The Gift Left Behind

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 14:15-31

June 9/10, 2012 • Portage First UMC

It was either in first or second grade when I got on the bus for the first day of school. As always, there were new kids on the bus, and I sat down near one of them. As the bus headed down the road, she looked at me and smiled. She told me her name was Andrea, and that she was my cousin. Cousin? Yes, she said. Her grandpa and my grandma were brother and sister. I don’t think I believed her. I mean, here’s a relative, who lived close enough to ride my bus, just a year younger than me, and I’d never met her? So I asked my dad that night, and he confirmed Andrea was indeed my cousin. It was sort of strange, meeting a relative I’d had for all those years—you know, all six or seven or my years at that point—but had never met. Have you ever had that experience, where you meet someone for the first time who is related to you and you never knew they existed? Or does your family have a relative they don’t talk about, someone who has either distanced themselves from the family or who has maybe embarrassed the family? It’s a strange feeling, to know there’s someone out there who shares your family name or family characteristics, but with whom you have little or nothing to do.

That’s the way, we, as mainline Protestants, often treat the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity. We believe, as all the classic creeds and statements of faith tell us, that God is three persons in one being—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. We sing a lot about God the Father, and we talk a lot about Jesus the Son. But people like us get antsy and a bit nervous when you start to talk about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is like that forgotten or ignored member of the family, that person you know about but don’t really want to talk about. After all, when we think of the Spirit, we tend to think about those radical Pentecostals, and all the false stereotypes we have of their worship and their tradition. And we’ve heard the TV preachers say you have to do something extra to “get” the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit isn’t just for one particular branch of the Christian church. The Spirit isn’t something you “earn.” The Spirit is for all, even Methodists, and so for the rest of this month, we’re going to take a look at some of the ways the Holy Spirit works in our lives. Next Sunday, Jeff King will be talking about the way the Spirit enlivens our worship, and the following Sunday, Pastor Deb will talk about the way the Spirit gives gifts. But this morning, we’re going to start by looking at what Jesus told the disciples about the work of the Holy Spirit on the last night he was with them. That night, with many things on his mind, he gave them a promise: that the Spirit would teach us and help us live the life he’s called us to live.

Jesus and the disciples are still in the Upper Room. Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, the Passover meal is over, the bread and the cup of what we call communion have been shared, Judas has left to make arrangements to turn Jesus over to the authorities later that night, and there is a sort of melancholy mood that has settled over the room. The disciples sense that something big is about to happen, something that will radically change their lives, but they can’t imagine what that will be, exactly. Jesus has told Peter that, before the night is over, Peter will deny knowing Jesus, which is something else Peter can’t imagine happening. And so, the disciples are quiet, and Jesus begins to speak, offering them hope and comfort beyond the events of the next twenty-four hours. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he tells them. “You believe in God; believe also in me” (14:1). He wants them to trust him that what comes next—his arrest and trial and crucifixion—as horrible as it will seem, is actually for good. And when the disciples begin to despair that he is leaving them alone, Jesus makes a promise that when he leaves, the Holy Spirit will come and live within them.

Now, it’s not like the Spirit of God was an unknown idea to them. The Spirit is often described as working among the people in the Old Testament. In the book of Judges, for instance, the Spirit often comes upon people and strengthens them for a battle. In the prophets, the Spirit is described as inspiring the words the prophets share with the people. King David, on his death bed, said the spirit of the Lord spoke through him (2 Samuel 23). So God’s Spirit working among the people is not a new idea to these good, Jewish students of the Scriptures. In fact, they would have already believed, known and experienced the work of the Spirit of God directing them, leading them, being with them while they were Jesus’ disciples. What is new, however, is that Jesus promises, once he goes away, the Spirit will not come to work among them, but, as Jesus says in verse 17, the Spirit will live within them. He says, “The world cannot accept him [the Spirit], because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (14:17). The main difference between the Old Testament experience of God’s Spirit and the post-Pentecost (Acts 2) experience is found in where the Spirit resides. For the Christian believer, the Spirit lives within us—not taking control of us, but working in very specific ways in our lives (cf. Tenney, “The Gospel of John,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pgs. 160-161).

Jesus describes the Spirit, then, with two specific titles or names. First of all, Jesus says he is sending “another advocate to help you and be with you forever” (14:16). The word “another” doesn’t mean someone or something different. It actually means “of the same kind.” So whomever Jesus is sending is just like him, only this one is able to be with us forever. This “another” is the advocate, or some translations say “counselor” or “helper” or “comforter.” Eugene Peterson, in The Message, says the Spirit is a “friend.” The original word is paraklete—say that with me, paraklete. That’s a combination of two Greek words—kletos means “called or invited” and “para” means “alongside,” like we call a person who works alongside a doctor a “paramedic.” So paraklete is someone called or invited alongside, someone who comes to offer aid, help, comfort, strength. The word may refer to an advisor, a legal advocate or a mediator. Literally, Jesus describes the Spirit as someone called alongside to help. Having someone come alongside in a time of need makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it? There have been many times in my life where that has been true. Thirteen years ago, when I went to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis for my heart surgery, we had wonderful friends show up to just sit with Cathy in the waiting room, so that when the perky nurse came out to tell her they had stopped my heart, she wasn’t alone and didn’t have to freak out. I went into surgery knowing she had comforters, parakletes, with her in the waiting room. There have been various times in my ministry, where important decisions had to be made, or issues needed to be worked out, when it made all the difference to have a paraklete. I remember one morning in particular when I was alone in my office, thinking through and worrying about a particular decision that had to be made. Out of the blue, my phone rang, and when I answered it, I discovered a paraklete on the other end of the line, letting me know he was standing with me and praying for me. That changed the whole day and the whole situation for me. And yet, as wonderful as it is to have friends who stand with us, who are advocates and comforters for us, they are finite and cannot be with us always. Jesus promises an advocate, a comforter, a paraklete who will always be with us. The Holy Spirit will help us and be with us forever (cf. 14:16). He is the Advocate.

The Spirit is also, Jesus says, the Spirit of Truth (14:17). We live in a day of “subjective truth,” where we think that just because something is true for you doesn’t mean it’s true for me. And there are some things like that; we call them “preferences.” But there are things that are true no matter what. If I hold a rock up here and I let go of it, you can believe all you want that it will float in the air, and it won’t. The truth is it will fall. Gravity pulls it down, no matter how much you believe otherwise. The truth Jesus is describing here is “objective truth.” It’s something that is true no matter whether anyone believes it or not. It’s still true. Suppose you get everyone in the world to believe that gravity isn’t true. Does that mean the rock won’t fall? Of course not. No matter what you believe about gravity, the truth is it’s still a powerful force and will cause the rock to fall. There are some things we can be subjective about; there are other things that are true just because they are, whether we believe them or not, whether we like them or not. Just a few chapters beyond this in John’s Gospel, when Jesus is on trial before the Roman governor, Pilate, Jesus is asked if he is a king (which is what the Jewish leaders were accusing him of), and he says, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Pilate, then, responds, “What is truth?” (18:37-38). Pilate had been steeped in that “relative, subjective truth” mindset. And, of course, the irony John wants us to see in that scene is that standing before Pilate is the one who declared, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6). Jesus is the truth. And that same truth—which is true whether we believe it or not—is what Jesus came to declare. Now, he says, it will be brought through the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Truth.

In regards to truth, Jesus promises the Spirit will “teach you all things.” He will also “remind you of everything I have said to you” (14:26). In other words, for those first disciples, who carried the message of Jesus forward without any sort of written Bible (other than what we know as the Old Testament), the Spirit served as the continuing voice of Jesus, the one who would remind them exactly what Jesus said and what kind of life he called them to live. Eventually, as that first generation of Christians began to pass away, the Spirit’s role was to inspire men and women to commit the teachings and the life of Jesus to writing, and to guide the church in discerning which writings accurately reflected Jesus’ teaching. There were many Gospels and books written during this time, some of which circulated rather widely, but many of them were inconsistent with what Jesus actually said and did. And so, through the Spirit’s guidance and help, the church accepted what we have as the New Testament to be holy Scripture. That’s what Paul means when he describes the Scripture to Timothy as being “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). In what is probably his final letter, Paul writes to his young friend and “son in the faith” to encourage him to remain true to what he has been taught, the truth about Jesus. “Continue in what you have learned,” Paul tells Timothy. Let the Spirit keep you faithful to the Scriptures, because in those writings, Paul said, you will find wisdom and salvation. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” he writes, “and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (3:16-17). Scripture is God-breathed, and in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, the word for “spirit” is the same word as “breath.” In the beginning, God breathes life into the first human beings—that’s the Bible’s way of saying God gives of his spirit to bring us life. Spirit, breath. It’s God’s Spirit that sustains us, just as much as our actual breath. The Spirit breathes the Scriptures, inspires the people to write of Jesus in a language and a way that is consistent with Jesus’ message. That’s what we mean when we talk about the “inspiration” of the Scriptures—you can even hear the word “spirit” in the middle of “inspiration.” Jesus says the Spirit would remind them of all he had taught them.

In the first century, as I said, that meant for a while they were reminded because they had nothing written down. For us, today, in the twenty-first century, the Spirit works in helping us understand what was written down. The Spirit’s work is to give clarity, to help us find Jesus in the pages of the Bible. The Spirit’s work is to help us get the Scripture down deep inside of us so that, when we face temptation or when we face a difficulty or when we face loss or whatever it is, the Spirit can then “remind” us of what Jesus said. There have been many times in my life when I’m struggling with a decision that the Holy Spirit will bring to mind just the right verse to point me in a positive direction. Or when I found myself, in college, really discouraged about my heart problem, God’s Spirit brought to mind repeatedly a verse from the Psalms: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26). When I sit with a family to prepare for a loved one’s memorial service, I ask the Spirit to guide the conversation, and so many times, when we talk together, a particular passage of Scripture rises to my mind that somehow just ties their life to the Gospel. And I can’t tell you how many times I’m working on a sermon or even preaching one and the Spirit brings to mind a Scripture I hadn’t considered but one that just needs to be shared. You see, the Spirit’s role, Jesus says, is teaching, and he teaches from within each of us and recalls to memory what Jesus said (cf. Tenney 148).

However, it’s my experience that it only happens when we give ourselves to reading and studying the Scriptures ourselves. The Spirit doesn’t tend to bring to mind things we have not encountered or experienced ourselves. It’s like the student I knew who asked his pastor to pray for a big test coming up, that he would do well, and the pastor prayed, “Help my friend achieve up to the level he has prepared.” I don’t think that’s the prayer the student wanted to hear! But the same is true in our Christian life. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he didn’t expect the Spirit to just drop the words of the Bible into Timothy’s brain. No, he talks about how “from infancy” Timothy had been a student of the Scriptures, and how he had studied with others whom he trusted (3:14-15). Paul was encouraging Timothy to be faithful to all he knew, and to allow the Spirit, the breath of God, to guide him in that truth.

For some of us, summer becomes a time when we think we can take off. A lot of our small groups are wrapped up for the summer, they don’t meet much, and so we get rather neglectful about studying the Scriptures during these warmer months. Aren’t we glad, though, that God doesn’t take the summer off from taking care of us? Why do we think we can take the summer off from God? I know that, for me, every year when we finish Disciple Bible Study, I find myself suddenly without a plan. Nine months of having a daily reading plan, and then there’s this void until August when we start up again. So over the last few years, I’ve made a point to purchase a study book before we’re done with Disciple so that I have something to go to immediately. This year, I’ve been studying through Maxie Dunnam’s book The Workbook on Spiritual Disciplines, and that continues to get me into the Bible for something other than sermon preparation. The Spirit will teach us, but we’re expected to do our part, too. So do you have a plan? Do you have a way to continue reading and studying during these “vacation” months? Pastor Deb or I would be glad to recommend a study book, or perhaps you can get involved with the Brown Bag Bible Study group on Wednesdays. FISH groups and other small groups will be starting up again this fall, and I can’t encourage you enough to make plans now to be involved in one of those. Perhaps this summer you want to pull a few friends together for a small study. You could use the daily readings in the bulletin each week (or on the YouVersion app) to read, study and comment together. And there are a lot of resources for Bible study out there today. Some are better than others. Some are downright useless. And there are a glut of Christian books available, so much so that it’s easy for us to get caught up in reading the latest Max Lucado book or the newest Christian novel or the top bestseller at the Christian bookstore. There is a time and place for such reading, as long as it’s not replacing first-hand study of the Scriptures. The Spirit may well have prompted those writers to pen those words, but even so, all they can write is commentary on the Scriptures, which amounts to opinion. There is no substitute for studying the Bible, which is God-breathed.

When we’re serious about studying and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us, that will lead us, then, to obedience. Jesus says as the Spirit teaches us, we will be enabled to follow his commands. He tells the disciples at the very beginning of this passage, “If you love me, keep my commands” (14:15), and then he proceeds to describe the Spirit who will help the disciples (and us) do exactly that. “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me,” Jesus says (14:21). Now, there’s another side to that. Sometimes we think we ought to be able to hold the world to Jesus’ standards, and we judge people who, we think, don’t “measure up.” But Jesus says the world isn’t able to live up to that because they don’t have the Holy Spirit. He’s more concerned that those who do have the Spirit, those who claim to follow Jesus, live Christian lives. Read the Scriptures, get Jesus’ commands into our hearts and lives, live the way he calls us to and stop judging those who don’t yet know him. Jesus’ focus is on us and how the Spirit then gives us the courage and the strength we need to do what he commands us to do— feed the poor, love the unlovable, live a holy life, care for the sick and reach out to those who don’t yet know Jesus. In other words, it is the Holy Spirit living within us that enables us to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ—to be able to love God, love others and offer Jesus. The Spirit is at the root and the core of everything we do as a church—teaching us how to live and leading us into all the truth of the Scriptures.

So, Jesus says, the Spirit teaches us and enables us to obey what we hear. In fact, our best ministries in this church have come as people have listened to the Spirit teaching. PF Hope came out of a dream as we listened to the Scriptures talk about reaching others and how the disciples went to the ends of the earth. If they went that far, surely we could go across town. And so Wade Boise listened to the teaching of the Spirit and has clung fast to the promise that the Spirit would always be with us, even when it gets hard. A while back, in our Disciple Bible Study, Lil Falk expressed a concern for those children in her class who, she knew, were going without food over the weekend. Out of that Spirit-driven discussion eventually came what we’ve been calling “Feed My Lambs,” a ministry that provides food during the school year to kids in food insufficient households. This past year we were able to help over 30 kids; we’d love for this next school year to be even bigger. And out of that has come all sorts of passions for feeding the hungry in our community. Chris and Kim Adkins took and ran with our Smart Choice ministry, providing low-cost quality food to help with everyone’s grocery bills, and our monthly food drive was expanded into a huge push called “Stepping Out to Stop Hunger,” something we do at least once a year to stock the food pantry’s shelves. Another study of the Scriptures gave Jaymee Penrose and others a passion for children who are abused and neglected, which has led to our church’s involvement with Royal Family Kids’ Camp. And I could go on and on, but the point is this: as the Spirit teaches us, we are also enabled to respond with obedience. Obedience shows our love for God as we respond to make a difference in his world.

This Holy Spirit is the Advocate and the Spirit of Truth. He carries on the work of Jesus, which is clear even from the way John describes Jesus himself. In the very beginning of the Gospel, John tells us Jesus “came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). Full of grace—one who will comfort, counsel and extend mercy, an advocate. Full of truth—one who will teach us the way to live, the truth about ourselves and about the world. Full of grace and truth. Advocate and Teacher. This the gift Jesus leaves us when he returns to the Father. The Spirit is the gift left behind. So how shall we respond to this gift? If the Spirit is living in you—and Jesus says all who love him have the Holy Spirit—then in what way will we allow this gift to shape our lives? Perhaps you need to be comforted, to sense God’s presence near you as you go through a difficult time. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, our comforter who often sends others to be a tangible reminder of God’s love. Perhaps you know you need to ground yourself more in the words and teachings of Jesus, in the Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and he will help you not only understand but also to obey the Scriptures. In whatever way you need, the Spirit is here for you today. He lives within each and every believer. So during our prayer this morning, I want to invite you to sit with open hands in your lap. That’s a posture of receiving; it’s a way of saying to God, “I’m open to whatever you have for me.” So today as we pray, let’s ask God to pour out his Spirit into our lives in new ways. Will you join me with open hands and open hearts? Let’s pray.

Golf Course Religion?

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Luke 4:14-21; 1 Corinthians 14:26-33

August 6/7, 2012 • Portage First UMC

There’s an old story about a preacher who was an avid golfer. Every chance he could get, he would be out on the golf course swinging away. It wouldn’t be too much to call golf an obsession for him. One Sunday, the weather was picture perfect for golfing. The sun was out, no clouds in the sky, and the temperature was just right. He looked out the window and suddenly, the urge to play golf overcame him. What to do? He couldn’t focus on anything but golf, so he called his associate pastor to say he was sick and could not do church. Then he packed the car and drove three hours to a golf course where no one would recognize him. Happily, he began to play the course. But it seems there was an angel watching who became quite upset about the whole situation. The angel went to God and said, “Look at that preacher. He should be punished for what he is doing.” God didn’t say anything, but nodded in agreement. Back on earth, the preacher teed up on the first hole. He swung at the ball, and it sailed effortlessly through the air and landed right in the cup three hundred and fifty yards away. It was a perfect hole-in-one. He could barely contain his excitement. The angel, meanwhile, was a little shocked. He turned to God and said, “Begging your pardon, but I thought you were going to punish him.” God smiled, “I just did.” The angel was confused. “How? He got a hole-in-one!” To which God responded, “Think about it—who can he tell?”

Ah, golf courses and God…two things (among others) that, on a Sunday morning, seem to be in constant competition. Though the years, I’ve often had people tell me they can experience God just as much on a golf course as they can in church. Well, from what I understand, God is often spoken of on a golf course, though not always in a complimentary way! Or people tell me they can be with God in their yard, or their coffee shop, or in front of the television watching their favorite preacher…the underlying assumption is that I don’t need the church to worship God or to be a Christian. Those beliefs come out of a couple of false assumptions, which we’re going to look at this morning as we wrap up our series on the Good and Beautiful Community. We’ve spent the last couple of months looking at Biblical images for the church—see if you can say them with me. The church is a peculiar community, a hopeful community, a serving community, a Christ-centered community, a reconciling community, an encouraging community and a generous community. My hope is that, over these last few weeks, you’ve seen the church in a new light and come to appreciate the church more and more. But above, behind and around all of those images, the Bible consistently paints the church in one other way—as a worshipping community. There is nothing we do that is more public or more important to our soul than worshipping God together.

We struggle to believe that, though, because, as I said, we’ve bought into two lies. The first lie is this: “Worship is a personal matter meant to inspire the individual” (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 171). I hope by this point, after looking at all these images over these weeks, you’ll hear immediately the unBiblical self-centeredness in that statement. Worship is never about me, and it’s not primarily about what I can get out of it. It’s not about me being inspired, as if inspiration somehow was the primary reason we gather here. Sometimes we may leave here with good feelings, but feelings aren’t what we’re after because feelings come and go. Worship is not about entertainment, imitation or inspiration—primarily because all of those things are so individual. It’s not even about what I like or what I don’t like. Worship is not about me. The second lie goes like this: “Worship is an obligation we owe to God” (Smith 172). Sometimes, if we don’t come to worship for inspiration, we come out of a sense of duty or obligation. We come because we think we owe God somehow, or maybe that God will appreciate it somehow (and we’ll get credit) if we just show up. It’s a little like this. Take a listen.

VIDEO: Home Improvement - “Losing My Religion” clip

That motivation in worship is short-lived at best and dangerous at most—and it’s even rather self-centered, because we act as if God needs our worship, as if God will somehow be deprived or depressed if we don’t “pay” what we “owe” worship-wise. But the Bible does not say God needs our worship. The Bible says God is worthy of our worship. God deserves our praise. God does not need our worship, but we need to worship. It’s part of our DNA to worship someone or something. So we’ll either worship God or perhaps the little white ball we chase around with a stick or the greenbacks we carry in our pockets or something else. Worship is not a matter of duty or obligation any more than it’s about me and my feelings. Those are lies we have believed for too long.

So if those two statements are lies, what’s the truth? If worship is not about me being inspired, what is it for? The truth is worship is a communal activity meant to instruct a people (Smith 171-172). When you read about worship in the Bible, it’s always a communal activity. Instructions that are given are for the people who gather together. Nowhere in the Bible will you find instructions given for “personal” worship. Worship is always corporate, because we are first and foremost part of a community. In the Old Testament, worship was about sacrifice, and those offerings were made not in a person’s own tent but at the Tabernacle, by the priest, in the presence of the people. Later, the same practice was carried on at the Temple, and eventually worship (though not sacrifices) took place in the synagogues. The great Jewish festivals were all about the people coming together, not to be inspired, but to give of themselves to honor God and to be learn what it means to be shaped by God, to be made into a people whose lives reflect their creator. The same is true in the New Testament, and we’ll look at that a little closer in just a few moments. Even Jesus practiced communal worship. In the Gospel passage from Luke, we’re told he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath (the day of worship) “as was his custom” (4:16). Communal worship was part of his practice, and if anyone could have worshipped by himself, don’t you think it would have been the Son of God? Yet Jesus came to worship in the community. So the point is this: Biblical worship is never about “me and Jesus” or “me and God.” Biblical worship takes place in a community, because it’s within the community that our primary identity is found.

But even though worship is communal, we still don’t join the community for worship out of a sense of duty of obligation. Worship isn’t something we owe God. Rather, worship is an invitation given by God (Smith 172) to which we respond. We gather together to worship out of gratitude for what God is doing in our lives. Gathering here on Saturdays/Sundays is about us saying, “Thank you!” to a God who loves us in so many ways throughout the week. A sense of duty or obligation usually leaves us in a begrudging mood, like “I’m only here because I’m supposed to be, but I’m not happy about it, God.” How different is that from the psalmist who said, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1). Or from another psalm: “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Psalm 84:2). Does your soul long for worship? Do you rejoice to come to worship? Or do you drag your feet? If you’d rather not be here, perhaps it’s time to take a gratitude inventory. How thankful are you for the things God has done in your life? And how do you show that thankfulness to God? The Bible says we do it through worship, because worship is an invitation, not an obligation.

Sometimes I’ve heard it said if we could just get back to a Biblical model of worship, we’d be much better off. But do you know the problem with that? There is no single Biblical model for worship. In fact, especially in the New Testament, there seem to have been a wide variety of ways to worship. What we call “traditional” doesn’t go back to Bible times; it really only goes back to the 1950’s. There are many ways to worship, but one consistent theme: worship was never meant to be a spectator sport. Worship is always meant to be participative. For just one example, let’s look at Paul’s instructions to the church at Corinth as they struggled to become a worshipping community. We know from Paul’s writing that the worship at Corinth included both word and sacrament (communion). It included preaching and praying. But it wasn’t a matter of everyone gathering as an audience while a few people led the service. There were no bulletins. There was no organ or praise band or worship team. There was no set order of worship. In fact, as I read this passage from 1 Corinthians, I get more of a sense that it was similar to Quaker worship than anything else today, where the community gathered and they waited for the Spirit of God to inspire someone to speak. The instructions Paul gives here are to provide order in such a setting, because, he says, “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (14:33) and worship of God ought to reflect God’s character. As Tom Wright observes, “Spontaneity is no guarantee of spirituality, and to think otherwise is to entertain wrong ideas about God himself” (Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, pgs. 199-201).

So, Paul says, when you come together, some of you choose a song, and others be prepared to give a word of instruction, or a word of encouragement from God. If someone speaks in tongues, make sure there is an interpreter so everyone can understand what is being said. In fact, he says, the goal of the worship is that the church may be built up. Not ourselves. Not individuals. The church—the worshipping community. He even says sometimes there are people who have a word from the Lord but then feel compelled to keep on speaking long after that word has run out—maybe he’s thinking of modern-day preachers! We do that sometimes! But Paul says if someone is speaking and another person senses God giving them a word to share, the first person should sit down and be quiet. While that sounds rude and abrupt, the point is this: it’s not about the speaker. It’s about God. It’s about honoring our creator and savior and doing so in an orderly way—at the most three of anything, whether a teaching or a message in tongues—again, so that the church will be built up. Now, here’s the underlying assumption Paul is making. He’s picturing the church gathering for worship. In some locations, there is evidence that “church” meant a gathering of four or five families who lived close to each other and may have even broken down walls between their houses to provide a common worship space. But however they get there, they were to come and prayerfully consider what they were going to contribute, not what they were going to receive (Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, pgs. 404-408). Worship was meant to be participative. It’s not a spectator sport, which is what we’ve made it.

You see that happening in the Luke passage, when Jesus went to worship. It’s his hometown, Nazareth, and in some ways he’s the hometown boy made good. Now, I’ve often pictured this scene (and even preached it this way) that Jesus comes home, and he’s invited to preach. I’ve thought he was the preacher of the day, but I’ve discovered that’s not what’s going on here. Rather, what Luke describes was common practice in the first century synagogue, that at the end of the service, there would be a reading of what is called the haphtarah, a portion of the prophets that is meant as a word people would have in their hearts and minds as they go out into the world. Any young man of the community might be invited to read the haphtarah on any given Sabbath, and after reading it, they could comment on it briefly if they like (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 69). So the service is almost over. They’ve read all the other passages assigned to the day, and the one in charge hands Jesus the scroll of Isaiah and asks him to read the haphtarah—probably because he’s the visiting “local boy made good.” And so Jesus does, and then he comments on it, ever so briefly: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s all he needs to say, because the passage he read is about the Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, the Savior. Now, we didn’t read the rest of the story, but at first, they speak well of him. “Isn’t that sweet, Joseph’s son reading the Scripture?” Then Jesus goes on to tell them that “no prophet is accepted in his hometown,” and explains that their lack of faith in him will prevent him from doing any miracles there. That’s when they get angry and they try to throw him off the cliff outside of Nazareth. But here’s the bigger point: Jesus came ready to participate in worship, as was his custom. He was an active part of the worshipping community.

We can and should be, too. But sometimes I think we hold back because we don’t quite “get it.” We come and we sit and we maybe enjoy this part or that part, and we either endure or ignore the rest. Yet everything we do in worship has a purpose. Everything is meant to shape us and to help us give thanks to God. Perhaps we don’t “get it” because we don’t come prepared and we’ve never really thought about why we do what we do. I’m going to have more to say about this when I return from Israel in July, but this evening/morning, let’s just consider very quickly some of the things we do in worship—doesn’t matter if it’s traditional, contemporary or somewhere in between, these are all things that are part of the worship of God’s people. Probably the biggest part of worship is music. When I asked last week on Facebook what your favorite part of worship is, most of you mentioned the music. And that’s appropriate. The Bible is full of commands to sing—yes, commands. Not requests, not suggestions, but commands. Psalm 33 says, “Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him” (33:1). As we discovered back in January, the book of Revelation contains numerous scenes of God’s people singing. Praise through music is perhaps the earliest form of worship known. There’s something about music that moves us in ways the spoken word cannot. In fact, in our tradition, it was music that fanned the flames of the Methodist revival. Many of the people John Wesley preached to could not read or write, but they could sing. And so Charles Wesley, John’s brother, took the basic principles of the faith and set them to music. The legend is that he took the pub tunes—the contemporary music of the day—and put Gospel lyrics to them. Charles Wesley’s hymns were the contemporary worship of his day. Before him, Isaac Watts set the psalms to new music because the music of his day was “boring,” he said. Every generation has to find a way unique to itself to sing the praise of God because music gets into our soul in ways nothing else can. So we sing. We use many different kinds of music to worship the one God.

Another part of worship is the offering. Perhaps this is the most tangible way we can see of giving thanks to God—we give of what we have for God’s use through the church. Again, far too often we’ve seen the offering as “paying our dues” or “paying the God tax” or even “the price of admission” rather than an act of worship. Sometimes we don’t even want to talk about giving. But the Bible’s perspective is that everything we have belongs to God. We give back out of what we have been given as an act of gratitude—not because we have to pay the bills, but because giving breaks the hold the world has on us, the hold that says it all belongs to me. It’s all about me. No, it isn’t. It’s all about God, and giving helps us let go of the need to store up treasures for ourselves. Giving is meant to be a joyous act of worship, because in giving we declare our dependence on God alone.

Then there’s preaching. For Protestants, preaching is usually the biggest part of the worship time, having replaced the New Testament church’s practice of persons in the congregation offering words of encouragement. Now, we can debate whether that’s a good move or not, but it is the way it is. Preaching is about the Bible, seeking to understand the Bible’s story, which is our story, and learning how it applies to our lives today. The Bible is our common text; it is the only thing sometimes that brings us together. Several years ago, the last time I was in the Holy Land, we had a man on our bus named Harvey, who learned I was a preacher. “So what do you preach?” he asked. I was a bit taken aback by his question, and I said, “Well, Harvey, I tend to preach the Bible. I don’t know what else there is to preach.” Harvey smiled and said, “Well, I’ve heard some who don’t.” But if we don’t proclaim our common story as contained in the pages of the Scripture, what else is there to center our lives around? So preaching is not about the personality or even the experience of the preacher. Preaching and hearing the word is about seeking to live out God’s way of life as found in the pages of the Bible as best as we can understand it.

What if we came to each of these things, and other parts of worship, with what we might call a “holy expectancy” rather than a sense of “just gotta get through it”? What if we prepared ourselves the day before, and even on the way to worship, to be ready to receive whatever God has for us that day? Our Soul Training for this week calls us to do just that, to do what Paul suggests in his instructions to the Corinthians, to prepare ourselves for worship. This is going to take some work, and it won’t come all at once. First of all, we need to create margin, to take some time to prepare our hearts, souls and minds. Maybe we need to get some extra rest the night before, or take some time in the afternoon before to quiet our hearts and slow down. As James Bryan Smith puts it, “Time margin is thus necessary in order to create heart margin” (187). Then, arrive early. Nothing puts us out of sorts as when we hurry in, and we’re late, and it takes us a while to even figure out what’s going on in the worship service. Leave home early, arrive early so you can have some time to adjust. Worship is something we’re made to do, but it’s not something that comes easily to us. If we arrive early, we can settle our souls so that we’re ready to worship. Then, perhaps, focus on one aspect of worship each week. Maybe we can’t change our perspective on it all at once, so choose one thing you’re going to focus on first. Maybe you want to connect more through the music this week. Or you want to be better at paying attention to the Scripture and the sermon. Or you want to see the offering in its proper place as worship. Or whatever it is. Choose one thing to focus on and allow that practice to shape your heart. And finally, give thanks. When God does speak to you, give thanks by acting on whatever it is that he has said to you. Come to worship with holy expectancy. What is it you have to give God in worship?

There’s one more element of worship that calls us to have holy expectancy, that calls for us to participate rather than spectate. Once a month or so, we invite you to share in holy communion. Communion is a sacrament, which is just a big word that means it is something we do physically that represents something going on inside of us spiritually. Communion is bread and juice, the bread representing Jesus’ body and the juice representing his blood. We don’t believe anything magical happens to the bread and the juice, but we do believe that in these two things, Jesus promised to be present, to be with us. He told us to do it in remembrance of him. Some people don’t want to take the bread and the cup because they don’t feel “worthy,” but none of us really are worthy. The bread and the cup are meant to remind us that in spite of our not being worthy, Jesus loved us enough to die for us. If we had to wait to be perfect before we took part in this sacrament, the bread would mold and the juice would go sour because none of us are worthy. But we are loved, and we are accepted, and we’re encouraged and challenged to receive these two signs—and to live our lives differently because of Jesus’ sacrifice. Out of gratitude, we receive the bread and the juice. Some traditions call it the “eucharist,” which is really just a Greek word that means “giving thanks.” It’s a gift. It’s a response to Jesus. And so, in gratitude and with holy expectancy that God might use this bread and this cup to touch us, change us, shape us, even speak to us, let us prepare to come to the table of the Lord.