Ride on in majesty?
Commentary
As the ship made her way down the channel, there was hardly a dry eye among those watching. Certainly, there was none after Her Majesty began to publicly well up at the sight of one of the last vestiges of English royalty being decommissioned. An era had ended with the final sail of HMS Britannia, the royal yacht. Those not used to living under monarchy may find such deep emotions a bit odd, but even in the more democratically inclined parts of the world, there is a sad feeling that the tide may be running out for old forms of authority. Nothing seems to be treated as majestically as it once was. Never again will an American president be able to hide a health condition in the way Franklin Roosevelt hid his polio from the public. No president, governor, or mayor in a post-Watergate world can count on much slack from the press. Judging by the dearth of clergy discounts, it seems that clergy are not treated quite as royally as they once were. The Internet has done much to dethrone the medical doctor as the sole source of health advice and guidance.
Then along comes Christ The King Sunday inviting us to consider that Jesus is not only friend, brother and fellow traveler, prophet and priest ... but King as well.
I think we clergy are in trouble here. The royal tide certainly seems to be running out: not only in the secular world but in the theological and religious sphere as well. For a while it seemed that no author could go wrong in selling the theory that the church through the centuries has been too tied to the ways of empire. Even the pope no longer wears a crown. Few congregations would tolerate the Herr Pastor style of pastoral care that thrived in the more imperial nineteenth century.
We bring a culturally and theologically inbuilt skepticism when we approach the lectionary texts for this Sunday. Most Americans are of democratic spirit. How can we understand the promise of a new David, and the gift of the one whom, being above every rule and dominion, has all things under his feet? We are much more comfortable with God dwelling with us than enthroned above us delivering humans to their final destiny.
Yet, some of Jesus' followers did ask by what authority Jesus cast out demons. While many academically minded are reluctant to line out how it will all end, the literally gifted make millions explaining the final judgment in excruciating detail. The battles rage in our nation over where it is appropriate to place the commandments that Moses brought down from on high. The tide may not have run out on the ideas that linger in these texts. Indeed we may be running against the tide if we fail to honor them.
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Certainly, for Ezekiel and his contemporaries, there was good reason to believe that the tide was running out on monarchy. Thoughts of how the old system had failed were bound to creep up on them as the Hebrews noticed Babylonian empire words creeping into their children's vocabulary, or found their daughters trying out the Queen Esther beauty cleanse, or seeing their sons thinking about a career in the Babylonia civil service. There is no doubt that for the moment the tide is running out for the old monarchy system as Judah experiences its low ebb.
The receding tide reveals a sad deep truth for Ezekiel. Judah has found itself in exile because of failed leadership that has tended more to its own needs than the needs of the people. In verse 8 preceding the lectionary reading, Ezekiel denounces a leadership that has left the people exposed in the desert to be plundered by wild animals.
Granted, Ezekiel seems to have been prone to wild visions but don't we recognize the feeling of being left high and dry to be devoured? Have not we felt the hot breath of ravenous beasts devouring pension funds while company CEOs tend to their perks and financial packages? Vultures with their schemes show up pecking away at vulnerable widows. All too often elephants and donkeys trample the truth as they leave political scandal in their wake. Good pasture needs to be secured for the lambs because some have fed off future generations leaving them exposed to financial debt and environmental bankruptcy.
Such ideas leave Ezekiel and us wondering if those who are exposed and hung out to dry to the point of being bare bones shall live again. How do people wander off so far from home to the point of such vulnerability? No doubt many of us can find a variety of things that have caused the sheep to go astray, including the mindless stupidity of the sheep themselves. However, for Ezekiel, it is failed leadership that is at the root of what has happened. Nonetheless, it is not failure of nerve or lack of training and skill. The flock has been exposed because of the false worship of the leaders who were charged with tending the sheep, not with tending the false god who has been enthroned in the temple.
One suspects that most of us can readily find the false gods that have been enthroned in our lives. It is not the free market but its enthronement and adoration as god that will lead us astray. It is false worship that leads us to believe that our help is in something other than the name of the Lord. Not a few churches have found themselves scattered and at their wits' end by the careerism of their clergy. It is often the self-adulation of true believers that diminishes truth by turning it into an all-encompassing ideology. The eighth chapter of Ezekiel is clearly the fork in the road where blue state and red state thinkers may find themselves diverging as to just what were the abominations that so repulsed Ezekiel as he viewed the goings on inside the temple. Just what they were we may never fully understand. However, it is how the preacher makes up his or her mind as to what is going on in the temple that will determine their application of this text to our current context.
For Ezekiel, the unraveling of the mess, the restoring of the community, and the returning of this people to their rightful place will be the activity of God. Whatever else it means, it involves God's identifying who has been left behind, exploited, and depleted to the point of leanness. It will require the establishment of new leadership as the result of God's shepherding, and in the movement of God we will recognize what true leadership is.
Ephesians 1:15-23
One of the more intriguing works by my artistic wife is a reproduction of a catacomb painting depicting the scene where Jonah is finally tossed from the ship toward the ravenous sea monster that awaits his arrival. So good is the reproduction, that you almost want to reach out and grab the ancient peeling paint. What must it have been like for the early Christians to see this story so graphically depicted? They must have seen and felt their own story in the tale of the one who was being pitched overboard into the darkness. The sense of things closing in around them and then sucking them under must have been all too familiar as they went about worshiping on the first day of the week while others were getting themselves into high gear for the week ahead. It must have been hard to hold onto the belief that they were riding the wave of the future as they went underground and found their status, standing, career, and scaling the heights of the local social scene all cast overboard. All for the sake of below-ground living with children asking, "Are you sure that this is the way ahead -- the wave of the future?"
In the midst of the controversies over circumcision and the inclusion of the Gentiles, the author of Ephesians writes, "I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers." Given "red state/blue state" battles on just about everything, given questions of who can be an equal part of the church community, and fundamental questions of church and state knocking at the door, I, too, am thankful for anyone who sees in the church something that looks like the wave of the future! As with Jonah, the ship seems to pitch up and down in a never-ending squall that has left some of us sea sick and pitched some of us out into a dark sea of doubt and depression.
In the catacomb depiction of Jonah, the figure cast into the ocean is balanced by the mast that, highlighted in gold, depicts the cross. When the eyes in your head are telling you that we are about to go under, seeing the church as the wave of the future giving one courage is clearly the work of the "eyes of the heart."
The eyes in the head see the might of Rome, the eyes of the heart see that the power to kill is not the same as the power to bury, as Pilate discovered. What is required to see with the eyes of the heart is the spirit of wisdom and revelation that the letter writer prays that his readers will have. It is this spirit that says at the graveside service that what we have here is not mere closure but what God may open in us through the life for which we give thanks. It is this spirit that, in the face of death, considers that the human task is less to hold on than to hand on the life that we have received. It is this spirit that sees the potential for new life even at the places where we are at cross-purposes.
Wisdom and revelation were, in the ancient world, thought to be the particular provinces of kings and emperors -- Caesar and Solomon. However, the below-ground crowd who sees themselves being pitched overboard finds themselves seeing with the eyes of the heart that they just might be riding the wave of the future. They see things this way because they partake of the royal power of the Christ who is, "above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come." These folks, viewed with the eyes of the heart are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Matthew 25:31-46
All my life I have been at less than my best whenever I get to the business of mathematics. I can be reduced to something of subhuman proportions any time I start down the road of balancing checkbooks, calculating cost benefit ratios, or determining budgetary consequences of my latest passions. For most of my life I have lived close to the seacoast where calculating the rise and fall of the ocean tides has been an important matter. Occasionally, my eyes drift in wonderment to the newspaper column that gives the rundown of the comings and goings of the ocean in and out of the capes and coves all up and down the coast. Just what mysterious formulas lay behind these predictions remains an impenetrable mystery to me.
The truth of the matter is that people have been in many ways trying to predict with a singular lack of success when their boat would arrive on the incoming tide. The movie, The Graduate, predicts that we will be swept up in a rising tide of financial prosperity from "plastics." As a child I watched Disney versions of the "Atomic Age" to come. The 1964 World's Fair featured the "Futurama" ride at the General Motors pavilion that clearly demonstrated that we would all, by now, be riding cars that operated from tracks in the road. Needless to say, we have come up somewhat short in the human ability to predict the future and adjust our lives accordingly.
Jesus' prediction of the future also remains enigmatic. It seems that neither the sheep nor the goats know what they are doing. Both are caught up in surprise results that come from the kind of lives they have lived. If there is a difference between them, it lies in the calculation of those who go into eternal punishment that it was not the wise move to meet the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the strangers, the sick, and those in prison.
It comes as a surprise to those who did connect to those on Jesus' list that anything was more at stake in what they did than the needs of the ones that they met. "And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' " Without calculation but acting out of connection with the plight and personhood of these least, they found themselves responding with clothes, drink, fellowship, and healing gifts.
Much is made of whether this story comes in defense of the needy in general or should the members of Jesus' family be understood as those who are his avowed followers? How quickly we get into trying to calculate what is precisely meant rather than enter into the story's emphasis on the lack of calculation by those who inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
Matthew has used chapter 25 to talk about what it means to stand before ultimate final judgment. Verses 1-13 cover a domestic situation as a family goes through the motions of a wedding feast. In verses 14-30, Matthew deals with the ultimate judgment that should be applied to our economic life. The final section of this chapter indicates that the royal judgment favors those who operate more out of their connectedness to the needy than their calculations that it is best not to respond. One wonders to what degree our system of governance favors this judgment. In domestic, economic, and political life we face the demands of and experience the grace of God.
In Canada, the final step in the lawmaking process comes when the governor general, as representative of the monarch, gives the royal ascent by a mere nod of the head. In this text we have the ultimate "royal" ascent by the representative of the "monarch" -- prophet, priest, and King.
Application
Many of us are, no doubt, gun-shy at the notion of finding gospel in anything that sounds like "Christ The King Sunday." Machiavelli suggested in The Prince that it was better for the ruler to be feared than loved. Perhaps that makes for good politics but for most of us it makes for bad religion. It does not seem to be what Jesus had in mind when he said "let the little ones come unto me and do not hinder them." While we may be a little sheepish about pledging all for "king and country," what we have enthroned as central and authoritative in our lives and country does matter. Ezekiel raises the question: What values have our rulers enthroned as worthy of their and our worship? Does the state grant the benefit of the doubt to the kind of judgment that is made in chapter 25 of Matthew? If it does not, do we have the courage to ride the wave that perhaps can only be seen with the eyes of the heart even though it may mean being tossed out of the boat in which everyone else is riding? I suspect that in many congregations it might be good preparation for the coming Advent season to raise the conversation to the discussion of law, rights, and royalty. After all, Joseph will have to consider whether he will take advantage of his full rights under the law in regard to Mary's unique situation. Herod's claim that all he wants to do is worship the newborn King is called into question. Many of the issues posed by Christ The King Sunday will be developed in the Advent season to come.
Alternative Applications
1) Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24. The Ezekiel passage, like Psalm 23, speaks of how the sheep are made to lie down. It does not say they were invited to lie down or that they were asked to lie down. Perhaps we are a bit uncomfortable about being forced to do something rather than be asked or invited. Yet, this does not always seem to be how God works with me as I drop to my knees in awe at the beauty of the night sky, or my congregation makes sure that I take my full vacation, or I drop with the kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to burn both ends of the candle. When friction builds up in human relationships from the daily grind, when heat builds up from being out of touch with the things that sustain me, when I am given a wakeup call to my own stupidities, or suddenly the light comes on, God may be more than suggesting that I lie down.
2) Ephesians 1:15-23. Both Ephesians and Ezekiel raise the question: What are the forms of worship, prayer, and praise that will support the mission of the faith community? In the sweeping issues with which the texts deal, we understand worship to be more than something that just makes people feel good. Worship should help people gain a feel for what God is doing and will do. Is the failure of those who are not sufficiently connected [to God, to the body of Christ] the result of misdirected worship?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 100
Whenever a would-be choir member tries to deflect an invitation to sing on the basis of tone deafness, the opening words to this psalm are applied. Pastor grins and says, "The scriptures say make a joyful noise, not that we should have perfect pitch!" While this response often puts a nervous soul at ease, it is more than that. It reveals the deep power of what it means to "worship God with gladness" (v. 2).
The words to this old favorite call to us through solidified layers of structure, organization, and institution. They shout out in disorganized celebration. They giggle in irrepressible gladness. And they dance in unrestrained joy. Praise the Lord!
Rather than organize a program, teach a class on doctrine, or participate in yet another spirit-numbing meeting, we are to make a joyful noise to our Lord! Moreover, this noise, as far as we can tell, is to be quite public. What noise would you make? A screech? A holler? A wild yell? Would you clap your hands or grab some sticks and bang out a dancing rhythm? One can already see people lining up with an eye toward organizing all this. But beware. This noise of praise and thanksgiving is not to be made in carefully rehearsed four-part harmony. It is to be unleashed with a degree of spontaneity that most religious folk would find suspect. A common joke centers around the oft-heard disclaimer that comes when an invitation to church is answered with, "Thanks, but I'm not into organized religion." And to this the inviter quickly responds, "You don't like organized religion? Well, you've come to the right place!"
No. This isn't an argument for spiritual anarchy.
It is, instead, a plea through the words of the psalmist to -- at least once in a while -- put away everything except the pure and unrestrained praise of God almighty. Think about it. If we "know that the Lord is God" (v. 3), if we understand that it is God who made us and that we truly belong to God (v. 3), then how could we do anything but throw our arms up and cheer? If, in the midst of this insane world of evil and betrayal, we know that God is good, and that God's love won't go away, it almost seems like any other response is less than authentic. Anything but joyful noises simply won't do.
So the question comes again. What joyful noise would you make? Go someplace, if you must, and shut the door in order to try it out. But in the end, invite some people ... maybe even a whole congregation to stop whatever they're doing and make a loud and joyful noise to the Lord.
Then along comes Christ The King Sunday inviting us to consider that Jesus is not only friend, brother and fellow traveler, prophet and priest ... but King as well.
I think we clergy are in trouble here. The royal tide certainly seems to be running out: not only in the secular world but in the theological and religious sphere as well. For a while it seemed that no author could go wrong in selling the theory that the church through the centuries has been too tied to the ways of empire. Even the pope no longer wears a crown. Few congregations would tolerate the Herr Pastor style of pastoral care that thrived in the more imperial nineteenth century.
We bring a culturally and theologically inbuilt skepticism when we approach the lectionary texts for this Sunday. Most Americans are of democratic spirit. How can we understand the promise of a new David, and the gift of the one whom, being above every rule and dominion, has all things under his feet? We are much more comfortable with God dwelling with us than enthroned above us delivering humans to their final destiny.
Yet, some of Jesus' followers did ask by what authority Jesus cast out demons. While many academically minded are reluctant to line out how it will all end, the literally gifted make millions explaining the final judgment in excruciating detail. The battles rage in our nation over where it is appropriate to place the commandments that Moses brought down from on high. The tide may not have run out on the ideas that linger in these texts. Indeed we may be running against the tide if we fail to honor them.
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Certainly, for Ezekiel and his contemporaries, there was good reason to believe that the tide was running out on monarchy. Thoughts of how the old system had failed were bound to creep up on them as the Hebrews noticed Babylonian empire words creeping into their children's vocabulary, or found their daughters trying out the Queen Esther beauty cleanse, or seeing their sons thinking about a career in the Babylonia civil service. There is no doubt that for the moment the tide is running out for the old monarchy system as Judah experiences its low ebb.
The receding tide reveals a sad deep truth for Ezekiel. Judah has found itself in exile because of failed leadership that has tended more to its own needs than the needs of the people. In verse 8 preceding the lectionary reading, Ezekiel denounces a leadership that has left the people exposed in the desert to be plundered by wild animals.
Granted, Ezekiel seems to have been prone to wild visions but don't we recognize the feeling of being left high and dry to be devoured? Have not we felt the hot breath of ravenous beasts devouring pension funds while company CEOs tend to their perks and financial packages? Vultures with their schemes show up pecking away at vulnerable widows. All too often elephants and donkeys trample the truth as they leave political scandal in their wake. Good pasture needs to be secured for the lambs because some have fed off future generations leaving them exposed to financial debt and environmental bankruptcy.
Such ideas leave Ezekiel and us wondering if those who are exposed and hung out to dry to the point of being bare bones shall live again. How do people wander off so far from home to the point of such vulnerability? No doubt many of us can find a variety of things that have caused the sheep to go astray, including the mindless stupidity of the sheep themselves. However, for Ezekiel, it is failed leadership that is at the root of what has happened. Nonetheless, it is not failure of nerve or lack of training and skill. The flock has been exposed because of the false worship of the leaders who were charged with tending the sheep, not with tending the false god who has been enthroned in the temple.
One suspects that most of us can readily find the false gods that have been enthroned in our lives. It is not the free market but its enthronement and adoration as god that will lead us astray. It is false worship that leads us to believe that our help is in something other than the name of the Lord. Not a few churches have found themselves scattered and at their wits' end by the careerism of their clergy. It is often the self-adulation of true believers that diminishes truth by turning it into an all-encompassing ideology. The eighth chapter of Ezekiel is clearly the fork in the road where blue state and red state thinkers may find themselves diverging as to just what were the abominations that so repulsed Ezekiel as he viewed the goings on inside the temple. Just what they were we may never fully understand. However, it is how the preacher makes up his or her mind as to what is going on in the temple that will determine their application of this text to our current context.
For Ezekiel, the unraveling of the mess, the restoring of the community, and the returning of this people to their rightful place will be the activity of God. Whatever else it means, it involves God's identifying who has been left behind, exploited, and depleted to the point of leanness. It will require the establishment of new leadership as the result of God's shepherding, and in the movement of God we will recognize what true leadership is.
Ephesians 1:15-23
One of the more intriguing works by my artistic wife is a reproduction of a catacomb painting depicting the scene where Jonah is finally tossed from the ship toward the ravenous sea monster that awaits his arrival. So good is the reproduction, that you almost want to reach out and grab the ancient peeling paint. What must it have been like for the early Christians to see this story so graphically depicted? They must have seen and felt their own story in the tale of the one who was being pitched overboard into the darkness. The sense of things closing in around them and then sucking them under must have been all too familiar as they went about worshiping on the first day of the week while others were getting themselves into high gear for the week ahead. It must have been hard to hold onto the belief that they were riding the wave of the future as they went underground and found their status, standing, career, and scaling the heights of the local social scene all cast overboard. All for the sake of below-ground living with children asking, "Are you sure that this is the way ahead -- the wave of the future?"
In the midst of the controversies over circumcision and the inclusion of the Gentiles, the author of Ephesians writes, "I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers." Given "red state/blue state" battles on just about everything, given questions of who can be an equal part of the church community, and fundamental questions of church and state knocking at the door, I, too, am thankful for anyone who sees in the church something that looks like the wave of the future! As with Jonah, the ship seems to pitch up and down in a never-ending squall that has left some of us sea sick and pitched some of us out into a dark sea of doubt and depression.
In the catacomb depiction of Jonah, the figure cast into the ocean is balanced by the mast that, highlighted in gold, depicts the cross. When the eyes in your head are telling you that we are about to go under, seeing the church as the wave of the future giving one courage is clearly the work of the "eyes of the heart."
The eyes in the head see the might of Rome, the eyes of the heart see that the power to kill is not the same as the power to bury, as Pilate discovered. What is required to see with the eyes of the heart is the spirit of wisdom and revelation that the letter writer prays that his readers will have. It is this spirit that says at the graveside service that what we have here is not mere closure but what God may open in us through the life for which we give thanks. It is this spirit that, in the face of death, considers that the human task is less to hold on than to hand on the life that we have received. It is this spirit that sees the potential for new life even at the places where we are at cross-purposes.
Wisdom and revelation were, in the ancient world, thought to be the particular provinces of kings and emperors -- Caesar and Solomon. However, the below-ground crowd who sees themselves being pitched overboard finds themselves seeing with the eyes of the heart that they just might be riding the wave of the future. They see things this way because they partake of the royal power of the Christ who is, "above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come." These folks, viewed with the eyes of the heart are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Matthew 25:31-46
All my life I have been at less than my best whenever I get to the business of mathematics. I can be reduced to something of subhuman proportions any time I start down the road of balancing checkbooks, calculating cost benefit ratios, or determining budgetary consequences of my latest passions. For most of my life I have lived close to the seacoast where calculating the rise and fall of the ocean tides has been an important matter. Occasionally, my eyes drift in wonderment to the newspaper column that gives the rundown of the comings and goings of the ocean in and out of the capes and coves all up and down the coast. Just what mysterious formulas lay behind these predictions remains an impenetrable mystery to me.
The truth of the matter is that people have been in many ways trying to predict with a singular lack of success when their boat would arrive on the incoming tide. The movie, The Graduate, predicts that we will be swept up in a rising tide of financial prosperity from "plastics." As a child I watched Disney versions of the "Atomic Age" to come. The 1964 World's Fair featured the "Futurama" ride at the General Motors pavilion that clearly demonstrated that we would all, by now, be riding cars that operated from tracks in the road. Needless to say, we have come up somewhat short in the human ability to predict the future and adjust our lives accordingly.
Jesus' prediction of the future also remains enigmatic. It seems that neither the sheep nor the goats know what they are doing. Both are caught up in surprise results that come from the kind of lives they have lived. If there is a difference between them, it lies in the calculation of those who go into eternal punishment that it was not the wise move to meet the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the strangers, the sick, and those in prison.
It comes as a surprise to those who did connect to those on Jesus' list that anything was more at stake in what they did than the needs of the ones that they met. "And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' " Without calculation but acting out of connection with the plight and personhood of these least, they found themselves responding with clothes, drink, fellowship, and healing gifts.
Much is made of whether this story comes in defense of the needy in general or should the members of Jesus' family be understood as those who are his avowed followers? How quickly we get into trying to calculate what is precisely meant rather than enter into the story's emphasis on the lack of calculation by those who inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
Matthew has used chapter 25 to talk about what it means to stand before ultimate final judgment. Verses 1-13 cover a domestic situation as a family goes through the motions of a wedding feast. In verses 14-30, Matthew deals with the ultimate judgment that should be applied to our economic life. The final section of this chapter indicates that the royal judgment favors those who operate more out of their connectedness to the needy than their calculations that it is best not to respond. One wonders to what degree our system of governance favors this judgment. In domestic, economic, and political life we face the demands of and experience the grace of God.
In Canada, the final step in the lawmaking process comes when the governor general, as representative of the monarch, gives the royal ascent by a mere nod of the head. In this text we have the ultimate "royal" ascent by the representative of the "monarch" -- prophet, priest, and King.
Application
Many of us are, no doubt, gun-shy at the notion of finding gospel in anything that sounds like "Christ The King Sunday." Machiavelli suggested in The Prince that it was better for the ruler to be feared than loved. Perhaps that makes for good politics but for most of us it makes for bad religion. It does not seem to be what Jesus had in mind when he said "let the little ones come unto me and do not hinder them." While we may be a little sheepish about pledging all for "king and country," what we have enthroned as central and authoritative in our lives and country does matter. Ezekiel raises the question: What values have our rulers enthroned as worthy of their and our worship? Does the state grant the benefit of the doubt to the kind of judgment that is made in chapter 25 of Matthew? If it does not, do we have the courage to ride the wave that perhaps can only be seen with the eyes of the heart even though it may mean being tossed out of the boat in which everyone else is riding? I suspect that in many congregations it might be good preparation for the coming Advent season to raise the conversation to the discussion of law, rights, and royalty. After all, Joseph will have to consider whether he will take advantage of his full rights under the law in regard to Mary's unique situation. Herod's claim that all he wants to do is worship the newborn King is called into question. Many of the issues posed by Christ The King Sunday will be developed in the Advent season to come.
Alternative Applications
1) Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24. The Ezekiel passage, like Psalm 23, speaks of how the sheep are made to lie down. It does not say they were invited to lie down or that they were asked to lie down. Perhaps we are a bit uncomfortable about being forced to do something rather than be asked or invited. Yet, this does not always seem to be how God works with me as I drop to my knees in awe at the beauty of the night sky, or my congregation makes sure that I take my full vacation, or I drop with the kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to burn both ends of the candle. When friction builds up in human relationships from the daily grind, when heat builds up from being out of touch with the things that sustain me, when I am given a wakeup call to my own stupidities, or suddenly the light comes on, God may be more than suggesting that I lie down.
2) Ephesians 1:15-23. Both Ephesians and Ezekiel raise the question: What are the forms of worship, prayer, and praise that will support the mission of the faith community? In the sweeping issues with which the texts deal, we understand worship to be more than something that just makes people feel good. Worship should help people gain a feel for what God is doing and will do. Is the failure of those who are not sufficiently connected [to God, to the body of Christ] the result of misdirected worship?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 100
Whenever a would-be choir member tries to deflect an invitation to sing on the basis of tone deafness, the opening words to this psalm are applied. Pastor grins and says, "The scriptures say make a joyful noise, not that we should have perfect pitch!" While this response often puts a nervous soul at ease, it is more than that. It reveals the deep power of what it means to "worship God with gladness" (v. 2).
The words to this old favorite call to us through solidified layers of structure, organization, and institution. They shout out in disorganized celebration. They giggle in irrepressible gladness. And they dance in unrestrained joy. Praise the Lord!
Rather than organize a program, teach a class on doctrine, or participate in yet another spirit-numbing meeting, we are to make a joyful noise to our Lord! Moreover, this noise, as far as we can tell, is to be quite public. What noise would you make? A screech? A holler? A wild yell? Would you clap your hands or grab some sticks and bang out a dancing rhythm? One can already see people lining up with an eye toward organizing all this. But beware. This noise of praise and thanksgiving is not to be made in carefully rehearsed four-part harmony. It is to be unleashed with a degree of spontaneity that most religious folk would find suspect. A common joke centers around the oft-heard disclaimer that comes when an invitation to church is answered with, "Thanks, but I'm not into organized religion." And to this the inviter quickly responds, "You don't like organized religion? Well, you've come to the right place!"
No. This isn't an argument for spiritual anarchy.
It is, instead, a plea through the words of the psalmist to -- at least once in a while -- put away everything except the pure and unrestrained praise of God almighty. Think about it. If we "know that the Lord is God" (v. 3), if we understand that it is God who made us and that we truly belong to God (v. 3), then how could we do anything but throw our arms up and cheer? If, in the midst of this insane world of evil and betrayal, we know that God is good, and that God's love won't go away, it almost seems like any other response is less than authentic. Anything but joyful noises simply won't do.
So the question comes again. What joyful noise would you make? Go someplace, if you must, and shut the door in order to try it out. But in the end, invite some people ... maybe even a whole congregation to stop whatever they're doing and make a loud and joyful noise to the Lord.
