Noisy Pets

Noisy Pets

Luke 19:37-40

It happened when I was in High School. It swept the nation in a matter of a few days. There were shortages and waiting list. Do any of you remember the pet rock craze? A round river stone in a box that looked like a cage with a bed of straw like stuff. The best part was the care and feeding instructions.

I did not have the money to spend on it, my parents were not going to waste their money. I wanted one pretty bad, so I eventually created my own. Now I guess, maybe it was a silly fad.

But then while studying this passage for today I had to stop and re-think :

37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." 40 He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out." Luke 19:37-40

This little snippet of scripture comes from the moment in time when Jesus is heading into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday. We will celebrate that day about two weeks from now. The Pharisees are upset with the attention that Jesus is receiving from the crowd that followed him. They are uncomfortable with the tone and method of this worship. They are probably uncomfortable with the focus, the thanking of God for Jesus.

I ask myself the question, do we have a problem with people worshiping God? Do we feel it must be done at a certain time and place and even in a certain way?

We have been on the subject of worship for a couple of weeks and covered the basics of what worship is, how we might prepare for it and to day the necessity of worship.

Since I have been around on the earth, I have been to a variety of worship service types. Most of them are just like ours. I have never been to any thing wild but I have been to many where the people did things that made me a little uncomfortable.

I used to never raise my hands in praise, or close my eyes and just focus on the music, words and feeling that come from music. Most times I hold back my praise. I let my self-consciousness keep me from showing God my feelings.

After reading today’s scripture I find myself starting to look more carefully at pet rocks. I am starting to worry that they might get out of the control. Pets are supposed to be subservient to their owner. When the dogs bark at night, right under our bedroom window, their owner, Renee, gets up and corrects them and they hush….for at least a while.

The dogs are only responding to something outside of themselves, they are raising sounds to make the household aware something is happening. In their case they are doing it for our benefit, Hey look out here, there are deer!

When dogs have something to say, it is hard to hold them back. We used to have an inside dog named Samantha. She would start to bark in the middle of the night and we would tell her to hush, and after a while she would forget and we would say it again, after a couple of times she would only whisper bark. Woof Woof, It was very hard to stop her from her verbal sign that she had something to say.

It is a lot easier to hold people back. We almost always feel self-conscious about our bodies, voices, hair. It is easy for people to stop most of us from any actions by telling us to hush, commenting how we do things, how we say things, how we worship. We all fall into the need of not being too different and for many of us don’t want to be noticed as different at all. We often will control ourselves based on how other people are acting and conform to what they are doing.

When I hold back how I feel and act in worship, is there a rock that takes my place? Some where on a hilltop or riverbed is there a rock that God raises up to take my place to give the praise that he deserves.

In this passage, we are told by Jesus, that if the disciples (The followers) do not give God the praise for Jesus, the stones or rocks will. I don’t know about you but I don’t know if I want that to happen. I don’t want to be accused of not giving God the praise He so deserves.