended. sailing trip with Presbyterian friends,
we all felt it. And so on a Sunday morning, anchored in the harbor beside
Marion, Massachusetts, someone said “let's go to church." So we
assembled the best outfits we couJd muster and got into the dinghy at nine
or so and discovered the First Congregational Church... It was wonderful.
The congregation was tiny bul like a Jot of other occasions when the buman
input is ordinary, there was something extraordinary going on and we were
privileged to be part of it. God's people were worshipping, praising and
rejoicing, hearing God's Word, putting the occasional trivia of life into
berspective, giving of themselves in gratitude... and it was good.

It surprises me - this hunger... and the simplicity of its
resolution. It surprises al] of us at times in exhilarating experiences of
wonder and also in‘ the most intimate moments which have something
transcendent, mysterious and holy about them: the birth of a baby, the
making of love, the communion of deep friendship, the wordless
Commanication between parent and child... all given and blessed by the God
who comes so very close.

God Far ... God Near. Worship intends nothing less than for you to
experience both... that God, in aklmightiness and nystery and holiness
Kiews your name, loves you and is Couched by your worship.

We don't always Chink Chrowgh our reasons for being here, Noly God
Give us some sense of your majesty. And then, help us to know your
Acaracess. Through Jesus Christ oar Lord. Amen.

9/27/87