Passionate Worship

Do you remember the first time that you sang a song or a hymn and truly believed the words that you sang?

I don’t know that I remember the very first time, but I do remember where I was. I was at Camp Innabah, which is a camping ministry of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church. We would have these campfire worship services every night, singing songs like “Heart of Worship” by Michael W Smith and “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” and I just remember being in those spaces and it was like time didn’t exist. Like there was nothing else that mattered in the world than singing with my friends and sitting in the very real presence of God.

I experienced a call to vocational ministry early in life, though I took the long road to actually make it a reality. But every time I read a certain text I remember those early moments — when life was a lot simpler. When God’s voice seemed so clear. This is

Isaiah 6:1–8 NRSV

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

The vision of the prophet is one that basically encapsulates every moment that I have with God when I’m trying to get out of doing what I’m pretty sure I’m being called to do.

And I believe that i’m not the only one who wants to disqualify themselves from the hard task of following Jesus where ever Jesus leads us. But the prophet Isaiah reveals to us the heart of God towards us: We are people who have been made clean by the power of God.

This is one of the main reasons that we come to worship each week. We need to be reminded of this fact — regularly. And then we come to worship to celebrate the grace that’s been bestowed upon us. But we also come to worship to receive our marching orders. To be given direction — and to say yes.

We are in the middle of a sermon series called “This is Us” where we are looking at a new mission, new vision, and new values for our church that will provide a future of vital ministry. Our Mission at First Church is “Flooding the Treasure Coast with the transformational love of Jesus” and we are going to accomplish that by “Creating, equipping, and mobilizing 610 Disciples by 2030 so that heaven and earth collide on the treasure coast.” We believe that God is doing something new in Fort Pierce, and that we are at the center of that something new.

So one of the ways that we are going to accomplish this extravagant goal of creating, equipping, and mobilizing 610 disciples is by leaning into and living out our core values. And the first of those values is Passionate Worship.

One of the first things that we need to understand about worship is that worship is not simply and activity that we engage in on Sunday morning. It’s not something that we only engage in when we are gathered in a formal setting or in a special place like this sanctuary. Of course, that is an important aspect of worship, but worship itself, in a Christian context, is a way of living that exemplifies the Lordship of Jesus and devotes itself in whole to glorifying God and building God’s kingdom through words and actions.

You may be like, ok, but what does that actually look like? Well maybe there is an easier example of what this looks like in the world than the church in its current moment. But the truth is, people are constantly worshipping in this country. Almost every single day of the year there are ballparks, stadiums, arenas, and courts filled with people worshipping their favorite sports teams. And every single person in those seats things that their favorite team could be, should be, or is the very best team — a team worth devoting their lives to. A team worth arguing with other people about. A team worth following through the bad times and a team worth rejoicing over during the good times.

I’m from the city known throughout the nation for having the most devoted (and rowdy and annoying) sports fans in the nation. But we just say we are passionate. We love our teams. And I just wonder, if we were as passionate about Jesus as we are about the Eagles and the Phillies (or whoever your favorite team is) what would the world look like. If we were as hurt and broken by the losing record of the church as we are when our favorite team has a slump… what would we do to invest in the church and turn things around?

While you let that settle in your brain, let me tell you a story.

There once was a nation that split in two. Over the course of about a thousand years the relationship between the two nations had deteriorated to the point of open hostility. The people of both nations had a similar religion and worshipped the same God, but because of the open hostility and differing opinions on some aspects of their religion they split. One of them decided that it was only appropriate to worship God in a certain historic place called Mt. Ebal, while the others decided it was only appropriate to worship God in a temple in a town called Jerusalem. This was one of many points of contention between these people… a point of contention that looking back now is very silly. But people have started wars (and certainly split their religions and denominations) over smaller disagreements. Humans are fickle people.

Jesus came from the nation of people who worshipped God in the temple. And one day he decided to travel through the northern land — right through the territory of the people who worshipped God at Mr. Ebal. These people were called Samaritans, and when he arrived he had a divine appointment at a well with a woman who was a social outcast. She was drawing water at the hottest part of the day in an attempt to avoid the crowds of other women who looked down upon her. This is the record of their encounter:

John 4:7–19 NRSV

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.

So this whole interaction is beautifully odd. It’s like both Jesus and the woman of Samaria are feeling each other out. Testing one another in different thinly veiled jabs. Its weird. But I like it, because it presents a Jesus who allows people to come to an understanding of who he is without force. She is exploring Jesus’s identity. And he is allowing her to do so.

Going forward, she’s going to question him a bit further:

John 4:20–26 NRSV

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

And here we have it. Jesus’s point here is complete. He has offered this woman 2 things: Living water and an invitation to Worship God in what he calls Spirit and in Truth. Which for our discussion today simply means “unconstrained by formalities and a specific physical location.”

And these two offers go hand in hand. Water had long been and has long sense been a sign of God’s activity in the world and in the life of a person.

Through the sacrament of Baptism we declare that people are member’s of the community of faith and the family of God. Through the sacrament of Baptism — the giving of living water — we declare that people are freed, through God’s grace — to truly worship God.

And so the question is, what does that look like for us? Or better yet… what should it look like for us?

John 4:27–30 NRSV

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

and then a short time later:

John 4:39–42 NRSV

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Our worship, our passionate worship should look like this. A brave and bold desire to go into our world and just simply say “Come and See,” and our ability to create, equip, and mobilize disciples depends on it. People don’t become disciples by accident. They become disciples because someone somewhere said to them:

Come and See the man who changed my life. Come and see the community that has changed my outlook on the world. Come and see the love that I have felt in encountering the people of God. Come and see what’s happening downtown.

Our worship in this space is passionate. Our worship in this space is amazingly skilled and amazingly impactful. It’s our responsibility as people who have taken on the living water to go into the world and say “come and see.”