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"To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God" (William Temple). "To worship is to change. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. If worship does not change us, we have not truly worshipped." So begins the chapter on worship in Richard Foster's book, The Celebration of Discipline.

During the children's sermon, when the children are having a tough time with a question, and I turn around and ask you to tell me, say, the Ten Commandments, do you get nervous? Uncomfortable? Many of you have said that you do. That's because most of us come to worship to sit back and relax, not to work! To receive, not to give! To be entertained, not to participate!

Maybe we need to turn our whole understanding of worship upside down and inside out. The word "liturgy" does not mean "the work of the pastor." Nor does it mean "the work of the worship leaders." The word "liturgy" literally means "the work of the people." To worship is to change. To stand before the Holy One of all eternity is to change. If we leave worship and we have not been changed, we have not truly worshiped.

One of my seminary professors said that true worship is fully living out the Sh'ma, the prayer that Jews pray three times a day, "Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." It was this prayer which Jesus turned into his "Greatest Commandment." True worship, therefore, would be to live out Jesus' commandment to love.1

Are you ready to worship?

To let the living God turn your life upside down and inside out?

King David knew how to worship! He worshiped with his whole being -- poured out the deep, passionate love he had for his Creator with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. As David and the 30,000 chosen men of Israel carried the ark of God into the holy city of Jerusalem, "David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals ... and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet."

David was so fully immersed in worshiping the Lord, in fact, that he did not realize that his linen ephod, the small ceremonial apron in which he was attired, was leaving him fully exposed to the whole company of Israel! King David in all his naked glory!

It is for this reason that his wife, Michal, "despised him." In the passage immediately following today's text, we read that after this festal worship celebration: "David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, 'How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants' maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!' "

David said to Michal, "It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor."

Michal was not truly worshiping. True worship is not a spectator sport. She wanted to sit in her comfortable choir loft and critique David's performance as he worshiped. By comparing and contrasting David and Michal, let us explore true worship as that which turns us upside down and inside out.

First, what would it mean for us to let worship turn us upside down? For a children's sermon I once asked all of the children to stand on their heads, and to tell me what they saw. Metaphorically speaking, worship changes our perspective. It should turn us upside down because, as another seminary professor said, "True worship, like true prayer, is God-ward."2 Our worship is toward the Lord of heaven and earth, toward the Holy One, toward the One who is beyond us, toward the transcendent One. Worship is God-ward, upside. My worship is not addressed toward you, but toward God; your worship should not be toward one another or toward me, but toward God. David was so caught up in worshiping God (upside) that he didn't notice his revealing ephod. Michal was so caught up in watching David and his revealing ephod (down, human-ward) that she forgot to worship. David worshiped with his whole heart, mind, soul, strength, and body! Michal seems not to have worshiped at all. David refuses to accept Michal's critique. You can almost hear the aching, pleading in his voice, as he challenges Michal to get over herself, and join in worshiping the Lord.

How about you? Is your worship God-ward? Or are you sometimes focused on a lower plane? For example, I confess that when I was a child, I would sit in my pew and watch the members of my congregation filing up for holy communion. They would kneel at the altar, about twelve at a time, receive the sacrament, then walk back to their pews. As I child I would focus on the different hats the ladies were wearing! But once God's Word grabbed hold of me, once God's Word cracked me open, my focus became Godward. The mystery and miracle of the sacrament was what I would ponder as we celebrated the sacrament of holy communion.

David worshiped in spirit and in truth. Michal noticed peoples' hats. True worship flips our normal human focus upside down. True worship is Godward.

The Word of God is alive and active. We are never to dare to approach the living Word of God by sitting back and relaxing! It is alive and active and sharper than a two-edged sword. It was written for you and me today every bit as much as it was written for those who lived thousands of years ago. It is not a children's sermon where you can sit back and relax. It's a children's sermon where you as a child of God are expected to participate. Nor is worship a place where we come to have our minds stimulated, and are given something to think about. It's a place where we engage the living God -- the Holy One of all eternity -- and so we leave and we change and our whole lives are turned upside down.

Let's get specific. This day, do we dare to enter the text about David and Michal and let it change us? Do we dare stand on our heads and see things from a different angle? Do we dare to let ourselves be turned upside down by God?

True worship is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. True worship is to let the power of the living God live in you.

Remember the movie Jurassic Park? One of the best parts of that movie was when the funky, bohemian scientist said: "Your theme park idea won't work! The life force is too great -- too powerful -- too explosive! It will find a way to burst out of the boundaries -- out of the bindings you've constructed for it!"

That's what happens when we worship the living God! I always sign my letters "In Christ our Life," with a capital "L." God, Christ, the Holy Spirit is the Way, the Truth, the Life. In the resurrection we see that all the Force, the Power of Life, is in Christ breaking through the bindings/cloths of the grave, bursting out of that cave, rolling that stone away, exploding all of the boundaries we had constructed for him -- for Life.

My father's mother was a woman who, like David, worshiped God with her whole being. My grandmother, like David, was full of Life, lived life passionately. She loved to eat and drink and celebrate life. She had a gentleman friend till the end of her life. She dressed vibrantly, with colors and flowers, and hats. She loved flowering gardens. After she died, my parents moved into her home for a time. Each spring, in the strip of grass in the middle of her concrete driveway, bright, vibrant, colorful lilies would burst into life. My father, like Michal, would complain because he wanted to park in the driveway, and the foolish flowers got in the way! But I loved it, because like the funky, bohemian scientist said, like David said to Michal, you cannot stop the unstoppable power of the One who is Life!

Like David, I sometimes worship God with dance. One Lent the Clergy Association in our town hired a dancer and choreographer to work with a group of volunteers on a dance for our community worship service on Good Friday evening. I was one of the participants. As the scripture immersed us in the story of Christ's Passion, so we entered the dance of death. At the conclusion of the Passion story, all of us dancers wound ourselves into a long piece of fabric symbolic of the grave cloths -- the cocoon of the tomb. There was a pause. Silence. Darkness. We then slowly began unwinding from our chrysalis in the dance of new birth, like butterflies, like spring, like resurrection. I am not certain what those sitting in the congregation experienced, but for us who danced the experience was so moving that Holy Saturday I felt much like David bringing the ark into Jerusalem. I could not stop dancing! My children and I were decorating Easter eggs, blasting old rock and roll music on the stereo: "Wild Thing!" As we often do, we began to dance around the kitchen and the dining room. My youngest child reached up, "Mama, spin me, pick me up, swing me, dance with me!" Our dance was Godward. Our dance, like David's, was with our whole hearts, minds, souls, and strength. We danced the victory dance of Life -- the dance of Easter.

I hope someday, when my children are old, and I am in my grave, that as they prepare their dinners, set their tables, wash their dishes, and decorate their Easter eggs, they play music, and start to dance. I hope they scoop up their children's children and dance wildly the victory dance of Life, and remember me, and know that I'm still dancing! I hope that they remember David, and know that he's still dancing!

Today the victory dance of Life bursts forth in music, flowers, children's excitement, beauty, springtime, the love of family gathered, of this family, the Christian family, the family of the One who burst the bonds of death, the One who explodes in you and me in unstoppable Life!

Saint Francis said to the almond tree, "Sister, show me the love of God," and she bloomed! And so should we. So should we.

Do we, like David, dare to let God turn us upside down?

How about inside out? Remember, true worship is to live out the love commandment. The love commandment has two parts: the Upside Down part -- that is, loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength -- and the inside out part -- loving our neighbors as ourselves. "For if you cannot love your sister or brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?" (1 John 4:20).

True worship will change us from the inside out. God's explosive new life will burst forth from us toward others. This, I think, is why the people of Israel loved David. Because his worship was pure, it changed him from the inside out. As he loved his God, so he also loved the people of God, his neighbor as himself. Because Michal did not truly worship, she despised David, her husband, her "neighbor."

"So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23-24). You cannot worship God in spirit and in truth and mistreat or despise your neighbor in whom God dwells.

An old man sat riding a bus, a gorgeous bouquet of vibrant, colorful flowers upon his lap. A young woman, visibly sad, upset, got on the bus. For the entire ride, she could not take her eyes off those flowers. Finally the old man rose to get off at his stop. He thrust the bouquet in her lap. "I noticed you couldn't take your eyes off these. I think my wife would like for you to have them. I'll tell her about it. I know she'd want me to give them to you." He stepped off the bus and walked a short way through the gate of a cemetery, his gift of beauty, of color, of Life, turned from the inside out, helping to unbind the young woman from her wrappings of death.

This turning inside out was taking place yesterday at the clean-up of our church grounds. As we raked away dead, brown leaves we helped to set free the green shoots struggling toward life beneath. As we pruned, and untangled, and dug out all of the dead stuff of winter, we helped to clear the way for the new life beneath it all. Let us this day begin to be about doing that for each other.


This turning inside out can be seen gently and explosively in a man I've known for many years. He has grown children. He has a beautiful, bright, professional wife. He is a pillar of his church. When I was his pastor I loved and respected him, but suspected that he might have an alcohol problem, for alcohol could be detected on his breath early in the morning at church when he shook my hand. He had always functioned. He was a successful, productive member of the community. He was a committed leader in the church. We never talked about it.

He came to see me recently. He showed up at my office, sat down, and stared at me with a smile that was uncontainable. "Guess what?" he burst out like a child who couldn't wait for me to open a gift he had made. "What?" I asked. "I've quit drinking." He poured out his story without stopping. "This past Christmas was the first Christmas I've celebrated with my family sober since the children were small. It's like I've been reborn. It's like our marriage has been reborn." The grave cloths of alcoholism have been thrown aside, rolled up and tossed away. The power of the resurrection has been made possible by others who helped to roll the stone away, who helped to unbind him, who helped turn him inside out. "I want to make you an offering," he said. "If there is ever someone in your church, or in the community, who is an alcoholic and wants to stop, give them my name and number. You have my permission." True worship turned him inside out. True worship means that we, like this man, love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength; and that we love our neighbor as ourselves.

So often when people leave church they shake hands with the pastor and say, "Good sermon, Pastor." But remember, true worship changes us. Saint Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." If we have truly worshiped, then our lives, like David's, will be turned upside down and inside out. Our lives will preach the gospel. Our lives will reflect our worship. Our lives will embody our love for God and for our neighbor.

To worship is to change. To stand before the Holy One of all eternity is to change. If we leave worship and we have not been changed, then we have not truly worshiped.

So today if you say to me, "Good sermon, Pastor, " I will respond, "That remains to be seen."

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1. Dr. Phil King, Professor of Old Testament at Boston College, in the class, "Eighth Century B.C. Prophets," spring, 1983.

2. Dr. Krister Stendahl, Professor and Dean, Harvard Divinity School, in the class, "Worship and Prayer," spring, 1983.