Sermon from August 7, 2011
"Reverence"
Deuteronomy 4:10 and 13:4

Carole and I once walked up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on sidewalks that seemed saturated with people. I don’t remember if we stopped to stare or if the voice we heard stopped us in our tracks, but we stopped in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The voice we heard was the voice of a woman, who might have just remembered a sacred vow she nearly forgot. “It’s the church,” she said, pointing to St, Patrick’s in a rush of veneration that seemed out of place amid the mob of indifferent New Yorkers and newcomers to New York.

I was 28 years old, and when I heard that woman speak and saw that woman point, I felt a sudden lack and loss of something that matters to human flourishing. The name of what I lacked is reverence.

Two Other Stories
Here are two other stories like that. You find the first in Luke 5:1-8. It begins with every commercial fisherman’s nightmare – a night of casting nets and coming up empty. It continues with another kind of nightmare – being told to go back in broad daylight and try again. Here’s how it ends in Luke 5:6-8. When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

Peter forgot about fish. The catch of a lifetime lost its luster. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” The name of the reality behind his awareness of unworthiness is reverence.

The second story starts in Isaiah 6:1-4, in the temple. The winged Seraphs, superior order of angels attendant on the throne of God, called out in deafening chorus, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” There, high and lifted up, during days of mourning for the passing of the King of Israel, Isaiah saw the Lord seated on a throne.

King and seraph ceased to matter. The dissolution of all things might be at hand. The dissolution of the prophet seemed certain. What issued from his smitten self was verse five: “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” The name of the reality behind his awareness of unworthiness is reverence.

Central to each story is a stark stab of the holy. Cathedral, fish, and vision become carriers of the Holy One. They catch us by surprise. The immaterial matters; matter becomes immaterial. We can’t plan for such surprises. We can’t capture such surprises and repeat them at will.

Their force diminishes with time, but their fingerprints remain upon our souls, however faint they may fade with the passing of time. All of which raises an urgent question: Is reverence only a powerful but passing emotion, or can we conserve reverence as a stable discipline of the soul that deserves the name reverence?

Reverence As Discipline
American democracy makes the question urgent. American democracy is a great leveler. We can’t stop a man from thinking too highly of himself, but we can stop everyone else from thinking too highly of him. Given the temptations of power and the hideous uses of power possible to the powerful, this democratic leveling makes sense.

But we pay a price for it. We abbreviate our ability for sustained reverence. Our heroes are heroes for a day – until someone digs up dirt on our hero, and we are disappointed once again and maybe a touch more suspicious about the next hero. We may become suspicious of all heroes. We will not be manipulated by anyone. No one is going to take us in. We hardly notice that this leveling corrupts our relationship with God, and we become as casual and skeptical of God as we are taught to be of people.

If we are going to conserve reverence as a stable discipline of the soul, we will have to do it in the face of this democratic leveling. Once again, the Church stands as a protector and guide through the ways of the world.

Moses said to the Children of Israel: “Assemble the people before me to hear my words” – Deuteronomy 4:10. Hebrews 12:28-29 says: Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Be here to worship every Sunday. There is no social pressure in the Mid-Atlantic Region to go to worship every Sunday. Being here every Sunday rises to the dignity of a spiritual discipline. Saying no to kids’ sports and to personal fatigue and personal inconvenience in order to worship Christ together takes on unexpected spiritual power. In worship, centered on the word of God, we learn to revere God as long as we live and to transmit the discipline of reverence to the next generation.

The reverence we render when we worship also retains a piece of our humanity we are in danger of losing by our relentless leveling. You are an impoverished person, if you cannot admire someone better than yourself without cutting him down to size. Heartfelt reverence for God leaves room for a proper reverence for Man. And it provides the cure for admiring another person too much. Reverence and fear God with all your heart, and you’ll never admire another human being too much.

Reverence God in Your Heart
Do you reverence God in your heart? Listen! You’ll never do it, and you’ll never understand Christianity, and you’ll never understand this church until you believe that God gave His Son, Jesus, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. We will not turn from our wicked ways, unless we see and say our ways are wicked. It’s the first step in turning back to God. It’s the first step to reverence. Turning back to God is a national need. Reverence for God is a national need. Turn back today. Confess that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Acknowledge your sins and ask for mercy. God will forgive you and give you a share in the new life Jesus gives.

And now we come to the most righteous reverence we render in the Christian faith. We commune with Christ, as we hold in our hands, as it were, His body and blood.  God has given these material means to remind us that He means to be merciful to Man. Don’t treat this Supper casually. If you are not yet an open believer in Christ, let it go by. If you are an open believer in Christ and just counting the minutes until you can get out of here, let it go by.

Otherwise, receive this reminder of the mercy of God, and reverence the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart. Heaven and earth meet here. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly and to the church of the firstborn.