How we worship…and does it matter? (Pt. 1)

Posted in Liturgical Church by Matt Marino

When the subject of worship “style” comes up, people generally start getting antsy. We stop listening and begin forming our objections. The young among us say, “I can worship any way I like.” The more mature, recognizing the self-centeredness of statements like this, will rightly counter with Paul’s limitations on Christian liberty, (1 Cor. 10:23-33) but go on to say, “How we worship is optional, subject to the preferences of the unbeliever, and not mandated by Scripture.” Whether or not that is true will be the subject of a later post.

Let us suspend those arguments for a moment and ask why worship matters… Passages of Scripture that immediately come to mind include the first two commandments, the Psalms, the practice of Jesus both in private and corporate worship (In the gospels we often see Jesus in the synagogue, temple, & private prayer. Jesus begins his ministry at Baptism and ends it with instituting the Lord’s Supper before going out to pray on his way to the Cross to lay down his life. The life of Jesus is surrounded and ordered by worship.) In the book of Revelation, the last thing we are doing is engaged in the “chief end” of humanity, in the words of the Westminster Confession, “to worship God and enjoy him forever.” Indeed, It appears an inescapable fact that all humans, regardless of religion or irreligion, worship something. We were made to worship.

How then, I wonder, can we say, that the manner in which we worship does not matter? Unless, of course, the object of our worship does not matter.

What if we assume three things about worship, simply because it is true of all of the Christian life: First, that what other Christians have done and thought through time is relevant. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Asking how those who stood closest to Jesus worshiped, is surely wise. Second, that the aspirations of our youngest members is relevant, since they will carry the baton when we are gone. Third, that we are part of a universal church, “one holy catholic and apostolic,” …that we are umbilically tied to every Christian in every corner of the globe, so their practice is also relevant.

Interestingly, On all three of those assumptions, the question arises, “What about liturgy?” After all, It is the way the first Christians worshiped and is the worship pattern enjoyed by 90% of all Christians who have ever walked the earth. Liturgy is also making a comeback among young evangelicals in unlikely places like PhoenixOne, a 1000 person young adult gathering, and on the stage of the church that invented the non-denominational “seeker movement,” Willow Creek. Third, it is the form of worship utilized by 2/3 of the Christians on the planet today. So you might want to check liturgical worship out, if only to see what the cool people are doing. Ok, so I’m joking. Sort of.

The most important thing about liturgy is that it isn’t taught, it’s caught…or, more accurately, something you get caught-up in it…like being tossed into a cold swimming pool by the older kids in elementary school.

The Greek word leitourgia comes from two root words – laos, “the people”, and ergas, “a work”. Therefore, you will hear it said that liturgy is “the work of the people.” That’s a little bit true since liturgy is participatory…the term “pew aerobics” comes to mind. Liturgy does involve all of you in worship – your whole body, which is important because our hearts and heads follow our bodies. You know that intuitively if you have raised your hands or bowed down in worship.

But “work that people do” is not really the meaning of “liturgy” at all. leitourgia was the word to describe an act of public service initiated by a wealthy benefactor. For instance, a person of means might build a temple and foot the bill, but the work itself benefited the community. Any public work done in service to the gods, but for the benefit of the community was liturgy. So liturgy is work dedicated to God, initiated for people, and which serves to transform the world–and that is the big meaning: liturgy is about the faith community being transformed for the purpose of going out and transforming the lost world. And a transformed community that couldn’t stop sharing the Good News is exactly how 11 scared dudes turned the most powerful empire in the world upside down in less than 300 years.

So liturgical worship is for God, transforms us, and benefits a lost world. Who wouldn’t want that?

17Dec2012

“Get your head in the game!” Seeing our need for a Savior.

Posted in Spiritual Encouragement by Matt Marino

A Sermon: Luke 3:7-18.

John has quite the attention getter for his message. I wonder what it would do to Sunday church attendance if preachers today opened sermons the way John did: “You guys…You. (pointing around the room) Guys…are a bunch of poisonous snakes. What are you doing here? Who warned you that God is about to play whack-a-mole and you’re the mole?” As I recall, the first lesson in high school speech was “Don’t insult your audience.” John the baptizer apparently took a different elective.

Last week we learned that John was appointed a task even more difficult than his outfits and diet: Preparing the way for the messiah. How does one prepare the way for the Savior of humanity? What does one do and say to “make straight the paths of the Lord”? The answer was a one-word message: “Repent!” Repent is a word your Bible translators left un-translated. Literally it means: “Change your mind.” Today we might say, “Get your head together!”

When John was preaching this sermon Jesus was still under wraps… he has not yet began his 3-year public teaching ministry. Not yet come, in his words, “to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

How does “getting our head together” prepare us for Jesus’ coming? Receiving a savior presumes we realize that we need one. That, in a nutshell, is John’s task…

Story: Remember the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles? Steve Martin is stuck on a trip home for the holidays with a somewhat deranged shower ring salesman played by John Candy. In one scene they get turned around while driving at night. They end up on the wrong side of the freeway. A car on the other side of the guardrail realizes the error and the couple inside furiously motions for Martin and Candy to roll down the car window. The couple in the car shouts at our protagonists, “You’re going the wrong way!” “What?” “You’re going the wrong way!” Martin and Candy are oblivious. They think the couple frantically warning them wants to race…then, when they hear the warning, assume the couple is drunk. After all, they reason, “How would they know where we are going?” Finally, Steve Martin realizes that he is looking at the wrong color road stripe. He looks up and sees two sets of semi headlights bearing down on them. In shock Martin begins to breathlessly warn, “truck, truck!”

…Is there any doubt today that we as a culture are going the wrong way? And what is a culture but a collection of individuals. The conclusion is inescapable: If the culture is going the wrong way, it is all of us. To quote the Blues Brothers: “You, me, them. Everybody. Everybody.”

We are going the wrong way.

In the shadow of the events at the Sandy Hook school 3 days ago, we cannot deny the effects of evil and sin and societal breakdown and failed solutions. One would have to have their heads deep in the sand to not be painfully aware that the world is going the wrong way. Sandy Hook wasn’t even our first mass-murder this week. That happened in Portland. In seven previous mass-murders this year alone, 41 other people have died in 7 other mass shootings.

Our world is broken. We are broken. If we are honest we will admit that most of us are but a few missed paychecks, a few bad months, a few broken relationships, a few bad decisions, and a little bit of self-medication away from unraveling our lives. There but for the grace of God go we.

And it is no longer enough to play the rugged individualist card. We live interconnected lives. What I do with my life matters to you. What you do matters to me. What we do matters to our neighborhood. We cannot say, “Stop worrying about me…take your hands and your laws off of my life.” Every freedom I have involves a corresponding responsibility upon each of you. And, in a time of social breakdown, we must all pull together, lay aside our rights and step up our responsibility for the common good. We must, “Get our heads together.”

In verse 8 John is saying, in effect: “Are you God’s child? Then live like it! Don’t live off of yesterday’s spiritual accomplishments…don’t claim some spiritual pedigree.” John points out the obvious: “trees that don’t bear fruit get cut down and burned so that other trees might bear fruit.” This isn’t necessarily anger. It is just reality. In every realm of life, if we don’t get the job done, someone else will.

How did the crowd respond to John’s “Get your head in the game!” Message? They ask the obvious question: “How?”

3 times 3 groups ask “How?” The crowd. The tax collectors. The soldiers. “How do I live like a person with my head in the game?”

It is the right question. For them. And for us.

John gives them obvious advice that makes sense in their context: Share. Don’t cheat. Be satisfied with your pay…obvious for them, and still pretty obvious for us today.

I see three implications in this passage. Two are overt. One we learn later when Saint Paul comments on the meaning of the Christ event:

First: Come humbly. Humility is the hallmark of a life ready to receive God. Live in a way that is open-hearted to God. Let God continually change your mind. Humility is the mark of one who walks with God. So come humbly.

Second: Live Selflessly. As a result of our humility before God, live a life that lays down our wants for other’s needs. The world really needs us to…but more than that, because turning from our self-centered sinfulness always has the effect of proving to us how unable we are to actually pull it off. Living selflessly leads to the third implication:

Third: See your need for a savior.

John is reminding the crowds of God’s law: the Old Testament standard. The law functions like that measuring stick at Disneyland. The one where if you aren’t big enough you don’t get on the good rides. The Law is the measuring rod to reveal to God’s children that we don’t measure up. Paul said it like this: “…if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” (Romans 7:7-12) The law is God’s yardstick to make us realize how much we need a savior!

How does the message “Get your head in the game…”and bear the fruits of repentance” pave the way for the One who is to come? The more God increases the more our pride decreases. That is why Paul says, “O wretched man that I am.” (Rom. 7:24) It isn’t self-loathing. It is glory-of-God-awareness. More than a few old saints have told me that the closer they get to the God, the more aware they become of their fallen-ness and God’s great goodness.

What is the result? “The people were filled with expectation.” They ask John if he is the one they are waiting for. We all cling to hope. Like Jamie Foxx, who at the BET awards in November referred to “Our Lord and Savior, Barack Obama,” we are always looking for a Savior. But like the President who rolled his eyes at the comment, John is very clear, “Another is coming after me whose shoes I am not worthy to untie.” And the one who comes will also have his own baptism: “the Holy Spirit and fire.”

What does being immersed in the Holy Spirit bring? Jesus said in John, “He will bring to mind all Jesus taught us.” (John 14:28) And, “He will convict of sin, righteousness and judgment.” (16:8)

Conviction is a divine invitation to allow God to work. God is love, but loving us involves helping us to become most fully the person we were made to be, and when we allow trees not bearing good fruit to grow up in our lives, well, the Holy Spirit helps with that.

In verse 17, John uses a final word picture, that of “His threshing floor.” A threshing floor was a flat spot in a breezy area. A farmer would throw his harvest in the air so that the heavier grain would fall at their feet while the breeze could blow away the dead chaff. The harvest was collected. The chaff? It is burned. That was what you did with garbage before landfills.

We all have chaff in our lives. John’s message is that the time is right to expose the chaff in our lives to the wind of the Spirit. The time is right to let God blow that which hides the harvest away.

Do you have something against another? We are going to be reconciled in the Passing of the Peace. Use that time to make it right.

Is there something between you and God? We are coming to the Lord’s table. We will come as we ought: on bent knee, with open hands. Offer to God whatever it is the Holy Spirit is convicting you is in the way.

If you have not yet, placed your life in God’s hands. Put your trust in God and receive God’s gift of life in Christ. Come forward and ask one of the ministers to explain a relationship with God.

John’s final sentence this morning: “with many exhortations John proclaimed the Good News.” We don’t think of exhortation as a part of Good News. But if we do not have a diagnosis we do not want to drink the medicine.

Here is the exhortation: Let God blow away the chaff.

Here is the Good News:

-We are forgiven by God as a gift purchased by God’s son on the cross.

-We are adopted as God’s own children as a gift.

-We have growth in faith and knowledge and wisdom as a gift.

-We have a calling to participate with God in extending his Kingdom A.

*All is gift.

And the way to receive any gift is with thanksgiving…hands open and a smile on our face. That is what “Eucharist” means: Thanksgiving.

It is almost Christmas: the celebration of God sending the gift of his Son. Christmas is not OUR birthday. And yet, the world received a gift. That is why it is so important that we Come Humbly, Serve Selflessly, and See your need for a savior.

As we await Jesus’ coming at Christmas, to walk among his creation, and to purchase victory through his passion, let us, as the old Eucharistic prayer says, “offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”

Amen.

15Dec2012

Today: Tears and prayers. But what next?

Posted in Culture by Matt Marino

The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a punch to the gut of an already wobbly America. Can any of us imagine anything more horrifying than a classroom full of dead first graders?

I wonder if we are exhausting our ability to process senseless tragedy. I had a meeting with a friend yesterday. We had an important agenda, but in the wake of breaking news, this brilliant up-and-coming academic could discuss nothing else. My 16 year-old son asked to be tucked in for the first time in 5 years. My 70 year-old father-in-law, posted his shock on facebook. Even the president was reduced to tears. The media is full of information on how to process this with our children. But all over America adults sobbed ourselves to sleep last night. Our theological frameworks are stretched. Our trust in our fellows diminished. Our numbness increases.

Several things I cannot get out of my head today:

1) The sinking awareness that it is easier for the mentally ill to get a gun than help.

2) The report that since Columbine in 1999, there have been 31 school shootings in the U.S. and 14 in the rest of the entire world. (Source: ABC Nightline)

Newtown, Ct. isn’t even our first mass murder this week. Portland has that distinction. Prior to that, in 2012 alone, there were 41 other murders in 7 other mass-shootings. (Source: Think Progress)

We will say prayers for the victims and for the shooter. We will pray for our country. Our grief will eventually subside. And, if past history repeats itself, do you know what we will do next? We will lock up our schools even more tightly.

Our communities will become a little more paranoid, and our children a little more afraid to venture and roam and try new things. Parents will helicopter more and children risk less. The cost of the Sandy Hook tragedy will be paid by every single elementary school student in America….and our entire society will pay a price for yesterday in lost inventiveness and entrepreneurship. (See Mindset: Carol Dweck)

When something like this happens we tend to “politicize” it in the worst possible way: We retreat into corners and lob partisan platitudes rather than work together to solve our problems. But what if “politicize” meant to “muster the courage to work together to make our nation a better place”? Then what better thing could we do to honor the dead than by working together to see that mass-killings stop? Surely we can meet in the middle and agree on the obvious: Criminals and people with mental illness should not have high capacity semi-automatic guns. It shouldn’t be easier for me to get an assault rifle than a law enforcement officer. We need to become better at identifying potentially dangerous people. We need more accessible help for those with violent tendencies. We need to take seriously the connection between violence in the media and video games and violence in the real world.

People are dying at an accelerating rate at the hands of unhinged people wielding high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons. And we can all agree that a risk-averse, fear-based future is not the right solution for our children. Do we really want to lock up our schools rather than our guns?

This is America. We will never have a country without privately owned guns. It will just never happen. But if we know that humans are sinful and broken, then surely those whose brokenness involves violence should not be in possession of semi-automatic weapons. Unlimited access to high capacity weapons and mental illness have proven to be a disaster: A study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that the gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined. (Source: Nightline) Google a timeline of shootings since 1982. The number that appeared upon cursory inspection to be committed with hunting weapons: 0

We are not a totalitarian state. No one will come and force a solution upon us at the point of their gun. In our system we have the opportunity and responsibility to work together to solve our problems.

We have the opportunity and responsibility to not allow these children to have died in vain. Pull together. Avoid the all or nothing rhetoric that is coming. Live peaceably. Pray faithfully. Worship in your faith community. Vote dutifully. Speak forcefully. Love relentlessly.

The President is right, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3) But what happens after that is up to you and to me.

2Dec2012

Illegitimacy: A far bigger “fiscal cliff”

Posted in Multi-ethnic Church by Matt Marino

Soon, we are told, we will go over the “fiscal cliff.” When it happens our politicians and corporations will make a beeline to our tv screens and exhort us to do our part: spend money.

No one is talking about it, but we have a much bigger drag on our economy than the fiscal cliff. It drags our nation down every minute of every day. It is children born out of wedlock, what used to be known as “illegitimacy.” 42% of American children are now born out of wedlock. Why is this a problem? Because, generally speaking, 3/4 of children born OUT OF wedlock are born INTO poverty.

I have spent 30 years in youth ministry. Largely this amounts to being a friend and a mentor…sort of an uncle to young people during their critical adolescent period. What I have seen time and time again is that to successfully make the jump to adulthood means making just a few big decisions right. With those few big decisions, people generally end up in a pretty good place. You don’t have to be anywhere close to a perfect person, but for life to go fairly well for most of us, meant three choices:

Don’t do anything in which the worst thing that could happen is for you to like it. (ie. addiction)
Get an education (in something that will get you a decent paying job)
Get married.

In the absence of someone else to pay the bills, if you don’t make the Big Three major decisions in order, life gets very difficult, very quickly.

You might ask, “Where is faith in this equation?” Faith is the fourth predictor. My son is in Student Council at a Title IV high school. Of the students whose homes kids go to for events, it is the 1/3 who are church members whose homes are invariably used. That is because they tend to be the ones at the school with homes large enough to use. Their faith gave them a moral framework and supportive relationships to make the Big Three! For me, the Big Three decisions are 2nd, 3rd, and home plate. First base is faith. In baseball if you don’t get on first base nothing else really matters. Yes, someone can have a decent life in the here and now without faith because, as Jesus said, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) People can engage the faith decision anywhere around the Big Three and end up fine. But without the Big Three young people send themselves into poverty and set up their children to continue that dangerous cycle.

We have to help young people know the consequences of their life life choices. Here is a web link to a NJ news article that describes the connection between poverty and out-of-wedlock childbearing: (http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2012/11/qa_why_marriage_may_be_the_str.html) It is controversial if you are a progressive, but in my experience, spot on. Helping young people with the other big decision, education, is controversial if you are a conservative and want to cut funding for public education. Isn’t it time we put our young people ahead of our politics?

Amare Stoudemire used to have a non-profit called, “Each one. Teach one.” I have no idea what that organization did. But the idea is right. If every person who reads this blog forwards it to your fb friend list and every one of us mentor one young person of poverty, from today until the day they graduate from college…we will have done far more to help our nation’s future than anything else in our power. So forward this to your friends and then become a Big Brother/Big Sister, a Young Life leader, join Mentor Kids USA or become a volunteer in your church’s youth ministry…find a way to longitudinally follow a young person as a wise aunt or uncle.

It will matter to them. It will change you. And the nation you save may be your own.

Won’t you join me and find a young person to share your life and wisdom with?