Two Sundays ago I gave an introduction to worship that seems to have touched deep into the hearts of a number of people in our congregation. I have been asked for copies of what I shared, as well as for the Annie Dillard book that I referenced in my introduction. I thought this might make for a good posting on my blog, so here it is:

Sunday, April 27: As we begin our service of worship today, I want to draw our attention to something that I don’t think we’re often conscious of when we come to church on Sunday. Because when we enter this place, it is so familiar, so comfortable, so “regular” and routine that it’s hard to imagine or remember what incredible, powerful, supernatural realities are occurring right here in our midst!  Do you realize this?  Do you remember that God Himself, the Eternal Creator of all that is, is present--here--and ready to display His glory, if we will only open ourselves to Him and realize what is transpiring in our midst?  

Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty He can speak galaxies into existence--and yet He deigns to meet with us here on earth, in our town, in our church building, among us!  Are we truly cognizant of this?  Do we realize what is happening here, in this place, each week when we gather  to worship God?  Or have we so trivialized this time, and tamed the God of the universe with our belief systems and rationalizations, that the incredible possibility and power of what can transpire here has been eliminated?

In her book, “Teaching A Stone to Talk,”  Annie Dillard provides a humorous and rather shocking description of the potential that worship has, if we truly realized what is actually going on.  Dillard writes:  “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” 

That observation, that we have no idea what power we so blithely invoke, resonates deeply with me. We sit and stand and sing our songs and give our offerings and listen to the sermon. We come away with a few things to ponder during the week. But since we do it every single week, it can be easy to miss the greatness of it all. That when we pray, things change! And that we can invoke this power at any time, day or night. Suddenly TNT doesn’t sound so far off!

Perhaps most of us are more afraid of being drawn out to where we can never return than we are willing to admit.   We all have problems, yes, but they are familiar.  We’re used to them.  We live with them quite comfortably. If these problems were taken them away from us--if we had to let go and grow beyond them--we might not be so comfortable. Which sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s true. We might not be happy with how things are, but neither do we really want them to change.

So we continue blithely on, standing and sitting and passing the plate, because admitting to ourselves what all this means might mean we’d actually have to face what’s wrong and do something about it. That would be letting TNT loose in our lives!  TNT that we can’t control. And that sounds way too scary.

The idea that God is untamed, uncontrollable, no matter how much we think we have a handle on God, is so very true, and so hard to get across to people. If we knew what we were doing when we worship, it would be truly awesome. We would be dying to come to worship. Churches, synagogues, and other holy places would be packed and overflowing. 

So today, for just a moment, let’s pause to remember and to realize Who it is that is present right here in our midst and remember what it is that our Lord Almighty really wants from us.  Let’s remember again that worship is ALL for God!  It’s not about us; about having our needs met, getting fed spiritually, being comfortable, surrounding ourselves with what’s familiar, or getting pumped up emotionally.  Here is how the writer of the book of Hebrews puts it:  

“What you have come to is nothing known to the senses.  No, what you have come to is Mount Zion, the City of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem!  Where millions of angels have gathered in joyful assembly with the whole Church of the firstborn citizens of heaven!  You have drawn near to God, the judge of all, to the souls of good men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, whose blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.  We have been given posssesion of an unshakable kingdom.  Let us therefore be thankful to God, and offer acceptable worship to Him with reverence and awe.  For our God is a consuming fire.” 

Let us worship, with true reverence and awe, this God today: our God Who is a consuming fire!