Right now there are about 25-30 people from Bethany at the Alpha weekend retreat over on the Peninsula.  I was over there all day yesterday, and there are some wonderful things going on: a lot of fun, digging into the whole topic of God’s Holy Spirit:

• Who is the Spirit
• What does the Spirit do
• How is one filled with the Spirit?

...as well as horseback riding and all sorts of other things.  And even as we worship this morning, they are worshiping as well, and we want to keep them in prayer this morning. 

Sometimes when a group gets together for one purpose or another, someone must start the meeting.  Sometimes they look around and say teasingly, “Okay, who called this meeting?” So, let me call us together with this:  This morning…Christ has called us together.  Let me repeat it.   Christ has called us together.

I’m going to read a list of statements about the church.  I’m not asking for a show of hands, but think about which ones resonate with you, or may have come out of your mouth at some point:

• “The church is too worldly.  It only echoes the same sexual, racial and class discrimination that is destroying society outside the church.”
• “The church is too heavenly-minded…singing about the gospel, but what about feeding the poor and housing the homeless?”
• “The church is too much of a social welfare organization.  It has forgotten about preaching the gospel and evangelizing the world.”
• “The church is so eager to be inclusive that it compromises the theological and ethical integrity of the Christian faith.”
• “The church is too exclusive and intolerant…you have to look a certain way and believe a certain way to be invited in.”
• “As long as you make a pledge of financial support, the church doesn’t care what you believe or how you live.”
• “The church has no right to talk about how I live my life.”       
• “The pastor’s sermons are vague, unrealistic generalities that give me no help in living real life.”  [Remember, I said no show of hands!]
• “The pastor meddles too much.  He should preach salvation of souls, and leave his words off my life.”
• “The church isn’t relevant, is old-fashioned, doesn’t meet my needs,  I can worship God just fine by myself, I don’t need the church.”

The church is too liberal.  The church is too conservative.  The church sings too many praise songs.  The church sings too many hymns.   The church is just another institution.

Is the church all those things?  Well, if we are honest, it’s at least some of them. Probably quite a few of them.  But I believe…and hope…that we are more.  Much more.

“Following Jesus Together.”  That’s what we’re calling this sermon series. It wouldn’t be much of an unusual title except for that last word, together.

It often seems easier, sometimes much easier to pursue our own spirituality, find our own way to God, try to follow Jesus on our own.  Period.  No “together.”  As soon as we add “together,” it gets messy.  Fast. But, like it or not, “together” is the way God designed it.  There’s a million ways to criticize and critique how the church looks like today.  But when it works…Oh, Lord, when it works.  Such an amazing, beautiful thing.

Let me tell you about something I saw at the Alpha retreat yesterday.  After a day of talking, singing and meeting in small groups, last night there was a 45-minute quiet time.  People could be prayed for by a team, they could go for a walk to be with God, they could sit and pray. 

About 20 minutes in, I noticed an older woman sitting by herself.  Candles were lit in the room, soft music was playing in the background, and tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks.  I had a small idea of what was going on with her, but she was obviously having a very difficult time.  And then I saw a young woman approach from across the room.  She sat down, and without saying a word wrapped the first woman in a big hug.  She hugged her, and wiped the tears off her cheek.  Five minutes later when I had to leave, there they still were, hugging.  It was just beautiful.  The church.

The Church is the called out people…called to God’s forgiveness and grace and then sent out to act as God’s agent in the world.

• The Church is a group of people…not a building, not an institution.
• The Church was created by God.  It’s not a club, not a voluntary association like the PTA or the soccer team parents.  It’s not our church, it’s God’s church.
• The Church is the family of God.  And the thing is, like with all families, you don’t much get to choose who’s in the family.

In these weeks, we want to look at what it looks like to follow God…together.

What are the things that mark the church that belongs to Jesus Christ.  What are we trying to do or be?    Today, we’ll look just briefly at one characteristic:  worship.  Following God together means we join together for worship.

Romans 11:33-36

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

When I was on sabbatical last summer, Anne and I and sometimes the kids were able to attend a number of different churches, some in England and some here in Washington.  I went with some pretty high expectations.  Pastor’s day off! 

I wouldn’t have to worry about anything at all, little things that grab me some Sundays.  Wouldn’t have to wonder if the heat was going to come back on because it was starting to get cold.  Wouldn’t have to wonder why the sound system wasn’t picking up someone reading.  Didn’t have to be concerned that a crying baby was making it impossible to have a silent listening time.  It wasn’t my job to think about where I might need to cut and paste my sermon since the prayer time was going extra long.  I was so excited…I could just go and worship! So what did I do?  Oh, one Sunday I noticed that the communion servers had absolutely no idea what they were doing; it was a logistical mess.  Once the preacher went a ridiculously long time with the sermon, which just started to repeat itself over and over.  Can you imagine??!!  

Once the praise band was so into singing their original songs that they didn’t seem to notice that no one was singing with them…it was a performance, a concert. Once a church just started communion without really a single word about what we were doing at this table, what it meant, or anything else. 

I didn’t just go and worship.  I noticed things.  I thought about things.  I evaluated preachers and leaders.  I compared things to the way I would do them, or how Bethany would do them.  I critiqued and criticized.  In short, I did almost everything except worship. 

Maybe that never happens to you.  It’s too bad when it does, really.  Because worship might just be the most distinctive thing that Christians do.  And it certainly is one of the most counter-cultural things we do.  When Christ calls us together and we worship, we move against all of the autonomous, solitary, independent, individualistic pulls of the culture we live in.  If we worship, of course.  The temptation is to evaluate or critique.  The temptation is to look for some good entertainment.  The temptation is to come to worship so we’ll feel happy, or self-fulfilled or good about ourselves or have our needs met.  And while some of those things can happen, it’s not why we come.

What happens here?  Why do you come here?  I’ve thought about worship a lot this week.  When it comes right down to it, worship isn’t that complicated. We were made to worship, we were wired to seek something, Someone bigger, far larger than ourselves. One definition of worship is simply to “ascribe worth to God.”  That is, when we come to worship, we come and tell God how amazing He is.  We perceive it, and then we speak it back.  Evelyn Underhill once said that worship

“is the response of the creature to the Eternal.”  

A response.  God reveals Himself, God acts, and we respond back.  We worship.  We hold God up, we acknowledge that God is the God of heaven and earth, the grace-filled judge, the sacrificial Son, the empowering, knock-your-socks off Holy Spirit.  And if we show up to worship a little unsure of what God might be about, a little bit in awe that we get to be with this Lord of the universe, that’s even better.

When God is at the center of our worship, many weeks it will be the one and only time when we are removed from the center of our own universe.  When we don’t worship God, we tend to backslide into worshiping ourselves.  It’s all about me. So Jesus Christ calls us together, and we worship.

1. Sometimes we worship because we can’t hold it back.  Our recognition of God, God’s presence in life, God’s characteristics, God’s actions…it just wants to bubble out of us, it bowls us over. I remember the first time Anne and I saw "Les Miserables," the musical adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, on Broadway in NYC when we lived on the East Coast.  If you are a "Les Mis fan" (and I confess to being a total junkie—my kids now recognize the "Les Mis" CD at the first note of music, and roll their eyes), if you’re a fan, you love the soaring music of "Les Mis." 

And the voices are so amazingly good, backed up by an orchestra, backed up by a choir and it is so moving.  And at one point, Jean Val Jean, the hero, sings out in this husky tenor voice the prayer-song “Bring Him Home,” pleading with God for the life of his soon-to-be son-in-law.  And at the end of the song, it is so beautiful, the ending notes stretch on so long, it is so moving, that the whole crowd jumps to their feet, cheering; you can’t stay in your chair, it’s too much, you must do something, it’s irrepressible!

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul has just exactly this same thing happen, in the few verses we read earlier.  Paul has most of eleven chapters laying out how he sees God at work in the world.  In chapter 8 he zeroes in on God’s grace, and talks about how

“nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.” 

Then in chapters 9 and 10 and 11 he explores how God somehow is able to take the worst things that human beings can do—reject their relationship with God, even to the point of crucifying God’s Son—and yet how God somehow turns even that into serving his purposes.  And if God can turn the worst news in the world into the good news gospel that saves people, there is nothing he can’t do.  And as Paul writes, it’s as though he builds and builds, he’s singing like Jean Val Jean, and finally at verse 33 of chapter of eleven, he just quits writing and starts singing! [from The Message]:  

“Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?  Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice?  Everything comes from him.  Everything happens through him.  Everything ends up in him.  Always glory!  Always praise!  Yes. Yes. Yes.   

It’s David dancing beside the ark, it’s Miriam and Moses singing in triumph, it’s Paul and Silas in jail filling up the barren prison with songs of praise.

Jesus Christ calls us together and we worship.  We pay attention to God. We respond.  We sing, heaven forbid we might raise arms or even dance.  And we wait silently on the Lord, and then voices around the room ring out to give thanks.  And with each prayer, each word, each tongue, each prophecy we are reminded that we are not at the center and Christ is, and it’s right and as it should be.  That’s worship.  Eugene Peterson says,

“worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God.”

2. But sometimes, it doesn’t well up inside of us.  Sometimes we worship because we are so aware of our need, we are driven to our knees in prayer, we need to hear from God, we are desperate.  We cry out, because we acknowledge that things are out of our control, that we thought we were more than we are, and even in our need we ascribe worth to God, we remind him who he is and we remind ourselves who he is and of our right place in the universe.

3. And sometimes, when we don’t necessarily feel like worship…we show up and worship.  We rehearse God’s story.  We cling to what we know, we remind one another of what is important.  Our worship leader, like Brian this morning, says in one way or another,

“Come, let us worship God together.” 

And we do it.  Every week, Jesus Christ calls us together.  But, you say, aren’t our whole lives to be worship to God, the way we work and live and the decisions we make?  Yes!  We respond to God, we pay attention to him in many ways.  And also, every week, 52 weeks of the year, Jesus Christ calls us together in this place and time to worship.  Whether we feel like it or not. Like with marriage relationships, like with friendships, our existence does not depend solely on our feelings.   Every week, we gather, Jesus’ church, his family because he calls us together.  One way or another, with more or less variety, sometimes done well and sometimes not so well, and we pray, and sing, and listen to the scriptures, and share and speak and include our children and confess our sins and pray our prayers and baptize and share the Lord’s meal.

Sometimes I wonder what we look like from the outside…filing in together, singing (some of us), closing our eyes (some moved, some dozing), reading out of a dusty old book, sitting in hard, straight pews built in 1929, next to windows we can’t see out of.  As best we can paying attention to God and responding to Him.  Nothing else like this happens in our lives.  Everywhere else it’s about me, what I need and want and feel and decide and choose.  We live in a society of mirrors, a culture where every aspect of my life is looked at and evaluated and critiqued and I start to believe that’s what life is.  Nowhere else do we stop to remember, to remind, to experience the fact that we are not the center of things, and that God is.

I want to leave you with two pictures, one that looks from earth up into heaven and one that looks from heaven down to earth.  Brian read part of the first one earlier from the book of Revelation.  It’s a peek given to this writer, John, who was on the earth but was given a peek up into heaven.  And what he saw was this amazing wild scene of worship.  God sitting on the throne of heaven; the 24 distinguished, important, powerful elders with golden crowns, the jewels and emeralds; the four living creatures flying around, and day and night singing,

“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come,” 

and the elders bowing down before their throne, hats (crowns) off, singing

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, you are worthy!”

And all bowing before the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, singing to Him,  

“You are worthy.” 

That’s what happens when we get a peek up into heaven.  But what about when heaven peeks down at us?

The same woman, Evelyn Underhill paints this imaginative picture for us:

“Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy puddly shore at low tide; littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends—a distressing sort of spectacle.  And then the tide of worship comes in, and it’s all gone: the dead sea urchins and jellyfish, the paper and the empty cans and the nameless bits of rubbish.  The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot.  So we are released from a narrow selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship.”

Maybe you thought that you were responsible for getting yourself here this morning.  Maybe you think that you choose to go to church where you do.  Maybe you came expecting relevance, entertainment, excitement or something else.   And maybe there’s part of those things that are true.  But there’s something more.  The church is something that Jesus Christ calls together.  And when he does, for at least a few moments, as best we can, we simply respond…in worship.  Let us pray.