I recently became aware that some folks shop for a church much as you would shop for a car or a home appliance. In talking with some people about joining our church, they said that they were shopping – that’s their word, not mine -- that they were shopping for a church by systematically attending each church in the neighborhood, and when they had shopped them all, then they would compare values and make a decision.
Well, when I considered the fact that there are some 38 Christian congregations who meet for worship within one mile of this front door, I realized that it would be quite a while before these folks made up their minds. And so I just had to ask them, "Well, what will be your basis for decision? After all, these 38 churches will be very different in many ways, they will have different programs, they will have different sizes and different kinds of people in them, not to mention widely different doctrines. Is there anything in particular you are looking for?"
And the answer came back, swift and sure: "We are looking for a church where we can get a lift every Sunday."
“We are looking for a church where we can get a lift every Sunday.” And when I probed a little more, what I found was something that I suspect is common to all of us, something we all look for. These folks felt themselves mired down, drawn down, every week, by the responsibilities they faced. They felt themselves, to a degree, contaminated by the stain of everyday life. And they needed something on Sunday which would help them get up on Monday and do it all over again.
Can I get a lift? Can I get a lift at worship? I understand the question, but I believe that the answer is far more complex than most of us imagine. Getting a lift out of worship is not automatic, it is not something that can be manufactured, it is not a matter of decibels of volume or of intense rhetorical gymnastics; getting a lift out of worship is not a question of how good the preacher is or how vigorous the deacons’ handshakes are or of how beautiful the church building is. Getting a lift at worship is in some ways not even something we can plan for.
The writer of the 28th Psalm came to worship one day needing a lift. A good deal was happening in his life, and he felt some desperation. He felt, for example, a little isolated, a little alone, and he needed to know that God was not very far away and that God was listening to him. And so he came to get a lift out of worship.
And this same Psalmist was in trouble with some folks. He didn’t feel very good about his neighbors. He saw himself surrounded by all sorts of mischief-makers. He was kind of like the fellow who said, "I could run a great poultry farm if I wasn’t surrounded by all these turkeys!" The psalmist came to worship feeling out of sorts with his neighbors, and he needed a lift.
And you know what? He got it. Let’s find out how.
First of all, he speaks about that feeling of being alone and unheard.
Psalm 28:1-2
And then he tells us about those turkeys, about the folks he is stuck with. He brings that concern to his worship life. Psalm 28:3-5
Now there is a turning point in the psalm. Now there is a different feel. At this point the psalmist gets his lift, he feels different, something happens for him. Listen to it and share in it if you can:
Psalm 28:6-9
What happened here and how did he get a lift out of worship?
I
In the first place, he brought his whole self to worship: soul and body, mind and heart, hands and feet, thinking and feeling. He brought his whole self and not just a part.
Listen to the psalmist’s catalog: "To thee, 0 Lord, I call." He brought his voice.
"I lift up my hands toward the sanctuary." That may not sound special, but it is. He brought his physical self, he used his body in worship.
And then he says, "In the Lord my heart trusts, and my heart exults, my heart rejoices … “ The psalmist brought his emotional life, he brought his feelings.
Let’s begin this morning by understanding that one of the keys to getting a lift out of worship is to bring our whole selves and to use our whole selves in worship.
Let’s permit our imaginations to wander for a moment and let’s follow the couple I mentioned earlier as they make their way around the churches of our community, looking for a lift.
They are going to find a wide variety of worship traditions. I tell you, it is incredible when you really stop and think about the ways in which people worship.
These folks might find their way into an Orthodox church, Russian or Greek or Ukrainian or Serbian; all these options are available not far from here. And they would see rich vestments, they would smell the odor of incense, they would hear chants in an obsolete language, a language that they would not comprehend at all. And much of the liturgy, in fact, would take place acted out by the priest behind a large screen called the iconostasis, and they would hardly be able to see it at all, much less hear it and understand it. Sounds unsatisfying to you and me, maybe, but for numbers of people, it provides faith and strength, and that all-important lift. Why? Why would such an exotic, mysterious rite do anything for anybody?
Let’s go to another corner of the Christian world. These church-shoppers, looking for a lift, might next drop into a Pentecostal church; and I see a few smiles creeping across faces, because you are saying, "O well, we know what they’re in for there. It will be hand-clapping and body-swaying and the din of a collection of musical instruments, most of them percussion instruments, and it will be choirs and shouting and … well," some of us are saying, "it will be a mess."
But let me tell you, that works too. At least for some of God’s people it works. Why? I suspect that a part of the reason is that what I have described are whole-self experiences, whole-body experiences.
In an Orthodox church worshippers come not only to hear, but also to see and to taste and to smell. Their senses are bombarded with experience, their bodies bow and kneel, they bring their whole bodies, and it works. It gives them a lift.
In a church of the Pentecostal tradition you are not expected to sit quietly by while somebody else does all the doing. You are expected and encouraged to make it happen for yourself … under other’s leadership, of course, but essentially, in Pentecostal worship, you make it happen by getting the whole self involved. You can get a lift that way.
But now our church-shopping friends enter a mainline church, a church like ours, middle-class, middle-of -the-road, middlebrow, as they used to call it. And what happens?
Sit and listen to the preacher. Sit and listen to the choir. Stand and mouth through a hymn or two, but then sit down again. Use your hands for only two things -- to fill out a visitor’s card and to drop something in the offering plate. What we do in worship is too often an exercise in listening, in watching a performance, in seeing somebody else do it all, and of course there’s no lift. Of course there’s no personal satisfaction.
Can I get a lift out of worship? Yes, if my whole self is involved. Listen to the psalmist again: To thee, O Lord,
I call … and hear the voice of my supplication. May not have been a quiet little nod-off-to-sleep prayer over in the corner … no, I get the picture of the psalmist standing up in the sanctuary and raising a complaint, loud and insistent.
Listen again: I lift up my hands toward thy most holy sanctuary. You know what? There are plenty of Baptist churches today, where if anybody were to lift up his hands and his arms in prayer, they would pitch him out and call him a holy roller. That is literally true. I know one church where one Sunday some folks got a little more involved than usual, and the pastor invited them out, right then and there!
But the psalmist knew that somehow it helps if you throw the whole body in when you pray. I don’t know how many of you know this, because when I offer prayer here I’m not looking at you, but as often as not, when I am standing here offering prayer for you, these arms just go up. I don’t plan it, I don’t orchestrate it, but I no longer stop it either. It’s just natural, to lift arms in prayer and thus to get a lift from worship.
It’s not some kind of formula, it’s not some kind of priestly mumbo- jumbo; it’s just throwing the whole self into worship, and a lift does came.
The great Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard told a parable about worship. In reacting to the sterile, lifeless, bloodless worship in the churches of his native Denmark, Kierkegaard observed that when we come to church, we expect to be the audience and the preacher to be the actor. But it ought not to be that way, said Kierkegaard. In worship, we are the actors, the preacher is merely the prompter, and it is God who is the audience.
Can we get a lift out of worship? We can if we bring our whole selves, if we get away from the business of reviewing the performances of the preacher, the musicians, the other prompters.
Can we get a lift out of worship? We can if we will use our bodies, if we will drop a few inhibitions, and bring our whole selves. If you want to use your hands, do it. Lifted hands might help give you lifted hearts. If you want to kneel in prayer, as I sometimes do at the beginning of the service, do it. Don’t leave anything at home... bring you and you will get a lift.
II
But there is another dimension of worship which this psalm raises for us, and I believe that it too gives a clue as to how we can get a lift out of worship. In this psalm, to our surprise, the psalmist gives voice to his feelings about his no-good friends and neighbors. He tells it like it is and expresses what he hopes God will do about it.
It isn’t exactly a pretty picture, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a prayer quite like this given in a Christian worship service. It could be that that’s because the prayer is not particularly Christian, but it could also be because we are more afraid of honesty than the psalmist is.
Could you pray a prayer like this when you came to worship:
"Take me not off with the wicked, with those who are workers of evil, who speak peace with their neighbors, while mischief is in their hearts. Requite them according to their work, and according to the evil of their deeds; render them their due reward … break them down and build them up no more."
Wow! In other words, give it to ’em, Lord. Sock it to ’em. They deserve it.
I say again, that doesn’t sound very Christian, not the nicey-nice pabulum we generally serve up. But I suspect that a part of the key to the psalmist’s feeling as though he had really worshipped was that he could voice a prayer like this, he could get off his chest the things he really felt. He brought his real concerns to the sanctuary and the Lord dealt with them ... maybe not the way he wanted, not the answers he would have liked, but the Lord dealt with his real, in-the-world, concerns.
Part of our problem, if we do not get a lift out of worship, is that we make our worship antiseptic and unreal. We will pray in general about the sins of world, but we are afraid to name them. We will pray and think about generalized sin, but naming names is a kind of polite no-no, and thus our worship takes on an unreal quality.
If I stand here and pray, deal with all the sinners, Lord, who have turned their backs on the church, well, that’s important, but it cuts no special ice. But if I stand and pray, Lord, shake up those of us who were baptized when young people but who have set aside their promises, well, that gets kind of personal.
If I pray, help us, Lord, to do more and to do better for the Kingdom, that goes down smoothly enough, but you don’t taste much either. But if I were to pray, 0 Lord, shake loose our wallets and break open our energies, so that we give till it hurts... well, that’s a meddlesome kind of prayer, isn’t it?
And yet, I believe, that is the kind of prayer that will give us a lift in worship. That is the kind of worship that will energize us for the days ahead: to pray what we really feel, to say what we truly think, to bring God not only our whole selves, but our whole gamut of feelings. And then trust Him to deal with them according to our needs.
It’s nice to worship in here, where the stained glass keeps all distractions out, and there are only Christian symbols for the eye to work with. But do you know that my favorite place to preach is a church in a suburb just off the Beltway, and instead of stained glass windows they have large open, clear glass windows that let you see everything that’s happening outside. And when you stand in the pulpit to preach, just above the heads of the people, there is a huge clear window that gives the preacher a picture of trees and cars and kids playing, and people coming and going …honestly, one Sunday when I was preaching there, there was a little boy outside who was making every funny face humanly possible. And you say, wasn’t that distracting? Yes, it was, but it meant that I was distracted by what distracts God. It meant that the concerns and the realities of the real world, out there, were brought in here.
And I will get a lift out of worship if I can see that in here we will treat what happens out there, and then maybe what I find in here will make a difference out there.
Can I get a lift out of worship? Yes, if I will be honest. If I can say to my God and to God’s people what is really on my heart. Yes, if I can get past the formulas and the contrived niceness. Yes, if I can just go ahead and admit that the world is full of turkeys, and I may even be one of them, but, Lord, we need your help.
Then I’ll get a lift out of worship.
And then I’ll be able to sing with the psalmist, "Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the voice of my supplications. The Lord is my strength and shield, in him my heart trusts. So I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him."
