I’m sure you know the statement which Jesus made, "God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." We want to think today about both spirit and truth. Worshipping in both modes.
Over the door of the monastery hung a sign. It read, "To pray is to work; to work is to pray." "To pray is to work; to work is to pray."
But someone, on reading that sign, said that the trouble with the world is that the people who pray don’t work and the people who work don’t pray!
How are we going to bring those two sides of life together? How are we going to blend being both dreamers and doers, both visionaries and activists?
Some folks are dreamers. Some folks spend their lives in dreamy reflection. These are what I call the "big picture" people. They think in terms of grand truths and big ideas. They prop their feet up on the desk and dream up wonderful things for other people to do! They don’t do; they just give birth to ideas. They are dreamers.
The pastor of a church here in the District once told me that he considered himself a "big picture" man. He said, "I preach, I counsel, and I share the vision." "And so," he said, "I need a large staff to work with me, because I don’t do anything. I don’t write letters or calculate budgets or move chairs or set up the VCR for film showings. I need a staff to do that; my job," he said, "is to imagine the big picture. "
Well, now do you see what they meant they mean when they argued that the trouble is that the people who pray don’t work!?
But then some folks spend their lives doing. Doing without thinking about it, doing, without much reflection. Some do so much that they get bogged down in the details. Some folks see nothing but just the daily do, do, do, work, work, work. I call them "assembly line" people.
Anybody here ever worked on an assembly line? On the assembly line, your job is to do one thing, over and over and over. You are told that this one thing fits in, so that a good product is produced, but you don’t really see the product. You just do your thing on the assembly line, over and over and over. One worker said, "My job is to tighten six nuts on the car chassis as it passes by. And sometimes I think if I have to tighten one more nut I’ll be one myself!" Some are not big picture people at all; they are assembly line people.
Or, in other words, the trouble is that the people who work don’t pray, don’t have a vision of where their life is going. It just goes, that’s all.
Dreamers and doers, visionaries and activists. How do you bring those two sides of life together? If you are a dreamer, with visions and feelings and deep-down hopes, how do you find the focus to make sense of it all and make it work? Or if you are a doer, ready for action and bursting with energy, how do you feel fulfilled, how do you know what it all means?
The answer is worship. Authentic worship. Worship that both engages the senses and makes sense. Worship which is authentic will, first, help us feel something when we are doers and will then help us do something when we are visionaries. Worship which is real will engage our senses, our whole beings; and it will make sense of the way we use our lives.
Prologue
It was a crisis time. The great King of Judah had just died. And with Uzziah’s death died an era of prosperity and effectiveness in the nation. What would happen next? No one quite knew. The new king, Jotham, was untried. On the borders were two hostile powers, Israel and Syria, and the future looked dangerous for Judah.
Now when the future looks dangerous, what kind of leader do we need? Do we need a dreamer? Or do we need a doer? Do we need people with vision or do we need action people? When the times are critical, do we need "big picture" types or do we need "assembly line" types?
The answer is we need both. We need both. We need someone who will fill his whole being with a sense of God’s glory; and we need someone who will get down to the trenches and do something about it. How do you get a person like that? You get a person like that through authentic worship.
The young prophet Isaiah, in a crisis time, wondering what to do with his own life, pondering what would become of the nation, went to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship. Listen to how Isaiah’s experience of worship gave him both a vision and a plan of action. It made him a dreamer; it also made him a doer.
First, Isaiah’s experience of worship was a whole-self experience. That worship engaged every part of Isaiah and caught him up in a vision splendid and wonderful, unearthly, totally beyond himself. A vision that cleansed him.
I want you to notice how Isaiah’s worship used the whole self. For example, it engaged all of Isaiah’s senses. Every aspect of the body was used there in the temple. The senses. What are the five senses? Hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touch.
Isaiah’s worship engaged them all. Hearing: The seraphs called to each other and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." Isaiah heard the voices of eternity.
And then sight. "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne ... seraphs were in attendance above him ... my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" He saw. Oh my, what he saw!
But there is more. Isaiah tasted and smelled in his worship. "One of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar .. the seraph touched my mouth with it and said, "Now that this has touched your lips"
That’s taste; and there was smell. "The house was filled with smoke" .. more than likely the smoke of sacrificial offerings.
Hearing and seeing, taste and smell. And the sense of touch. How his entire body must have trembled when "The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called."!
Authentic worship involves the whole person. Bring the whole self before God, and cleansing takes place. Healing comes. It did for Isaiah. "Now.. your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out."
In our time we are seeing a great deal of attention being given to emotional experience in worship. Some churches, some Christians, are discovering things that the rest of us had forgotten about. Some churches are rediscovering the value of bringing the whole self into worship.
There are churches now where not only do you hear a sermon or listen to choirs, but you watch dramas or see films, and these stimulate worship. There are churches where people readily hug each other or clap their hands or fall on their knees in prayer. The sense of touch. And as for taste and smell, that may not be happening in experimental churches, not yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come.
After all, this is nothing more than what the church has always known. At our best we have always known that worship involves the whole person. Think about it: even in traditional churches, not only do we preach and sing and read the Scriptures and pray -- all the hearing things; but we have robes and liturgical colors and baptism and stained glass to be seen. We have the Lord’s Supper to be tasted. Some have incense to be smelled. Most have at least the folded hand and some the clasped hand for touch.
But, you see, the issue is that we do most of this in anemic kind of way. A half-hearted way. We don’t invest in it. We don’t put our passion, we don’t throw our full selves into worship. And it’s not only that we don’t have much to see-Lord, haste the day when the artists in this church will surround us with beautiful symbolism. And it’s not only that we don’t have much drama going on -- thank you, Lord, for the liturgical dancers and the start they’ve made. It is primarily that we are afraid to let ourselves go. We are frightened of our emotional sides. We are afraid to experience anything else. We shut down! What a shame!
A former pastor of mine, whose hobby was photography, one Sunday prepared his sermon as a slide show. No discourse, no argument, no three points and a poem. Just slides and Scripture. When it was over, several church leaders were heard to grumble, and the pastor got the message very promptly at the next deacons’ meeting: don’t ever do that again, that’s not preaching! What a shame, not to expose our full selves to all that God wants to share!
No, our problem is emotions are hard to control Feelings are hard to contain, once they get going. And we don’t want to be out of control.
But, men and women, the root of human sin is our need to be in control! Who is in control? Who is in charge? If we could be in control of our lives, we wouldn’t need God! If we could be in charge of ourselves, and get it right every time, then we wouldn’t need forgiveness and cleansing. And holding ourselves back, keeping ourselves under wraps, we clamp ourselves down, we shield ourselves against feeling very much ... and there is no healing in us. There is no cleansing if we won’t let go.
I remember with so vividly the lady who prayed one morning, in a church I once served, "Lord, help something to happen this morning that isn’t printed in the bulletin!" I like that! Who’s in control?
So be a dreamer. Bring the whole self to worship. Use all the senses, use some passion, let go, and there will be cleansing. When one of our members, only a week ago, began to speak of a relationship that mattered to him, and tears filled his eyes, who of us did not worship? Who of us did not feel something deeply moving, even though only a few sentences were heard? Who of us did not see cleansing and the healing in that moment? If there is passion, "This has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Worship creates visionaries and dreamers.
II
But at the same time, in critical times we need doers as well as dreamers. We need assembly line people as well as big picture people. Authentic worship not only is an emotional release and a cleansing. Authentic worship is also something that gives direction, purpose, commitment, instruction to our lives. Genuine worship not only uses all our senses; it also makes sense of us. It makes sense of life.
The young prophet Isaiah had received a cleansing. He felt forgiven. He felt deeply, in the awe and wonder of the moment, that God had taken away his personal guilt and his shame. But that didn’t change the real world situation that was on Isaiah’s mind. That didn’t fix the problem with the nation. Just because Isaiah now felt changed, that didn’t mean that everything else was all right. Just because inside the temple he could feel good and could shout all over God’s heaven, that didn’t mean much out in the marketplace. That didn’t do much on the job or in the political arena.
That’s why worship has to teach us and lead us. It has to make sense. It has to give us something that will make a difference out there in the real world. Direction, purpose, commitment, focus. Instruction. It makes sense of life.
What happened to Isaiah? "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ’Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ’Here am I; send me!’" Isaiah got a message and committed to it.
I make no apology whatsoever for this church’s insistence that worship be instruction. If, at the end of my tenure here, I could be known as a teaching pastor, I would feel fulfilled. Every service, every message, needs to communicate something practical, with clarity and with focus. Every service and every message needs to be more than emotion. Oh, I haven’t forgotten what I just preached; I haven’t forgotten that I urged you to bring passion when you worship. Of course. But now I am saying that we must also bring our brains to worship. We must also expect God’s word to instruct, to make sense, to give us marching orders.
I’ve been in the kind of worship service where emotion runs mindlessly. I’ve been in the kind of place where, if you stand up and say anything, no matter how ordinary, people are falling all over themselves to shout “Amens.” You know what I mean? "The ushers have bulletins at the door" "Amen, Amen!" "There is a car with its lights on" "Oh, praise the Lord, praise the Lord!" In places like that, you can preach mindless drivel and they will go up in ecstasy!
What’s happening? Some folks confuse noise with feeling and juvenile behavior with spirituality. But here please expect instruction, based on God’s word. No, demand worship that is instruction. Don’t settle for anything less. Have no patience with half-truths or poor communication. Expect it. And expect to respond as Isaiah did. Expect to learn how to make a difference in the world. "Here am I; send me."
We will no doubt continue to debate worship. We will certainly experiment with it. There will be failures, and there will be, I pray, successes. But whether we fill this room with exuberance and energy; or whether we cultivate the rich tapestry of ancient traditions; or whether we adopt the quiet attentiveness of waiting silently for the Spirit to speak -demand both passion and instruction from your church. Seek and demand both cleansing and commitment.
And the day will arrive when dreamers become doers, and doers become dreamers. The day will come with prayers become workers and workers become prayers.
And God the Spirit will be worshipped both in spirit and in truth. I will give thanks with my whole heart.
