Sermon for April 8th, 2018
Luke 24:50-53
50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
1 Corinthians 14:26-33, 39-40
26 What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. 30 If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. 32 And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, 33 for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.
39 So, my friends, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; 40 but all things should be done decently and in order.
FPC Worship is Orderly
During a worship service at an old Presbyterian Church back in Scotland, when the Lord's prayer was said, half the congregants stood up and the other half remained seated. The half that was seated started yelling at those standing to sit down, and the ones standing yelled at the ones sitting to stand up... The young pastor, realizing this was something that hadn't been covered in seminary, was at a loss for a way forward.
His congregation suggested that he consult the 102 year old matriarch of the church, who was one of the original church members. The pastor hoped the elderly woman would be able to tell him what the actual tradition was, so he went to the retirement home with a representative of each faction of the congregation.
The one whose followers stood during Lord's prayer said to the elderly woman, "Is the tradition to stand during the Lord's prayer? She thought for a moment, and answered, "No, that is not the tradition."
The one whose followers sat said, "Then the tradition is to sit during the prayer!" The woman thought some more, and answered, "No, that is not the tradition."
Then the Pastor, in desperation, exclaimed, "But the congregants fight all the time, yelling at each other about whether they should sit or stand..." And here the old woman interrupted, exclaiming, "Yes! THAT is the tradition!"
This week and for the next six weeks, we are taking a closer look at WORSHIP... what it is, why we do it, what the scriptures have to say about it, and how we do it here at First Presbyterian Church--standing up, sitting down, yelling at each other, or any other tradition you might raise an eyebrow about!
To help us remember some fundamental principles of Presbyterian Worship, I like to use the acronym WORSHIP: Worship, for us, is Welcoming, Orderly, Reformed, Sacred, Honest, Intellectual, and Public. Last week, we talked about how we strive to create worship that is welcoming to all people, regardless of background, faith tradition, politics, sexual orientation, age, or income. That's actually a relatively new tradition in Presbyterian Worship, but one we fully embrace.
Today we're going to talk about a much older aspect of Presbyterian Worship--one that goes back to the very beginning of our movement: Presbyterian Worship is orderly. If that word isn't your favorite, you could just as equally substitute the word "organized" without messing up the acronym. But before we delve into what it means for worship to be orderly or organized, I want to share a story from my own faith journey:
Although my ancestors were, in fact, Presbyterian, I was raised in the Methodist church--St. Mark's United Methodist Church right here in El Paso, in the upper valley on Love Road. If there's any church out there that shares with Presbyterians a love for order and organization, it's the Methodists. As their very name implies, they take a methodical approach to worship. And I was comfortable in that tradition, growing up. I liked being able to look at a bulletin (which you didn't even need after three or four services) to know what was just happened, what was happening, and what was about to happen in the worship service. And when I was a little older, I liked knowing that everything that happened in worship was for a reason or a purpose, could be traced back to some aspect of scripture or church tradition which had evolved over the years through trial and error. Basically, worship was something that had been carefully thought out, and as a thoughtful person, that appealed to me.
And then, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into today (that's a story long enough to be its own sermon!), when I went to college I left El Paso behind and ended up 825 miles away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at a place called Oral Roberts University--probably the most pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical university in the country.
If I had owned a little black dog in those first weeks at Oral Roberts University, you probably would have heard me tell it (often) "I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
Weekly chapel services at ORU (which were mandatory for all students, incidentally--they took attendance) began with four or five praise choruses from the worship band...or sometimes fifteen or sixteen praise choruses. Sometimes there were announcements, or sometimes prayer; usually there was a sermon, sometimes preceded by a reading from the Bible...and sometimes they just talked *about* the Bible a lot without ever quoting anything from it. But that's usually right about where things completely fell apart--right in the middle of the sermon, or I guess near the "end" of it:
Someone in the congregation would stand up and start speaking in tongues--or sometimes it would be the preacher. Pretty soon others would do the same, and before long the entire chapel (about 3,000 students) would descend into a chaotic cacophony of unintelligible mumbling...or screaming. Or sometimes people would start jumping up and down and flailing frantically. Sometimes people would collapse, writhing on the floor, or lie perfectly still. They called that being "slain" in the spirit. I can remember chapel services where hundreds of students burst out into spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter, then tears, as well as services where people claimed to be miraculously healed from all sorts of ailments or injuries, and were then paraded around the stage for all to see.
If there was one consistency amidst all this, it was that the worship service usually ended in utter chaos. At first, I wasn't sure when exactly it was appropriate to even leave the service without being counted absent. But when I saw my student Resident Advisor (the one taking attendance for my dorm) "slain in the spirit" I usually figured it was safe enough.
I also quickly learned that classes after chapel rarely ever started on time, so often I would wander off campus, walking just down the street to the tiny little Methodist church I attended on Sundays, wandering into the pastor's office, where I would plop down on a chair and ask, with a confused look on my face..."what do WE believe?"
When people ask me about my time at Oral Roberts University, often I'll say, "Yeah, I went there, but I didn't drink the kool-aid." That's true enough. Although I genuinely tried a few times to be "slain in the spirit" or to let myself get caught up in the emotion and sensationalism of the moment, I was never really able to. That's not meant to imply condemnation or even disapproval of my fellow ORU students. I had a lot of good friends there--sincere, intelligent Christians for whom those chapel services were deeply meaningful. They found God in the midst of the chaos, while I found God in the quiet order and thoughtful ritual of the little Methodist church down the street.
Eventually, I became a Presbyterian--or rather, I learned that God had predestined me before the foundation of the earth to be a Presbyterian. And I quickly learned that one of the "mottoes" of the Presbyterian church that goes right back to the 16th century reformation is "All things are to be done decently and in order." I thought it was just a motto, reflecting the tendency of Presbyterians to be prim and proper, with a fondness for over-analyzing things and referring them to various committees. Decently and in order.
It wasn't until years later that I learned those words actually came from scripture--today's scripture passage in 1 Corinthians 14. Even more surprising, the context of Paul's words to the church at Corinth was really familiar to me. People speaking in tongues all over the place, all at once, interrupting each other, chaos and disorder. If you read the rest of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, you realize that
