What Ministers Wish Church Members Knew
Who Is Worship For?
Rick Jensen
Luke 17:11-19
Yankton UCC (Congregational)
August 4, 2013
Summer Sermon Series - #4
Continued:
One-after-another professor replied, “Well so-and-so is an outstanding
preacher.” Pittenger raised his hand to stop them from speaking further. “I
didn’t ask who is an outstanding preacher. I asked where I could find a
place where I will be helped to worship God!”
Truth is: preaching and worship are not about us preachers. They’re
also not about each worshiper, as vital as you are, because without you there
would be no public worship. Worship and prayer aren’t just more ways of
asking God: “What have you done for me lately?” Worship isn’t just the
church’s version of “entertainment” or “religio-tainment.” It’s about
expressing our love for God which in turn elicits our love for our neighbor.
As Saddleback preacher Rick Warren says in his first sentence in his
book, The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you (or me).” It’s all about
God! God is the audience and you and I are the actors! Indeed, we often
speak of worship as the “church service,” or “worship service,” as another
form of service to God!
Nothing better communicates this than the German word for worship,
“Gottesdienst,” literally translated “God service.” Interestingly, the word
“Dienst” is plastered on signs all over Germany to identify “service
stations.” So, our worship, to use Methodist minister Ezra Earl Jones’
phrase, “is intended to lead us to the throne of God that we might return to
the world to serve God by caring for our neighbors.” But is this what
worship has become?
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Two vital questions we need to ask of worship are these: First, does
God get anything out of our worship—the hymns, the prayers, the offering,
the sermon, communion? Secondly, do the hurting people of the world get
anything out of our worship—does our worship lead to Christian action in
the form of benevolence toward others? Worship without service leads to
arrogance; service without worship leads to cynicism. While our worship is
primarily for God and God’s good pleasure, it can never be decoupled from
our service to others and remain worship! “The proper response to God’s
saving mercy, therefore, is not presumption that it is something we deserve;
but untainted gratitude and pure praise of God for God’s saving mercy,
which evokes in us acts of mercy for others!”1
When we worship as spectators, as passive consumers of prayers and
sermons and communion, we belittle both God and ourselves and become
paralyzed from helping others. “Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard once
described worship as a great drama in which church members are on a stage
and God is the audience. His point was that worship is our offering to God,
not the minister’s offering to the members….Worship that does not address
God, listen to God, speak to God, is not Christian worship….The problem is
that we think worship is primarily for us. And we want what we want: to
watch, to judge, to critique. Churches that have members who understand
who worship is for, who is to please & who’s to do the pleasing are churches
whose worship redeems & renews those who make their offering to God.”2
Preacher Jan Linn says neither worship nor preaching are spectator
sports, where, if either becomes boring we wish we were somewhere else.
It’s like an ancient story suggesting our need to be fully present with God:
“Where shall I look for enlightenment?” the disciple asked.
“Here,” the elder said.
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“When will it happen?” the disciple asked.
“It is happening right now,” the elder answered.
“Then why don’t I experience it?” the disciple persisted.
“Because you do not look,” the elder said.
“But what should I look for?” the disciple continued.
“Nothing. Just look,” the elder said.
“But at what?” the disciple asked again.
“At anything your eyes alight upon,” the elder answered.
“But must I look in a special kind of way?” the disciple went on.
“No. The ordinary way will do,” the elder said.
“But don’t I always look the ordinary way?” the disciple said.
“No, you don’t,” the elder said.
“But why ever not?” the disciple asked.
“To look you must be here. You’re mostly somewhere else,” the
elder said.
My friends, are we here? Or are we somewhere else, thinking about all we
have to do?3 Are we looking for attention and pleasure? Or are we giving
God our undivided attention and pleasure? Beware, we may be missing
something vital right before our very eyes and ears!
New Interpreter’s Bible, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 327.
Jan Linn, What Ministers Wish Church Members Knew,” StL: Chalice Press, 1993, p. 57-59.
3
Susan Andrews, “Proactive Praise,” Lectionary Homiletics, October 2001, pp. 14-15.
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