Do you know what a monologue is? A monologue is when one person speaks while everyone else listens. Late night talk shows begin with a monologue. The host cracks jokes while the audience listens. A teacher lecturing on the habits of the South American sloth delivers a monologue while students take notes. Do you like this form of communication? It has its place, but monologues can quickly become tiresome.
Thankfully Lutheran Worship is not a monologue. Oh sure, parts of it are. What’s happening right now—the sermon—is a monologue. I preach. You listen. But the rest of the service is a dialogue–a conversation between two parties. We have Martin Luther to thank for this. Before the Lutheran Reformation people would stand (not sit!) for a two-hour service and do little more than listen while the priest chanted or spoke in Latin and a professional choir did the singing. As Luther sought to revitalize worship, he concluded that worship ought to be a dialogue. Certainly we need to listen when God speaks to us through Word and Sacrament, but it’s also proper and beneficial for us engage in conversation with God and with each other. We do this through prayer and praise. That will be our focus as we continue our sermon series on Lutheran Worship.
Let’s begin with how we speak to God through prayer. Praying is pretty simple and straightforward. Christians simply tell God what’s on their hearts. We don’t have to bow our head or fold our hands to do this (though that is often our custom). We don’t have to face a certain direction or say certain words. In fact we don’t even have to pray out loud for God to hear us. Prayer is so simple that even a two-year-old can do it. Yet it’s also something utterly amazing, for when we pray we’re speaking directly to the Creator of the universe!
To put that into perspective try phoning up the Prime Minister this afternoon. Do you think you would get through and actually get to speak with Stephen Harper? If you did get through, would he really care about what you have to say? And how long would he listen before he would cut the connection to attend to more pressing matters? And if you travelled to Ottawa to try to speak to the Prime Minister in person, how close would you get to him before armed guards would stop you? So what makes us think that God actually listens to our prayers? Armed guards may prevent you from speaking personally to the Prime Minister, but something even stronger should prevent us from speaking to the holy God: our sin. Would you be very eager to listen to someone who repeatedly made life miserable for you by their lies, their rudeness, and even their violence? So why should God want to listen to us who often think his commands are no better than annoying speed bumps in a parking lot?
Our text for this portion of our sermon gives us two reasons why we can be confident that God listens to our prayers. In 1 Kings 8 we have a record of the prayer King Solomon offered at the dedication of the temple. Listen to what he had to say. “May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. 30 Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive” (1 Kings 8:29, 30).
We can be confident, as was Solomon, that God listens to our prayers because he promised to listen, and because he is a God who forgives our acts of rebellion. But of course to make use of this open line of communication we can only do so through faith in Jesus. Because it’s only through Jesus that God forgives our sins. In other words people of other religions like Muslims may be serious about their prayer life but because they reject Jesus as the savior of the world, God does not listen to their prayers. I don’t say this to make myself feel superior. I offer this truth as a warning. For although I may profess faith in Jesus, if I don’t listen to his Word and put it into action, then neither does God listen to my prayers. The book of Proverbs puts it like this: “If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable” (Proverbs 28:9).
Brothers and sisters, don’t ever forget that having faith in Jesus is more than just saying you believe in Jesus. It means trusting his Word and being eager to put it into practice. No, you won’t be able to do this perfectly but when a true believer fails and falls into sin, he is also quick to seek God’s forgiveness.
One sin that we can no doubt continually confess is our laziness in prayer. God shouldn’t have to urge us to pray and yet he does so over and over again in the Bible. What does that say about us? It says that we’d rather worry than tell our almighty God what’s on our mind. It means that we take for granted his many blessings instead of stopping to thank him for them. And when we do pray, we’re more apt to ask for physical blessings like good health rather than for a faith that burns brightly.
That’s why it’s a blessing that our Lutheran Worship provides ample opportunity for prayer. It’s the very first thing I invite you to do after I greet you at the beginning of our service. Take that time to personally and privately ask God to bless your worship. Reign in your wandering thoughts and eyes and focus on why you have come church. Likewise don’t let your mind wander when I offer prayers on behalf of the congregation. Remember what we are doing: speaking to the most holy God who is interested in us!
Lutheran Worship gives us opportunities to speak to God, but it also gives us opportunities to speak to each other. Listen to what the Apostle Paul said in the verses that serve as the second part of our sermon text. “… be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18b-20).
Another way in which our Lutheran Worship is a dialogue is in the hymns that we sing. We normally think of hymns as songs of praise we direct to God so didn’t it surprise you to hear Paul say, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs”? The hymns that we sing are not meant so much to beautify our service as they are meant to edify, that is, to build up the faith of the worshippers. So what’s more important than a hymn with a good tune is a hymn with good words. That’s why we don’t sing a lot of praise songs in Lutheran Worship. It’s not wrong to sing songs that repeat simple phrases of praise, but if hymns are meant to encourage by teaching, then they should tell us something about the God that we worship.
Since one of the purposes of our singing is to encourage one another, sing out! It doesn’t matter that you can’t carry a tune. It doesn’t matter that you’re a child. Your voice is meant to be an encouragement to others. In fact one of my favorite parts of worship is the minute or so before I preach. I usually stop singing and pray that God would bless the sermon that I’m about to preach. But I also take the time to just listen to you sing. I let your voices wash over me because it reminds me that I am not the only one who has faith in the God of the Bible.
There’s another encouraging aspect to our hymns and praise. Many of these songs have been sung by believers for thousands of years. The psalms that we sing were also sung by believers a thousand years before Jesus was born. The basic form of our liturgy is one that Christians have been using for centuries. When I say: “The Lord be with you,” and you respond by singing, “And also with you,” and when I say: “Lift up your hearts,” and you respond by singing, “We lift them up to the Lord,” these are the exact words Christians sang during their worship services nearly 2,000 years ago. When we sing, “Glory be to God on high, and on earth, peace, good will toward men,” we’re singing the same song that the angels did the night our Savior was born. So when we join in singing our songs of praise in our worship services, we are joining hands across the ages, as we literally sing with saints and angels. What a unique and awesome encouragement this is for us in our worship. So make a joyful to noise to the Lord, and add your voice to millions upon millions of believers of all time.
God speaks to us. We speak to God. We speak to each other. That just about sums up Lutheran Worship. Join in the conversation each Sunday because it isn’t idle chit chat. It’s a dialogue through which God strengthens faith as he assures of his love and forgiveness. It’s also a dialogue that we are fortunate to participate in because by nature God should only lecture us about our sins and never want to hear what we have to say. And yet because he is full of grace, like a Christmas tree from under which presents spill across the living room floor, God delights in hearing and answering our prayers, and he delights in our hymns of praise. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
How is worship today different than it was before Martin Luther’s time?
Lutheran worship is a dialogue. To whom do we communicate? (You should have two answers.)
What exactly is prayer?
Prayer is so simple yet it’s so awesome. Why?
Explain: The fact that God has to urge us to pray shows just how sinful we are.
Explain: The hymns that we sing are not so much meant to beautify our service with pretty music as they are meant to edify.
The Apostle Paul said that we should encourage one another with hymns. Jot down the title of a favorite hymn and explain to a family member why you like that hymn so much.
What would you say to someone who claims: “I don’t like to sing in church because I have a bad voice”?
