Golf Course Religion?

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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.