We’re in the middle of a series of sermons on the "Great Ends of the Church." The first is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of all humankind. The second is the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. The third, which we are dealing with today, is the maintenance of Divine worship.

        I have often wondered why they didn’t put that one first. The first question in Westminster Catechism: What is the chief end of man? The answer: to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. My systematic theology professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary said of that first question, "That was the best day’s work the Presbyterians ever did."

        After all, worship is a normal and natural thing. All human beings have within themselves the instinct to reach up, or out, in worship. This instinct is found in all cultures, in all periods of history. This universal instinct has been seen as one of the important indications of God’s existence.

        Worship has been genesis of many life-changing experiences and noble human aspirations. And the church is about the only place where Divine worship is offered on regular basis. You won’t find it on the football or baseball field. You won’t find it on the golf course. You won’t find it at the gym or the fitness center. You probably won’t find it at the lake. You won’t find it at the mall or at the fair. But in any church, probably at sometime on Sunday morning, you’ll find a service of Divine worship. And while it may proceed routinely most of the time, on rare occasions, when you’re really tuned in, an insight may come, a question may be answered, a problem may be solved, a fear may be conquered, a turmoil may be settled, or a new direction may be sensed¾ in other words, your life might change. That is the possibility that lies in any service of Divine worship.

        That’s what happened to a young Isaiah. The king had died and Isaiah’s world may have been a little shaky. He went to the temple as usual. The familiar ritual was enacted, just as it had been countless times before. But on this particular day something happened. He saw God, and himself, and God’s grace¾ all in perspective. He went in a troubled young man and he came out on the road to becoming one of the greatest prophets that Israel ever had. That’s the kind of thing that happens in Divine worship. A look at this notable experience will help us learn what Divine worship is all about.

        The third great end of the church is the maintenance of Divine worship. Author Marva Dawn defines true worship as when God is subject and object. Well, that is true of anything that happens in a church, right? It’s not necessarily so.

        I want to affirm that I believe the praise of God should be in a way that is accessible and natural to the people who are congregated. I believe the music of worship should be singable by the majority of the people who make up the congregation, and that it should touch the heart. But what has often been true, and it was true of some of the "good ‘ol songs" of the past as well as of some contemporary music, that the most "popular" music really touches only the feelings, focuses mostly on me or my experience, and leaves God as a rather remote and incidental part of the whole thing.

        I recently was dragged to a performance of Johnny High’s country music review. It was "gospel music night" and my friend Max had auditioned and landed a spot on the program. The people from his church were out in force, and, of course, he did well.

        But the whole thing was amazing to me. I think the band used the same piece of music to accompany the first five acts! I was concerned that a persistent coughing condition I was experiencing would be distracting. But no one heard it over the band. While the music sung evidently engaged the hearts and won approval of those who came willingly to hear it, there was relatively little of a Divine reference. I know this was supposed to be a performance, but several of the acts were lifted from Sunday church! I can now testify that this set of circumstances can lead a spiritual experience¾ I know I prayed a lot for intermission! And it can lead to reconciliation¾ I went home and apologized to my tomcat for getting on him about his singing.

        I sense that a lot of what passes for worship today in many of places that attract the crowds is really a county or rock music review where the congregation is really an audience, where the sermon is really is a self-help lecture, and where the result is little more than a deeper quest into self-absorption. The thing that happened to Isaiah was an experience in which he was, to use Charles Wesley’s well chosen words, lost in wonder, love, and praise.

The second realization is the incompleteness of human effort.

        Isaiah saw not only his need, but also the grace of God to address his need. He cried out in confession, and then saw the cleansing fire on the altar. Divine worship must be more than making one feel good. I hasten to add that there’s also more to it than just making one feel bad. There was a mistaken notion in times past that worship was successful and that God had been magnified when you felt you were miserable and worthless. Just as you don’t build yourself up when you tear someone else down, you do not automatically magnify God when you tear yourself down.

        Still there is a need to recognize the fallibility and limitations of human effort. There is a scene in the movie Shenandoah where a self-sufficient farmer prays over the food at the dinner table saying, "Lord, we tilled the ground, we planted the seeds, we did the fertilizing, we harvested the crops, we ground the grain, we kneaded the dough, we baked the bread. If we hadn’t done it all we wouldn’t have any of it. But we thank you for it anyway." This may be a parody on some of our prayers, but it is truthful to many of our attitudes.

        I am glad to see an emphasis on worship reemerge in our church. There was a period when we seemed to have a very secular humanistic bent. I remember hearing a song at Synod we were all supposed to sing, hands joined, swaying to the music:
            Walk with me and I’ll walk with you,
            And we’ll build a land, which God has planned,
            Where love shines through.

        Of course that’s a laudable sentiment. But it struck me as a caricature of the notion that this whole thing is really up to us, and God is, at best, only some remote motivating force.

        For years, at meetings of the so-called higher judicatories, worship was seen as something really unnecessary, as fluff in a busy agenda. It was thought the purpose of our being there was to discuss, to deliberate, and to do the business of the church. I think some of our loss of spiritual vitality can be traced to that dry era. I am concerned that remnants of that attitude often persist in "doing the business of the church" in congregations today. It persists when classes or meetings begin without prayer, where decisions are made without prayer, and where trials and tragedies are faced without prayer. Worship brings us to face the inadequacy of mere human effort.

Divine worship issues a call to something nobler and higher.

        I was for some years the moderator of the Presbytery Worship Committee. At a Presbytery Council orientation session, the moderators of committees were asked to tell what their committee responsibilities were and a theological basis for the work. When it came my turn, I used this 6^th chapter of Isaiah as the theological basis. I reminded the council of the movement of praise/confession/grace/call to service. I summed it up saying, "You really can’t do the last¾ the "business" of the church¾ until you had first done the first three. That’s why we worship at presbytery."

        That is, of course, Isaiah’s story. Praise, confession, proclamation of grace led to whom shall I send and who will go for us? Time magazine carried a story about a man named Bill Tomes. This man has survived some fifty-three gun battles. Bill Tomes roams the streets of the toughest neighborhoods in downtown Chicago. His mission is to share God’s love with gang members, drug pushers, and prostitutes he finds there. And fifty-three times so far, Bill Tomes has stepped into middle of a gang gun battle, but he has never suffered even a scratch. Bill believes that God called him into this work, so he trusts God to protect him.

        Fifteen years ago, Bill was trying to decide what to do with his life. Although he was not a religious man at the time, Bill stopped by a church one day to pray about things. As Bill knelt in the church, the majesty of it all came through. He physically passed out. But as he was losing consciousness, he says he heard God talking to him. The voice gave him only one instruction, "Love. You are forbidden to do anything other than that."

        That’s when Bill began hanging out in violent, run down neighborhoods. At first, the local gangs took a vote as to whether Bill should be killed. But once they saw what he was about, they decided instead to protect him. So every day finds Bill Tomes out on the streets of Chicago, offering love and support to anyone who needs it. He hands out friendship and advice, gives people rides to the store, buys them food, bails them out of jail, and listens to their problems. Once Bill came upon a young gang member who had been shot and left to die in the stairwell of an old building. He held the young man in his arms and told him about God’s love. It may have been the first time anyone had told this young man that he was precious and loved. And the young man drifted off to a peaceful death in the arms of someone who cared about him.

        Bill Tomes is not a timid man. Why? Because one day he saw the holiness of God and heard God’s call. He’s now on a mission¾ a mission that gives him spiritual power.

        When the church is the church, when worship is Divine worship, then the Lord is lifted up, the incompleteness of human effort is exposed, the love of God is discerned, and God’s call¾ somehow, sometimes¾ comes through. And the world is better off because of it!