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"First Person Singular"

Sermon by Dr. Kit Schooley
given February 18, 2007
on Psalm 84

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He's dressed in a baseball sort of way, wearing a Phillies jacket and hat. An arm, his left one, in the sleeve, but the rest is draped about his shoulders. He sits in the cab's backseat. Sitting doesn't capture it; he's on the seat's edge, glaring through the windshield while issuing warnings to the cabbie about cars and trucks darting from the right. He's all but driving the cab himself. They arrive at the ball park; he throws a $20 at the driver and rushes in the "Players-only" door.

The trainer spots him: "You cut it close Sonny, the manager is ready to send in Smitty."

Sonny strips off the jacket and hurries, runs, to the mound. His mind is still imagining a car sideswiping them as they came off Passyunk; all his muscles are anxious right along with him. He doesn't focus on the strike zone, and that batter 90 feet away is no Wilmington Blue Rock. By the second inning he's getting settled down, nearly ready to pitch his best. Problem is, the other team put up a 5-spot in the first. He is amazed he's even on the mound. He hears his A-league coach's voice: "Preparation makes all the difference Sonny!"

Preparation makes all the difference.

For a large number of worshipping people, this place we call sanctuary, and our worship here, is like a baseball game. Baseball is filled with rules, lots of them, and an even larger amount of subtleties hard to appreciate as a spectator. True baseball followers know Sonny doesn't stand a chance. Likewise, many people have a passing interest in worship, but just can't get excited about it, can't prepare for what it requires. Worship can seem to be filled with rules, gestures reminding one of the secret signals from a 3rd-base coach. But as someone said about God, the wonder is God can be found inside the sanctuary, among the quirky, flawed and broken ones who may have little in common, yet are bound to one another. So both God and worshipper find our coming together a bit awkward!

Christianity thrives on worship. Without it, a congregation might as well be without heart. Without it we're a pitcher who doesn't warm up. The act of worship is what makes us a church. All we do beyond it - teaching children, serving the poor, gathering in small groups, keeping up this building… all arises from encountering God in live worship! In praying, singing, confessing, hearing the Word, giving thanks, sharing our bounty, we mold ourselves into Christians. I can't say it enough: without worship we are not a people of faith, we are simply people impressed by Jesus, holding vague notions about respecting God.

But worship, ah that slippery act: worship. The place we're given the darnedest challenges: learn how to live with other people, then forgive them here, in the belief we will go out to forgive people even harder to forgive, and so come to see God in someone else, everyone else. After all, if you find God here, you can find God anywhere; out where everyone lives. Worship is like the pitcher's mound. Everything starts there and spirals out from what happens when the ball leaves the hand.

Hymnwriter Brian Wren puts it best.

"[In our worship,] as we sing together, we agree, in effect, not to be soloists or competitors, but to compromise with each other, listen to each other, keep the same tempo, love each other in the act of singing. We are reminded we are not a crowd, a mob, a swarm or a flock, but a united Christ-centered community. God is the audience for our song. No single participant receives recognition."(1)

We look for God in many places: mountaintops; Children's Hospitals; and living rooms as two people are praying together. But in the sanctuary we intend to be with God differently. What happens in worship? What ARE we preparing for? Recall the writer of Psalm 84. He (or she), from a pre-baseball world, is on a journey to the Temple, working her way toward "church," anticipating all that will be there.

He's picturing God, in a great sanctuary where birds nest in the rafters; an image of his own arises: nesting himself with God.
She crosses a dry valley, where, unexpectedly, springs arise, and water quenches. Her psalm sings about God's refreshment in the desert.

Again, he pictures the sanctuary with God bright-shining like a face turned to the sun. The psalm is a preparation for the worship of God, the getting ready business.

Most of us in this sanctuary live remarkably fragmented lives. We have work lives, social lives, family lives, and church lives. They overlap a bit, but mostly, we maintain their separation. Many of us will participate in, or have participated in, "Take Your Child to Work Day" so kids will have some notion of what we do with most of our waking hours. I would suggest we crave to have our several lives gathered up into a more coherent whole. Our world has whispered to us that we should wait; that will come when we retire (if we master retirement, or even do it.) Order comes later - we're told

And the meantime? Most Sundays, we consider ourselves fortunate to get out of bed, locate suitable clothing, swallow some coffee or juice, read the headlines, and scramble out the door, drive to church and slide into the pew in time for Paul's prelude. Add children, a partner, out-of-town guests to the mix, and the minimal goal of arriving in time for the first hymn may be the best one can do - getting there just in time to take the mound, so to speak.(2) If that continues, we'll finally be centered enough toward the middle of the sermon.

Yet, we deserve this credit: by gathering for worship weekly, we are saying worship matters; we want worship of God to be part of our life. Even so, it's difficult for worship to be a fulfilling part of our lives, let alone life-giving like water in the dry valley, if we don't prepare. Worship demands it.

Cindy Dunn, a member of a Presbyterian church in Airizona, talks about why she chose her congregation. "There was a lot of bad stuff going on a couple of years back," she begins. "When I came to church at first, people were nice to me. They spoke to me. I noticed it felt good. I didn't plan on telling them the marital part of my life. It was enough to have a worship part to offset the other. I began anticipating Sunday. I kept thinking of the name of that woman from last week, or last month. I began thinking about worship on Wednesday or Thursday. I noticed if a person hadn't seen me for a while, they would either touch my arm, or offer a hand or hug. I felt like it was just part of Sunday morning - to be with ones I was coming to care about, in a cautious way. It isn't about me. This is a first-person plural religion, I found. It's about we, not me. Then one day I looked back, and I had crossed some bridge. I remember just hoping someone would ask me about the events of my life. I didn't want to lead the many lives that I seem to have fallen into."(3)

So it goes, a wave in the parking lot, a smile at the entry in the pew, a tap on the shoulder to let you know someone is behind who remembers you, a conversation in the Holy Toast Cafe which may not be with a long-loved friend now moved away, but is a conversation with one whom you share something in common - a desire to be bonded to God, and bonded to all who are claimed by God. First-person plural. There you are - on the other side of the bridge, looking back on the planned cautious conclusion - we'll worship here - for a while, till something better came, or till this was home.

How do you get ready? How does anyone get ready for God's stated plan that you'll be yanked out of your usual stance - to be cautious, see if you fit in - while God is planning an eternal embrace, a hug that won't let you go. And in exchange for the hug, you'll be asked to love the world, all of it. Your neighbors whom you already like (or don't), and the homeless guy on Adams Street who holds up the Sunday News-Journal for sale. You come to know about him because at church you're asked to help with dinner on a Sunday night at Friendship house and he walks in and you serve him the casserole. He looks worn by the weather, and by life, and you know what it is to be joined a world like God expects. How do you get ready for that?

It's a lot. This is the act that will eventually ask much. It's a weaving, a knitting. It's where our story is knit into God's larger one. Woven, us with God. First-person plural.

Amen and Amen.

NOTES

1. Brian Wren, Praying Twice: The Music and Words of Congregational Song, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2000, p. 84

2. The Work of the People: What We Do in worship and Why, Gilber, Brundy, Myers and Perdew, Alban Institute, 2007, p.20.

3. "Worship as a Vision-Building Work of God" by Brian Paulson, in Congregations Winter, 2007, pp 24-25.

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