It's What God Serves

Boy, those kids, you know, Jesus said, unless you have faith like a kid, like a child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Also reminds me of Art Linkletter in Kids Say the Darndest Things. But I'm an old person. I know about Art Linkletter, and I can tell a lot of you others know, too, about that. So, did anybody go to work this past week, besides me? Really? I was the only one? Ah, you don't have to raise hands. I know you're not supposed to do that in a Lutheran service. But, you know, really, what I'm getting at when I asked you about, well, how was work, really, the question is, what did you get out of work today? Right? You come home, and maybe somebody at home asks. Or anybody here married? You know, I can ask the same thing. How your marriage going? In other words, what I'm really wondering about is what are you getting out of your marriage? What's marriage doing for you? Anybody here retired? Well, of course. So how's your retirement going? In other words - thumbs up? Okay. So what are you getting out of it? I bet you could share some things about that. What about worship? You know what happens if there's somebody you know, somebody the family who isn't here with you now, but you go home and maybe they might ask "Well, how was church today?" I think what maybe they're really getting at is so, what did you get out of church? What was in it for you? So, you know, you think about it. So, with regards to work, retirement, marriage, worship - my retirement, my marriage, my work, my worship. Me worship. Well, that is what the Apostle Paul discovered as he worked and was present and got to know the Christians, the the Corinthian Christians and their assembly as worshippers. There were those who were getting a lot out of worship in Corinth because the the Spirit had endowed them with these special gifts - especially, Paul mentioned, some had this gift of being able to speak in tongues - but that wasn't everybody in the congregation. So imagine that - there are those after a worship service who are like, "Oh boy. Wow, did I get a lot out of church today!" And the rest were saying, "I didn't get a thing out of it. I didn't understand what was going on. It wasn't for me at all." You know, this is what Paul - and he confronted this many times, not only in Corinth, but in Rome, we'll mention that in a moment - but to the Corinthians, he says to each is given the Spirit for the common good. Do you hear what Paul is saying? He's saying, yeah, some have these special gifts of tongue and interpretation and have great faith and such, but it all is intended to serve, not the individual solely, but for the common good of all. Again, he says, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or interpretation. Let all things be done for building up... me? No. For building up the church. The church. And as I mentioned a moment ago, it wasn't only in Corinth. It was in Rome, too, because in Romans, Paul had to remind them: so then, let us pursue what makes peace and for mutual upbuilding. Not me upbuilding. But mutual upbuilding. The key word there is "mutual," that shared, common, reciprocal building-up one another, as being at the heart of why they were called to come together to worship the one, true God. One God, three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? Boy, throughout my public ministry - beginning in Iowa and in Wisconsin and elsewhere - I can't tell you how many times with regards to the Lord's Supper, I've heard it said, you know, that's really nobody's business as to whether I'm welcomed up here or not. It's just between God and me. What do you think about that? Now, Luther did say that the two most important words in the Lord's Supper was "for you," you know, so that we can appreciate the personal nature of what's happening when we come to be at the Lord's table. But yeah, we also refer to this as what? Holy Me-union, right? That's Holy Me-union. It's just between God and me. Pastor - it's none of his business whether I should be up there or not. It shouldn't be the business or concern of the elders or anybody else. If I want to go up there, I can go up there. It's Holy Me-union. No, it's not. It's Holy Communion. My dad was an English teacher. I learned all about English, whether I wanted to or not. And I know that com is a prefix. That means "with" think of words that start with com besides communion. Commune. Commemorate. Communication. That's not "me, myself and I" kind of thinking there. We were - Genesis teaches us - we were created for me, myself and I, we were created for Community. For Fellowship. That's what this is all about. It's for me, sinful me, like Isaiah said. Woah is me, for I don't know if I dare come forward, because I am a man, a pastor of unclean lips. But then here for you, Chris, for the forgiveness of your sins, as well as the person to your right, and the person to the left and all the others that come up and commune with you, that hopefully also share with you one faith, one Lord, realizing they, too, are sinners with unclean lips who need what you need: the whole community. The forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ.

You know, the other thing, too, about Christianity, understood properly and in light of all other religions. And, you know, in the hospital, I rub shoulders with Hindus and Buddhists and athiests and agnostics and Muslims and such. And there's a lot of Catholics and Lutherans there, too. But in every other religion apart from Christianity, when it comes to worship, the worshipers are expected to come together to serve their God, or their leaders, or whatever they refer to as "God." But in Christianity, in true, Bible-based Christianity, worship is always viewed as God's. It's God gathering us together, bringing us together so that He can serve us. You know, grace. God's riches at Christ's command.

Now, our German forefathers and foremothers, they had a word - our German Lutheran ones - for worship. It was Gottesdienst. Good old draconian, German language. Anybody know German here? How do they say I love you? Ich liebe dich. I'm real German, so. And I tell you what, growing up as a kid in Minnesota, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a lot of times, worship felt like it's "Gottesdienst!" You know? It's Gottesdienst, "God's service" is what that means. God's worshipping gathering. God's liturgy. God's church service. Take the hymnal. We still have hymnals. And what does it say on the binding? Look at that. It says, what? Lutheran Service Book. Now, I want you to turn the page 151. The biggest print on that page 151 says what? No, mine says Lutheran Service. It says Divine Service. Go to page 167. That's one liturgy in this wonderful hymnal. What's setting two? Known as what? Divine. Okay. Go to page 184. Are you getting the idea here? Page 184. The biggest pring on the page 184 at the top. Divine service. Don't stop yet. Go to 203. What is our worship here? Whose worship is it? Page 203? Divine service, and there's one more. There's a fifth, and that's page 213, I believe. Yes, there it is. Divine service. Gottesdienst. God's service. Me worship? My service? Or God's service?

In the introduction, you can look it up for yourselves if you've got a hymnal at home, Roman numeral page 8. It begins with these two sentences: Our Lord is a Lord who serves. Jesus Christ came into the flesh, not to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom - for me? For many. For community, for the world. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. I wonder how many people come to church. Yeah, I went to church and put money in the plate, and I work at church, and look what I'm doing to serve the Lord. How is He serving you? How is He serving you? When you come to church, how is He serving to you? Are you being served? Are you letting Him serve you? Do you need to be served? Boy, I do. I know I do. Yeah. Here: God serves what He says is a communion of saints. Fellowship. People together. Do you know that the baptismal font in the early Christian Church was not where we have it placed? Not that this is wrong, but it was outside the church. It was in the garden, it was in the narthex. In order to come in to the congregational setting, the communal setting of the Nave in the sanctuary, first you had to go by way of the font in baptism. Now, so how does the Divine service start? Well, we know how it starts: with Tara Darling's wonderful announcements on video. No, she does a great job. The Divine Service starts with that name. In the name - does this have anything to do with baptism? Absolutely - in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is the one God, Three Persons who made it possible for you to come into the communion of saints. That's why the early church had that font outside the church. So if you wanted to be a part of the community, you needed to receive that name, because of what that name means and what that name did for you, and what that name does for you, is it showers you with Easter. Because all the community was gathered together in worship to receive and be served with Easter, once again, with the blessings of Easter: forgiveness, life, peace, grace, mercy, because of what Christ did from that Good Friday to Easter. And so, that's why God service starts with His name, to remind us, what gave me a place here in the communion of saints known as Immanuel, Wisconsin Rapids. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful.

Have you ever been bored in worship? I was telling the confirmation kids between services this morning - we were talking about the Lord's Prayer, and somehow, we got around to worshiping. And I asked them about that, if they ever got bored. I said, "yeah, I was bored as a kid." And they asked, you know, how did you keep going to church? I said, well my dad promised me, A&W root beer afterwards, and it worked, it worked. I went to church. But I was pretty bored, however, I did hear things. I did hear things. God was serving me, even though I wasn't always listening. Have you ever felt burned by being in worship? In other words, like some of those Corinthian Christians who said we're getting nothing out of this. They're just, there's people here who are just making sure they get served. There's really not community here in what's going on. Well, if you've ever felt not just bored, but burned by your worship experience, God keeps wanting to serve you and me. And He does. The One who was burned by a cross in the shape of an altar. And do you know why He was burned, if you will, by that cross? Because for us, when we fall into thinking, yeah, this is about me, myself and I, instead of thinking of the community. What did Jesus say when asked about - so, how do you sum up the commandments? Really, all 10 of them come down to this: love the Lord, your God and love who? Me, myself and I? Your neighbor. So, in other words, you know, this cannot be just about God and me without you. And this cannot be you and me without Him. We're all in this together. God and us. It's about God's service. Going back to the introduction in our hymnal reminds us the Lord's service calls forth our service. The Lord's service calls forth our service and sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to Him and in loving service to others. Oh, that's what Jesus said about the purpose of The Commandments. And don't forget that the purpose of The Commandments flows from what God first did for Egypt by saying I'm the Lord, your God of grace and mercy, I'm long-suffering in terms of my anger and wrath. And I have delivered you, and so therefore - then you have the stipulations or the Commandments.

Same thing is happening here: is we are gathered together to be encouraged, to be about kneeling before God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And also, if you will, kneeling, even humbling ourselves in our service to others, so that hopefully they'll go, "Why are you doing this?" Because I know how God has served me in Jesus Christ. You know, worship, the one thing that Bible doesn't - the Bible doesn't get specific on how to do worship. Is it supposed to be traditional? Is it supposed to be contemporary? Is it supposed to be clapping? Is it supposed to be sitting on your hands? Is it supposed to be raising your hands above your head? All the Bible says, to paraphrase, is that when it comes to God's Divine service, so long as it isn't taking place, you know, chaotically or disorderly or it's sinful or selfish, worship. Come together.

We can "how" worship to death, can't we? You know, when our synod gets together in convention, it has a reputation for their three things that keep getting debated, convention after convention after convention for decades. And somebody has said, oh, you sum it up as wine, women and song. Wine, referring to Holy Communion. Who is it for? Open or closed? Okay. That's something that still is debated. Wine. Women. The role of women in the church. Okay. And the other one, song/worship. I remember being in a district where that district came really close to resolving that churches could only have traditional hymnal liturgy, and to ban all contemporary worship. It didn't pass. Barely. And I was part of a church where we had some contemporary worship. By the way, those of you who know page 5 and 15. I consider that contemporary worship. It's contemporary. It still has a place. And I also know David in the Old Testament, he got chewed out by his wife, because he was so thankful for the grace of God, he started running down the streets, shaking a tambourine, and, you know, just being really super happy. And his wife must have been German. Had to have been German. But you can tell a German, but can't tell him much. I'm one of those. I know how that goes.

But God does say this in Corinthians: excel in gifts that build up the church, because the church is a fellowship and community of believers. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, the communion of saints. So, if anybody's going to ask you today, so what you get out of church today? Well, one option is, well this is what I got out of it. And maybe you might want to go on to say, yeah, what I got out of it is what God's served me once again: His Son. His Son. Forgiveness, encouragement, peace, assurance that even when I know that my lips have been unclean, He's ever-present to cleanse me, like He did Isaiah. Be glad He doesn't do it with a coal from a burning hot alter like He did with Isaiah. We just have wafers and wine up here, but still, the very body and blood of Christ. Like the writer of Hebrews puts it, let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another, and all the more, as you see the day approaching. The day is coming. The day is coming when God says, hey right now, we're just rehearsing what's yet to come. Somebody once said, heaven is an eternal choir practice. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not an eternal choir practice. It's being in the presence of the Almighty, and coming to see, yes, He is a great Lord, one who is worthy to kneel before. So we've received, once again, and I trust you will continue to receive whoever your next pastor should be, what God gives you this Easter celebration - Sundays, Wednesdays, whenever you gather together - the cross and the empty tomb for us to share, as He has shared with us to give thanks, to give Him our praises, to do it together, to instruct and be instructed together, and to be encouraged week in and week out by what is really, really the best of all news. The good news, the Gospel. Because, you see, that's our service because we are His service. And may the peace of God, which transcends all our understanding, may it keep and guard your hearts and minds, ever kneeling before your Lord and mine, Jesus Christ. Amen.