WORSHIP: My ancestors were starving Arameans (19th Sunday after Pentecost; Deuteronomy 26:1-11; September 25, 2016)

My ancestors were starving Arameans

19th Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
September 25, 2016

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Sometimes, when I have asked congregations to describe their mission as they understand it, they have responded with lists of things that they do: These lists sometimes have odd omissions. While sometimes people mention music or even more rarely sermons. they have never listed worship as important to their mission or at the center of who they are or what they do. Sometimes worship is seen as one way to attract new members to the church or the place where the congregation is conveniently congregated so that some information might be shared or they might be convinced to do something. Worship might be a way to transform individual lives or to grow a church.

We find it pretty easy to point to some goal or end for which worship might be a means, but have a hard time with the idea that worship is an end in itself. Somehow we have lost the sense that worship is central to who we are as followers of Jesus and that it needs no justification beyond itself.

So I really appreciate what we have said about worship in our statement of core values: "As a congregation we value gathering together in meaningful worship." That’s good. But what do we mean by "meaningful worship?" The extended statement teases that apart a little:

From our worship experience we want to be inspired to leave the church pew and live out our Christian faith. We appreciate the feelings we receive through music that moves and lifts our spirits. We wish to hear sermons based in scripture that stimulate us, reinforce and strength our faith journeys, and show us how to apply God’s Word to our daily lives. We appreciate the familiar rituals of communion, baptism, Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday services. We welcome the participation of young people and youth in our services, from lighting candles to Puppets of Praise.

A lot of the pieces are there: music, preaching, tradition, participation by young folks.But I wanted to relate all of these things to something deeper, to ground them in the nature of worship, and to connect what we do on Sunday with the long story of God's people at worship.

So I went back as far as I could to one of the most powerful texts in the Bible. It's found in Deuteronomy, oddly enough. It is set in the story of the escape of the Israelites from Egypt as part of the law that God gave to Moses. It is presented as instructions for what the people are to do once they have reached the land of promise, taken it for themselves, settled down, and begun to produce crops.

A careful look at the reading shows that it cannot be what it pretends to be: instructions for the people who are wandering in the desert. There is something out of place in the text, or better, out of time. They are told to bring the offering from the first harvest "to the location the Lord your God selects for his name to reside." But there would be no such place for several hundred years, not until Solomon built his Temple in Jerusalem. We call this an anachronism, something that is out of its time, like the famous anachronism found in the movie Ben Hur set in the early Roman Empire in which one of the chariot racers is wearing a wrist watch.

Though it is certainly not simply an instruction given to the desert wanderers by Moses, it may well be part of a liturgy (or liturgies) for the Festival of First Fruits that has been projected backwards into history. Anyway, that's my interest in this passage is liturgical, not historical.

So I want for us to do a couple of things. First I want for us to read as those to whom it is addressed. So here is what we, the people who live in Judah, are to do. When the first harvest comes in--the lettuce and the strawberries, I guess--we are to put some of them in a basket and bring them to the Temple. (Or maybe, simply to the nearest shrine served by a priest of Yahweh.) And there we are to say to the priest, "I am declaring right now before the Lord my God that I have indeed arrived in the land the Lord swore to our ancestor to give us." The priest is to take our offering and place it before the altar.

Then we make this profession:

My father was a starving Aramean. He went down to Egypt, living as an immigrant there with few family members, but that is where he became a great nation, mighty and numerous. The Egyptians treated us terribly, oppressing us and forcing hard labor on us. So we cried out for help to the Lord, our ancestors’ God. The Lord heard our call. God saw our misery, our trouble, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with awesome power, and with signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land—a land full of milk and honey. So now I am bringing the early produce of the fertile ground that you, Lord, have given me.”

Then we place our offering on the ground and bow to Yahweh. (Yes, there is another little textual problem here, since we have already given our offering to the priest and he has placed it in front of the Lord's altar. Is there more than one liturgy that has been combined here? Maybe, though it's not terribly important.)

So the first thing is that we are to put ourselves in the place of the first of our people who came into possession of the land of promise, even though we may be living many generations later.

The second thing to notice is that there are some important changes in grammatical person and number in the profession. We begin by talking about our ancestors: “My father..., he went down..., he became...”And then in the next verse we switch to the first person: "The Egyptians treated us..., we cried out..., our call..., our misery, our trouble, our oppression..., The Lord brought us out..., brought us..., gave us...” And then, finally, we move from the first person plural to the first person singular. We are no longer speaking as we and us, but as I and me: “So now I am bringing the early produce of the fertile ground that you, Lord, have given me.”

Someone else becomes we and us; we and us become I and me. That is what happens in meaningful worship. In meaningful worship we become a part of the story of God's people.It doesn't matter to begin that we who are here in this space and time were not present in ancient Egypt as God set the Israelites free. It doesn't matter to begin that we were not there to settle in the land of promise. It doesn't matter to begin that we were not gathered with the crowd when Jesus fed them with two loaves and five fish. It doesn't matter to begin that we were not there in the upper room when Jesus broke bread and said, "This is my body."

Meaningful worship makes us a part of events and part of a story that we were not present for. The liturgy begins with "he" but it moves us to "we." It is as if we had been present at the first celebration of the early harvest in the land of promise. It is as if we were the disciples who walked to Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday. History that happened somewhere else to someone else becomes in worship our story.

Meaningful worship not only moves us to name ourselves as the people of God; it also moves us to commit ourselves to our own lives and world as members of the people of God. "So now I am bringing the early produce of the fertile ground that you, Lord, have given me." In meaningful worship his-story becomes our story becomes my story. That's meaningful worship in a nutshell.

Worship isn't really about holy entertainment, or about getting tips for holy living or just plain living for that matter, or about raising our children right, or about a lot of things. Any of those things can happen, but that's not the heart of it. The heart of it is our coming together in all our variety from all sorts of places and becoming together the people of God. The heart of worship is identity: God's and ours. In worship we become God's people and God becomes our God. It's like a wedding in which we are asked, Do you people take this God, Yahweh, to be your God? Do you, Yahweh, take these people to be your people?

What if we could figure out how to make that more readily apparent for all of us who gather here? Music, preaching, rituals and sacraments, and the participation of all generations, are certainly a part of how that happens. What if we are missing something?

For instance, Protestants have always been a little ear-focused, a little worried about the visual arts. Statues, for example, have always been suspect in Protestant churches. In general, Protestants have been more committed to what can be heard than to what can be seen. We've lost something from that, I think. What if we did more with color and texture, not to communicate a message in words, but to set an environment that invites us into the story?

Protestants don't go in for lots of gestures, but the participation of our physical bodies in worship is important. I'm not sure that the free-throw line on a basketball court is the right place for the sign of the cross and a remembrance of our baptism. But the fact that a practice can be abused doesn't mean it should be banished, only practiced well. But what if the church at worship became a right place and time?

When we come to music, we step onto the battlefield of the worship wars, which I have never really understood. Maybe it's because I appreciate too many kinds of music. Organ music and fuzzy rock guitar both touch me in places that the other can't reach. If I'm going to worship with all of me, I'll need them both. But others seem not to feel the same way.

There is certainly a generational divide. Those who were born before 1948 want to clap their hands on the first and third beats of the measure. For those born after, it's the second and fourth. Music is written to favor one or the other of those two basic accent patterns. I'm always amused when an elderly congregation tries to clap along to modern music. The music has a two-four accent pattern and the people are trying clap one-three and it's just a mess!

The fact is, to the pre-1948 generations, a two-four pattern feels uncomfortable; it even hurts a little. To put themselves into the music, there has to be a rhythm that matches their one-three sense of rhythm. For younger folks, it's just the opposite. Of course, most of our music in church now has one-three accents and fewer and fewer of us are one-three accent people. Could this be one of the reasons that most two-four people are somewhere else on Sunday mornings?

Inter-generational worship isn't simply a matter of having fifth graders reading the lessons, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Worship that invites all generations into our story must speak the language that each generation speaks and that includes the musical language. What if we had a band that could lead us in singing the music that some of us need and just aren't getting? I'm not suggesting all rock, all the time, but some rock or some blues, some of the time doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

The furniture of our sanctuary suggests that the proper posture of the worshiper is to sit upright and still on marginally uncomfortable benches while I talk and they listen. Many adults can handle this, but most younger children cannot. They can sit still for five minutes and then the fidgets set in and it becomes increasingly painful--yes, painful--for them to sit still.

The conventional response to this is to banish younger children to a nursery, but that assumes that because children do not worship like adults, they shouldn't be in worship at all. What if we made a space available with pillows and cushions and soft toys for kids to sit or lie or sprawl and overhear the worship, at least for the sermon? What if we planned worship so that every generation received an invitation to become a part of the story?

Over the centuries the "what" of worship has changed and evolved. In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo, felt forced to comment on the recent arrival of the practice of singing the psalms. He was a little worried the music might overwhelm the sense of the words, but all-in-all he was for it: Later, he even famously said, “Qui cantat, bis orat (To sing is to pray twice).”

Worship music has changed a great deal since then, and that's all to the good. At the heart, though, we worship to remind ourselves (and to remind God if it comes to that) that we are a part of the story of God's people and that God is a part of our story. We speak and sing and act as if we were there and because we do we are the people of God. And by the time we are finished we will be able to say, Because I am God's child, now I am ready to do the work of the people of God!

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