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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