Monday, June 03, 2013

1 Kings 18:20-21, 30-39


It was a junior high Bible study.  There were about a dozen young people gathered in the room, sitting around a few old folding tables shoved together.  They were there because their parents had dropped them off, insisting that the youth needed to be at church.  They had no interest in actually studying the Bible.  They knew why they were there—to play air hockey and foosball, to gossip, and to eat pizza. This was what they’d done every week.   No one in the congregation was bold enough to take on this bunch of adolescents and the adolescents knew it.  Maybe that’s a fear not isolated to that particular congregation, eithe.  So, until someone was brave enough to stop them, this group of young people intended to keep on playing games, chatting, and eating pizza for the foreseeable future. 

            And then, the new pastor stepped in.  His name was Steve, and he was fresh from seminary.  He was full of new ideas and perhaps a little too much confidence lingering from his days as a college football linebacker at Brown.  So, he’d decided he would be the one to change this Sunday evening gathering into a “real” Bible study.  And now he’d sat the youth around these tables, set out Bibles that no one was touching, and started his class.  What he wanted to do was get the young people talking about what it meant to be Christian.  So he asked them questions--  Do Christians have to listen to Christian music?  He was met with silence.  No, someone finally said.  More silence.  He moved on.  Does being Christian mean that you can only be friends with other Christians?  Silence.  He went around the group, forcing responses from everyone.  No, they all agreed.  Do you have to go to worship to be a good Christian?  Someone laughed.  No, worship is boring, it’s pointless, the group said, it doesn’t really have anything to do with being a good Christian. 

            Those junior high students were longing for the chance to go back to playing ping pong and gossiping with friends.  They were pretty confident in their answer to the worship question.  Worship just didn’t matter—it was a thing they had to sit through on Sunday morning to make it to the doughnuts afterwards.  Maybe, this wasn’t Pastor Steve’s best planned discussion.  Or maybe it was.  Because I was sitting in that group of junior high students and now, more years later than I’d like to admit, I can say we were wrong about worship.  Worship matters.  More than I knew then, more than the whole group knew, probably even more than our parents understood.

            I wish I could say that Pastor Steve opened up his Bible to the 1 Kings passage that I read today when we were talking about worship.  But he didn’t.  Like I said—it may or may not have been his best planned Bible study.  But, when I read this text searching for what to preach on this morning, the image of that Bible study immediately came to mind.  This 1 Kings text is all about what it means to worship God   What does worship have to do with living faithfully?  And what is worship?  What does it do, for us and for God?  Or, as I briefly thought about titling this sermon, who are we, and what are we doing here?

            Let’s return to the scripture.  “Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow the Lord; but if Baal, then follow Baal." First and foremost, worship is about a choice.  Let’s start with where we are.  To state the very obvious, we’re all here this morning.  Every one of us could have chosen to be somewhere else.  We could be at soccer practice, sleeping in, having a cup of coffee in our pajamas, or spending some time taking a walk outside.  But we decided instead to come to this place, and to worship.  We have chosen, if only for an hour this Sunday morning, to make God our priority.  And maybe, like that junior high Bible study group, some of us are waiting for the food or the chance to talk with our friends, but being here still matters.  It is a choice we have made to put God first. 

            However, when we leave this place, we will be bombarded with the pressure to follow so many other gods.  The lectionary skips over the section of the text that describes what it’s like to worship another God—Baal in particular here.  Clearly I’ve chosen not to read the whole thing, but I’ll summarize.  Baal worship was frenzied shouting, wailing, it was bloody, and it went on from morning until afternoon.  In contrast, Elijah’s worship of God is much more restrained.  He builds the altar, sets up the sacrifice, and says a simple prayer.  Worshipping God and worshipping Baal share some common threads like prayer and ritual, but Baal worship takes these to the extreme. 

            The temptation for us worship other gods isn’t as obvious as building an altar and praying to Baal--- I doubt any of us have had a hard time resisting that.   The temptation to worship another God is much more subtle.  It’s when we mirror he Baal worship from text.  It’s making something that isn’t God our focus, and twisting something good into something harmful.  So, the Baal we’re tempted to worship might be money.  We may spend all our time and energy working to make more and more.  We may abandon our families, our friends, or maybe our spiritual lives as we do whatever it takes get more money.  There’s nothing wrong with making money or making a profit.  But, when CEO’s make 500 times more than their workers, who can’t even afford the basic necessities, clearly, something is twisted.  By making money more important than people, or quality of life, our culture worships money as a god.  It tempts us to do the same.   

            Money isn’t the only other god worshipped though.  The Baal we’re tempted to worship might be something like a youthful appearance, an unhealthy relationship, or maybe a sports team, if I can say that in this town.  Anything that consumes our focus and becomes our ultimate goal, it’s a god we worship.  We all do it at times.  We put our faith in the wrong place, lose focus, and we get off balance.  But, when we gather here to worship God, we make a statement that worshipping those other gods is not our final choice.  In worship we live into our intention to put our faith, trust, and hope in God.

            Now that we’ve made that choice to be here, what are we doing here?  It might sound strange, but part of it is figuring out who we are.  In the Kings passage, Elijah rebuilds the altar of the Lord.  And he rebuilds it in a very symbolic manner. He uses twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel.  He reminds the people of Israel where they came from, and who they’re called to be.  And worship, at its best, reminds us of our identity as well.  Like the tribes of Israel were the sons of Jacob, we are sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters in Christ.            

            Even more than simply reminding us of this sacred identity, worship is a place where we try to live out our identity as God’s children.  The identity as God’s family is different than the identities the world often likes to give us.  Because of that difference, we do things that might seem strange from the outside when we worship.  We gather with people we wouldn’t necessarily gather with in other situations.  We shake hands and hug as we pass the peace, even though we may not necessarily feel at peace with everyone in this room. We voluntarily give our money away. We eat bread and drink juice and say that there’s more to them than meets the eye.  We say things and think things with the intent that a being we can’t really see will hear, and understand, and respond to us. 

            God heard Elijah.  God responded to Elijah.  Yes, there was the fire, but if we focus on the physical fire, we miss the point.  The really exciting fire is the fire that springs up in the people’s hearts, causing them to confess that “The Lord is God and no one else.”  We already knew that God was more powerful that Baal, and so did the ancient readers of the text. What we didn’t know was how the people would respond to God’s presence.  Think about it.  Go way back to the garden even.  God creates a paradise, and what do people do?  Turn away from God’s instructions.  God frees the Hebrew people from slavery, and what do they do?  Build and worship a golden calf.  Again and again, God provides, and the people turn away.  So God provides again in this story from Kings.  And the people respond.  They fall on their faces and cry out, "The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God."  They caught a glimpse of God.  It changed them.        

            So when we gather to worship, we make a choice. We see ourselves through different eyes. We do things that look and sound a little strange, but we do them because sometimes, we too catch a glimpse of God.  The fire of the Holy Spirit ignites in our hearts and we are changed.  Before you start asking what worship services I’ve been at, let me say that we all know that it’s not always perfect.  There are times when we feel  like that junior high Bible study group.  There are weeks we don’t like the sermon, we’re mad at the person sitting next to us, and all we want to do is grab some coffee and get out the door.  The fire in our hearts may not feel ignited every week, but we’re here.  By making the choice to be here, and to worship God, we keep intentionally opening our eyes in the hope that they will be able to see God and God’s fire will ignite us again. May God’s fire shine brightly enough in us that others may catch glimpses of God in us even when we leave this place.

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