SETTING THE CONTEXT

The vision that Psalm 100 paints is a glorious one. We see people from all lands coming together to worship the Lord. The “sheep of his pasture”, his people assemble from throughout the rural countryside forming a great procession that moves to the city gates entering the urban streets winding their way through the shops and homes into the central part of the city. The multitude walks through the temple gates and into the temple courts where God is present and worshipped. Let us join this procession.

Read Psalm 100

Most of us are familiar with the Pentecost story where Jesus’ disciples receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and begin proclaiming in many different languages. Today’s Scripture tells “the rest of the story.” Peter addresses the crowd proclaiming Jesus the Christ. This reading tells us of the crowd’s response to his preaching. Pentecost began with the gift of the Holy Spirit given to a small group of apostles. The day concludes with the gift of reconciliation for the thousands who had been standing on the outside.^[i] These gifts, the Holy Spirit and reconciliation continue to be offered here today.

Read Acts 2:38-47

THE SERMON
From the very beginning worship has been a central part of biblical living. After the great flood receded, Noah built an altar and worshipped the Lord (Gen 8:20). When Abraham received the covenant from God and traveled at God’s command, he built altars in every place he stopped to worship the Lord (Gen 12). Moses and the Hebrew people worshipped God as they journeyed through the wilderness. They even made a mobile house of worship called a Tent of Meeting. Worship continued to be central to the lives of King David and King Solomon and their people. King David wrote psalms that we still sing and say today. King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem. Even when the Jews were exiles in Babylonia, it did not stop them from worshipping the God of Israel. It appears that the synagogue service originated during this time of captivity. As scholar, James White wrote, “Israel could survive through worship when countless other kingdoms were obliterated by the sword. And the power to remember, reinforced generation after generation by worship, was too powerful even for the tyranny of Babylonia.” ^[ii] After the exile, the Temple was rebuilt and the people continued to worship God. Jesus worshipped in both the Temple and in synagogues. His disciples from the original twelve through the first converts we read about today through generation upon generation of followers to us at this very present moment worship God. We are part of this very long procession of humanity who “worship the Lord with gladness …entering his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise” (Ps 100).

The word worship comes from an old English word which means attributing worth or respect to someone.^[iii] Christian worship is to help us focus on God and not on ourselves. In worship we set aside the rest of our responsibilities and demands because God is worthy of our love, praise and thanksgiving. In worship we are reminded of who we are in God and what God has done. For the Jewish people, worship became a way of teaching and transmitting the communal memories of a chosen people, people with whom God had covenanted.”^[iv] This is still true today, in worship and through worship we can re-member and we add our chapter to God’s great salvation story.

The root of Christian worship came from our Jewish heritage. The first converts to the Way of Christ continued to worship in the synagogues, and then they broke bread together in people’s homes. We saw this in our Scripture reading from Acts. When the Christians began to be persecuted and were kicked out of the synagogues, they grafted the pattern of worship they were used to, the service of the word, with the sign-act of the breaking of the bread which has become Holy Communion and the Service of the Word and Table was born. Around the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr, a Christian convert, described the normal Sunday service this way. “And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites [us] to the imitation of these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. And as said before, when we have finished the prayer, bread is brought and wine and water.”^[v] So for the first 3 centuries of Christianity the service of the word included a greeting, Old Testament lesson, psalm, Epistle lesson, psalm, Gospel lesson, sermon then the people who were not baptized were dismissed and the remaining congregants prayed together. In about the 5^th century, worship became more elaborate. In the West, an introit and other introductory elements were added. During the Middle Ages prayers of confession were added. The Methodist contribution to worship was the expectation of singing hymns. In fact, John Wesley wrote “Directions for Singing” that are still in our hymnals today. Turn to page vii in the front of your hymnal and you’ll see that we are to “sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep.” Maybe I should have told you this at the beginning of the service.

Our order of worship tells a story and I’d like to share that story with you. Worship begins with gathering. People come together in the Lord’s name, the body of Christ gathers. Our greeting each other and announcements reflect that when we come to meet God, we meet our neighbor first. We are one body with many members. The prelude signals us that it is time to turn our attention to God. We need to quiet our minds and our voices. The call to worship and opening prayer all work to help us refocus our attention on God and God’s grace. We join our voices in song becoming one people as we sing of God’s goodness and faithfulness. The introit is an element from was added in the 400’s and served as travel music so that the clergy could get to the altar-table. (Sometimes our worship elements have a practical reason more than a theological reason.) For us, the introit is a musical call to worship. Then we spend time proclaiming God’s word to our children. This element lifts up for us and for others who come to our services that as Jesus welcomed and honored children so do we. Their nurture and spiritual formation are important to us. Then we continue our preparation to receive God’s word. We are stilled and moved through music. We pray our joys and our concerns to God just as the earliest Christians prayed together. Like those first converts in the book of Acts, we also hold on to some of the tradition that has been passed down to us from the ancient church, we pray as generations of Christians have prayed the Lord’s Prayer. Then we offer ourselves and our resources to God in recognition of our role as stewards or managers of God’s generous gifts and in thanksgiving for the blessings that God showers upon us. Now in some churches these activities occur after the sermon in response to the Word; however this church has historically chosen to express its response in another way that I will explain later. Now that we have prepared ourselves by practicing the spiritual disciplines of prayer and generosity, the Scripture is read and then in the sermon we seek to do what the preachers from the very beginning have tried to do, as Justin Martyr said, to urge and invite all of us to the imitation of these noble things proclaimed in Scripture. George, I think spoke very well last week to our understanding of the role of preaching. I would just like to reemphasize that in our preaching we seek to incarnate or en-flesh the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and our Christian calling drawing the Scriptural witness from a distant time and place to this time and place. We are known as “singing Methodists” and we sing again our response to this word that sends us forth into the world. Today we will respond to the Word by sending missionaries from our church to Ethiopia. The benediction is a word of blessing and challenge that sends us out to live the proclamation that we have experienced through the entire worship service. I think it is very appropriate that immediately following the proclamation of the Word we are sent forth out of the church and into the world for that is where our response really needs to take place. Sunday is supposed to be the first day of the week so it should set the tone for the rest of it. Our response needs to come in how we live our lives all seven days of the week. This is the Service of the Word. Next week Rev. Jim Swenson will reflect on the breaking of the bread as we share World Communion Sabbath. While he is here with you, we will be celebrating World Communion with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Ethiopia. The bread we break will be shared in three places at once, here, in Ethiopia and in the Ethiopian congregation of Pastor Surafel in Phoenix. We are one body, one great procession as The Message Bible paraphrases Psalm 100,

“On your feet now – applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: God is God, and God, God. He made us; we didn’t make him. We’re his people, his well-tended sheep. Enter with the password: “Thank you!” Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank him. Worship him. For God is sheer beauty, all-generous in love, loyal always and ever.” Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on September 28, 2008.