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.
As a child growing up I always wondered if things like trees and rocks had feelings. I might have been curious enough to poke at thing to see if they yelled. At some point I asked someone, if trees and rocks and cars had feelings.
The response was no they are inanimate. There is a really good chance that after they said this to me I wondered off still wondering if trees and rocks had feelings.
Later in elementary school calling something stupid was a habit I fell into, I am sure I picked it up from some other boy with a bad background. I would say stupid ball or stupid book or stupid bike when I was having any little problem with something. I recall that a girl in my class made an observation that put me down a little. I seem to recall is was more her superior tone.
She Said “that can’t be stupid because it is inanimate.” I probably started calling her inanimate about his time.
What people have been trying to explain to me over the years is that things (books, trees and Rocks) don’t have feelings, they don’t have emotions, they don’t have pain any don’t have desires. But the scripture today tells me something different….. It tells me that they can if God desires praise. That means that they will have the emotion of joy and release it for the Glory of God.
Now wait before you start saying - huh oh - Tom’s gone out the short pier again and he has almost hit the water, listen to what I’m saying.
We are still working on the general topic of worship. Today’s scripture is a snapshot in time when the people shout praises to God and give thanks for the gift of Jesus. They are celebrating the things they have witness and they are just positive that this is the moment that the Kingdom of God will finally come to pass.
This group was more than the 12 disciples, may have been 50 or 100 or more people traveling with Jesus. Caught up in the excitement that something was happening, something big.
The people are not being led in worship by anyone they are walking along and the spirit moves them to shout and sing and be happy.
Worship is about giving praise to God, for the good, sometimes the bad and always for the Gift of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice.
These people were drawing attention, people along the road heard the commotion and came out into the streets to see what was happening. There is a really good chance they started getting excited as well. I would expect that many joined in the parade and copied what was said and done, some may have known what was happening and others were moved by the Spirit at the moment.
The scripture refers to Pharisees in the crowd asking the teacher to get control of his disciples. The Parsees were traveling with the disciples. They were listening to the teachings but they were not affected by the spirit of worship that everyone else was feeling.
I imagine them walking along with stern and even disapproving looks on their faces. They probably had clenched jaws, their hand folded across their chest. They were witnessing the moment but not experiencing it. They were focused on what others were doing and not open to participation themselves.
Today a major portion of God’s creation (man kind) doesn’t even care about his first coming. Some of us who have found Christ, never think about the return of Jesus. We are to caught up in today’s problems and tomorrows worries to remember to celebrate, really celebrate the gift of Jesus.
The Pharisees were having trouble getting into the worship mood. They were the religious leaders, they knew the Law and knew what to expect better than anyone. I can see where they would say, hold on here folks we have rules, there is a time and place and an order of worship. They were on the side of reserved and restricted worship. Who, how, when where ……
Jesus told the Pharisees that if the disciples didn’t shout, the rocks of creation would.
What keeps you from praising the Lord with joy and excitement. What is wrong with singing loudly, or saying Amen when the Holy Spirit moves and you know it. Is it what other people might think, is it the way you were raised, is it that you don’t feel the desire or need to praise.
I am not encouraging anyone to just holler out to make a spectacle of themselves. I am not encouraging you to just act out. I am encouraging you to be open the spirit’s movement and give natural praises to God.
I have been to some of my training things in the past, where people would read their messages word for word. (Maybe some of you think I do.) I have heard people with monotone voices that left me drifting off board. These people were sharing the word of God and it was not until much later that I realized the I had a problem; I did not allow myself to receive the word that was being given by God. I was not open to worship, I wanted to be entertained or intrigued with the lesson and I was not living with a spirit of worship.
Worship does not come from what people have to say, or how people sound when they sing, or from other things we do outwardly. Real Worship comes from within your heart. Worship is what you give God - Not people!!! If I raise my hands during a song, or if you see tears coming down my face it is not me showing off how spiritual I am. It is ME EXPRESSING TO GOD WHAT I FEEL FOR HIM.
I try not to care what anyone thinks at that moment although far to often I do. I get self-conscious and lower my hands or wipe the tears. It is like in High School and I see Renee in the hall and we speak, She wanted to hear me say I love you as we parted, and I resisted because my friends were around, they might make fun of me. I let my perception of what others might thing, hold me back.
I believe many of us let peer pressure keep us from worship. The biggest problem is the peer pressure is probably not even real, it is just we don’t want to be different or act out of place.
We don’t want to be perceived as strange or even worse as showing off in church. We keep worrying about what people think. We should only be worrying about what God thinks. God is the only judge we should be worried about. God wants our praise and worship, he wants to hear I love you as we pass in the hall, in the hospital, having pizza for dinner and as a group in our church worship.
It doesn’t matter we you or I think some one’s action are real. God is our judge, It does not do any good to be false in our worship because God knows if it is real.
As for me, I am a person who is learning to express myself in worship, learning to let go and praise God. When the Spirit of God touches me I normally shed tears. It is not very “mattacho” in our culture so I normally hide it the best I can.
My tears just start, why, because I do not deserve what God has done for me. I do not deserve the knowledge He has given me, the gifts and talents he has given to me. I deserve death on the cross, I deserve punishment for my failures, my sins. And if you think about it , we all deserve the punishment of disobedience and denial of Jesus and the things God has done for us.
Anytime we worship, and we give thanks to God, we are returning the focus totally to God. As a church we are to help each other and even other people come into a mood of worship. Like the people that heard a commotion and cam out to see what was going on. Some will be attracted to follow along and see what is going on. The excitement and joy is contagious and some can and will come to faith if we create the atmosphere of real worship. A time and place that it is safe and easy to worship, a place where people don’t feel judged and even more importantly Loved by God.
The main point of today’s scripture the I want to carry off this week is that if the disciples did not worship the stones would do it. If the people that were in the parade, if they were faking it, God would have known and he would raised up something else the demonstrate his Glory. Just because they were doing something did not make it worship. It had to come thit spirit on the inside to make it worship.
If they had quit because the Pharisees said to or if it was false: The rocks along the road way, the stones in the walls of the city, the inanimate objects of the city, would rise up and praise God.
The rocks stayed silent that day, other wise I am sure that there would have been a mention of it.
I made my own care and feeding instructions for the pet rock I made. Most of it was copied from my friend’s list. I tried to start my own craze with the pet stick - in a way I was always a schemer for a fast buck. I guess I neglected my pet rock, I can’t tell you where it is today. I don’t even remember if I gave it a name. Pet rocks were a fad, something that everyone thought was fun and neat for a while and then it disappeared as fast as it came up.
Let me stretch your minds a little more today. The people that were on the streets that day were probably Jewish for the most part, they were looking for the messiah and celebrating the arrival of a new king. What if it became a fad and the rocks did rise up? What if the rock under the feet of the people were raised up by God?
What if we are the rocks, the gentiles? If the Jewish people did not have genuine praise, then the ones that were useless as rocks on the ground were given the opportunity to give praise.
God is God and God created us to praise him. He made us intelligent enough to realize that there is something more to life the just living day to day. There is a creator that made us something special and something Holy because we are a part of God. If we don’t praise God, we can also be replaced. After all we are just dust and water, God can make more.
"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
All Glory be to God!
