Sermon for August 19th, 2012

Last week we started our sermon series "The Heart of Worship" with an overview of what worship means for us as Christians and Presbyterians. We established that Jesus Christ, the living word of God, is at the heart of our worship and infused into every part of it.

Today we're going to zoom in on the very first part of our worship service--the things that, in your bulletin, come under the heading "WE GATHER IN GOD'S NAME." We'll look at what we do in this part of the service, why we do it, and what God's written word, the Bible, has to say about it.

We gather in God's name. Or as I have recently come to think of it, the "emotional roller coaster ride" of the worship service. We go from the hopeful heights of the Call to Worship and a rousing opening hymn down to the depths of despair as we are reminded of our sins in the prayer of confession, then right back up as we receive the assurance of pardon and pass the peace of Christ to one another. If we take these things seriously, we ought to be emotionally worn out by the time were just a quarter of the way through the service!

James 5:13 is not one of our scripture readings this morning, but it could have been. It reads, "Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise." This verse highlights the emotional roller coaster ride, but it also points out two important features of our worship: music and prayer. You'll find both of those things in all four movements of our worship service, and particularly as we gather in God's name. Music gathers us together. When we hear the prelude and the chiming of the hour, and when the choir sings the Call to Worship, we quiet our hearts and turn our thoughts to Jesus, in whose name we gather. Often the opening hymn is the very first thing that we all do together as one congregation, singing with one unified voice. Music gathers us together in God's name.

Sometimes the Call to Worship is sung by the choir, and sometimes it is spoken in the form of a responsive prayer. But always, toward the beginning of our worship service is a prayer of invocation. Because it isn't enough for us just to gather together by ourselves. In Matthew 18:20, Jesus tells us that "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." That "in my name" is pretty important. So with the prayer of invocation, we invoke the name of Jesus, we ask God to be present with us as we worship, and at that point we can truly claim to be gathered in God's name. Like music, prayer gathers us (and God!) together.

You should know that I'm not a purist when it comes to what goes where, in what order, and what exactly we call it. I do like for things to make some sense, so probably we shouldn't put the prelude at the end of our time of gathering together. It's a "pre" lude, after all. But as for whether or not we have Announcements when we gather, whether the choir sings the Call to Worship or whether we pray it, whether our opening hymn comes before or after the prayer of invocation...I'm not picky. I hope you aren't either. What is important to me is that music and prayer be part of what gathers us together in God's name. What is important is that we come, in the words of today's first scripture reading, "into his presence with thanksgiving" (that's prayer!), and that we "make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!"

I'd like to turn now to a very important, and I think very misunderstood, under-appreciated part of our worship service. It's the "down" part of our emotional roller coaster ride as we gather in God's name: The prayer of confession. It is a prayer, but a prayer unlike any other. I say it's a prayer unlike any other, because the central focus of the prayer of confession is how much we stink. How broken and messed up we are. And if you're like most people, you probably don't exactly enjoy being reminded of that fact. And yet, the confession of our sins has been part of the life of our church for a long time. In our second reading today from Nehemiah, we find the ancient Israelites "assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, with dust on their heads" as they "stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors." They did this confessing together with reading from the scriptures and worshiping God. Sound familiar? Then in our third reading, from 1st John, we read that "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But "if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Historically, different churches go about this in different ways. In the two oldest Christian churches, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, individuals are encouraged to make confession of specific sins in the presence of another person, usually a priest or an elder. On the opposite end of history, some of the newest non-denominational churches do not practice any sort of confession of sins at all, preferring instead to focus publicly on more positive aspects of the gospel message and leave the "sin conversation" as a private matter between God and the individual.

Presbyterians, as we often do, fall somewhere in the middle of all this. We take seriously the instructions in James 5:15, which says "Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed." Our prayer of confession every Sunday is a unison prayer, allowing us to confess our sins publicly in the presence of one another. But the sins mentioned in the prayer are general, not specific, and are intended to help each of us recall privately where we've missed the mark and dropped the ball in the preceding week, so that we can each ask God directly for forgiveness in prayer.

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