Sermon - Imitating God

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Imitating God

James Sledge                                                                                       August 12, 2012

When I was a child, Disney movies were a staple of my movie going.  The Parent Trap, 101 Dalmations, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and many others came out during my childhood.   A movie that I particularly liked, in part because my family had a dachshund, was one starring Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette entitled The Ugly Dachshund.

As I recall, Suzanne Pleshette’s prized and pampered dachshund is about to give birth to puppies, an event of such importance that she and her husband, played by Dean Jones, rush the dog to the veterinary hospital, enlisting a police escort from an officer who mistakenly believes this emergency involves a human birth.  Following the delivery, the vet convinces Dean Jones to place a Great Dane puppy who has been rejected by his mother into the litter of dachshund pups.  And so Brutus goes home as a member of this dachshund family, unbeknownst to Suzanne Pleshette.

As the title of the movie suggests, Brutus, raised by a dachshund mother with dachshund siblings, thinks he is a dachshund.  But of course as Brutus grows into a huge Great Dane who thinks he’s a tiny dachshund, all sorts of movie disasters and hilarity ensue.

It gets so chaotic that Suzanne Pleshette wants Brutus gone, but Dean Jones pleads with her and sets out to prove that Brutus can actually live up to his Great Dane DNA, entering Brutus in the same dog show as his wife’s prized dachshunds.   The plan almost goes terribly awry when Brutus spots a dachshund from the show ring, immediately reverting to thinking he’s a dachshund, crawling on his belly to appear small.  But the situation is salvaged when Brutus spots a lovely Great Dane and begins to adopt the regal, imposing figure of the Great Dane he actually is, winning the blue ribbon.

 The Ugly Dachshund is far from a great movie, but it does touch on a significant topic, that of identity and where it comes from.  Brutus the Great Dane has acquired an identity that does not fit him, and trying to live out his mistaken identity has been the source of countless mishaps and disasters.  But when Brutus encounters a Great Dane who knows she’s a Great Dane and begins to imitate her, he discovers his own, true identity.

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Who am I?  That’s a huge existential question, along with associated questions about how I become who I am.  Nature or nurture or some combination, and then in what proportions?  What is the interplay of genetics and environment?  None of us like to think we are programed or fated to turn out a particular way, but we also know that children who are abused often grow up to be abusers, that there are cycles of poverty and violence which seem intractable.

Coincidences and Providences

I love the LORD, because he has heard
    my voice and my supplications. 
Because he inclined his ear to me,
    therefore I will call on him as long as I live.   (from Ps. 116)

In his book, Humble Leadership, Graham Standish reports something a former archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, is supposed to have said.  "I find that when I pray coincidences happen. When I cease to pray, coincidences stop happening."  Temple is, of course, speaking of providences rather than coincidences.  When through prayer he is more attuned and aligned with God, he sees and experiences God at work in his life and in the world around him.

Now I don't mean that every good turn of events can or should be attributed to God. (I have a memory seared into my brain of a boxer thanking God for his victory, saying how he felt Jesus empowering his fists as he pummeled his opponent into submission.)  But without some meaningful connection to and experience of God and God's providence, faith is nothing more than a philosophy or ideology.

The psalmist loves YHWH because God has heard him, has responded to him in some way.  I think this is often a weak point in Mainline Christianity.  We're big on knowledge, but not so much on experience.  In fact, we're suspicious of it.  I was once at a retreat that featured Brian McLaren.  He made an offhand comment about being able to learn something from Pentecostals, and most of the pastors over 50 practically came out of their seats to challenge him.

We certainly need to "test the spirits" to see which are from God, and a solid, biblically based knowledge of God and God's ways can help us to do this.  But if we cannot encounter God at work in our lives and in the world, along with being able to identify that work as providence, then we might as well be Deists.  I'm not knocking Deists, but we Presbyterians insist we don't believe in a great, cosmic clock-maker who is now removed from Creation. We say God IS at work in history, so surely  with the help of the Spirit, we should be able to say, "See, there is God's providence."

Of course if we became perceptive enough to sense God at work on a regular basis, it stands to reason that we would also become more sensitive to God's call in our lives.  We would also hear God's command.  And maybe that's a pretty good reason to keep God at arm's length.

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Something Old in Something New

When I read the daily lectionary passages, I admit to sometimes hurrying past the morning psalms.  Some of the same psalms occur with great frequency, and I think to myself, "Just saw that one the other day," as I begin to skim.

This morning I read, "O sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth."  It is one of those frequent psalms, and I began to speed up.  But before I could accelerate to full skim mode, I caught enough of the next few lines that something grabbed me.  The psalmist had commanded something old and something new.  We are to remember and declare God's saving acts and marvelous works, but apparently it requires a "new song" to do so.

I don't know why this contrast never struck me before.  I've commented before on this command for a "new song" alongside congregational "worship wars" where people fight to hang on to the old songs.  But I'm not sure I've ever thought about this idea that declaring what God has done requires a "new song."

Being the Church requires a fair amount of remembering and retelling.  We are rooted in a salvation story, a long story of God's countless, gracious acts to pull humanity back and repair a broken relationship.  Along with songs, laws, and wise saying, the Bible is a book of stories, stories we need to know to know who we are.  But, at least according to this psalm, sharing this knowledge requires new songs, repackaging if you will.

An inherent problem for all faith communities, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. is a tendency to confuse our core purposes and our packaging.  We decide that our way of worshiping or singing, our style of liturgy or music, is somehow essential to the faith.  Worshiping God with music and song may well be essential to the exercise of biblical faith, but our particular music and song are not.  This is not an argument for or against any particular music style, but it is a reminder that getting confused about essential and packaging may make it difficult for us to tell of God's saving acts and marvelous works.

When we remember and tell, we do so in  order to be joined to a story that is moving toward a yet-to-come future.  Jesus calls us to proclaim the kingdom, the reign of God that is now only partially seen.  And our methods of telling can never be so rooted in the past that the past seems to be our desired destination.

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Insignificant

Praise the LORD!
  Praise the LORD, O my soul! 
I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
  I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
Do not put your trust in princes,
  in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
  on that very day their plans perish.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,   whose hope is in the LORD their God, 
who made heaven and earth,
  the sea, and all that is in them; 
who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed;
  who gives food to the hungry.             (from Ps. 146)


Most of us take some note of what other people think of us.  It bothers us if they think poorly of us and heartens us if they think us impressive in some way.  If I stumble and nearly fall, I quickly look around to see if anyone was watching.  Strange that I give others so much power over me, worrying constantly about how they see me.

Most of us tend to be very ego driven.  We are very focused on self, on staking out and defending an identity.  We do this almost completely in comparison to others.  We are forever building our

résumé, trying to portray ourselves in the best light compared to others.  And most of us want to be better, more powerful, richer, prettier, better dressed, and so on than those around us. The last thing we want to be is unimportant and insignificant.  We know that we can't always be first, but we can't stand the idea that we might be last.

I think this is why we so value being independent. Becoming dependent on others is a huge blow to our egos, to those résumés we work so hard to build.  To move from independent to dependent is a move toward insignificance in many people's minds, and some of us will go to absurd lengths to guard our independence and supposed significance. 

In ancient times, royalty was about as significant as they come, but this morning's psalm insists on their insignificance.  And the psalm calls for a radical dependence, a call echoed over and over in the Bible.  "Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, who hope is in Yahweh their God."  

Richard Rohr's meditations this week have been on "Healing Our Violence."  (They were not a response to the shooting at the Sikh temple but are certainly fitting.)  In today's piece he speaks of how our résumé-building egos are inherently insecure, "grasping for significance."  And this striving for significance, importance, and power is at the root of much of the conflict in our world.  But when our selves find their true identity in God, in radical dependence on God, we discover that we have "very little to defend, fight about, compete with, overcome, hate, or fear."

My own Protestant roots are about dependence on God's gratuitous love and tender care.  Not by works but by grace, we say.  But in practice we have worked very hard at explaining just how this grace works and insisting that our explanation is better than yours and that those with wrong explanations are in trouble.  And we end up being very impressed with how well and systematically we figured all this out, and we don't look the least bit dependent or insignificant. 

How dependent on God are you?  I sometimes think this issue is the single biggest obstacle to my work as a pastor. I so want to be a good pastor, a successful pastor, that my insecurities make it nearly impossible to simply trust God.  Change my heart, O God.

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Sermon audio - Mystical Presence

Audios of sermons and worship also on FCPC website.

Not Again

"Not again."  A Twitter post that begin with those words first alerted me to yesterday's shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.  I'm sure others' thoughts echoed this tweet.  It does feel like this sort of thing happens too often.  I know that many more people die in car accidents and  "run of the mill" murders, but still...

Close on the heels of the Colorado shooting, I'm sure there will be more talk about gun control.  I certainly support reasonable limits on owning certain types of guns and ammunition, background checks, and so on.  And while gun control might well help, I do not think it would solve the problem. In fact, I am suspicious that a more fundamental issue underlies both our culture's resistance to reasonable gun control and its apparent tendency toward violence.

As I read today's lectionary passages, I saw this verse from Acts which describes the first Christian converts and the beginning of the Church at Pentecost. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." This begins a section of Acts that describes an ideal (some would say idealized) community that looks nothing like US society. It is very communal. No one wants for anything because everyone shares all they have.  Even non-believers are impressed.

I suspect that if you showed people on the street some verses from Acts without telling them the origins, many would label them socialist.  And they certainly don't fit well with individualistic American notions that are so quick to protect my rights, protect my property, etc.  The stereotypical hero in American culture looks nothing like Jesus. It's hard to imagine Hollywood ever casting John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, of Bruce Willis as Jesus, but they are the epitome of the quick-with-a-punch, quick-with-a-gun, American hero.  (If you want an authentically Christian sort of movie heroism, try Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.)

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."  I wonder which of these teachings we have devoted ourselves to in America. Many like to speak of us as a Christian nation, but it is a strange brand of Christianity, one that somehow mixes faith with a love of violence, guns, and the expectation that people should fight for their rights.  Never mind that Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek... Love your enemy... Become a servant to all... Deny yourself."

And the dark side of American individualism in not a problem for just one side of the political spectrum.  Our bitterly partisan, win at all costs, political landscape also seems contrary to basic, Christian notions.  Both political parties often seem more intent on winning than on doing what is best.  No doubt this is sometimes motivated by genuine belief in a viewpoint, but when Jesus says, "Love your enemy," he doesn't add, "if they agree with you."

Don't get me wrong.  America is a wonderful place, but it is far from a perfect place.  The verse from 1 John is as applicable to nations and cultures (maybe even more so) as it is to individuals.  "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But if we are to do the soul searching and confession that John goes on to suggest, I think we need to dig a little deeper than we tend to do.  We need to think about just what fundamental notions, values, beliefs, etc. under-gird who we are, and shape us for good and for ill.  And for those who are Christian, I think we would also to well to emulate those first Christians who "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."

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Sermon - Mystical Presence

John 6:24-35

Mystical Presence

James Sledge                                                                                                   August 5, 2012

As a group, we Presbyterians have never been terribly good at evangelism, a trait we share with Episcopalians, Lutherans, and a few others.  There are a lot of reasons for this. We tend to be big on knowledge and understanding, and so people are often worried about not knowing enough to share faith with anyone.  Many of us have also been turned off by the overly aggressive, sometimes manipulative evangelism methods of other Christian groups, and so we defer, not wanting to look like them.

In recent decades however, interest in evangelism has seen an uptick in our denomination.  We have regular evangelism initiatives at the national level, and many Presbyterian churches have offered classes on evangelism. I’ve taught them  myself, although I think Presbyterian interest in evangelism is more often about institutional survival than anything else.

That probably helps explain the content of the typical Presbyterian evangelism pitch. It goes something like this.  “We have a great pre-school and children’s program.  I bet your kids would love it here.”  Or if it’s a different target audience it might go, “We have this amazing young adult group.  We do all kinds of fun things together, and it’s a great place to meet new people.”  Not that we completely avoid religion.  People may pitch the quality of the worship.  They may talk about social causes or community ministry the church does. They may even mention some fashionable, spiritual options like a contemplative prayer group, meditation, or spiritual retreats.  But what rarely gets mentioned is faith, or connecting to Jesus.

Perhaps that’s presumed, but I wonder if our evangelism pitches don’t in some way parallel the sort of things the crowds in our gospel reading were saying.  “You gotta come check this guy out. He gave us all we could eat.  We were out in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies, and we ate like I’ve never eaten before.  Let’s go see what he might give out today.”  The crowds were fascinated by the tricks Jesus did, and they flock to him, but Jesus is unimpressed.  “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves,” because I’ve got something you want, a little moral training for your kids, a little something to go with your hectic, consumer lifestyle.

When you think about it, it’s a little surprising that so many people still come to churches looking for Jesus. We live in an age when most of life is disconnected from God.

Reasonable Doubt

If you read a Bible commentary on today's gospel reading, you will likely find some mention of an accusation that early Christians had to answer.  People were saying that Jesus had not risen from the dead. Rather his disciples had swiped his body and then perpetuated a hoax about his resurrection.  Many scholars will note that Matthew's gospel, written many decades after the actual events, seems tailor made to address such charges.  Similarly, some scholars argue that claims of a "virgin birth" for Jesus (found only in Matthew and Luke) are an attempt to refute charges that Jesus' birth was actually "illegitimate."

(Presbyterians have an interesting history with the whole virgin birth thing. At one point it was an article of faith required for ordination.  It was later dropped as an absolute requirement, but I was asked in 1995 by a pastor nominating committee what my beliefs on the virgin birth were.)

But whatever Matthew's reasons for supplying that little detail about stealing Jesus' body, I found my thoughts drifting to questions of faith and doubt.  Am I more likely to believe because Matthew refutes claims that disciples pilfered Jesus' body?  Is faith the product of getting the story straight?  And if I'm suspicious that Matthew is creating details to deal with charges against the faith, might that not actually make me more inclined to doubt the biblical storyline? Throw in the fact that the different gospels give slightly different versions of the story, and such issues are amplified.

It seems to me that there are plenty of places where reasonable doubt can emerge. (I once had a Muslim acquaintance tell me that he thought we Christians had a huge problem because our Bible had so many authors with so many different takes, unlike Islam, based solely on the the writings of the Prophet.)  If Christian faith must exist on the basis of the empirical evidence alone, we run into problems right away. It is no wonder that many people assume science to be the enemy of faith (a view I do not share). Science is all about empirical data, but the empirical data build a pretty shaky case for faith.

Like love, one must experience faith.  Like love, it can wax and wane, and even disappear entirely.  For people of faith, the prospect of its waning or, worse, disappearing can be terrifying.  But fear rarely leads to the best human responses, and fear related to faith is no exception.  I've know my share of Christians who practiced denial with regards to faith, who insisted they had never felt a the slightest twinge of doubt. I suppose that's possible, but I think it much more likely they're terrified at what happens if they admit such doubts.  And so they work very hard to fool themselves and God.

I think that fanatical fundamentalism is an extreme form of such denial.  It refuses to allow doubt or any variation from truth on anyone's part, and woe to those who don't stay in step.

By contrast, my tradition is rather open to doubt.  I'm quite happy about that as I don't think I would fit in otherwise, but our friendliness with doubt sometimes raises other problems.  It makes us very suspicious of religious certitude, and we become so unsure of anything that cannot be confirmed by empirical evidence or logic that we struggle actually to act on our faith.  We may do good things because we are convinced they are reasonable and the right thing to do, but that does not really require much in the way of faith or discerning what God calls us to do.

It seems to me that faith is quite often about doing things that seem unreasonable even in the face of doubt.  Being non-violent in the face of violence often seems a foolish tactic. Seeking the good of your enemy even more so.  Being abused, chastised, or attacked for doing such things only seems to confirm the foolishness of those tactics.  I suppose that is why so few of us ever experience the truly transforming power of faith.  That is why there are so few Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings who can act on faith and transform the world.

O Lord, I'm no fanatic, and I know well how to doubt.  Help me to have faith, faith that actually hears and does what Jesus calls me to do.

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A Time to Wait

I've been doing a lot of spiritual wrestling of late. A few months into a new position, I feel like I should be "doing" more, helping the church take bold, new steps, that sort of thing.  But I don't have much clarity about what steps to take or in what direction.

The one thing I've felt convinced of from the beginning has to do with helping us become a more spiritual place.  I don't say this because of some serious spiritual deficiency I witnessed on my arrival.  Rather, this was a strong component of my original sensing a call to ordained ministry.  Twenty years ago, I felt that the work and ministry of the church needed to be more deeply grounded in God, needed to flow from God.

In my own struggles to keep my ministry grounded in and flowing from God, I have discovered a number of spiritual practices that were not part of my upbringing and do not come naturally to me.  I have gained a deep appreciation for centering and contemplative prayer, lectio divina, spiritual direction, and other practices. And I have tried to let my experience with these seep into my "work" as a pastor.

However, I sometimes worry that I have done so badly. In trying to encourage committees and governing boards and congregations to think more about what God wants us to do, I fear that I have inadvertently stereotyped spirituality as a style.  I may have given the impression that spirituality is about candles and meditation, about a "smells and bells" approach rather than an integral part of our Christian life.

And so it seemed providential to me to find the opening of Acts as a lectionary reading this morning.  The disciples in the passage must have been struggling with some of my questions about what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.  The risen Jesus had told them that they were going to be his witnesses throughout the world. He had promised they would be empowered by the Spirit, but none of them knew quite what that meant.  And so they waited, and they prayed.

I don't know if they used incense or centering prayer, chant or lectio divina. I do not know if they sat cross-legged, stood, had eyes open, or had them closed.  Perhaps some did one thing and another something completely different. We don't know because the Bible seems unconcerned with the spiritual style they employed. It is clear, however, that they waited and prayed. They prayed together, and surely the prayed alone. And they continued to wait until God showed them the way.

I am not terribly good at waiting.  I tend to be impatient by nature, and I am the product of a culture that values getting things done.  But before I convince the leadership here to embrace some bold new thing that I want to do, how do we wait and listen to be sure (at least as sure as we can be) that it is what God wants?  And before I or anyone else tosses aside some new or strange sounding idea that seems to make no sense, how do we stop and wait to determine if it is from God?

It seems to me that to hear God's call, we need to know how to wait.  We cannot be too quick to say "Yes" nor too quick to say "No," because our quick "Yes" and "No" are probably more apt to come from our own biases, preferences, habits, and expectations than they are from God. So perhaps right now is not a time for Yes or No, but a time to wait.

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You Just Wait!

The cross and the Crucified Christ are central elements of Christianity. But despite this, the faith has never come to a complete consensus on exactly what the cross means or how it "works." Scholars and writers are still offering their takes on the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion.

But at the moment, I'm not thinking about whether I prefer ransom, satisfaction, penal substitution, or some other atonement theory.  As I read today's gospel - Matthew's account of the crucifixion - I found myself fixated on the taunts hurled Jesus' way.  "Save yourself... He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him." Even the two criminals beside him get in on the act. (You have to go to Luke to find the one criminal who is sympathetic to Jesus.)

Much as happened during his trial, Jesus remains silent.  He suffer the abuses and taunts without a reply. There is no comeback, no "Just wait; you'll see."  Not that we don't sometimes provide that for Jesus after the fact.

It strikes me that we sometimes minimize the cross into a difficulty on the way to something great.  Jesus still turns the tables on those who taunt him, only later.  They still get theirs and Jesus gets his vindication.  In the gaudier versions of this, King Jesus comes back with a sword and settles old scores, and the cross was simply a cosmic version of "no pain, no gain."

The cross still perplexes and confounds us.  And so we try to fit it into models of victory that we do understand, where the bad guys still get their due, and Jesus wasn't a wimp after all.  He just knew that holding his tongue would make the victory sweeter when the time came.

Yet presumably Jesus dies for the very folks who taunt him.  And the biblical picture of Jesus doesn't speak much of an avenging warrior who returns saying, "You had your chance, but now you're really gonna be sorry."  Instead Paul speaks of God's power being made perfect in weakness.  And, in what I think one of the more remarkable images in the Bible, we meet King Jesus in John's Revelation. 

The typical expectations of a great king are there in Revelation 5.  He is "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David," and he has "conquered."  But then John sees him, a "Lamb standing as if he had been slaughtered." We may want the Lamb on the cross to transform into a Lion, like a 98 pound weakling who bulks up and turns the tables on the bullies, but the Lion remains a Lamb that has been slaughtered.  And "conquer" takes on a whole new meaning.

I wonder what Christianity would look like if we really took the cross seriously, and if we took seriously Jesus' call to take up our own crosses, to embrace our own willingness to suffer for the sake of the other, even if that other hates us.

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Settling for Scarcity

The Lord upholds all who are falling,
    and raises up all who are bowed down. 
The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food in due season.  
You open your hand,
    satisfying the desire of every living thing. (from Ps. 145)

Today's meditation from Richard Rohr begins, "It is good to remember that a part of you has always loved God. There is a part of you that has always said yes. There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance. Once you learn this, why would you ever again settle for scarcity in your life?"

Strange that Rohr would describe the lifestyle of out consumerist culture that acquires things at an astounding rate as "scarcity."  But I think him correct when he says that our culture trains us well in a kind of "learned helplessness."  Most of us have known people who were overly dependent on someone.  They needed their wife or husband or parent so deeply that they could do nothing on their own, and they lived out of a subservience that was crippling. 

Our culture works hard to put us in exactly such a position with regards to needing more.  We are rendered helpless by accepting the cultural lesson that "I'm not enough!  This is not enough! I do not have enough!" to quote Rohr once more.

Fear is a powerful, if evolutionarily primitive, emotion. There are perhaps still times when a fight or flight response may aid us, but such instincts do not lend themselves well to the sort of life Jesus says we are meant for; a life freed from fear, a life motivated instead by love.  

Jesus says, "You are a beloved child of God. You do not need to be more impressive or have more accomplishments. Open yourself to the powerfully transforming presence of God's love in your life.  Discover an abundance that truly satisfies and empowers you for a bold, new life."

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Today's worship looks a bit different at Falls Church Presbyterian.  It is organized around our just completed Vacation Bible School and is led by the VBS participants.  This is apparently a traditions here, one that I have not yet experienced.  Not having seen this or knowing quite what happens, I asked for some assurances that it would still "worship" and not simply a VBS slide show.

As a pastor, I tend to obsess about worship.  It's been drilled into me.  I took classes on worship in seminary, and our denomination not only puts out Book of Common Worship, but our constitution includes a lengthy section entitled the "Directory for Worship."  It speaks at length about what worship is, how worship is to be ordered, and what elements might be in it, should be in it, or must be in it.  All this attention to worship is not really surprising.  When you are a religious institution whose most visible product is a worship service, it is going to receive a lot of energy, thought, scrutiny, etc.

I also tend to worry about worship out of the criticism of it from the 19th Century philosopher, theologian, and existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard.  He spoke of worship as drama, but he said it too often got misconstrued as an event where preacher, choir, and liturgists were actors for the audience/congregation.  Rather, Kierkegaard said, God should be the audience with the congregants being actors.

I'm writing this prior to today's worship, but I won't be surprised if today's drama comes closer to what Kierkegaard suggests than many other Sundays.  Oh, there will be some parents or grandparents who are there for the performance rather than worship, but, as Kierkegaard complained, there are people there every Sunday in that mode.  But there will also be dozens of children leading worship, singing, praying, moving, dancing.  By that alone, today's worship will have more of what Kierkegaard wanted. 

No doubt there will also be a number of adult and teen VBS volunteers helping to keep all this going, and so even more people who otherwise might be sitting and watching worship will instead be "onstage," to use Kierkegaard's language.  And presumably God will find the whole thing every bit as pleasing and enjoyable as what happens on other Sundays, perhaps a lot more so.

The whole thing will no doubt be less polished than some other Sundays.  There will likely be times when it looks a little chaotic.  But there may well be times when it has more heart, life, and vitality than some meticulously planned and executed worship services.

At this point I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this.  But as one who sometimes obsesses about getting worship well planned and executed, it's likely worth recalling that today's worship may feel more like worship to God than some of those I'm responsible for.

P.S. My expectations were not far off.  The service was louder, more animated, and at times more chaotic that the typical Sunday.  But it was also more energetic, lively, and full of heart.  The children and leaders did a great job, and I'm pretty sure that God was pleased.