Worship Wars : Out of Our League

Check out the video version of this sermon by clicking here!

Hello and welcome back to another blessed week here at Making Waves! Thrilled that you have chosen to join us once again this week as we begin a new series on something incredibly important to me.

As many of you may know, we are kind of starting off this year with an ongoing overarching theme of going “back to the basics” of the church. We kicked off the year with a series of that title and, most recently, we did a series on the “basics” of Prayer and it’s methodology and meaning. And now, we are beginning this week our next leg of the “basics” theme: worship.

Now, before you close the web browser or turn off your computer and chuck it out your window, hear me out with this one. Let me start this whole thing off by saying this: I get it. It’s hard to ignore that, among the many divisions that we create within the modern church, worship is a major heartstring that people do NOT like to have plucked. And I totally get that.

Take my word for it, as someone who grew up in an extremely contemporary setting: loud drums, pop songs, bright lights, and - Heaven FORBID - coffee in the sanctuary, I totally understand that culture shock that can happen when that lifestyle is stolen away or threatened. You grow accustomed to one style of worship or the other. And, you aren’t alone in this feeling of holding your ground. Whether you are traditional- or contemporary-minded, you are part of this great movement of the worship wars of the modern Christian identity.

So maybe, just maybe, it’s time that we take it back to the basics and see what worship really is in order for us to move forward with our great understanding of what makes worship great in today’s era. Time will tell. But without any more of my words, let’s dive into the Word together and read of one of the most notable instances of worship to ever take place. If you’d like to follow along, there will be the selected passage from the NRSV below, but of course, feel free to use whatever version you feel most comfortable with for this purpose. Hear now these words:

“6 1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” “

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be ever-acceptable in Your sight, O God, for You, and You alone, are our Rock and our Redeemer.

Now, I want to tell you all a quick story about one of my biggest peeves. First, I want to say how very much I love my wife! We work so well together and have a wonderful, God-centered relationship that is so incredibly fruitful of God’s blessings. That being said, we do have certain tendencies (that we discovered during our 4-years of dating) that drive one another insane. If you can’t tell from my overly hectic lifestyle, I am a major busy-body and I love to be active doing things out in the world, and my wife is the same way. That being said, we love to get out on the town when we can and go shopping. One of Logan’s favorite places to shop is Marshalls. Now, I’m not trying to get a sponsorship of anything by name-dropping, I just wanted to see if any of you knew how much time could be spent in a Marshalls. I know for a fact that you can potentially spend up to an hour and a half in a single trip to Marshalls if they have enough clothes marked down to just-the-right-price. Now, right next to our closest Marshalls, there just so happens to be an Old Navy. Since you are reading this virtually, just imagine that I’m rolling my eyes back into my head. With the combination of the two greatest powers on planet Earth, an entire afternoon or marathon of the Lord of the Rings movies can be spent in two stores in a day.

However, this isn’t my pet peeve, but my pet peeves lies in another shopping trip when we go to one of MY favorite stores, perhaps Gamestop, or Barnes & Nobles, and my beautiful darling wife just gets tuckered out after about ten minutes.

I’m, of course, just picking on Logan here, but this shopping mentality can seep and infect other areas of our lives. Too often I see this (or just blatantly hear this) in the lives of Christians. How many of us know someone who has treated church just like this? Maybe some of you reading this are “church shoppers.” And that’s okay, it’s just this byproduct of our culture that has been instilled in us. We go shopping for clothes that fit just right, we go to restaurants to eat the exact food we are craving, and we try to find a church that fits us just right. We need the organ to be just the right size bigger than the organist, or we need there to be projector screens, or we need there to be a correct proportion of Charles Wesley hymns to the Hymns We Sing, or just enough Kari Jobe with a little less 90s Tomlin.

That leads us to our first point about worship, and hear me out here because this may be hard for us to hear… worship is not about you!

Still with me? Okay, good. Let’s keep diving into the good Word that we read just a moment ago. If worship isn’t about us, then what is it about? We could be simple and just say, “God” or “praise” or something like that, but let’s really break down what happens in this worship example given to us by the prophet Isaiah. Many of you may or may not know this about me, but I am a huge fan of art. Modern, contemporary, post-modern, historic, sacred, anything! I wanted to share with you what I think of whenever I hear this scripture from Isaiah.

Luke Allsbrook, 2006

This can be a bit much to take all-at-once, much like our aforementioned scripture, so let’s break them down together and use this image as a guide to understanding more about this instance of worship.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.”

Let’s stop right there. Why would the author have included this dating of the scripture? What makes this instance so important? He could have just as easily said the actual year, which is believed to have been around 740 B.C.E. What made this information worthy of being noted? Well, it gave Isaiah a reason to come to the temple for worship. King Uzziah was a great king who ruled with grace and passion for his kingdom. When he passed, the people were distraught over what would come after this good king. It was a national tragedy for the people of Israel and it’s likely that Isaiah was seeking answering from God on what would come next for the people. Maybe you missed him the first time you looked at the image, but try and find Isaiah in the painting. He is enveloped in the bottom left corner in some kind of cloth, the robe of the Lord. Do you see the sky behind the prophet? It’s dark, sad, melancholy. The world beyond the temple is dark and hurting.

So, we need God and we come to worship. That’s what prompts us to worship.

Speaking of God’s robe, we see the cloth of the robe, but where is God in this image? We see his throne, but where is God himself? The artist states that God in this painting is the very sun itself, setting atop the throne extending its spirit to Isaiah. A sermon for another day, let’s continue reading.

“2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.“

We can clearly see the seraphs, right? These incredible flying creatures surrounding our prophet in the painting. And what are they doing in this scripture? They’re praising God with song. Is there a tune attached to it? Does it say whether to play an organ or an electric guitar? Does it matter if the words are written in a hundred year-old book or projected on a television screen? It doesn’t appear that way, in fact, it doesn’t even seem like Isaiah is the one who is lifting up these praises. Instead it’s these angels, these Holy Spirits who are lifting up God in song (we’ll dive more into this later, I promise).

What is worship here? Worship is an experience with God. God is in this place, He is in the world actively and presently right here, right now. Like the robe we talked about earlier, we are just like Isaiah, wrapped up inside the holy presence of God.

Let’s continue on to what Isaiah’s reaction to all of this is:

“5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” “

What does Isaiah say in reply to this one true form of worship? I am unworthy! I am unclean! My lips are unclean! He isn’t happy at all with the situation because worship reminds him of how unworthy he is to be in the presence of such an incredible God. But he is filled with a sense of woe and yet at the same time joy as he admits of his uncleanliness and affirmation of his humanity.

“6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” “

And just like that, just with the admittance of his humanity, the seraph comes down and wipes the slate clean. Not of condemnation and hellfire, not of pain and torment and loud preachers who make you feel bad about yourself, no no no, but a cleansing grace of the one who once was lost but NOW he is FOUND! (If you aren’t yelling “Amen” at the computer screen, we need to have a chat!)

What is worship to us here? We are called to respond in the same way that Isaiah has responded. With the holy and incredible experience of God in this room, literally in this room, we are totally unworthy. Admit your sins, be free of your pain, not because of fear or intimidation, but because of the grace that God is actively extending to you. What is worship here? Worship is a transformative cleansing.

So, how do we close this moment of worship? There has been so much incredible work of God done in this instance that surely it will end with perhaps a rousing chorus of “Just As I Am” or a Hillsong 11-minute work of art. Let’s see:

“8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” “

And, just like that, worship finally comes to you. Not in regards to your seeking the perfect, just-right church family that offers Krispy Kreme instead of Dunkin. Not in regards to your requirement for the perfect length of preaching. No, instead worship finally comes into your court right at the very end. God sends you an easy lob, “Whom shall I send?” He is asking right here, right now as you’re reading this message: Whom shall I send? So, finally, what is our final leg of worship listed here? Worship is our offering.

If there is one thing that we can glean from this image, from this powerful example of what is happening in worship, it’s surely this: worship is wholly and totally out of our league. Even we gathered together the greatest or the greats in the worship scene, Wesley, Tomlin, Hall, etc, then they couldn’t even scratch the surface of the power of God in the worship experience. When we focus so greatly on the shopping experience of worship, we miss the boat entirely on what is really happening in worship. It’s got nothing to do with us. It’s got everything to do with what God is doing IN us. And so I close by asking, whom shall He send?