“There was a man with two sons …”: a sermon (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)

Today’s gospel lesson is one of the most familiar passages in the entire Bible.  As with any familiar passage of scripture, we can find many different things jumping out at us from this parable.  In the lectionary, we hear this passage on this Sunday in the middle of Lent once every three years.  I looked back on some of the ways I treated this passage in sermons during my ministry.

I first prepared a sermon on this passage as a first-year theological student.  In the subject “Introduction to Preaching”, one assignment was to write a sermon based on one of a number of passages.  I chose this passage and wrote a sermon that was pretty forgettable – as forgettable as most sermons prepared by first-year theological students.  I don’t think I ever preached that sermon … and just as well really.

I wrote my second sermon on this passage while I was still a theological student, at this point a second-year student.  This time, I prepared the sermon, not for a classroom assignment, but to preach in my field education church.  The sermon was a dramatic monologue, telling the story of this passage from the perspective of the elder brother.  At the time, I thought it was pretty good. 

This sermon became my “travelling sermon”, maybe even my “party piece”.  For a number of years, whenever I was invited to preach anywhere where I hadn’t preached before, I trotted this sermon out (regardless of the lectionary). 

The point I made in this sermon, as I acted (overacted?) the part of the elder brother struggling with his decision whether or not to join the party for his younger brother was this:  Through God’s grace, we are a forgiven people.  God also calls us to be a forgiving people.

(And, of course, to forgive someone does not mean that everything is emotionally OK between yourself and the person who wronged you.  Far from it.  It means that you seek to promote the well-being of the one who wronged you, even if things will never be emotionally OK.)

A few years later, when I was considering the same passage, I had recently read the book Poet and Peasant by Kenneth Bailey.  Bailey was involved in research in villages around the Middle East, telling the parables of Jesus to peasant farmers.  After telling the story, Bailey asked the question  “What would happen if someone in your community did this?”

Bailey always received the same reaction when he told this story, whatever the religion or the culture of the people to whom he told it:  “This would never happen here.”  When he asked the villagers why it would never happen, some of the frequent responses were:

·        A son never asks his father to receive his inheritance early.  This implies “I’m looking forward to your death.”  This would be unthinkable.

·        A son would never refer to his brother as “this son of yours” when speaking to his father.  That phrase would implies “He’s your son, but I’m not.”  While a parent may disown a child, a child would never disown a parent.

·        No parent would ever beg their child to do anything, as the father did when he tried to persuade the elder brother to join the celebration. 

·        Neither would a man of high status run in public, as the father did when he saw the younger son returning.

The point I made in the sermon was this :  Even when people do shockingly (and scandalously) hateful things, as both sons did in the story, God’s grace enables us to do shockingly loving (and scandalously loving) things, as the father did a number of times in the story.

Another time was shortly after the death of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who wrote the classic book Baby and Child Care.  Dr. Spock taught generations of parents that it is better for children to love their parents than it is to fear them, and that (as a result) it is no sign of weakness for parents to show their love to their children.

I used the example of Dr. Spock – alongside the image of the father in Jesus’ parable - as a jumping-off point to say that our own views of God are often dependent on our responses to the ways our parents raised us. 

·        Those who grew up with the care of warm, loving parents often find it easy to appreciate the loving care of the Living God.

·        On the other hand, those who perceive their parents as having been cruel, harsh, selfish, erratic, or merely absent, may have problems coming to terms with a loving God.  Instead, they may find themselves worshipping a god of wrath, … rejecting a god whom they see as nonexistent, … or ignoring a god whom they regard as irrelevant to their lives.

(And, of course, it may not be terribly helpful to use this as an excuse to play the popular game of “My family’s weirder than your family.”)

Another time, I preached completely off the cuff, for the first – and only – time in my life.  It was on one of my visits to Bangladesh, visiting Christmas Bowl projects.

One Sunday afternoon, I attended worship in a Baptist congregation in a poor neighbourhood of Dhaka.  I was told by the Bangladeshi staff person who had brought me to the service that I’d be asked to give a brief greeting to the congregation on behalf of the churches of Australia. 

The service was in Bengali.  The Bangladeshi staffer was translating parts of it for me.  After about half an hour or so, the staff bloke translated the minister saying, “And now our Australian visitor will preach the sermon.”

I asked “Are you sure he said ‘… preach the sermon?’”

“Yes.”

I thought for a moment.  I had no sermon with me.  The only Bibles I could see were in Bengali.  I had to say something.  It had to be on a passage of scripture I knew well enough to talk about off the cuff with no warning.  I asked the minister to read the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel.

“The whole chapter?” asked the minister.

“Yes.”

While the minister read (in Bengali) the parables of the lost sheep, and the lost coin, and then the one about the two lost sons, I thought about what I’d do.

I’d retell the story of the man with two sons and hope that the congregation found there was sufficient vitality in the story itself.  So, after the minister read the passage, I started to re-tell the story.  Periodically, after every few sentences, the minister would translate my English into Bengali.  That gave me sufficient time to re-gather my thoughts to tell the next part of the story.  And, yes, in this ancient story that Jesus told, there was sufficient vitality for the story itself to suffice for that congregation in Bangladesh.

And, today, I still believe those things I learned on those previous occasions:

·        Yes, our own views of God are often dependent on our responses to our parents.

·        Yes, through God’s grace, we are a forgiven people.  God also calls us to be a forgiving people.

·        Yes, even when people do shockingly hateful things to us, God’s grace enables us to do shockingly loving things in return.

·        Yes, there are some sermons written by first-year theological students that are better left unpreached.

·        And, yes, in this ancient story that Jesus told, there is still great vitality in the story itself.

“We need a little Lent, right this very minute.”: a sermon (Matthew 6: 1 – 21, Luke 4: 1 – 13)

Today’s sermon was a work in progress for the past week-and-a-half.  It began to take shape in my mind around the time when the result in a high-profile criminal trial was announced.  (Given the fact that there’s an appeal in process and the matter is still sub judice, I won’t be commenting on the actual trial or the actual charges.)  The sermon has changed a bit during the past week-and-a-half.  As a result, the sermon has had a number of working titles.

·        It began as “Observing Lent even in the age of Donald Trump and George Pell.”   

·        It morphed into “Even at a time when arrogance is treated as a civic and religious virtue, let’s do Lent anyway.”

·        I’ve eventually settled on “We need a little Lent, right this very minute”.

Let us pray. 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

In your order of worship, you’ll find a copy of a drawing by the very talented cartoonist Jay Sidebottom.  The scene is during a worship service on Ash Wednesday.  As the minister is about to put some ash on the forehead of a member of the congregation, she says,   “Remember that you are dust…”, but then she adds “…but a very high quality sort of dust.” 

There’s some real and profound theological truth to this.

We are dust.

·        In contrast to the eternal God, the God who is Life itself, we are mortal; we are finite.

·        In contrast to the God of Love, the God who is Compassion itself, we struggle to reflect the love of God in any consistent way in our own lives.

We are dust.  Lent reminds us we are dust.

Nevertheless, we are “a very high quality sort of dust”. 

·        We have been created in the image of God, with a capacity for rational, logical thought.

·        We have been created in the image of God, with a capacity to appreciate beauty, both in the world of nature and in the achievements of human art.

·        We have been created in the image of God, with a capacity for ethical choice.

·        We have been created in the image of God, with a capacity to express love.

·        We have been created in the image of God, with a capacity to worship the God in whose image we live, and move, and have our being.

We are “a very high quality sort of dust”.  And Lent should also remind us of that.

This is tremendously important.  There are many people for whom a warped, ultraconservative religious faith – Christian or otherwise - has taught them a destructive sense of low self-esteem, in which they believe that the true response of true faith is to always think, “I’m evil; I’m evil; I’m horrible; I’m horrible!”  An approach to faith – Christian or otherwise – which encourages this low self-esteem is a sick faith.

A healthy faith - again, Christian or otherwise – reminds us that we are “a very high quality sort of dust”. 

Lent challenges our personal arrogance.  We are dust.  Lent also reminds us that we are people living in the image of God.  We are “a very high quality sort of dust”. 

In both readings from scripture we’ve used today, we see both these concerns.

The lesson from Matthew was the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday.  Jesus is teaching his disciples about religious practices, good and bad.  Our practice of the faith shouldn’t call attention to ourselves and our own piety.  Long-winded, ex tempore prayers are unnecessary (particularly if they’re packed with pious jargon).  Don’t whinge or look dismal when fasting.  When you give to the poor, do it in a way that advances social justice and shows respect for the people you’re helping, not in a way that entrenches dependence or which insults and embarrasses the person who needs help. 

The lesson from Luke is the gospel reading for today, the First Sunday in Lent.  Jesus resisted the temptation to focus on his own immediate needs.  He resisted the temptation to go for a flashy, showbiz, special effects approach to the life of faith.  He also resisted the temptation to give in to despair and say “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

In both of these lessons, we are challenged, as those who seek to follow Jesus, to be “a very high quality sort of dust”. 

Those who remember the musical “Mame” will remember the song “We need a little Christmas”, sung by Dame Angela Lansbury (and, as we all know, there’s nothing like a Dame).  If you don’t remember the musical, you’ll know the song from watching “Carols by Candlelight” on TV.  Anyway, I’d like to paraphrase Dame Angela’s song by saying, “We need a little Lent, right this very minute.”  (Oh, blow it, I’ll sing it.)  “We need a little Lent, right this very minute.” 

And the reason we “need a little Lent” is that Lent challenges our arrogance.  Lent reminds us all that we are dust, even if it is “a very high quality sort of dust”.   Looking at the rampant arrogance in the world around us, I believe “We need a little Lent, right this very minute.” 

And here, I suppose is where the “colourful American political identity” and the “colourful Australian religious identity” I mentioned earlier both come into the picture.  We live in a time in history in which arrogance is treated as a virtue.  If the 1980s was the decade in which people believed “greed is good”, we’re living now at a time in which many people believe that arrogance is a civic and religious virtue. 

In the realm of business, in the realm of the media, in the realm of politics, and, sadly, in the realm of faith, some people are trying to tell us that we’re living in a “post-truth” era.  In other words, you can talk the worst rubbish imaginable, but if you seem sufficiently sure of yourself (arrogantly sure), people will follow you.  Sadly, it is possible for an arrogant con-man to become a senior leader either in the body politic or in the household of faith.  When this happens, it undermines the credibility of all the institutions in the community.

“We need a little Lent, right this very minute.” 

Lent challenges our arrogance.  Lent reminds us that we are dust.  … Donald Trump is dust. … George Pell is dust. … I’m dust.  … You’re dust.

“We need a little Lent, right this very minute.” 

And, at the end of Lent, Easter will once again remind us that we are “a very high quality sort of dust.”  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Some (rambling) reflections on the Pell case

To begin with, I was not present in the courtroom during any session of this trial.  I didn't hear any of the evidence first-hand.  My reactions are based on second-hand information, just like those of any other consumer of the media.

Secondly, I have no vested interest in the outcome of this case. 

• I'm not a survivor of child sexual abuse. 
• I'm not a lawyer.
• I'm not a member, lay or ordained, of the Roman Catholic Church. 

I am a retired minister of another Christian denomination (Uniting Church in Australia) that enjoys good ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church across Australia.  I also spent a decade working as a staff member of an ecumenical body with active Catholic membership.  In any event, I think I qualify as an "objective but informed" commentator and an "educated amateur", whatever that means.

My initial reaction, given that I wasn't in court to hear the evidence being presented, is to trust the intelligence of the jury.  Occasionally, as in the case of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, juries get it wrong.  More often than not, juries get it right.  I'm working from the overt assumption, unless decided otherwise by the appeals court, that the jury got it right this time.

I have some real concerns about the public reaction to this case.  Much of the public comments (whether in social media, or in the traditional media, or in conversations among people in private settings) tend to fall into two disturbing patterns.  Many (but not all) of those who endorse the jury's verdict have tended to express either an establishment anti-Catholicism or a bogan religiophobia in support of their views.  On the other hand, many (but not all) of those who question the verdict have tended to minimise the seriousness of the impact of child sexual abuse on the survivors, victims, and their families.  Both of these extreme tendencies have the effect of cheapening and coarsening our public discourse.

One fact that I find interesting about the reaction to this case is that (discounting the politicians and media people who can always be counted upon to get on the bandwagon supporting whatever happens to be the right-wing cause du jour), a significant number of those who have publicly questioned the Pell verdict are people who were strong and consistent critics of Cardinal Pell during his period of ascendancy in Australia's Catholic hierarchy.  There are people other than Cardinal Pell's "yes-men" and "fan club" who are questioning his verdict.

Those questioning this verdict need to be aware that, in any legal case involving accusations of sexual assault (in which the only people present during the alleged assault are often the complainant and the accused, and no one else), the legal rules of evidence are (necessarily) different from other cases.

Similarly, those of us who happen to support the jury's verdict need to be aware that court cases are based on law and evidence, not on public opinion.  The fact that the majority of the population happens to believe that a defendant is guilty has no relevance to the outcome of a court case.  Public opinion carries no weight in the legal system.

Some comments have compared the case of Cardinal Pell to that of Lindy Chamberlain.  In a real sense, the early (and false) public perception of Mrs. Chamberlain's guilt was based on her own naïvete in assuming that the tragic disappearance of her child was an occasion for her to bear public witness to her own faith, leading to the false belief that Mrs. Chamberlain had a harsh and uncaring attitude to her child.  Whatever adjectives you want to use for George Pell, naïve is probably not high on your list.

 

I believe a better high profile Australian case to which to compare the Pell case is one from a few decades earlier than the Chamberlain case, the case of Professor Sydney Sparkes Orr in the 1950s.  Professor Orr was dismissed from his position at the University of Tasmania for seducing a student.  He sued the University for unjust dismissal, with the case (and its subsequent appeals) becoming somewhat of a legal marathon.  In the course of the trials and appeals, according to my reading of accounts of the case, Orr's abrasive personality and his personal arrogance were factors resulting in stiffening the resolve of his opponents and frustrating his supporters.  Can this be an apt parallel between the Orr and Pell cases?

 

I am personally worried that the Pell case may signal the beginning of a renewed period of anti-Catholic bigotry (never really far from the surface) here in Australia.  I've seen public comment asserting the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is a sinister institution at its heart, and that individual Catholics (or, at least, those who are practicing) have no moral right to express opinions on this case.  As a person whose social media profiles often list my profession as "ecumenist", I must object to this in the strongest possible terms.

In a real way, a renewal of anti-Catholic bigotry in the wider community will not hurt Cardinal Pell nor the various Pell wannabees in the hierarchy.  Nor will it hurt the various ultraconservative Catholics whom some commentators describe as "Brideshead Catholics" (from Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited) and whom I've been known to describe as the "Scientology wing" of the Roman Catholic Church.  (1)  They would just love it if the relations between Catholics and the rest of the community reverted to being as bad as they were during the bad old days of the 1950s.  It would increase their own influence within the Catholic Church far more than they deserve.

The people whom I fear would be most hurt by a renewed growth in anti-Catholic bigotry would be the good, solid everyday Catholics we all know in our daily lives, the people I call the "Mrs. Duffy Next Door Catholics".  These are people who are regular attenders at Mass.  They appreciate the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, but would like to see the reforms go just a little further, even if it's nothing all that radical.  For example, the formidable "Mrs. Duffy" would like to see her divorced-and-remarried brother, her Baptist sister-in-law, and her gay son be able to receive Communion when they show up at Midnight Mass next Christmas Eve.  A rise in anti-Catholic bigotry in the community would hurt "Mrs. Duffy" far more than it would hurt the "Brideshead-Scientology" crowd in the RC Church .

Ultimately, we need to realise that life is more complicated than a television drama.  In a murder mystery on TV, it goes without saying that the character who is portrayed as an arrogant, ultra-conservative, hyper-moralistic cleric will turn out to have a few skeletons of a sexual nature in his closet.  Life is far more complicated than an episode of Midsomer Murders, however. 

The jury has done its job.  (In my own opinion, I believe they did it well, but I could be wrong.)  Now it is time for the appellate court to do its job.  Let's allow the legal system to continue to function.

The two things with which I want to conclude, whatever your opinions on the facts of this case, are these:

• For the sake of the survivors and victims of child sexual abuse in any context, secular or religious, do not minimise the impact of child sexual abuse on the survivors and victims.
• For the sake of the wholeness of our culture, do not add to the level of bigotry already expressed to, and experienced by, Australian Catholics.

    

  

  

  

  

(1)   I'm not singling out Catholics here.  I've also been known to speak of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" wing of the Anglican Communion (i.e., Sydney-style evangelicals) and the "Playschool wing" of the Uniting Church.

Down from the Mountaintop? ... Up from the Mountaintop? ... Out from the Mountaintop?: a sermon (Luke 9: 28-36)

For many of us, it happened in our youth.  A camp or a youth conference makes the faith dramatically real for the first time for some young person.  The first stirrings are seen of a deep personal identification and commitment with the faith.  I can remember my own faith – and my sense of identification with the Christian church – being deepened as a result of participating in Methodist youth events in New Jersey in the 1960s and 1970s.  Here in Australia, here in Tasmania, are many people whose Christian faith was deepened as a result of their involvement in such youth events as the Uniting Church’s NCYC and the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day.

While this deepening of faith as a result of a single event is often associated with events for young people, it is not exclusively an experience of youth.  Adults have had similar faith-deepening experiences at a range of events.

·         Dr. Billy Graham’s missions in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had a profound effect on many people who are still active in churches in Australia today.

·         At a very different point on the theological spectrum, the visits to Australia of Bishop Jack Spong in more recent decades have also challenged many people in the churches to take their faith much more seriously.

·         For those who’ve had an opportunity to travel overseas, visits to communities of Christian renewal such as Taizé or Iona have also had such an impact.

·         With the ecumenical movement, our growing opportunities to experience the worship and spirituality of other churches have been such a transforming experience for many.  To give a personal example, my own experiences as a student of the awe and wonder of Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox worship had a profoundly positive effect on the development of my own faith.  Without these experiences, I really doubt if my Christian faith would have survived my undergraduate years.    (Actually, when some of my “evangelical” friends ask me to talk about my “conversion experience” or when I was “born again”, I tell them about a Catholic Mass I attended during my first semester as an undergraduate.  They’re usually more worried about the state of my soul after I tell them this story than they were before.  …  I can live with that.)

Such events of a profound deepening of faith are often called “mountaintop experiences”.  And in this phrase is a link with today’s gospel lesson. 

And now, we’ll have our readings from scripture.

Exodus 34: 29 - 35

Luke 9: 28 – 36

“Down from the Mountaintop? ... Up from the Mountaintop? ... Out from the Mountaintop?”

Let us pray. 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Jesus took the core group of his disciples: Peter, James, and John; up a mountain to pray.  In the experience of the disciples, a dazzling light began to shine.  They saw two great figures of Jewish history . . . Moses, the liberator and law-giver, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets ... appearing, and speaking with Jesus.  A thick, almost smoky, cloud enveloped them all.

Peter was focused on the experience: ... the light ... the smoke ... the big-time historical heroes.  He was so impressed by the whole experience that he wanted to make the experience a permanent thing:  “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”  It had the implication of “Do we really have to go back home?”  He suggested building shelters for them, so as to encourage Moses, Elijah, and (presumably) Jesus to hang around with the disciples up there on the mountain for ever.  But:

·        Moses and Elijah vanished into the cloud;

·        the cloud faded away;

·        the lighting began to be more, well, normal; and

·        Jesus led the disciples off the mountain

Peter’s suggestion about building shelters to make the “mountaintop experience” permanent may resonate with our own reactions to our closer experiences of God’s reality.

But in any event, Jesus led the disciples down from the mountaintop.  … Or was that up from the mountaintop?  … Or perhaps that could have been out from the mountaintop?

“Down from the Mountaintop?”

Jesus led the three down from the mountaintop.  He led them back into the real world with all its struggles.  Christ today challenges us to bring the light of his presence into all the difficulties of life.  There are many who resist this challenge to come down from the mountaintop:

·         Some resist coming “down from the mountaintop” because they have a very mystical, otherworldly faith and they do not want the secular world to interfere with the way they experience their faith.  They want to keep their faith “pure” and “uncontaminated” by worldly concerns.

·         Others resist coming “down from the mountaintop” because they don’t want their faith to interfere with the way they live their lives in the world.  They don’t want their faith to overly influence how they behave when they earn their living ... or when they spend their money ... or when they vote.  They have a “firewall” between their life as a worshipper and their life in the world of work and the wider community.  It’s far too inconvenient, they believe, if our faith was allowed to impact on such things as our attitudes toward race, or economics, or human rights, or business ethics.

Both groups resist the challenge to come down from the mountaintop.

Jesus still led his disciples down from the mountaintop, bringing the fruits of their encounter with God into the struggles of everyday life.  He calls us to come “down from the mountaintop” as well.

“Up from the Mountaintop?”

The danger also existed for the disciples, that the dramatic experience on the mountain would become the big thing, instead of the reality of God that lay behind it.  So Jesus challenged the disciples to look up from the mountaintop and to realise the main thing was:

·        not the dazzling light;

·        not the smoky cloud;

·        not the presence of big-time historical heroes;

but God who lay behind it all

Jesus also challenges us to look “up from the mountaintop”; away from the “special effects” of the faith to God’s main plot.

“Out from the Mountaintop?”

It could all have been terribly in-group up there on the mountaintop.  There were just the six of them up there: Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John.  The six of them could have become a nice, tight, little ‘holy club”.  A group of six people was smaller than most families were in those days.  It would have been cozy, very cozy … far too cozy.

In the scriptures, the story of faith is also the story of the expansion of God’s community from smaller to larger circles of people:

·         from a solitary individual to a family,

·         from a single family to a nation,

·         and, in the New Testament. from a lone nation to two great world-wide religions.

And now, I believe, this expansion still continues:

·         from two closely-related religions to all humanity and even to all life.

We are living in a time when many Christians - and many other people of faith - are being challenged to come to grips with an expanded view of the scope of God’s love and concern.  I strongly believe that it is God who is challenging us to this broader view.

Just as Jesus challenged the disciples to look wider than the cozy little circle of six, Jesus challenges us to ensure that our transforming, faith-deepening, experiences expand, rather than contract, the scope of our concern, to reach “out from the mountaintop”.

Down from the Mountaintop?

Up from the Mountaintop?

Out from the Mountaintop?

On the mountain, Jesus shared a moment of profound significance with his disciples.  We have such opportunities as well.  As with the disciples Jesus continually challenges us:

·        to come down from the mountaintop;

·        to look up from the mountaintop; and

·        to reach out from the mountaintop.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

“What happened in church?”: a sermon (Isaiah 6:1-8)

I’ve given my sermon the title “What happened in church?”  Interestingly, one of my Princeton Seminary professors, the late Dr. Donald Macleod, had a sermon with the title “Something happened in church”, based on this same passage from Isaiah.  These are two very different sermons, and I didn’t consult Dr. Macleod’s sermon in preparing this one.  (Actually, I don’t even own a copy of that particular sermon.)

Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I may be about to make a very strange – and, perhaps, dangerous - admission, particularly at the beginning of a sermon. 

But here goes anyway. 

I often “zone out” when I listen to a sermon in church.  If you talk to me on Sunday afternoon and the conversation turns to that morning’s church services, “What was the sermon about?” is a dangerous question to ask me

It’s not because of advancing years.  If you asked me this question back when I was in my mid-twenties, I’d have been as vague on the homiletical content of the typical service I attended then as I would be now in my mid-sixties.

A better question to ask me would be “What happened in church?”  I could comment at length about the scripture lessons, the hymns and other music, and the liturgy.  I’m mentally engaged during the bulk of the service, and always have been.  But I freely admit to letting my mind wander during sermons …, and during children’s talks …, and particularly during the notices.

I don't think I'm alone here.

A big part of this has to do with the assumption – an assumption I consider to be a false assumption - made by many congregations and by many worship leaders:

-- regardless of their denomination,

-- regardless of their theological emphasis,

-- regardless of their worship style,

-- regardless of their musical tastes.

This assumption is that the average person sitting there in the congregation is there because he or she wants to learn things about religion.  As a result, the parts of the service in which information is conveyed to the congregation (sermon, children’s talk, notices) are treated – in practice, at least, if not in theory – treated as being much more important than the rest of the service.

I think that assumption is a rather large mistake to make.  I believe the typical person who shows up at a worship service, whether a regular worshipper or an infrequent one, is there because she or he wants to experience a relationship with the God worshipped by the congregation, not because they want to learn information about religion.

The fact that so many congregations and worship leaders don’t “get” this – particularly in churches with a middle-of-the-road, teaching-learning worship style such as the Uniting Church – is (in my opinion) one of the main reasons why churches like ourselves have been clobbered in recent decades in areas of membership and attendance:  a far more important reason I believe for the emptying of the churches than questions of theology, biblical interpretation, or sex.  People want to experience God when they turn up in church, rather than merely learning stuff about religion.

We need to remember that  the typical person who shows up at a worship service, whether a regular worshipper or an infrequent one, is there because she or he wants to experience a relationship with the God worshipped by the congregation. 

Thus, we need to be aware that the “main course” of our worship is what we do when we gather around the Lord’s Table to celebrate the presence of the risen Christ.  The part of our worship we’re doing now is the appetizer.  I want to make it as good an appetizer as possible, but nevertheless the appetizer leads up to the main course.

Looking at our lesson from the book of Isaiah, the prophet was in the Temple, the place of public worship.  He spoke of his experience of worship.

-- He was caught up into the cosmic praise of the Living God involving all creation.

-- He was confronted with his own shortcomings, yet also heard the clear word of God’s mercy, grace, and transformation.

-- He experienced God’s call to service, and responded with a clear, “Here am I, send me!”

For Isaiah, worship was not merely something cerebral.  (Nor was it something merely emotional.)  For Isaiah, something happened in worship:  something real, something genuine.

So may it be for us.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.