What Are We Doing Here?- Rev. Wendy McCormick- Sept 15,2024
“What Are We Doing Here?”
Rev Wendy McCormick
September 15, 2024
It was one of those moments when the preacher is chatting with the funeral director in the back of the funeral home before the ceremony begins. Small talk, generally. Commenting on the weather and the size of the assembling crowd, sometimes something about the family. I mentioned that in this case I didn’t know them. It happens. They don’t go to church, I said. “Yeah, nobody goes to church anymore, right?!” the young funeral director laughed. I was meant to laugh along. He was overstating but not that far off about how much his work and mine have changed. Instead, I heard myself say, “Well, there’s a bunch of people over at the Presbyterian Church who would disagree.”
And here you are among them. An average of about 120 of us gather here on Sunday mornings. An average of about 35 tune in live, in some cases more than one person viewing. And an average of 100 view these proceedings later.
Even the retired among us are busy. And for all of us, there is so much content available online, that I would daresay exactly ZERO of us are here because we have nothing else to do.
In other words, we are here because we want to be. We all make an effort. To wrestle the technology or to get up and dressed and into this space.
Which begs the question: why? Or as I have facetiously titled today’s sermon: What are we doing here? What is it about this ancient and weekly rhythm that draws us, that keeps us coming? Of course, each of us has our own reasons. The human contact of this uniquely intergenerational gathering. The music. The prayers. The sermon. Or maybe something about all of it. Today I want to reflect on what our Presbyterian beliefs say about worship, about what is happening here and about what difference it makes.
As you inevitably compare the substitute preacher with the regular preacher, compare Wendy to Karen and then to the new pastor soon to come, as you can’t help but notice when something changes however small --- like how we serve communion or how many ushers bring forward the offering – whether it’s a different translation of the Apostles’ Creed or children being welcomed to the front of the room --- as we sing songs you like and songs you don’t like, when mistakes happen like Wendy skips over something, when we run out of programs or you come in late and just can’t seem to connect to what’s going on – in the midst of it all, how do you – do I – do any of us -- stay grounded in the overall purpose of what it is we’re doing here, why we come, why we come back?
To the outside observer, largely because of the arrangement of this space and what that means in the wider culture, it looks like those of us in the front here are performing for you -- for your edification, your inspiration, your enjoyment, your challenge, your comfort, and ultimately your evaluation. And I will assume I speak for our musicians as well as myself when I say that we really like it when you appreciate what we do, that you enjoyed the music or that the sermon or the prayers were meaningful to you. And when people ask you why you go to church, you might tell them that you like the preaching or you like the music. Sometimes we even applaud to show that we enjoy or appreciate what is happening here.
It shows our appreciation, our affirmation, our Amen, so to speak.
And yet if we limit our understanding to that --- that you are here to receive what we offer in the front, reacting to it and evaluating it --- we miss a really essential faith component of what we’re doing here.
Consider the famous teaching about worship from the 19th century philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard: He responded to the idea that Christian worship is a drama, a performance. He insisted it’s different from what we might assume. Kierkegaard criticized an elitist class of worship leaders who perpetuated the idea that we are performing for you, the audience. In that understanding, God’s role in this “drama,” if God has any role at all is to be the “prompter,” in theatre terms, or we might say the inspiration. Inspiring us, the performers.
Relegating God to such a minor role and elevating the worship leaders is precisely backward, Kierkegaard argued. Instead, he taught that the worship leaders – the preacher, the readers, the musicians, that we are the prompters, the ones to coach and to cue and to inspire you – the gathered community in your performance. In other words, the performers are everyone here – we are performing together – not just watching and listening and taking it in but performing and performing for the one true audience of all our worship. Did you guess who it is? Kierkegaard challenged us to see the drama of worship with God and God alone as the audience.
It is still right and good to evaluate those of us who are up front. But I wonder how often when we participate in worship we evaluate ourselves? I wonder how your own participation in these proceedings might change if you thought of it not just as taking in what we are offering but as making your own performance, your own offering to God. What if we thought of all of us together as a great chorus or orchestra, each offering our best to God.
We talk about “going” to church and “attending” worship . . . what if we more consciously thought of doing worship, of our own participation as an essential performance?
It changes our perspective. It calls on each of us to ask of ourselves, “Have I given my best to God in this hour of worship?” as opposed to, “how did I like what was offered here?”
From this perspective, we have a better chance of encountering the divine, of connecting with God, AND, perhaps most importantly, of being changed – of leaving here different than when we arrived. Which is the point. Some people say they like to come to worship because they feel better, they feel different, their outlook for the week is better. Sometimes you might feel better, sometimes you might feel uneasy or uncomfortable or challenged. Sometimes you might feel inspired and energized with a new perspective on something you are dealing with. Sometimes you might feel resolution or peace about something that has been bothering you. The point is you are meant to be different when you leave than when you arrived. And that difference is meant to change who you are and how you live when you shut off the livestream or get up and walk out the door.
Now that I’ve made my case that your role here is as important as mine, let’s take a look at the movement of this hour and how it is meant both to help you give your best performance for God and also to make a difference for you so that you are somehow changed – dare we say transformed – by your participation here.
There are four parts – four movements – to our time together and they are bookended by the experience we hear from Isaiah in today’s reading. The prophet is looking back on a vision he had: It was the same year that the king died, he recalls, when he had this magnificent vision of God, high on a throne in robes that filled the whole temple. God is surrounded by angels, flying around singing their praises to God. It is a vision that has inspired great art as well as the hymn we sang this morning – Holy, Holy, Holy.
Modeled on Isaiah, our worship always begins with praise. Even on our roughest day, even in a funeral service, our worship always begins with praise to God. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Our prelude and your wonderful tradition here of ringing the bell help us to settle ourselves, to enter into this time and space and to be ready to give that praise when we are invited – or sometimes we say “called” – to worship.
The next part of this opening section continues from Isaiah’s cue. The prophet remembers that as he came into the presence of God, all the splendor and majesty, the angels singing their praises, he was suddenly aware of how small and inadequate he felt alongside the great God almighty. “Woe is me,” he said. “I am lost, for I am a person of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; and yet I have seen the Lord!”
Every Sunday our hymn of praise is followed by an invitation to share our own feelings of small-ness, inadequacy, un-clean-ness, in Isaiah’s words. A prayer of confession or a confession of sin. We do it together, focused on our common condition as human beings – all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It’s a kind of existential prayer -- we are confessing that we are human, that we fall short of God’s call and claim on our lives, and that we feel the inevitable separation from God. It is not meant to “make you” feel bad but to give you a chance to acknowledge the ways that you already do feel bad. It is a time for releasing or unburdening in a spiritual sense of all that separates us from God, that keeps us from living fully as the people God created us to be.
Isaiah’s “woe is me” confession of his “uncleanness” is followed by an angel flying over to touch his lips with a burning coal from the altar to make him clean, to restore him to right relation with almighty God. No burning coals here in the Presbyterian Church! Instead, we remind ourselves and one another in words and music that God’s love and mercy are greater than anything we are or have done. That we are forgiven and set free to live the lives God calls us to live. We affirm and celebrate that forgiveness in music and share the peace with one another – love and forgiveness are made known to us in Jesus Christ – may the peace of Christ be with us and in us and among us!
This first movement of our worship is all about preparing us to receive God what God has to offer us, to encounter God, to hear God, to be changed by God, in word and sacrament.
The second movement is the word --- we hear the scriptures read and proclaimed – the Bible readings, the time with the children, the anthem, as well as the sermon.
We put a lot of emphasis on this section, and a lot of preparation goes into it. That’s because something is meant to be happening. We Presbyterians believe that when the word is “rightly preached” and the sacraments are “rightly administered,” God is truly present with the people. In other words, something is happening. Something more than whether I did a good job and whether you liked it. From time to time, someone will have a particularly profound or moving experience during the sermon. And they say to me, “You knew just what I needed to hear.” And I get to say, no, I didn’t know what you needed to hear. How could I? God knew what you needed to hear. How cool is that?! This three-way event is happening – I’m offering something, and you are open, primed, so to speak, and the Spirit is moving – and you receive something you could not get any other way. Of course, that experience can happen during an anthem or a prayer as well. You are here, you are prepared, you are open, you are participating, and God can use what we are doing up here to give you just what you need.
The third movement in our worship, then, is our response as those who have been affected, changed, by encountering God in the word. We reaffirm what we believe in words and in music; we pray for others and ourselves. And at what is meant to be the high point, the climax, we offer ourselves and our gifts. Like Isaiah, we say, “Here I am, send me.” Take me. Use what I have and what I bring. Originally, the offering was the offering of agricultural products like grain and fruit to be shared with the community, and then of course it became the offering of money. To this day, in some churches, the bread and wine are presented at the offering as our faith and our renewed commitment are sealed the sacrament of the lord’s supper.
For many of us the weekly offering is symbolic because we give our actual money in other ways. But as we stand and sing the doxology, literally the study of praise, we are meant to be at our highest moment in worship and our greatest moment of commitment and dedication as we say, take me, use me – all that I am and all that I have – for your will and to your glory.
The fourth and final movement of our worship sends us out, transitions us from what has happened here back out there to the world and the tasks and activities of our lives. We know that we will fall short, that we will slip back from that moment of connection with God, from that commitment to give our all to God, that we will slip maybe even by the time we get to the car. But we receive a charge and a blessing and leave on a high note. And we’ll be back. Like great Shakespearean actors who continue to hone their performance, thousands of times through the same play, each performance unique in its own way, some better than others, we come again and again to give our best performance, ready each time to be changed and then sent back out to be God’s change in the world. Amen.
