Sunday, April 26, 2015

Sermon: Worship in the Kingdom

Acts 2:41-47
Worship in the Kingdom
James Sledge                                                                                       April 26, 2015

I have a vivid memory of something that happened during worship at a church I previously served. That particular sanctuary was a bit different from ours. It was a longer and narrower. Like ours, there was a narthex just out the sanctuary doors, but it also had a large fellowship space straight through on the other side of the narthex.
More importantly, at least for this story, the back wall of this sanctuary had windows that went all the way across. This meant that the choir and I could look out of the sanctuary during worship into the narthex as well as into a bit of the fellowship area.
This could be distracting during preaching. A few ushers always stayed out in the narthex and were often moving around, getting a cup of coffee, finding the offering plates, arranging furniture in the fellowship area, and so on. I tried very hard to ignore them.
One Sunday while preaching, I saw a fellow who looked like he might be homeless enter the narthex from the doorway just out of my view to my left. He did not make it before he was intercepted by one of those ushers. I could see what happened but not hear anything. The usher appeared to act cordially and probably asked what he could do for him. I assume the man said he was looking for help, and the usher said it wasn’t the best time because he then led the man, gently but firmly, back across the narthex until he disappeared from my view again, headed to the exit.
I don’t know if people in the congregation noticed my distraction. I kept preaching, but my focus was on the other side of those windows. That moment has stayed with me, and I’ve  wondered about them from time to time. Did the usher ask the man if he wanted to stay for worship? Did the man volunteer that he would come back later when told worship wouldn’t be over for another 30 minutes? I don’t know.
The contrasts were stark, though. The usher was in coat and tie, the other man was disheveled and in ragged clothes. The usher and almost everyone in worship were white while this fellow was black. Whatever the particulars of his conversation with the usher, he was not one of  us. He was not like us. And he did not stay for very long.
Watching those events in the narthex, it was easy to imagine the usher reinforcing the racial and economic barriers of our society, although I doubt he meant to. He was just concerned about decorum and order in worship. I know he supported the ministry where homeless families lived in our church building for a week at a time, eight times a year. He just thought of worship and mission as two separate things.
In that sense, he was little different from me. As a second career pastor, I can recall those times my wife and I looked for a church to join. When we did, we sought people who were “like us,” who sang hymns we knew and had a worship style we were used to. And the churches we ended up joining had people that looked like us, dressed like us, and mostly had skin color like us. Looking for a church, for a place to worship, was not about breaking down cultural, racial, or economic barriers. It was about finding a comfortable place to attend.

In the constitutional documents of our denomination the last of the six Great Ends of the Church is “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[1] And in the section on worship is this, “The church in its worship and ministry is a sign of the reign of God…”[2] You know, the reign of God, that new day when everyone will sing songs I like and share my political leanings and my understanding of the Bible.
It’s  not really possible to do worship without some particular style, and until the kingdom arrives there’s no way to know what sort of worship Jesus prefers. But seems likely it is one that reaches out, that crosses boundaries just as Jesus did, that draws in the outsider.
Sixty years ago, when people assumed that most everyone was Christian, we could easily forget that worship was an important way we witness to Christ and God’s new day. When everyone had to go to church somewhere, it made little difference if people did or didn’t like ours. But in a time when people are no longer expected to attend, if they do give church a try and feel unwelcome, they may well never try another church down the road. In our day, worship is a profound opportunity to do ministry, to share God’s love with others, to show people the ways of God’s new day that Jesus revealed to us and called us to be part of.
A paragraph in the Brian McLaren chapter for today really speaks to this. McLaren imagines that he is part of the Jerusalem church in its first year, where, according to Acts, the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Speaking of this he writes, “It is so unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. Everywhere in our society, we experience constant divisions between rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, city-born and country-born, and so on. But at the Lord’s table, just as it was when Jesus shared a table with sinners and outcasts, we are all one, all loved, all welcome as equals. We even greet one another with a holy kiss. Nobody would ever see a high-born person greeting a slave as an equal— except at our gatherings, where those social divisions are being forgotten, and where we learn new ways of honoring one another as members of one family.”[3]
Maybe you’ve  never thought about it, but church congregations are strange, even counter cultural places, one of the few places where children, parents, students, the very young and the very old, the very wealthy and the not wealthy at all, gather in one place as a community to have a shared experience. Whoever you are, you are welcome here.
But because we often don’t think about it, we forget that this welcome is part of our ministry, part of our mission, part of our work together to reveal God’s new day. And like all ministry and mission, this requires thought and intentionality. So how do we make our worship as welcoming as possible, a place where when someone attends, it feels like what I just read from Brian McLaren? “It is so unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. Everywhere in our society, we experience constant divisions…  But (here) we are all one, all loved, all welcome as equals.”[4]
This is a ministry we all share, ensuring that all are welcome, loved, and equal: those like us and those who are not, those who are Democrats and those who are Republicans, those well-schooled in the ways of church and those who are not, those whose tastes and preferences are like ours and those whose are not, because there is no us and them in Christ.
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What brings you to worship this Sunday or any Sunday? If someone isn’t forcing you to be here, why do you come? There are probably lots of reasons. Several of them may apply to you. Habit, faithful duty, desire to connect with God, spiritual hunger, wanting to give thanks, sing praises, and more. When I hear people compliment worship or complain about it, the issue is usually what they did or didn’t get out of it. Did it inspire them, move them, feed them, etc?
Nothing wrong with that. To encounter the divine in worship is wonderful. To be swept up in God’s love, to know that God longs for you, no matter who you are, that God wants you to know life in all its fullness, is something to be greatly desired. But to be caught in that divine embrace is also to be changed, transformed into people welling over with gratitude who long to share God’s love with others. And when we experience God’s love, offer thanks, welcome all, and embrace one another in God’s love, then we have truly worshiped, and our worship truly becomes our ministry.


[1] Book of Order, F-1.0304
[2] Ibid. W-7.6001
[3] McLaren, Brian D. (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (pp. 183-184). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
[4] Ibid.

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