Sermon from November 12, 2006
Worship is a human act, but it does not originate in a human act. The pressure to worship comes frm the invisible Mystery who invites but does not impose Himself. In other words the source of worship is God's revelation of Himself. The means of worship on the other hand is our submissive response to God's revelation of Himself. The purpose of worship is to manifest God's worth throughout the whole creation.

It would be surprising, if worship did not have a central place in BVBC's mission and vision. The mission of Brandywine Vally Baptist Church is to be followers of Jesus Christ, known by our love. What would such a community of followers look like? What would be that community's vision of its future? I have proposed the following.

These followers of Christ, known by their love, will engage their communitiees with compassionate deeds, and they will engage their culture with gracious discernment. Today, we come to the third engagement. These followers of Christ, known by their love, will engage God with heartfelt worship.

To help us embrace this vision of BVBC as a worshipping community, we need to reflect on the source, the means, and the purpose of worship. Because worship does not originate in a human act, let's begin with the source of our worship. We find striking language that will help us do this in Psalm 18.

Stooping Down to Make Us Great
Before verse one there is what we might call a program note. It describes briefly the circumstances in which the Psalm may have been written. Probably, some ancient scribe inserted it to help readers. It says the psalm was written by "David the servant of the LORD. He sang to the LORD the words of this song when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul."

We know from 1 Samuel that King Saul tried on several occasions to kill David. In this Psalm David compared his experience with King Saul with the experience of nearly drowning. In verse six he tells how he called out to God to deliver him.

In my distress I called to the LORD;
     I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
     my cry came before him, into his ears.

The point of the Psalm is that God answered David's prayer. But the language David used about God is especially striking. For example, in verse nine: He parted the heavens and came down. In verse 16: He reached down from on high and took hold of me. The one that breaks your heart with goodness is in verse 35: You stoop down to make me great.

Do you know? If we fail in worship, it is not primarily a failure to love God as we ought. It is first a failure to know that God loves us. I hope it doesn't disappoint you for me to say that. Maybe you think there is more to say. We think that, because we think we already know that God loves us.

We know the words. We know they are the right words, the orthodox words, the buzzwords that admit us to the good opinion of those whose esteem we cherish. But words are like maps. It is possible to sit at home with your map of Europe and look at the brown colors and black numerals that measure mountains, and have at your elbow a color photo of the mountains.

But wouldn't you like to use that map for a leisurely drive through Switzerland, and for the chance to stand there with the wind in your face and see before you old, hard, creased, and capped with snow the Alps filling heaven and earth?

We never look at a map and talk as though it were the same as being there. But we do it with words. "God loves us." We hear it said and say it to ourselves so often that it serves no purpose but to tell others we are orthodox. The experience behind those words can slip away or never come at all.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, says 1 John 4:10. We love (God) because he first loved us, says 1 John 4:19. The love of God for us is the source of Christian worship. How shall we respond to this specific way in which God stooped down to make us great?

Reaching Back to the God Who Reached Down to Us
Let's focus on the response that we have in common. Psalm 122:1 strikes just the right note: I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Worshiping God together as a response to God's revelation of Himself deserves closer attention than we usually give it. Follow me for a few minutes.

A striking, easily-overlooked reality is going on right here, right now. You are here. You could be many other places, but here you are. Why is that? Is it the music? Is it the sermon? Is it your friends? Is it guilt? Is it curiosity? Is it habit? Is it desperation? Did others in your household impose their will on you? Is it a mix of these?

By the way, I take seriously that old hymn of invitation that Billy Graham made famous: "Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidd'st me come to thee. O Lamb of God, I come; I come."

If the Lamb of God waited until we had pure motives to come to Him, He would welcome a very small congregation. So, I don't reject or make light of any of the motives that brought you here today. They are living powers in you, and if they were strong enough to get you out of the house and into this gathering, they deserve respect, even if the worship of the Lamb of God deserves better.

Think about that for a minute. Thousands of our neighbors seldom or never do what you have done this morning. Few if any of the people you live near or work with would raise an eyebrow, if you stayed home every Sunday. The power that moved you to be here came from within you and caused you to act in a way that is contrary to the status quo. Coming to this worship service is a counter-cultural act.

Where did that power come from? Some people say it is a sign of your election by God. Others say it is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work in you, giving you spiritual life. Both are right, and on another occasion, it would be good to pursue a discussion of God's actions and what they tell us about ourselves. But today, I am interested in coming at it from the other end, so to speak. I'd like a discussion of our human motives and what they tell us about ourselves (and about God).

So, I'd like to pose a question about these motives that have brought us here today. I hope that it will open up deeper possibilities for our worship. Here is the question. Does the power that brought you here represent a deterioration in your motives for coming to public worship?

Many years ago, G.K. Chesterton pointed out that if you paint a post white and do nothing to it for a year, it will not be a white post at the end of the year. Weather and the chemistry of white paint and the neighborhood dogs will act on that post in such a way as to guarantee that it will not be white this time next year, unless you do something to keep it white.

Motives are like that. Let's say you came today because of the music. Is it the emotional buzz the music gives you that brings you back? I am not rejecting or making light of that. It got you here. It's powerful. But has the need for that emotional buzz crowded out something better in your soul? Is the white post no longer white?

Changing circumstances, strong-willed people, or the fickleness of your heart may have allowed a different motive to slip past your guard and diminish the power and even the memory of better motives. But I believe that a better motive is still in your soul.

And what is that better motive? There was a time when whatever you did in worship was reaching back to the God who had stooped down to make you great. You may have never thought those words. You may not have thought five minutes in five years about why you go to church. But there was a time when the reality of God, of Christ, broke upon you like an unexpected wave at the beach, and you responded; you reached back. You prayed. You gave away something valuable. You dedicated your life to God. You reconciled with your spouse. You went back to church.

Our vision of followers of Christ, known by our love, is a vision of people who engage their God in hearfelt worship. Heartfelt worship is reaching back to the God who stooped down to make us great in Jesus Christ. We sing to Him. We listen to sermons to hear something from God. We give to God. At our best we do it with all our hearts.

A cautionary word is in order here. We place a premium on feeling good. We often evaluate the value of an experience by its power to make us feel good. We bring that expectation with us to Sunday worship.

That is a tricky expectation. It is dangerous in two ways. First, it may compromise the integrity of our worship together. Making people feel good is not the motive for Christian worship, and if that is our silent expectation week after week, the quality of our worship will be compromised. The fence will be less and less white.

Second, that expectation sets you up for frustration. There is no way we or anyone else can construct worship together so as to guarantee that you will go away every week feeling good. Feelings are wonderful servants and terrible masters. They always demand more and more excitement in order to maintain yesterday's good feeling. The demand to maintain a certain level of good feeling can become emotionally destabilizing. Let the focus be on God, and feelings will take care of themselves.

To Show His Worth
That brings us to the purpose of worship, which is to manifest throughout the whole creation God's worth. Does our worship at (8:30, 10:00, 11:15, 6:00) do that? It seems pretty tame. Well, no, our worship alone does not do that. But our worship alongside the worship of half a million other Christian congregations around the world does that.

You know the wave that we still see occasionally go around the stadium at large sporting events. We need to picture the worship of the universal Church, beginning just west of the International Date Line each Sunday, as a giant wave of worship and praise to God encircling the earth. If that vision can fill our hearts, we will see how far we have come in fulfilling the ancient dream of the Old Testament prophets: For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea – Habakkuk 2:14.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Mrs. Evelyn Underhill was an early 20th century, English mystic. After she embraced the Trinitarian faith of Christianity, she wrote a book called simply Worship. Early in the book she feeds our aspirations to worship with the following statement.

"'I come to seek God because I need Him,' may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet,' is the only possible formula for worship," (Worship, 9).

The Gospels are full of such worship. Do you remember the distraught father, who wanted to believe but couldn't believe that Jesus could help his son; and he cried out: "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

Do you remember the quintessential act of worship by the woman who had lived a sinful life? She brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind Jesus at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them – Luke 7:37-38.

Unbidden, such worship arises in the hearts of the people of Christ. That disposition of our hearts will find a way to express itself within all disciplines of worship and styles of worship. Apart from that disposition, all disciplines and styles become husks. With it the mystery of humanity and the mystery of the Godhead meet at "the still point of the turning world," and there is worship, and there is peace.

I said earlier that you may not have thought five minutes in five years about why you go to church. As a result, without knowing it, you could be here for any number of reasons: the music, the sermon, your friends, guilt, curiosity, habit, desperation, others in your household imposed their will on you, or a mix of these.

Again, I say that I don't reject or make light of any of the motives that brought you here today. They may be heartfelt. They are living powers in you, and if they were strong enough to get you out of the house and into this gathering, they deserve respect, even if the Lamb of God deserves better.

But the Lamb of God deserves better. So, what perfume do you pour on the feet of Christ in these brief moments we have together here? We sing, we pray, we give, we listen, and we obey. It all seems pretty tame. We've done it for years. I think I know what's lacking.

Our alabaster jar of perfume remains unopened. Our hearts remain shut here in the presence of God. We come unprepared. We hold back, once we're here, preoccupied with other matters. We are like the uncomprehending ones in Browning's poem:

"Earth's cramm'd with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only those who see take off their shoes,
the rest sit round and pick blackberries."

Let us open our alabaster jars and pour their treasure on His feet. O Worship the King!