When I was in college, I had a math professor who would write a problem on the board, and then with a few deft strokes of his chalk, write the answer: X equals 12. Somehow, no matter what the problem, it seemed as though X always equaled twelve. But how did he get that? From long and complex expressions down to the simple X equals 12! It left me scratching my head and asking, “What just happened here?”
It’s only one of the times I have found myself at some occasion I don’t understand, and have to ask, “What just happened here?” Have you ever been to something like that, where you didn’t understand what was going on? People were doing their thing, and you watched, but you just couldn’t figure out what it was all about? You asked, “What just happened here?”
Take ballet, for instance. I can hear the music, I can appreciate the beauty of the costumes, I can admire the skill of the dancers. But I still do not get it, what the pirouettes and the pas de deux mean. I can watch it, but I still want to ask, “What just happened here?”
My wife is British, and so I have over the years become an observer of all things Brittanic. I have watched royal rituals, I have listened to the House of Commons in session, and when we have gone to Britain, I have learned how to drive on the left side of the road through roundabouts – which helped me a lot getting to your church today! I have even learned how to order a meal at a pub. A Baptist minister bellying up to the bar and asking for fish and chips – can you imagine that? I have come to understand many things British, but one thing I have never understood: the game of cricket. For the life of me I cannot get it. Somebody is throwing a ball and somebody is trying to hit it, just as in American baseball, but there the resemblance ends. Amid all the language about pitches, wickets, stumps, and bails, when I see a cricket match, I ask, “What just happened here?”
Now translate all of that to church, and imagine yourself as a person who is unfamiliar with what churches do. Why do these people come together on a Sunday morning in a special room, and sing songs that are not the ones on MTV, and listen to someone speak? Can’t you imagine that for much of the world, for those who have no Christian background, they would ask, “What just happened here?” It must seem very mysterious indeed.
And that’s just your normal Sunday service. What if someone came and observed a baptism? I understand that you recently baptized twelve people, and I congratulate you on that. But just imagine that outsider coming to see what worship is all about, and it’s a bunch of people getting wet! What ever does that mean? And then at the end of the hour they serve refreshments; well, now, that we can understand – except that it’s just a tiny little scrap of bread and the smallest cup of juice imaginable. What was that all about? What just happened here? The poet Bliss Carman smiled as he wrote about it, "That’s folk a-praising God …They do it every Sunday, They’ll be all right on Monday; It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired."
Why indeed are we here? What is happening here? What is this little habit we’ve acquired? And when Sunday is all over, and we have to go and face Monday, will it matter that we were here?
The apostle Paul, addressing the church at Ephesus, teaches us what this is all about. Paul, in strong language, pictures for us what is happening when we do church. It is, after all, more than a little habit we’ve acquired; it is God’s plan for the redemption of His world. And so we’d better grasp the full dimensions of what it is to do church.
The dimensions of church. I call them up and down and in and out. Easy enough to remember; difficult sometimes actually to live out. Up and down and in and out.
I
First, UP. What is happening here? We are looking upward. We come here to turn to the one who, as Paul says, is “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” We are here to turn our sights toward that One from whom all life flows, that One who is the author of every good and perfect gift. Being church, doing church, starts with an upward look.
I know that I am not telling you anything you do not already know to say that we live in turbulent times. We live in times that are very challenging. Some of you came out of difficult times at home to this country because you sought education and there would be opportunity here. You came to this land and this city believing that you could do something good for yourself and for your family. But now, what is happening? The economy is uncertain, jobs are hard to find, and there is talk of tightening restrictions on non-citizens. So where do you turn for help? What do you do when times are tough?
You may do a variety of things, but I tell you that the heart is so shaped that when we are in distress, we look up to God. When we have doubts, we put our faith in the one who made all things. When we struggle, our deepest instincts are to pray and to call on this “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
When I was pastor at Takoma Park Baptist Church, I got a call from one of our members, a Nigerian woman. She had come home to her apartment after work and had found her husband dead in his bed. Their little baby, only a few months old, was crawling over the body trying to awaken Daddy. Difficult as that was, it was only the beginning of this woman’s troubles. Family members back home insisted that she bring his body back to Nigeria for burial, but there was no money for that. It was a terrible time, made even more difficult because of family expectations. What would she do?
Grace prayed; Grace came to worship and asked us to pray with her. Grace looked upward to the God who is able to supply all our needs. And things began to happen. Within only a few months not only had she received enough money to accomplish that expensive burial, but also to make a down payment on her own home. I led a home blessing service at that house, and all those family members who had put so many burdens on Grace came and marveled at her success. I think they were asking, in their own way, “What just happened here?’
Well, what had happened? You know. Grace looked up. Grace put her faith in the God and Father who is above all and through all and in all. The first and most fundamental dimension of worship is to look up, praising God from whom all blessings flow and trusting Him for all your needs. That’s what is happening here. Looking up. Looking up is the beginning of everything that matters.
II
But that’s not all. Praising God and enjoying His goodness is not everything, not all that happens here. You see, God does not need our praise. He is sufficient into Himself. God is not sitting around waiting for us to tell Him how good He is. He does not need that. God is asking us to offer ourselves to Him in faith so that He can mold us and shape us into what He wants us to be. God calls us to come into His presence so that He can form us as He wants us. Paul speaks of that as “humility and gentleness, with patience.”
So what is happening here in worship? Not only are we looking up, but we are learning how to come DOWN. Down off our self-sufficiency. Down off the pedestals of pride. Down off our high and haughty self-image. The second dimension of what is happening here is DOWN. We gather for worship in order to be shaped and formed into the likeness of Christ, to come down off of our pride and to humble ourselves. “Humility and gentleness, with patience.”
Now this, brothers and sisters, the world finds very hard to understand. The world around us is filled with people whose first instincts are to make themselves superstars and do whatever they want to do, never mind the consequences. Just think about all that you have been seeing recently: a governor keeping a mistress and lying about where he had been; a senator revealing an affair with a family friend and coaxing his parents into paying hush money; a music superstar’s mysterious death, tainted with the suspicion of drug abuse and marked with his inability to make peace in his own heart; and a football player, murdered by one woman with whom he was cheating on his wife because she found out he was involved with yet another woman. What does all this mean? It means that we are all headed for the fall that comes when we consider ourselves above God’s ways. Not just those who are prominent and powerful, but all of us. And even though every one of the men I have mentioned was involved in a church, for reasons only they could explain, their worship was powerless. It was ineffective. It didn’t have the DOWN dimension.
For what we do here on Sunday mornings is not only to look UP toward the God who gives us strength, but also to bring ourselves DOWN to a place of humility and gentleness and patience. If that is not happening, then our worship is pointless. If lives are not being shaped here, then let’s close it up and go home.
What is happening here? It is both UP toward God and DOWN toward humility, for worship points us to Christ. In worship we discover the purity, the strength, and the power of Christ, and that makes us aware that we are not pure, we are not strong, and we have no power ourselves. Worship brings us DOWN from the fantasies we have about ourselves. Worship teaches us the truth about who we are. And here we are shaped in the image of the one who made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant. What is happening here? Week by week, little by little, God is shaping us into the image of the humility of Christ. UP and then it must be, DOWN.
III
But even that is not all. That is not all there is. There are other dimensions of church, other dimensions of worship, other things the world does not understand. What is happening here? It is not only UP and DOWN, up toward the worship of God and down toward our own reshaping. There is also an IN dimension. When we come together on Sunday, it is to come IN, not just into a room, not just into a building, but IN to something far more wonderful.
When we gather, we come IN to a fellowship like no other in all the world. We come IN and join IN what Paul calls the “unity of the Spirit.” He describes this unity as one body, one Spirit, one hope, rooted in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. IN one body. IN one Spirit.
Friends, if we are the church, we involved with one another. We know that we are a part of a family, we are IN one another. If worship were just a matter of ideas, we could read the Bible and some devotional books at home, and let it go at that. If worship were just a matter of listening to somebody teach, we could turn on our television sets and let the electronic preachers sound off! There are plenty of ways just to get information.
But what is happening here is much more than gaining information. Here there is the IN dimension. Coming together to be the body of Christ in this place; belonging to one another; knowing that in this fellowship called Calverton Baptist Church there are those with whom our very lives are intertwined.
A pastor friend of mine got a call from one of his delinquent church members. The man had not been in worship for many months. However, the brother was going to the hospital for surgery, and was scared of what might happen. So he called, “Pastor, would you come and pray with me before I go into surgery? I know I haven’t been coming to church and I know I haven’t been giving any money, but I do watch Charles Stanley on TV.” My pastor friend said it was all he could do to keep from responding, “Well, then, call Charles Stanley and ask him to visit you.” Now I hasten to add that my pastor friend did go, because at some level, even those who don’t express their unity well are still a part of us and cannot be rejected.
But do you see what I’m getting at? IN. In the Spirit, in the body, in unity with one another. Up and down and in. What is happening here? When we come together to worship we look up toward the God who is above all; we come down off our pride and let the word humble us; and we find that here, among God’s people, are brothers and sisters, people just like us, strugglers and pilgrims, but they care for us. They will do things for us that no one anywhere else will do.
Oh, you and I need to value the church. We need to invest personally in making church happen. This thing of knowing that we are IN, and are a part of a body of caring believers – this doesn’t happen just by accident. It happens because somebody has cared enough to create and maintain this church. It happens because each of us makes up our mind that we can gladly do something for this body. Paul says that each has been given a gift – some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the building up of the saints for the work of ministry. Yes, and some can be choir singers and some can be deacons and some can be Sunday School teachers and some can be cleaners of the building and some can be pullers of weeds in the garden. If I were to roll up my shirtsleeve you would see traces of poison ivy, obtained from pulling weeds around the parking lot of Montgomery Hills Baptist Church! Why? Because it is something I can do for the body of Christ of which I am a part and for people that care for me.
The IN dimension. What you put IN to making church happen will determine whether in this place there will be the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one hope, one body. IN: I pray God that’s what’s happening here. Up and down and in.
IV
But I am not quite finished. The best is yet to come, and yet it is the part that most find very difficult to understand. Even some Christians do not understand this last dimension of worship, this final dimension of church. OUT. OUT. Up and down and in and OUT.
For what we do here is not only to look upward to our God, and not only to see how to bring ourselves down to humility; and what we do here is not only to express our oneness with one another, to be in. We are also here to equip ourselves to go OUT with the truth of the Gospel and to be agents of Christ in a broken world.
Oh, this is critical! Do not miss it! Paul is very explicit. “The gifts he gave were … to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ … speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
You and I come together each Sunday to be equipped to go OUT and speak the truth in love. You and I come together to be trained so that we can represent Christ and His truth to a world that does not even understand its need or know where the answers are. We have church, we have worship, so that we can become effective witnesses and genuine messengers of love. We do not come IN just to stay in; we come IN so that we may go OUT and be effective. Until all come to the knowledge of the Son of God. Until all come to the unity of the faith. It’s not over until it’s over … up and down and in and, most important, out. Speaking the truth in love, out there.
Otherwise, we would be like an army that trains but refuses to go to battle. Or like a basketball team that practices plays endlessly but never engages another team. Or like a musician who rehearses a great concerto but never goes to the concert hall to play it. A waste! So also if a church has the Up and the Down dimensions, and even the In dimension, but never gets to the Out side, never takes the message to the world, it is wasting its energy. It is a terrible waste.
Brothers and sisters, I know only a little of your recent history. My experiences with this church were nearly thirty years ago. But thirty years ago Calverton Baptist folks were wondering why this community did not respond. Thirty years ago members of this church, most of them now deceased or relocated, were worrying that all these residents of all these homes were staying away. Why? Could it just be that Calverton Baptist Church never quite arrived at the OUT dimension? Could it be that you have the Up and the Down, and maybe even the In, but the Out dimension eludes you?
Then I have to ask, as if I were a complete stranger, “What just happened here?” Was it anything at all, just a little habit we’ve acquired? Or will this Sunday translate into action on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and on and on, so that when Sunday comes again, we will need to be here. We will profoundly need to be here so that we can bring our trials UP to the One who is above all and we can bring our failures DOWN and learn humility, gentleness, and patience. We will profoundly need to be here so that we can discover again the love and support of the one body IN whom we live. And most of all, we will absolutely need to be here so that we can prepare to go OUT to speak God’s truth in love.
What just happened here? Was it just a little habit? Or was it up and down and in and out?
