"Worship Together: Many Styles, One Audience"
Luke 24:13-35 April 28/02
Intro: "Turn on the Yardlight - Comp'ny's Comin'!"
Once upon a time - long time ago, way back in the 50's and 60's - when I was just a wee little lad, the "world" in rural Ontario had a radius of about 5 miles. We had just enough advances in transportation and communication to make it easy to get around and extend our day (thanks to hydro) but not so much that the planet intruded on our doorstep. The roads were still gravel, so that slowed us down a bit. I say a radius of 5 miles because most of my parents' immediate family lived in those limits, so for my generation of kid cousins that was the edge of the known universe.
Anyway, back in the good ol' days, it was a big thrill on a Friday or Saturday night to see a flash of light on the living room walls, run to the window and - sure enough - there was a set of headlights coming in the driveway! "Turn on the yardlight," someone would yell: "Comp'ny's comin'!" A couple of minutes later we'd head to the front door to see who it was and welcome our guests. Then we'd make our way to the living room where for the next few hours stories would be told, crops compared, township politics rehashed, maybe a game of euchre played - in short, there was a "visit". Then towards 11 Mom would put the kettle on and we'd relocate to the kitchen for a bite to eat - a "bite" that had somehow been secreted away in the cupboards or fridge away from the grasp of the hungry farm labourers. Whatever it was, it was pretty well understood there'd be a nibble of some kind. As my uncle put it at least once, "Don't bother with pie if there's cake!" Usually by this time us youn'uns'd be bundled off to bed. But eventually the company rose from the table, put their coats and boots on, the car was warmed up and brushed off (if it was winter), and the sound of goodbyes and a car driving off made its way up to the far corner of the house where our eyelids were closed and homemade baking was ushering us into dreamland.
By today's standards, farm families didn't have a whole lot - no four-wheelers, computers, and only 3 channels of black-and-white TV (two channels of which were pretty much identical) - but we had just experienced a rich degree of relationship. Yes, there were stories we'd heard several times before, arguments and discussion, the sharing was probably not "deep" psychologically speaking - people might look at you strange if you got too emotional - but headlights in the driveway heralded people making contact. In the weekly evening interludes between stone-picking and the routine of milking cows twice a day, we were "comp'ny" to each other. A greeting - stories related - a snack at the kitchen table - then on our way: pretty simple really, but it hit the spot.
"Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts..." This verse in Acts 2(46) sounds a lot like those Friday night get-togethers: yet that's the earliest form of regular Christian worship. It was intimate. They shared stories, and reminiscences of the Saviour. They enjoyed a common meal. By God's grace, that's all it took to turn the world upside down. By such simple acts a fellowship was born, a communion in the Risen Lord that death would not sever.
Problem: Worship that doesn't "Work"
Yet somehow in many churches these days people don't feel like they're making contact with God. Worship for them just isn't "working" somehow. A Barna Research Group study found that 32% of all types of regular churchgoers say they have never experienced God's presence in worship. 44% haven't experienced God's presence in the past year. And the younger you are, the less likely you are to have a religious experience in worship. For too many, worship is boring instead of satisfying. Leonard Sweet says, "To say that the church's worship has become as dull and lifeless as a museum would be an insult to museums." (After all, museums have re-tooled to become more "hands-on" and interactive.) People don't feel they've made contact with God.
And in some churches, God probably doesn't feel like He's been able to make contact with people. The spiritual aspect of worship has been sacrificed in favour of entertainment. Warren Wiersbe observes that apparent success can get in the way of true worship. Some of the greatest churches on the continent know very little about true worship, but thrive numerically. Real worship poses a threat to power-hungry pastors, performance-centred musicians, and spectator church members. In 1993 John MacArthur wrote, "In the past half decade, some of America's largest evangelical churches have employe worldly gimmicks like slapstick, vaudeville, [and] wrestling exhibitions...to spice up the Sunday meetings. No brand of horseplay, it seems, is too outrageous to be brought into the sanctuary. Burlesque is fast becoming the liturgy of the pragmatic church." Robert Webber, professor of worship at Wheaton College laments: "contemporary worship has capitulated to pop culture...In worship many evangelicals are driven more by the market than they are by the Scriptures."
Worship is not entertainment. We do not sing songs or do anything else primarily to make ourselves "feel good". Worship will always have only an "Audience of One" - God alone. It is a danger, in reacting to traditional worship gone stale, that we switch to a contemporary style just to please the "customer" - er, "seeker" that we hope to attract. We risk making worship a "performance" to please the person in the pew rather than the Lord. Worship belongs to God! Kim Hill says, "Worshipping from the heart involves focusing all of our attention and affection on one thing.The result of ardent, disciplines focus is adoration, which should be reserved for God alone...Our goal needs to be magnifying the Lord with all our heart...Worship allows us to look at God in such a way that we can't see anything else - especially ourselves - at the same time.Heartfelt worship enlarges our view of God to the point that He fills the entire screen of our minds."
Maybe it will help us to re-discover worship that works by turning for a moment to look at that early Christian worship that happened in people's homes. What were the essentials in its original form?
Original Christian Worship: Telling & Table
The elements of worship we see in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus are similar to the flow of visiting in our farm home those Friday evenings back when I was young. First, meet'n'greet; second, recall & relate; third, eat & appreciate; finally, leave to live.
In Luke 24 verses 13-16, Jesus comes up and walks along with the two disciples, possibly a husband and wife. That's "meet'n'greet". Next, vv 17-24, He finds out what they've been discussing together (actually the same Greek root from which we get "homiletics" or the art of making sermons). They're recalling the distressing events of the past few days - their Master's death and the news of the empty tomb. Vv 25-27: Jesus launches into a long explanation of how their current situation relates to God's great plan foretold by the prophets; "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (What a sermon that must have been!) He relates their problem to God's eternal promises.
Vv 28-31, they persuade Jesus to stay with them for the night, though they still don't know it's Him. At the kitchen table He unexpectedly takes the bread and gives thanks for it (that's normally the host's role, not the guest's). At this point they recognize Him, and he disappears. That's the eating and appreciating. Then they get up and return at once to Jerusalem - they leave to live.
So there's a four-fold movement here - meet'n'greet, recall and relate, eat and appreciate, then leave to live. But the two central aspects revolve around Telling and the Table (or as we've come to call them through the years, Word and Sacrament). In the "telling" part of worship, we reflect on our dilemma (what's been happening in our lives) in light of God's overarching destiny and Good News. Jesus' sermon put the events of the past few days in a whole new light, as He explained how the Messiah had to suffer as foretold by prophecy. In the same way a good sermon gives us hope and understanding for our current situation by reminding us of the big picture in the Bible. In the telling, our story takes on new meaning in the light of Christ's own history and future He desires to share with us.
As it would be rude to shoo your company home without offering a bite to eat, so the Table or "breaking bread" is an important shared experience of God's nurture for the whole person, our creaturely beings. The Lord's Supper covers three time zones all at once: it's a flash back, a memorial of the Upper Room the night He was betrayed but loved His followers to the end; it makes Him present now in a mysterious way, being a sacrament combining His word with matter to symbolize or re-present His company with believers in real time; and it's an anticipation, a looking-ahead to the feast in heaven Jesus will share with those who are His. As we hold the bread and drink the cup, God's Spirit helps us to locate our time in Eternity, our life (with its joy and suffering) in the Lamb.
You can see the same core parts of Telling and Table in Exodus 24(7-11) when Moses has led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. He reads the Book of the Covenant (including the Ten Commandments) to the people. Then Moses and over 70 other leaders go up the mountain and eat and drink in view of God - a meal sealing the covenant, as was usual in that culture.
Or at the other end of the Bible in Rev.19(1-10), there again we find Telling and Table. The heavenly multitude celebrate God's victory over evil on earth. The 24 elders fall down and worship. Then there is an announcement saying how blessed are those people who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. John's response is to worship. So in both these cases you can discern that worship revolves around God's Word and the special meal.
Back in Acts 2(42), after Pentecost Luke summarizes the early church's activity in these words: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Telling and Table. Or look at Acts 20(7-12). Luke records, "On the first day of the week we came together to break bread" (that is, to have church). Paul spoke (that's Telling), on and on until midnight. The many lamps may have been a factor in a young man (Eutychus) falling asleep and falling three stories to his death, but with God's help Paul revives him. Luke adds, "Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate." (That's Table) "After talking until daylight, he left." Because Paul would never be seeing them again and had so much to share, they pulled an all-nighter church service. But apart from the accident, it was basically talking and eating.
Rousing Eutychus: While you were sleeping, the World Changed
Eutychus was in for a shock when he woke up: things had changed. He'd fallen 3 stories, died, and been resuscitated. Not what you normally want to have happen when you fall asleep! I understand there's a movie out (which I haven't seen) called Groundhog Day, in which a guy falls asleep and wakes up each day and it's always the same day. Kind of the opposite of Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep for 40 years, then woke up and everything was different.
Worship is boring and puts people to sleep in so many churches because the church, like Eutychus, has fallen asleep. It's now a different "story", there's been an entire revolution. These churches need to be resuscitated because, when it comes to relevance, they're at least half-dead! Leonard Sweet says, "The mainline church went to sleep in a modern world governed by the gods of reason and observation. It is awakening to a postmodern world open to revelation and hungry for experience. Indeed, one of the last places postmoderns expect to be 'spiritual' is the church. In the midst of a spiritual heat wave in the host culture, the mainline church is in the midst of a deep freeze."
Does culture matter if worship is primarily about focussing on God, our "Audience of One"? Culture doesn't have to change the substance of worship - the Telling and Table - but it will have a very big effect on the style of worship. The goal of the worship leader, with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is to usher people into an experience of God's amazing presence. But the person from a postmodern culture will be assisted to do that by different means than a person from the modern culture (which is rapidly fading from view). What's all this "postmodern" stuff about?
There have been 3 revolutions recently - in science, philosophy, and communications. Modern science viewed the world as a machine; it had a high estimate of human reason. But now we know that nothing stands still; the new science has moved away from rational comprehension and opened the door to mystery again. The world appears to be complex and mysterious.
In philosophy, we think differently about our world. It's seen as dynamic and interactive; we're all interconnected, not detached observers. We're participants in a community.
In communications, we used to use words and concepts - logic, analysis, linear sequence. (As a computer nerd with two degrees in science, I've been trained to be so left-brainy it's painful!) But postmodern communication is more symbolic; new catch phrases include "the primacy of experience", "knowledge through immersed participation", the "impact of the visual", the rediscovery of "imagination" and "intuition". Postmodern people "feel" their way through life rather than just think it. Robert Webber says, "The reason why so many people find worship boring is simply this: In our life in the world, we're aware of mystery, community, and symbol. But the majority of churches are still operating out of the old style of rationalism, individualism, and verbal communication. We've attempted to make the mystery of God understandable. We've turned worship into something we "watch" instead of "do". And our worship is dominated by words, words, words. Our worship style is that of the old world view, not that of the postmodern world." Or as Leonard Sweet contends, "Fifteen-minute sermons that are linear, point-making, position-taking and intellectualist are fourteen minutes too long." OUCH!
By contrast, a high school English class at Madill recently did an exercise using guided imagery, encouraging students to describe the forest they were travelling through, what the field looked like, what the bear did when it came up to them...then later interpreted their writing using psychology and symbolism. Although such an exercise tends toward New Age spirituality, that's the sort of thing postmoderns will gobble up, because it's highly personal and "truth for them".
How can churches keep worship relevant to people growing up in postmodern culture? Sweet sums it up as "EPIC" - experiential, participatory, image-based, and communal. We move from rational to experiential: tourism is such a fast-growing industry because it is experienced-based. Postmodern preachers don't "write sermons" but create experiences, bringing together all the senses.
We move from representative to participatory: Television is plummeting in popularity among postmoderns because it isn't nearly interactive enough. "With a wired universe, each person can be a programmer, not just an observer." In economics there are fewer "professionals" as more people become their own online stockbrokers. In religion there are no more "professional clergy" and pew-sitting laity: there are only ministers (you!) who look to leaders to mobilize and release ministry through them.
We move from word-based to image-driven: humans think in images, not words. Postmodern culture is "visualholic"; movies have replaced reading. Jesus taught using parables, word-pictures, which are so much easier for our mind to latch onto. The visual arts will become increasingly important in worship. Authors of the book Megatrends 2000 write, "The 1990s will bring forth a modern renaissance in the visual arts, poetry, dance, theatre and music throughout the developed world." RA Farmer notes, "We dare not give less quality in worship.If anything, we ought to give them better quality in the church than they observe outside the church, for we know the God who has inspired all that is excellent."
And we move from individual to communal: the internet is becoming less an information medium than a social medium. Postmoderns are disillusioned with the hyper-individualism of modern society. JS Miller writes, "There are more people in Generation X involved with volunteer organizations than any other generation ever.I believe this behaviour has been prompted, in part, by relational starvation.Most Gen Xers grew up in either a divorced home, a single-parent home, or an absentee-parent home.Some grew up with practically no home at all." What a hunger for relationship! What an opportunity to surround someone with God's love and caring!
Touched by An Angel Jesus in Song & Supper
So what can we take away from all this for our worship as a congregation? How can we become more "EPIC", allowing the Telling and Table to become God's avenue to touch lives with meaning?
We've already begun by intentionally using more contemporary music that's meaningful to boomers, busters, and gen-Xers. Col.3(16) says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." (Colossians 3:16) Jack Hayford comments, "This passage explicitly states that the fruitful implanting of God's Word is linked to singing and worshipping." Or consider Eph.5:18f: "...Be filled with the Spirit.Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord". Hayford notes, "God's Word is clear.If a person desires to walk in God's will, he or she must avoid the world's spirit and instead be filled with God's Spirit.Meaningful singing in worship is the way to do both." While Hayford warns us not to be tied to a hymnal, he also cautions us not to discard traditional hymns altogether; they "provide music that links us to our predecessors and has stood the test of time."
Leonard Sweet asks, "Why has 'praise' music had such a hard time of it in mainline circles? Partly because the modern age was temperamentally allergic to praise. The scientific method was a 'critical' method, and moderns were trained to critique, not to cheerlead - to assess, not to applaud." But worship is about applauding and exalting our Maker and Redeemer - so praise music can help us "loosen up" to do just that.
Sally Morgenthaler adds, "Music has the ability to access the human soul faster than anything else. Our whole society - especially those younger than thirty - craves the "medicine" of music...it shouldn't surprise us that God is harnessing music to tell people he loves them." In the large worship events she leads, Kim Hill says she wants "to use music to grab others by the hand and heart and to walk with them to God's throne of grace". Singing is something we can all do together at the same time before the Lord, blessing Him with our voices, appreciating Him in unison.
Besides singing, the other thing that would probably promote true worship amongst us is to rediscover the Lord's Supper. This meal was at the heart of early Christian gathering: Luke recorded gatherings as "breaking bread" not "having church". Somewhere along the way since the Reformation and Enlightenment we've adopted a head-heavy approach to Communion and lost the sense of joy, wonder, and mystery. But it's exactly that that postmodern culture yearns for. We enjoy wonderful fellowship times with each other after the service, cup of coffee or juice in hand; we just need to learn to push that back into the service of the Table during worship, and experience God's refreshing presence through the symbol.
A Presbyterian minister friend of Robert Webber who is a professor at a major evangelical seminary said to him, "Bob, if we don't restore the Eucharist to its rightful place in our churches, we are going to lose many of our children to the liturgical churches." People are moving already because they crave the healing presence of Christ at the Table. Notice the disciples at Emmaus - it was in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened and they beheld Jesus. Webber comments, "When the elements of bread and wine are taken in faith, the transforming and nourishing power of Christ for the salvation and the healing of the person is made available...[For such people] worship has broken through the lifeless nature of what, for some, may be an empty form and has opened them to the joy and healing that come from the gracious and active presence of Christ in the sacrament. Sometimes students or other persons struggling with a painful experience in their lives will come to me for counsel. I always say to them, 'I'm not a counselor and I don't have the tools necessary to help you with this problem. But I can suggest one thing - flee to the Eucharist. Get to the Table of the Lord just as fast as you can, because it is there that God can and does touch His people in a healing way.' In all the years that I have been giving this advice, not a single person has come back and told me it is not true. On the contrary, many have affirmed that God through the Eucharist reached into their pain and touched them with His healing presence."
When we join in real worship together, coming in Christ to honour our Father, the Holy Spirit turns on the yardlight in our hearts. "Comp'ny's comin'!" Builder, Boomer, Buster, Gen-Xer, makes no difference: Jesus is keen to hear our story, open our eyes and warm our hearts by His wonderful news. He'll even throw in a miracle at the Table! Let's pray.