Sermon from July 19, 1998

Sermon "Laying Out the Garden"
Rev. Dr. Steven A. Peay
Chris Rygh
Sunday, July 19, 1998

"Laying Out the Garden"
{second in the July dialogue sermon series:
"Worship: At Play in God's Garden"}
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

The Acts of the Apostles give us a good picture of the garden which was the early church: "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." Why did the first Christian community act in this fashion? Simple, they were responding to a profound encounter with God. In the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost they had come face-to-face with the One who is All-Holy, and completely other. They could only react with a sense of awe and wonder.

In the Eastern Churches this sense of awe and wonder is brought to worshipers' consciousness during the liturgy in the singing of the "cherubic hymn": "Let us who mystically represent the cherubim and sing the thrice holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, now lay aside all earthly cares, that we may receive the king of all invisibly escorted by the angelic hosts." In the act of worship we take the place of the angels, whose job it is to praise God night and day, and are raised to the presence of the Creator and sustainer of all that is. God comes among us and joins himself to us as we respond to his gracious invitation to know and love him as we are known by and loved by him. As we said last week, worship is a return to the garden of Eden -- the garden of unbroken encounter with God.

Our worship is not placating some fearsome, distant being -- though for many Christians I'm convinced that there is more than a small amount of that in their religious life (almost like a 'Monty Python' sketch: "O Gawd, you are so verrrry huge!"). No, we are responding as God has invited us, and entering into active relationship with him. Worship is not a static, but a dynamic thing -- really an `ecstatic' thing, because we are called out of ourselves into the presence of God. So worship is not a spectator sport -- we're not here to be entertained. Why? Because worshipers are not the audience . . . God is. It's his garden after all.

Then how do I worship? What are the parameters of this garden? In the Old Testament God establishes humanity's role as worshiper from the beginning. We see it in the offerings which were to be brought by Cain and Abel. We see it in the response of Abraham and then find it codified by Moses; first in the covenant (the ten commandments) and then laid our in detail in the book of Leviticus. What we find is a definite idea about sacred time (the Sabbath, the feasts, the years of jubilee); sacred space (Sinai, the "tent of meeting," the temple); and sacred action (circumcision, sacrifice, ritual vesture, postures, and gestures). Eventually we find the prophets calling the people to understand that their ritual was not to be reduced to ritualism -- "Rend your hearts, not your garments."

Then along comes Jesus, who keeps the Sabbath, goes to the synagogue, worships in the temple, and tells the Samaritan woman: "The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . " We've been trying to figure out what "spirit and truth" is ever since he said that! What he did, however, was to show us that this worship came from a life in tune with the Father's. When he left us an action, "take eat . . . take drink . . . do in remembrance of me," it was in anticipation of his ultimate offering on the cross.

Thus, when the church was formed on that first Pentecost day, it continued to frequent the synagogues and the temple (though we were eventually thrown out and this was one of the things which would lead to Roman persecution). However, they gathered in homes to do as we heard in the reading today. One author describes their action as the paradigm for all Christian worship: gather the folk, tell the story, break the bread.

Perhaps the earliest description of Christian worship was penned by Justin Martyr, who died around 165. In his 'Apology' he tells of a community gathered to hear readings, a sermon, to pray for themselves and others, to share in the Eucharist (holy communion) and then go forth to serve. What he describes is pretty much what Christians did for centuries- Word and Sacrament- but more and more elaborately as the church became part of culture and the state.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century wanted to continue the emphasis on Word and Sacrament, but more in line with what the Bible taught. The Scripture is, I think, abundantly clear that the norm for Christian worship was a balance of Word and Sacrament -- nourishment coming from both tables. Unfortunately, and this more because of the effects of the Enlightenment than the Reformation, the idea of Word became stressed over that of Sacrament. As a consequence, in much of Protestantism communion became something infrequent and worship has become, as a recent issue of Christian Century described it, "the chatty hour."

That the garden is to be balanced, I think, is abundantly demonstrated by the furniture we find in every Christian church. In various styles, shapes, sizes, and locations, you will find a font for baptism, a pulpit for preaching, and a table for communion. The 'how' of worship is going to reflect the culture, tradition, and orientation of a given faith community. I have become not so nearly concerned as I was about a rigid orthodoxy (right glory) in worship -- it simply hasn't been and can't be a uniform thing. Worship in spirit and truth, I believe, opens us to the richness of diversity as Christ's body at play in God's garden.

What is the effect of worship, what is the experience of the garden to be like? If we ask the question, "What do I get from worship?" we've already missed the point. We come to worship not for ourselves, but for God and for his people. We cannot come to worship simply to be alone with our thoughts or ourselves, because in worship we witness to God's presence in us and through us to his world. Thus, there is a difference between inspiration and worship. Inspiration is a private thing, an individual thing. Worship is a corporate act. Quite frankly, we get from worship what we put into it -- almost like what they say about computers "GIGO" (garbage in/garbage out). The act of worship is entering, anew, the garden of encounter.

We need to remember where we are, as I've quoted from Annie Dillard most Christians haven't "the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blindly invoke." The effect of worship is to place us in the presence of the living God; whose face, scripture says, one cannot look upon and live. Yet, we are invited not only to look upon the face of God, but to call him Father, Brother, Teacher, Friend. We are invited to walk with God in his garden. We are gathered to come into God's presence and realize who we really are: part of the Body of Christ, tenders of the garden. The dismissal of the Latin liturgy says it all: Ite missa est -- go, you are sent. We are sent to make him present, as was that little body of believers in Acts who changed the world.

Laying Out the Garden
Chris Rygh

About a year ago Mary Beth and I were invited to our sister church, First Congregational Church of Beloit. I preached the morning worship and it was an absolute disaster. I mean it was awful. I don't know what happened, but I had a terrible time communicating my ideas clearly. After worship the comments went something like, "Boy, you've got a long road ahead of you." "Lots of luck, we'll be praying for you."

Nobody mentioned the sermon, except for one. A young lady came through the line and she said, "I've got to tell you, your sermon really changed my life today." I had to ask, so rather sarcastically I said, "Really, what line penetrated you?" She said, "It was that part in the middle where you said, 'And now moving on to my next point.' You see I'm at a point in my life where I'm really stuck ,and hearing that line this morning enabled me to see things in a new way. I realized it's time in my life to move on to the next point."

Before we can move to the next point in our relationship with God, we must learn about God's longings:

1. God longs for us to remember our purpose in the garden, our purpose in worship.

2. God longs for us to reconcile the paradox in the garden

3. God longs for us to recommit ourselves to the passion of worship.

Worship is our corporate response to God's beckoning. So by definition it has to be a team effort. By implication, worship is something set apart from the rest of what we do as a church community. People come to church for all sorts of reasons, for groups, classes, special programs., but worship is something else entirely. Our purpose is more focused. It's all of us together working toward the same end: to glorify God.

With that in mind, the second point is more difficult, especially for us Congregationalists Reconciling the tensions or paradoxes we find in worship is no easy task. For example, let me share with you how easy it is for me to put my needs before God's. Look for the tension here. Last week Mary Beth and I were visiting my sister in Des Moines. On Sunday we worshipped with her at her Lutheran church. I kept looking for something I could carry away from that experience. It was more important for me to get something than to give something. We come to worship looking for buried treasure, expecting to leave with our spiritual coffers filled. We have a craving for spiritual renewal and we come to worship expecting to find that. See the tension? Our needs vs. God's needs. God needs us to give him glory and praise.

Consider a secular example, imagine if you were a parent sending your five-year-old off to a birthday party. Your expectation is not to have him or her come back loaded down with presents. As a parent, you help your youngster shop for a special, appropriate gift, wrap it, put a card on it and send your child off to the party, excited to share this special gift with his best friend. Imagine that that's the purpose of worship. Each of us comes on Sunday morning with our gift to put down before God with the expectation that we are here for the host, the honoree. That's our purpose. If we get anything out of it, it will be the fulfillment we experience after delivering what we feel is our most cherished present before the Father. Worship should be more about giving that getting.

Worship is more about function than form. As Congregationalists I'm ashamed to say that we argue over too many petty details. Continuing with the party metaphor a while longer, we talk more about the flavor of the birthday cake, who should and shouldn't be invited, what colors to use in decorating the party room and who gets to sit closest to the honored guest. Instead, as Christians, we ought to be discussing whether the cake is big enough, how to make the guests feel more welcome. We're slipping when we begin to place a higher value on the flow of our worship than on the focus of our worship. Worship that is consistent and structured provides a wonderful security. On the other hand, worship that becomes routine is at risk for losing it's authenticity. More tension.

Finally, worship is more about communion than community. We call it fellowship around here. It's one of our most cherished words, but there's a real tension between fellowship that excludes God and faithfulness that excludes others. When it is a matter of one or the other, we have to err on the side of God's needs. God needs us to be absolutely, unconditionally faithful. "Worship the Lord with all your heart and all your mind . . . ."

Ultimately it is about passion in the garden. The things I struggle with the most as a worshipper and as a pastor are the matters of passion: integrity, intensity and intimacy. I feel that God called each of us on Sunday mornings to reclaim our passion. When we worship we should attempt to respond with a clear and honest conscience. That's called integrity. We should attempt to respond with a clear and honest desire. That's called intensity. We should attempt to respond with a clear and honest heart. That's called intimacy. Authentic Christian worship is our passionate response to God's beckoning call.

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