6/19/55

Scripture: Read John 4: 3-24.

It was at a meeting of church laymen that a visiting leader suggested several topics for thought and discussion. He said, “Why not devote a meeting, or several meetings, to the subject of worship. What is worship? What do you do at worship, and why do you do it? Aside from your going through some motions, what happens when you worship?” One of the men present responded immediately with the comment that this subject would interest him greatly. Whether he had difficulty in finding worship real in his experience, or whether he was curious to explore its meaning, I do not know. But I am certain that it is of profit to each person to experience worship and to know about worship.

I am not concerned this morning with an analysis of the so-called “order of worship” which is used in our church, or in any other church. There might be some profit in such a study at another time. But I hope that we may think together for a while about what worship is, and how it is real in experience.

A genuinely worshipping congregation is not alone a group of people influencing each other, as one writer suggests. But it is people reaching beyond themselves, and beyond each other, toward God. Nels Ferre says that “God is not merely our selves at their best, even in worship. We live in Him in a drastically different sense from His living in us. Worship .... is man’s relation to eternity. The way a man worships determines how he accepts, rejects, misrepresents, or neglects reality. ..... To worship aright is to find meaningful, what otherwise is mysterious to us. ...”

We want meaning. We depend on meaning. Even animals live by meaning. White mice may be trained in experimental laboratories to enter a certain door when a bell rings, to find food. But, ring the bell and leave the door closed. Then vary the bell signals until the mice do not know which ring means what, or whether the door will open or not. And after a while the mice will show signs of “nerves.” For meaning, to them, is connected with certain signals upon which they have learned to depend.

For many, life is lived on the level of constant response to learned meanings. They think very little of deeper problems in life, and perhaps even resist such thinking, being satisfied with occasional glimpses of understanding. Others cannot rest until they get much deeper into the meaning of life. They are grateful for what they can learn from books, or from conversation; they appreciate what they can learn at school and church; but they crave to see for themselves. Life must yield its meaningfulness to them personally. They will be frustrated in this longing, however, until they learn to worship. For the answers of the intellect do not alone satisfy the hunger of the heart. The click of conviction comes only after meaning has come into focus in worship. For worship is the exposing of the whole person to reality. It is one’s whole relation to God.

Worship entails work, but work cannot replace it; worship demands thought, but no thinking can replace it. It may engender emotion, but feeling, as such, is not worship. Worship is the rooting of life in reality; it is man’s honest exposing of himself to the rightness of God.

The focus of meaning for Christians, and for an increasing number of non-Christians as well, is the life of Jesus. For there is seen, more clearly than anywhere else, the love of God. And love is now being more clearly understood as the meaning of existence. Physicians, psychiatrists, children’s workers, prison counselors, family affairs consultants --- all agree that love is a master key to happiness and good health.

In the love of Christ, we find meaning. Yet how mysterious is the meaning! We cannot fathom it. We cannot measure it. We can so little prove it, except by living as though it were reality, until we have become satisfied that it is.

Many folk seem to think that “seeing is believing.” But one can see so little. And so one can believe so little, if he limits himself to what he can see. For there are vast mysteries beyond what one can see, or touch, or measure. More and more thoughtful people open their eyes and minds to the truth that there is an abyss of ignorance over vast areas of reality.

A president of the American Medical Society devoted part of his presidential address several years ago to the abysmal lack of knowledge in vast areas of the fields in which are particularly concerned. A professor of engineering recounted how a few years ago he had thought that he knew some things for certain, whereas today his only certainty is that, except for a few facts, the vast meaning of such a seemingly exact field as mechanics is a mystery.

As a youth I had supposed that mathematics was an altogether exact, measured, and known field. It was a revelation to me to realize that the really competent mathematicians confront great mysteries. I think I have learned that the truly great scientists are humble before the oceans of mystery.

In worship, meaning and mystery are kept together. We may, and do, find light upon our darkness. But we are also saved from assuming that what light we have found has swept away all darkness. Worship is like looking into the waters of a clear, deep lake. The deeper down one may see, the more he becomes conscious that there are unseen depths below what he can see.

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Worship is our own “finding that God is real.” It is “being changed in His presence and by His power.” No worship is real, or right, that does not set before us the living God, Lord of history, active among people. Worship is a confrontation of man with God. Spiritual experience, observed John Wesley, is to faith what sense is to reason. The experience of God’s presence is what can convince the honest seeker.

1) One side of this experience is being alone with God. Some folk dread being alone more than anything else. But he who has found God real can never be left alone. For he knows a Companion who understands. The unknown mystery has assumed a friendly face. Perhaps it does not seem friendly at first. Possibly we are afraid of it until we find it so assuringly real that we can trust it, as Jesus of Nazareth did even to going to his cross.

There is much about a crowd that is untruth. One may entertain emotions, and perform acts, in a crowd that he would not countenance by himself. Probably no soldier, alone, would have spat upon Jesus as they did mockingly in a group.

When God becomes central in our lives, we can become honest enough to know how lacking and sinful we are; we can find the grace to accept forgiveness and be made right by his mercy and strengthening power. We find peace in the midst of our tensions. We do not escape tensions. It is fortunate that God does not remove tension from us. Without tension, one can not lift an arm or a foot. Life moves forward on the tracks of tension. Tension can be constructive, or destructive. The arm can be lifted to harm or to bless. The tensions of life can spur one on or can bring on the wreck. Worship can balance the tensions rightly so that there comes to one the peace of power. Forgiven and renewed within the struggle of living, the worshipper feels the peace of God which passes all human understanding.

Worship is the finding of our place; right worship is the learning to play it well. We can only learn true worship wen we are able to find ourselves alone with God regardless of who is around us. And still, we are not only persons, but people, not alone individuals, but social beings. And as we become real persons, in the sense that Fosdick meant, when he wrote “On Being A Real Person,” we become better people.

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2) To trust God rather than self, is the first lesson in personal worship. Probably this is what is meant by the New Testament “new birth” -- to trust God! So long as we keep ourselves at the center of reality nothing seems compellingly significant. When God becomes real to us because we have accepted ourselves and reality, worship is released.

3) Following self acceptance, should come meditation. The worshipper should recall who God is. Let the mind dwell on the unfathomed mystery of the eternal. The infinitely small is beyond our ken. The invisibly small can blow great sections of the earth to bits. Then what inconceivable power exists in the millions of solar systems? Do not these calculations reflect the power at (so to speak) the fingertips of God? Can not God do things, and be things, vastly beyond our most venturesome imagination? Think also of what God will do, and is doing, for all of us, yet leaving to us what is consistent with our freedom to choose as we will.

4) And after this self acceptance and meditation comes dedication. For when we have contemplated what God can do, cares to do, and will do, we should consider that He waits for us to do our part. God Himself is in no hurry for lack of time. His creation is young though it be billions of years old. It is we who know the limits of time. God is urgent because he cares for us.

If a father sees his small son with leg pinned beneath a truck under which he has fallen, he finds little comfort in the thought that sooner or later somebody will do something about it. His love for the boy speeds him to aid. How much more God yearns to help, when our undedicated selves yet prevent Him. Therefore worship requires dedication as well as meditation.

When God becomes great to us, we say I can, I will do great things. Worship, opening the imagination and firing the will, leads to great things. With His help, you and I can release more help than we dare imagine by ourselves.

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Of course, personal worship leads to public worship. For, as we remarked earlier, persons are also people. Persons can become insulated and can die unless they be people in group fellowship with others. Public worship demands discipline; the willingness to enter into it with others. It requires participation. Try preparing for church at home, on Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Come into the sanctuary as into the house of prayer. Come soon enough to sit quietly thinking of the presence of God. These things may sound pious, but those who have tried it know it to be realism.

Thus prepared, come recalling the purpose of going to church. Enter into the hopes of the minister, of the choir, of others worshipping with you. Open your life in a prayer that you may be delivered from defensiveness and may be ready to receive more light from the word and from the will of God. As the service proceeds, join in each act of song, or response, of confession or praise. Be willing not only to hear the truth, but to receive it and do it. Offer yourself with the offering. Pray for the preaching. Keep expecting real and great and good things to happen. The fruit may seem intangible, and elusive of proof, but it will be genuine, and beneficial.

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Worship, then, is both private and public. For religion is both private and of the community. When Nels Ferre sat down in a restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia one day, a man sat down opposite him, who was obviously agitated. Ferre found that he had come to see his brother who had been in a near fatal accident. But what had shaken him more was the fact that a young student had just asked him is he were “saved.” “What did he mean by that?” Ferre, being a theologian, tried to explain that it meant being right with God, being forgiven, accepting one’s self and the community of concern. The fellow stopped him right at that point, and said accusingly: “You say you are from Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve driven through there and I’ve seen a great many churches there. Also I’ve seen the worst slums there of any city I know.” Well, if there are so many church folk there why hadn’t they done something about the way in which so many people have to live in Nashville? Happily, Nashville has since receive special commendation from the Federal Housing Authority for its progress in doing away with its worst slums. But the point is inescapable; worship is known by its fruits. Christian character is rightly judged by its actions! Worship leads to both private and public works.

Worship, at its highest, however, is being in the presence of God and finding life’s truest satisfaction. Worship, today, demands a larger understanding of God than ever before. When worship becomes real, then religion works.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, June 19, 1955.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, June 4, 1961.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, January 30, 1963.