March 11, 2007
When I was thinking about this week’s sermon, I considered going in a
different direction, of doing an exploration of a different part of this text,
but I actually decided to go back to one of side items of last week’s
sermon, the whole dilemma of idols, and our own, very human struggle
to avoid our worship of things, of that creation, rather than the Creator,
that mistake we humans so often make. But our mistake is rooted in
something that is good, this instinct to worship God, something that we
were created for. Sometimes we do our worship privately, in quiet times,
and even in some not-so-quiet places—I’ve certainly had moments in
loud concerts where I found myself immersed in the presence of God—
even in concerts with no religious focus—sometimes you just have to
praise God because such moments of beauty and artistry can exist in
this world.
But most of the time, I worship with you, and with others that I have gone
to church with over the years, at different churches, in different parts of
the country—all of them were sacred places. And for me, worship is
most powerful when it is with other people, when the room just crackles
with the Spirit, and you know that you are in the presence of the living
God, and you are with your friends and strangers, doing the work of
worship together. But the interesting thing about worshipping and
serving at different communities of faith is that there a lot of differences
in the way we humans worship. When I was at the Cathedral of Hope in
Dallas, the community really did reflect a lot of diversity, and one of the
woman that I worked with encapsulated that diversity for me. Marty
Ruggles was the Prayer Coordinator of the Cathedral, in charge of the
different prayer ministries of the church, and sometimes she would help
lead worship, sitting up in the chancel with the rest of the clergy and
whenever we would be sitting next to each other, I would always think
that we must make an odd pair up here together! Marty just worships
differently from me—you could CLEARLY tell when the Spirit was working
in her—she would close her eyes and one of her arms would start to go
up and I’m sitting right next to her, with all my ex-Presbyterian alarms
start going off, thinking “what’s she doing?” Is she about to slap me
upside the head? It might do me some good to worship next to her, but I
kept thinking that we make a funny couple we make up here…Marty, who’
s just swaying and smiling and got that hand up in the air and me—one
of the frozen chosen, not moving an inch, worshipping in my “don’t show
any emotion” sort of way. I always kid that you know that the Spirit is
working in me on any given Sunday when my foot gets a tapping—if you
see that, you know that I’m having my own personal spiritual revival up
here!
But whatever our way of worshipping, high church, low church, or
somewhere in the middle, the truth of the matter is that we humans were
built for worship—it is so ingrained in us, so deep within us that it is like
breathing—most of the time we are not even aware that we are in the act
of worshipping. In fact, I would say that 95 % of the time we aren’t even
aware of the moments we are in the act of worshipping God—or even
worshiping something else. And the worshipping “something else” is
always the problem, isn’t it? One of the great things about being built for
worship, being created for worship, even given the duty of worship as
one of our purposes in life, is that we know how to do it instinctively—we
know instinctively how to worship, though, again, I suspect most of us are
not even aware that we are doing it. In our better moments, its those
times in our lives when our hearts leap for joy, when we see the beauty
in the world that God has created, and something sings within us,
quietly, or even powerfully—we see the shimmer of God’s glory and God’
s presence in the world, and our hearts leap for joy and yet we can
barely name what we are experiencing at that moment.
But the other side of the coin is the darker side of this instinct to worship,
those moments in our lives when our instincts for worship fail us. Why?
Because we were built for worship, because we have been created to do
this thing, we so often get confused—in fact, the most human of all
mistakes when it comes to worship is to confuse the creation for the
Creator, to think that the things made by God are actually God. That is
why the Old Testament is just filled with God saying to the people, “don’t
worship idols! Don’t confuse what I have given you for me!” I mean,
there a lot of reasons we humans have this tendency to worship “things”
—I think that so many beautiful things in our lives, the good things in our
lives, they remind us of who God is, they reflect the God we want so
desperately, and we just make the mistake of thinking that those things
in our lives, the material things we acquire and are given in this life—the
cars, the house—or we even confuse God with the people in our lives we
are gifted with—the spouse we have, sometimes even our family,
sometimes even our children—we make the mistake of worshipping the
gifts we have been given rather the Giver of those gifts.
But this temptation towards making this mistake is so human, so
common, that even Jesus experienced this powerful choice between the
creation and the Creator. Satan tempts him with this offer: “worship me
and I’ll give you all the power and glory that this little world can offer
you.’ And of course, Jesus refuses this, and he replies to Satan that
only God is worthy of worship—no one and no-thing else. And yet most
of us have at least spent some of our lives worshipping other things,
actually, we probably spend most of the 95% I spoke of earlier
worshipping the things that aren’t worthy of our worship. Besides, the
reality is that the idols in our lives—whether it is our finances, our
partners, our families, power and prestige—all important things, beautiful
things, but not worthy of worship—all of the idols fail us. Eventually, they
crumble and we see them for what they are—faint glimmers of the God
who created them for our sake, for our care, but not to be worshipped.
And why it is so important not to fall for the darker side of our instinct to
worship, for that no so pretty other side of the coin I was talking about?
Because worship is one of the reasons we exist, because it is one of our
purposes for existing—to adore the one who created us, to see the world
in all of its beauty, human and not-human, and to see it as faint glimpse
of the One who created it and us. And to be frank, the other reason we
probably should get this whole worship thing right is because of what
worship really is.
You see, in the New Testament, the word you find most often translated
as “worship” actually comes from the Greek word that means “to kiss
towards.” (Proskuneo = to kiss towards) When we get this whole
worship thing right, we don’t just simply adore God, we actually kiss
God. In the ancient world, and to some degree even today in some
countries and cultures, especially in the Middle East, people kiss each
other on the cheek when they greet each other. In the early church,
people greeted each other with a “holy” kiss. It was an ancient sign of
friendship and welcome—and that is why Jesus is so hurt when Judas
betrays him with a kiss—it is such a betrayal of the gentle act of
welcoming and greeting friends. Judas betrays not only Jesus, but he
disfigures what it means to be warmly greeted by another person—he
betrays human kindness and human warmth—and I suspected this broke
Jesus’ heart as much as anything else.
I mean, let’s face it: kissing is such an intimate act in culture, beyond
simply greeting each other—the kiss of another is one of those things we
don’t forget about them, especially if we have loved them. And we can
also usually remember the moment a particular kiss really meant
something to us—the heat flowing through our bodies, the soft texture of
his or her lips, the initial fumbling and awkwardness as you try to sense
how you and this other fit together, at least how you fit together in this
particular moment. Jeanette Winterson says in one of her novels, THE
PASSION that “To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or
stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. (p.
59). Kissing another person is an art-form, it takes practice, and it takes
time—you’ve got to learn how to kiss, much like we have to learn how to
kiss the face of God—and when things finally click for us in worship,
when we kiss God, the fireworks go off in our hearts and in our bodies,
and those fireworks can be seen in raised hands, in tears, in feet a-
tapping, and the closed eyes of someone who is obviously in the
presence of God, quietly immersing themselves in God. The art of
human kissing, in addition to being a learned thing and an intrinsic
goodness, perhaps it is also a gift from God so that we can get some
hint of what it means to worship the One who has made everything, all of
which contains hints of the One has created it.
But this idea that we are kissing God when we gather together for
worship, it doesn’t just stop there—in fact, it wasn’t just us Christians who
understood worship as something close to human passion. Our ancient
forbearers in the faith, the Jewish people, didn’t just settle for this idea of
kissing as being a warm, social greeting from God, so to speak, as it was
probably understood in ancient times. No, this idea went a lot further,
actually. In our Old Testament, you will find one of the most unusual of
books, the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, because legend
attributes it to King Solomon. It is a poem between two lovers, and let
me tell you, if you haven’t already read it—its incredibly hot stuff! Some
of the images are so charged with sexuality that it almost didn’t make it
into the Jewish Bible—it was so sexual that even some early fathers of
the church had a problem with it being in our own Christian Bibles. And I
always tell people when they read it, that all those moments when they
are asking “does he actually mean what I think he means or is she
referring to what I think she is referring to?” more than likely they are! It’
s probably what you are thinking!
You see, the only way the Jewish people and the early church could
justify having this particular erotic book in its canon—most of which you
couldn’t read aloud in church—was to say that it was a metaphor for the
love affair between God and the people of God. The church has said
that it is an erotic love poem that was meant to hint at the passion that
lies between the Creator and the creation—between God and the
church. To be in relationship with God is to be in a relationship like this—
where the passion is deep, where human lips meet divine lips, where all
of the body and spirit is met and loved by the very God who has created
it in the first place. Now, I’ll be honest, I think its probably stretching this
ancient book beyond what it can handle—I mean, after all, it could just
be an incredible celebration of human love and passion, things that
certainly hint of the one who created both of those things. In my mind,
however, this odd traditional understanding of the Song of Songs says
something about how both the Hebrew people and the Christian church
understood what it meant to worship God, what it meant to be in
relationship with God. To worship God is to return the kiss—in fact,
maybe our job in worship is to return the kiss of the One who made the
first move, the One who has always made the first move with us. Some
of us have sometimes been pretty reluctant to begin the relationship with
God, haven’t we? No need to worry in this case, because God has
made that gesture towards you and me—an incredibly intimate gesture,
a kiss, a gentle, inviting kiss.
But you know, a relationship takes time, it takes effort, it takes showing
up, and putting in some effort, and to be honest, a lot of us have not
always been prepared to make a commitment, at different points in our
lives. And that is why I think we fall for the idols—I mean, a relationship
with a thing doesn’t require much from us—I mean, what kind of
demands can money really make of us, or things, material things, for that
matter? Worshipping those things may wither away our soul, but what
was never alive cannot truly ask anything from the living. And you know,
worshipping stuff, kissing material things, metal and stone—the truth is
when we worship the idols in our lives, when we kiss what cannot return
the kiss, eventually we find that we can only be truly satisfied for so long
in this one-way relationship, in this one-person relationship. That’s why
Jesus refused the toxin that Satan was offering him that day in the
wilderness—he knew it would poison him in the end, like it does us…and
why we’re asked to do our own detoxification each and every Lent. And
even when we worship that which is alive but not God, even when we
worship other people, when we think they can fill us up and complete us,
we find out pretty quickly that no other person can fill up that piece of
our heart that is reserved for God and God alone—the place inside of us
that is made for the worship of the One who has created us.
So, on Sunday mornings, I come to meet God here with you…and I come
to meet God in you, and I hope that you stumble upon God in me as
well. Is God everywhere? Oh yes, most definitely. Can’t you worship
God anywhere? Yes, once again, most definitely. But you know, this is
the only place in my life and I suspect in yours as well, where I search for
God wholly and completely, where I strain to get a glimpse of God in you
and I strain to even get a glimpse of God in me. One time a week, I am
asked to focus all of my life completely upon the One who has loved me
from the moment I came from my mother’s womb, and is the One who will
be with me when I draw my last human breath—we come to worship to
the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega. And if we believe the
New Testament, we are also asked to gather together, and to worship
together, because for whatever reason, our personal relationships with
God are made stronger when we worship God together, as beautiful and
fragile people—we get more chances to get a glimpse of God in each
other, the Spirit in each other. We come here to worship together so
that we can return the gentle kiss God has placed on our lives, upon our
lips, upon our hearts, and at least one hour a week, on this very day, we
get life and love and hope just right—we return the kiss of the One who
has loved us more deeply and more gently than anyone else ever has,
or ever will. Amen.
