I am a United Methodist Christian Because Worship Has More Than One Expression

“I Am a United Methodist Christian Because…Worship Has More Than One Expression”  - Sermon Series Week #4 
Pikeville UMC 
September 23, 2018 

Review series
Throughout the month of September, we are exploring our heritage as United Methodists, and what makes us unique, through a sermon series entitled, “I am a United Methodist Christian Because….”   

Throughout this series, I have made two very clear statements.  First, the United Methodist Church is part of the larger Christian family which means that we are unapologetically Christian.  Our faith is in Christ.  And, secondly, we do not believe that we are the only Christians or that we are “more Christian” than other Christians.  To be United Methodist is to be ecumenical.   

While we are inherently an ecumenical people, it is okay to say there is something unique about being a United Methodist Christian; something worthy of celebrating.  I compare it to a combination lock.  This particular lock has numbers from 0-39.  Mathematically speaking, that means there are 64,000 possible combinations to find the correct three numbers required to open this lock.  Other combinations open other locks, we have been talking about the right numbers for us.

In the first week of the series, I stated that, “I am a United Methodist Christian Because Salvation is only the beginning of the journey.”  We examined what it means to continue our journey of faith after our initial saying “Yes” to Jesus.  We spoke of a journey towards sanctification – the refining of our faith and perfecting of our love for God and what that means – as well as what it does not mean.  

Two weeks ago, I explained that “I am a United Methodist Christian Because of the Beautiful Way the Head and the Heart Meet.”  Our Christian experience is one that engages our entire being and that includes our heads and hearts.  How we think and what we feel are very important to us as followers of Jesus.  

Last week, we noted that our heritage as a people called “Methodist” challenges us to be holy in our relationship with God as well as in our relationship with our fellow human beings.  We are to see this world with the eyes of God and respond accordingly to the needs we see.

John 4: 4-24 (NIV)

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” 

Introduction

For several years, I had the privilege of speaking to new pastors preparing for their first appointment during the License to Preach School about preaching and worship planning.  In preparing for my initial conversation related to worship planning, I gave some thought to what I knew about our annual conference.

There are roughly 805 churches in our annual conference.  They are found in places like Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green and Covington – places you have heard of and probably been.  They are also found in places like Gravel Switch, Slip Up and Stark – places you may have never heard of and probably haven’t been.  

Kentucky United Methodists attend worship services in massive sanctuaries filled with hundreds of people, but they also attend small rural churches where 25 in worship constitutes a wonderful accomplishment.      

There is no way that one type, one expression of worship can possible connect with all those people.  

Jennifer feels she is really worshiping when two or three of her favorite praise songs are strung together, each one taking her higher than the one before. Robert’s passion for Christ soars on the third verse of the great Wesleyan hymn, "And Can It Be?" Tanya doesn’t feel like she is really reaching God until the decibel level reaches sonic boom proportions. Vincent will tell you that God gets through to him only in the silence.  Irene thinks angels sing in the organ pipes. 

The great English Baptist preacher, C.H. Spurgeon was said to have referred to the music department of the church was the “war department”.  Well, he meant that many of the spiritual battles were won by the church through its music.  Unfortunately, today, the concept of music as the “war department” of the Church may have a second meaning – that of a battle fought over the style of worship.  

People have always fought over worship style.  It’s been said that the first battle over worship occurred when Cain killed Abel because he was jealous that Abel’s sacrifice was deemed acceptable by God.  In the last 25 years or so, we have seen the birth and hopefully the death of what has been referred to as “the worship wars.”

A worship war occurs when a body of believers begins to engage in conflict over the style of worship that the community will utilize in its corporate worship – particularly as it relates to music.  Over the centuries, the skirmishes have been over different symptoms but there has a common illness.  The skirmishes were over things like:

·               Do we chant the psalms or is it okay to sing hymns?

·               Is it okay to sing hymns utilizing secular hymn tunes?  There is a classic story in which Charles Wesley took a bar tune by the name of “Nancy Dawson” which employed lewd lyrics and changed the words for use in the early Methodist open air evangelistic services, but he is reputed to have said to his brother John something to the effect that, “We can’t use these in worship because they are vile.”

·               Can we use instruments in worship?

·               Should we use multimedia in worship?

The skirmishes are really about style and preferences.  What I like is right.  If someone likes something else they are wrong.  Not only are they wrong, but because we are in the context of the church, they are wrong and thus, “unholy.” 

As you might imagine, I think there’s a problem with that mindset.

When we baptize our preferences to the status of sacred what we are really engaging in is idolatry.  We lose sight of what it means to truly worship.

This week, I ran across a wonderful definition of the word “worship”.  It comes from the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, which read, “Worship is to honor with extravagant love and extreme submission.” 

As great a definition as I believe that to be, it is somewhat incomplete from a Christian perspective.  The Greek word most commonly connected with worship in the New Testament, is the word “proskuneo” which generates the image of one who enters into the presence of a king and bows before him as a sign of reverence and respect. 

Somehow, the concept of a “worship war” doesn’t jibe with that understanding.

As I was thinking about my presentation to the future pastors, I began to list the different styles of worship – especially as it relates to music – that one will find in the churches of the Kentucky Annual Conference.  Even now, as we speak, several of these are happening simultaneously.  I stopped my list – at least – 7 styles of music and worship.  I know these are valid because I have experienced each one of them at some point in my journey as a United Methodist over the last 30 years.  They are:

·      Country/Bluegrass – “Wayfaring Stranger” – guitar, banjo, mandolin

·      Southern Gospel/Gaither – “Beulah Land” - piano

·      Country & Wesleyan – “Victory in Jesus” AND “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” – electronic organ/ upright piano

·      Classical “High Church” (Killer B’s – Bach, Brahms and Beethoven) – pipe organ and a grand piano

·      Blended – which utilizes both hymns and praise and worship genre – new arrangements of “Amazing Grace” – keyboards/guitar

·      Multi-sensory, Multimedia, “Contemporary” worship –“Oceans” and “Reckless Love” – full bands

·      Racially and ethnically influenced worship – African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American

 In all seven of these expressions, I have experienced a divine encounter and yet, I still witness worship wars.  How does that happen?

I cannot help but believe that worship wars are ultimately less about worshipping God than getting my own way.  As I have discovered as a pastor, when we fight in church, very often the last thing we are fighting over is what we say we are fighting over.  Worship wars can – and frequently do – serve as a distraction to larger issues.  

That certainly seems to have been the tactic of the woman at the well.  

Text

Jesus and his disciples are in the region of Samaria.  That they are there at all is quite unusual.   Jews and Samaritans, as a rule, despised each other.  Any self- respecting Jew would have crossed the Jordan River to the East Bank, walked past the region of Samaria and then recrossed the river into Galilee.  It added considerable time in the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee, but at least they would have avoided interacting with people they deemed ethnically impure – and that suited the Samaritans just fine. 

Yet, here we are.

While his disciples have gone to look for lunch, Jesus sits by a well and there he encounters a woman.  At that time, drawing water from a well was a chore primarily taken care of by women or children.  Most of the women would have come early in the day with, perhaps, some coming in the evening but few, if any, would have come in the middle of the hot day.  And, yet, here is where we find this woman who is, without question, an outcast of the community.  

Over the course of the next few minutes Jesus engages her in a conversation.  Everything about this conversation is mind blowing:

·               Jesus is fully God and fully human.  This woman is only human.

·               Jesus is a male and she is an unrelated female

·               Jesus is a Jew and she is a Samaritan.

Jesus shouldn’t be there and certainly shouldn’t be talking to this woman, but he is.  Gender and ethnic lines were not flexible.  This shouldn’t be happening, but it is.  Something’s up.

After some banter, Jesus abruptly changes direction in the conversation.  He didn’t even give her what we in the Knipp household call a “conversational blinker” to warn her, he just asks her to go get her husband.  In doing so he’s exposed a deep wound because she’s been married five times and is now living with a man who’s not her husband.  

Stung by Jesus’ knowledge of her life, the Samaritan woman cleverly attempts to pull her own conversation blinker by changing the subject from her personal life to the smoke screen of a worship war.  She wants to talk about the differences between how Jews and Samaritans understand the how’s and where’s of worship.  

Jesus, however, isn’t falling for it.    

The time is now when God the Father will be worshipped neither in Jerusalem nor on Mt. Garazim. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.  In other words, the place of worship is not as important as the integrity with which you bring to worship.  If you want to talk religion, he is saying, that is fine, but the most important subject in religion is God and your relationship with God. 

The styles we use to worship the Lord God and the places where we worship the Lord God are far less important to worshipping God with integrity, vulnerability and humility.  

Jesus’ conversation with the woman is so powerful, so amazing that it changes her life.  She forgets that she’s an outcast and runs into town looking for the people she’s been avoiding to tell them about Jesus.  She’s so convincing the people go out to see him and – unlike the reception Jesus receives from many Jewish communities – he’s actually asked to stay by the Samaritans.

Conclusion

In this passage, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman – and us – that his true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth.  This includes both the expressive nature of our worship (the spirit) and the authenticity of our worship (the truth).  As we noted last week, we are called to love the Lord with our total being – heart, soul, mind, and strength.  

"Expressive" worship does not mean that worship must be loud nor does it indicate any particular physical posture.  It simply means that worship comes from our spirits and involves our total being.  Moreover, worship is a lifestyle response to God, not just something done through music at church.  Worship includes daily loving God according to His teachings found in Scripture as well as with heart and emotions focused on Him.

Sometimes, people attempt to engage me in conversation about worship styles and my preferences.  They find it difficult to believe when I say no one style of worship speaks to my heart more than another.  As long as God is glorified, as long as Jesus is lifted up, as long as I am engaged by the Holy Spirit, I have worshipped.  The key to worship is not such much the “how,” but the “who”.

Ultimately, the key is Jesus.  May it always be so.  In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit…. Amen.