Skillfully

Scripture Readings

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition John 4

19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Psalm 33

1 Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous.

Praise befits the upright.

2 Praise the LORD with the lyre;

make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.

3 Sing to him a new song;

play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

4 For the word of the LORD is upright,

and all his work is done in faithfulness.

5 He loves righteousness and justice;

the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.

6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made

and all their host by the breath of his mouth.

7 He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle;

he put the deeps in storehouses.

8 Let all the earth fear the LORD;

let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him,

9 for he spoke, and it came to be;

he commanded, and it stood firm.

10 The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;

he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

11 The counsel of the LORD stands forever,

the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

12 Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD,

the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

13 The LORD looks down from heaven;

he sees all humankind.

14 From where he sits enthroned he watches

all the inhabitants of the earth—

15 he who fashions the hearts of them all

and observes all their deeds.

16 A king is not saved by his great army;

a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

17 The war horse is a vain hope for victory,

and by its great might it cannot save.

18 Truly the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,

on those who hope in his steadfast love,

19 to deliver their soul from death

and to keep them alive in famine.

20 Our soul waits for the LORD;

he is our help and shield.

21 Our heart is glad in him

because we trust in his holy name.

22 Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,

even as we hope in you.

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction/Recap

Matthew 25

We are continuing on our journey through the first of three focuses in being a Matthew 25 congregation:

Vital churches.

Dismantling structural racism.

Eliminating systemic poverty.

Carolyn once again did a fantastic job setting us up last week, talking about the fourth mark of vitality, and today is kind of a stream of consciousness into number 5:

Spirit-inspired worship that challenges, teaches, transforms, convicts and energizes us so when we are sent out, we have experienced the wonder of God and are changed for the better from when we arrived.

Gifts and response

The heart of worship, if I can spoil the sermon so early, is understanding that God has given and continues to give us overwhelming gifts, and then knowing how we respond to those gifts.

If someone gives you a tremendous gift, costly and well thought out, and your response is…meh…thanks I guess…that person is going to wonder what the status of your friendship really is.

If however you have this response:

<Nintendo 64 kid>

A couple of things to love here:

“Now we can get games from Blockbuster!”

When he’s opening the second gift, he can’t take his eyes off the one he’s really wanted, can he?

How do you think this boys parents felt about their gift, and the love that their son showed because of it?

How do we respond when God has given us gifts?

The Worship Wars

Presbyterians have been locked in this epic battle called the worship wars for a few decades now.

At other churches…not ours.

The battle has been between what is typically known as traditional worship, and what might be called contemporary or emergent worship.

At other churches...

Traditional comes with an organ and choir and responsive liturgy.

Emergent comes with guitars and keyboards and drums, and more experiential elements of worship.

And some people, man they will fight this one to the death!

They will slip in to their particular chosen style of worship and insist that it alone is how Jesus used to worship.

At it’s absolute worst, the worship wars turn into not just celebrating your own preferred style of worship, but downplaying, degrading, or insulting the other style.

At other churches...

A couple of problems...

Dualistic Thinking

The worship wars in the Presbyterian church have typically only focused on two primary styles of worship.

There are way more than two.

How many in here have ever been to a Taize service?

I have!

It is neither contemporary or traditional, is it?

How many of you have ever been to worship in a bar?

I have!

Again, neither contemporary or traditional.

How many of you have celebrated Good Friday by participating in a peace march through Homewood?

I have!

Some of the most inspiring worship I’ve ever attended.

It makes worship too small.

If you don’t hear anything I say today, please here this:

Worship is so much bigger than what we do in this room on Sunday mornings.

If your picture of worship is one particular service for one hour on one particular day of the week, then my friend your view of worship is entirely too small.

Sarah found this artist by the name of Anthony Gurrola, please do check him out on instagram.

But this could’t be more on the money for where I’m coming from today.

So how can we have an expanded view of worship? How can we make it bigger?

There are three verses in our Psalm this morning that point the way I think:

Psalm 33

Verse 5: The Earth is Full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

A stocked pond

If you are paying attention to the news or media or whatever, you might be led to believe that everything is awful all the time.

That have a vested and financial interest in making you believe that.

But the Psalmist says oh nay nay!

The Earth is full of the steadfast love of God.

It’s like the Psalmist is telling us that we’re fishing in a stocked pond.

Go ahead and find a place, go ahead and notice somewhere, that is devoid of the steadfast love of God?

You won’t be able to do it.

Go to Church? Love is there.

Go to the grocery store? Love is there.

Go to the laundromat? Love is there.

And if the whole earth is full of the steadfast love of God, that means something else.

Wonder is everywhere!

Imagine if we appreciated the gifts of God the way that boy did.

People might think you’re crazy.

People might think you’re off balance.

People might think you’re naive.

And I’m here to tell you: Let them think that! You get used to it!

What if we just held on to a sense of wonder at everything that God gave us?

A sense of wonder is our deepest worship.

When we behold the gifts God gave us with a sense of wonder, we are worshipping.

When we behold the majesty of a cup of coffee on a dreary morning with a sense of wonder, we are worshiping.

When we celebrate a diverse and magnificent human being right in front of us not with judgement, or fear, or anxiety, but with wonder, we are worshiping.

Verse 2: Play Skillfully

Wonder is something you can get better at.

I’ve been teaching a young person to play the drums lately.

Which means, after a whole bunch of years off of playing drums, I needed to practice again!

I can’t teach someone something if I’m not good at it myself.

It turns out, that we can get better, we can sharpen our skills at wonder and worship.

Two focuses to sharpen:

Observation

I think the deck is stacked against us when it comes to observation.

We can go a whole day without leaving air conditioning.

From the house to the garage to the car to the parking garage to the office to the parking garage to the car to the garage to the house.

And we can tailor make our media in such a way that we only see what we agree with.

And when those are true, we loose our ability to observe the world around us.

Do we notice what is going on in our neighborhood?

Do we notice what is going on with our neighbors?

Do we notice what is going on with our fellow church goers?

We can get better at this.

We can be intentional.

We can pick our heads up.

We can turn our radar on.

We can try to take in new and different stimulus.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the media badly doesn’t want you to do this, right or left.

They’d rather make their money by explaining their observations to you as if that’s true.

Maybe, just maybe, we ought to go out there and notice for ourselves.

Celebration

This is something that you can get better at.

You can practice celebration.

Part of the practice is noticing the right things, to be sure.

But part of it is just being grateful and humble in whatever gifts God is putting before you.

Can you celebrate at least one thing about the last 24 hours of your life?

Can you celebrate what God has given you in the way of your Spiritual Gifts?

Can you celebrate what God has allowed you to observe in your day to day, normal moments?

Can you celebrate the people who are in your life, can you shower those around you with celebration and affection?

By the way, coming off two weeks ago where you all celebrated me and a certain birthday I’m still coming to terms with, this can get awkward and weird and embarrassing sometimes.

But it’s also super good!

To get better at either observation or celebration, you need to choose to get better at observation and celebration.

You can be skilled at those things.

And church, whichever flavor you choose, can be a training ground.

But perhaps verse 18 gives us the most important piece of our worship.

Verse 18: Hope in Steadfast Love

Wrong places to put our hope:

Our politicians

Our resources

Ourselves

Someone who hopes in Steadfast Love

Isn’t afraid to be wrong (on the side of love)

You know, politicians hate being wrong.

They’re just professionals at telling you how wrong everyone else is.

Is generous with everything that God has given them.

People who trust in their own resources make sure that they hold on to them as much as they can.

People who hopes in the steadfast love of God have no problem giving what they have away.

Would much rather celebrate God than celebrate themselves

When your hope is in your own ability, you have to celebrate yourself because, hey, no one else is going to do it, right?

But when your hope is in the steadfast love of God in Christ Jesus, you want to celebrate that, don’t you?

You want to celebrate how Christ loves you just as you are.

You want to celebrate how God gives you all the gifts you could ever need without ever asking a single thing in return.

You want to celebrate the God who welcomes everyone, rather than being exclusive to those who are different from you.

You want to celebrate the Hope that God has given us, the love that won’t ever stop.

In other words, you want to worship in both spirit and truth.

Are we hitting the mark?

Tour guides

When the boys were first born, Sarah and I were gifted with a membership to the national aviary.

You have to walk them, and you might just as well do that with birds around, right?

I would usually go on my day off, at absolutely not peak hours.

So more then a few times, it was just me, newborn fussy twins, and a docent.

Have you met this creature in the wild, that which we call the docent?

I was completely unaware that someone could be so over the moon in love with the African Pygmy Goose?

And seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, she just loved to tell me as many facts about the APG (that’s what I started calling it) as she could.

It sounds like I’m making fun of it, but to be honest…I loved it.

Any time someone with that much passion starts letting it rip, you’re drawn in! You’re hooked!

Maybe that’s our job in this crazy world we live in.

Maybe we’re supposed to be the tour guides to what God is doing all around us for our neighbors.

The Earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord!

Let’s start pointing it out to people!

Let’s be the docents of the wonders God has placed in front of us.

Practice makes perfect

If I heard that phrase once while I was a music major, I heard it a thousand times.

But it’s true, isn’t it.

If we’re going to skillfully worship, we need to practice the gifts of observation and celebration.

So may I offer two challenges to you this week:

Notice something you’ve never noticed before.

It could be in your neighborhood.

It could be with a person you spend a lot of time with.

It could be something that you’ve never noticed about yourself.

But go about this week trying to observe something that you’ve never ever seen before.

If you are intentional about it, I doubt you’ll make it out of the parking lot.

Celebrate someone at random.

I’m not kidding, pick someone in your life who could use some encouragement, and just celebrate them.

Send them a “just because” card.

Plan a surprise part that has absolutely no purpose or intention.

Take them out to dinner for no reason.

It doesn’t matter.

Just choose to celebrate someone.

As homework assignments from the pastor go, this is a pretty fun one, so hop on that!

A people of hope

Look, I’m really tired of those in the world who want to live hopeless lives.

I’m tired of people that tell us that we only have two choices when it comes to how we worship. (At other churches…)

I’m tired of people that are paid very good salaries to have good haircuts and keep us locked in fear.

I’m tired of people who are convinced that things are never going to get better.

I’m tired of people who aren’t observant of what wonders God is placing in their path every single day.

Let’s be a people of hope.

Let’s be a people who say that “both” styles of worship are beautiful and wonderful, because the Spirit of God is in them.

Let’s be a people who say that perfect love casts out fear, and if we need to turn the TV off to believe it let’s do it!

Let’s be a people who insist that tomorrow can and will be much better than today, with steps taken toward the Kingdom of God and not away from it.

Let’s be a people who are watching, observing, celebrating, and worshiping every day of our lives.

We can be skillful in the ways of hope.

And we can start today.