Eleventh Sunday after
Trinity, August 11th, +D 2024
Our Savior’s and Our
Redeemer Lutheran Churches, Hill City and Custer, SD
The Heart of Worship – Luke
18:9-14, 1st Corinthians 15:1-11, Genesis 4:1 - 15
Audio of the sermon available HERE.
“The heart of worship.” What is the heart of Christian worship? What
comes to mind when you hear this phrase “the heart of Christian worship”? One of my first thoughts is Jesus telling the
Samaritan woman at the well that the true worshipers, the ones the Father is
seeking, are those who worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. (John 4)
How about you? What do you think of when you hear “the heart
of worship?” Perhaps you think of music, from one solo voice, pure and clear, singing
the truth of God, to a large organ, or even an orchestra, beautiful music carrying
the congregation on waves of divine melodies. Or, we might think about praise and
thanksgiving, about confessing and proclaiming without shame or timidness the
great works of the Lord, His power and
radiance: God is great. There are beautiful banners, candles and paraments, also
learned sermons, using the best rhetoric to persuade and confirm the hearers in
the faith of Christ, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
For some, the heart of worship
has to do with emotion, with the expectation that the worship experience will
be moving.
Traditionalists among us will
want to talk about the form of the liturgy, whether it is acceptably linked to
the Liturgy of St. John of Damascus, or perhaps to that of St. Gregory of Rome.
Or, maybe you've heard it said the
most important thing is not what happens in the meeting, but rather what
happens in everyday life, the idea that true worship is “walking the talk,”
that living a good Christian life is the most important way to worship God.
Well, to be sure, all of these
things have their importance. They are all gifts from God that are part of
Christian worship, and so deserve our attention. But, speaking of worship in His parable today,
Jesus does not focus on any of these things.
To some who trusted in
themselves as righteous, and despised others, [Jesus] also spoke this parable:
Two men went up to the temple to pray.
In what follows, Jesus says not
a word about the music or hymns, no description of the art, furniture and altarware
of the Temple. Nothing about the
liturgical precision of the ministers, nor the eloquence of the preachers. To be sure, there are emotions in Jesus’
teaching, but not the emotions we prefer to associate with worship. Does Jesus speak of joy and awe? No, but rather He speaks of pride, disdain, contempt,
and shame. And yet, Jesus is
teaching us about right worship.
To some who trusted in
themselves as righteous, and despised others, [Jesus] also spoke this parable: Two
men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax-collector.
Interesting. Maybe uncomfortable for us. Unbelievers who hate the Church tend to slander Christians at worship as bunch of self-righteous bigots, who have contempt for
others. We find this characterization
insulting and unfair.
But Jesus Himself raises the
possibility. Our Lord uses the context
of worship to talk about self-righteousness.
He wants to confront pride and contempt, and so our Lord chooses to speak
of praying in the Temple. Which
shouldn’t surprise us, because for the Lord, everything comes back to worship,
which in its essence is actually divine service. Worship is not so much us doing things for
God, but rather God coming to serve us.
This is the Lord’s liturgy, His public work, done for the good of His
people, and for the life of the world.
Today Jesus teaches us about
the heart of worship, about the essential things needed to do worship correctly. These encounters with God, which we call
worship, are where we can receive from Him our greatness need: God’s “not
guilty” verdict, which we call justification.
Declared not guilty, worship is where we learn to trust that God accepts
us as his sons and daughters.
Right worship always includes
the Word and the presence of God. For
about nine centuries, with a few gaps, the Lord had commanded His people to
worship Him in Jerusalem, in the Temple, the one Solomon built, and then
Nehemiah rebuilt, and then even later Herod rebuilt again. God’s Name dwelt in the Temple, and He called
all Israel, indeed all of the nations, to come and encounter Him there. For it was at the Temple where God had
promised to dwell with his people Israel, and receive their worship. So, it’s
natural for Jesus to use the Temple to teach us about worship. And what does He teach us?
Simply put, the Lord focuses on
repentance, confession, and the forgiveness of sins. And so we are reminded that God is different
from us. Repentance and confession are unpleasant
to us. But, according to the Christ, the
heart of right worship is being honest about our sinful lives, and confessing to
God everything we’ve done wrong. Which
is counterintuitive. We know that God
has a law and we are obliged to comply with it. So we naturally think that our
reasonable service, our acceptable worship, would be all about keeping the
Law. What’s so wrong with worship being centered
on us giving a report to God about all the good we’ve done, in order to receive
His approval and praise?
I think you know the answer: the
only thing wrong with this idea of worship is us. Crowing about our good works cannot
be the heart of true worship. There are
two possible outcomes when we mix self-justification into our understanding of
worship. Both outcomes fail for the same
reason: we don’t keep God's Law.
One possibility with such
self-righteous worship is that we realize our sin and guilt, we get overwhelmed,
and we lose hope. We run from God in
fear, like Adam and Eve did. If we flee
from God, there is no possibility for right worship.
The second possibility with
self-righteous worship is that we become hypocrites, faking and then bragging
about our righteousness, based on our good works. Like the Pharisee, who, “standing by himself,
prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast
twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’” Look at me, God! The Pharisee is proud and confident. And dead wrong. He, and we, are all sinners, all of us very
much alike in this flaw, everyone, without exception.
The difference between these
two failures and right Christian worship is the difference between living under
the law, with all its demands and the perpetual torture of never achieving
them, or living under the Gospel, the Good News that, despite our sinfulness, despite
our failure, God in his love has gathered us together here, to show us
mercy. The difference is stark. We can live under the pressure of a goal that
is unattainable for us, or we can live under the freedom of Christ, who has
achieved the goal, for us.
The heart of worship is really
to depart from a dishonest world and enter another, honest one. The dishonest world is outward, all about the
visible and the apparent, such as the pride and self-righteousness of the
Pharisee. The other world is interior, the
world of an honest heart, which the tax collector has toward God. From the outside, this world looks bad; the
tax collector is on the verge of despair over his sin. But, his faith in the promises of the Lord,
weak as it may be, leads him to the Temple to pray. And by God’s amazing grace, the tax collector
knew how to pray rightly, honestly, faithfully.
He knew simply to pray: God, be
merciful to me, the sinner.
Notice how the tax collector prays
alone, spiritually naked before God, making no comparisons to others, no excuses. This is the posture we all need when we
approach the heart of true worship. For
it is through such humility that God prepares us to receive His gift. Through such worship God meets our greatest
need. And, such honest repentance is the
starting point for everything else in Christian worship and life.
Before the Lord, the essential
thing is a contrite and believing heart, which confesses all sin, but which
also knows and trusts in the good news that the Lord has mercy for sinners. Repentance
and faith make us acceptable to the Lord, because they take us to the point
where He wants to bring us. God wants to
bring us to the point of not trusting in our own righteousness, which is a
fiction, but rather to trust only in His merciful heart, revealed in the
righteousness of Jesus.
We might even say that right
worship has to do with two hearts, the contrite heart of the sinner, and the
gracious heart of God. When these two
hearts meet, all manner of other good things begin to flow. Praise, music, confession of faith, singing,
joy, prayer, thanksgiving, fellowship and care within the body of the
congregation, love for our neighbors, all these good things flow from the
encounter of an honest, repentant heart and the merciful and forgiving heart of
God.
This morning’s Old Testament
and Epistle readings deepen our understanding of Jesus’ parable. The Pharisee despised others, just as Cain
despised Abel, his brother. The first
murder was the poison fruit of bad worship.
Cain’s fratricide flowed from an angry, self-righteous man who was
offended when the Lord was not impressed by his worship. Unable to strike back at God, Cain took his
anger out on Abel. Cain hates Abel,
because he worshiped rightly. Abel trusted
that God was giving His very best to him, and so he gave his very best to God. Not so Cain.
And so God had regard for Abel’s offering, but not for Cain’s.
The criticism of Christians by
militant atheists may be unfair. But we do
need to be wise to the dangers of self-righteousness. Contempt for others might only make our life
miserable. But if it festers, contempt can
lead to sin against our brother, or even violence. And contempt grows best in the heart that
thinks too highly of itself. Being honest
about our sinfulness is essential to right worship, and also to peaceful
living.
Most of all, honest repentance
is needed to open our eyes to what Paul in our Epistle today declares is of first importance, the central message that he
received from Jesus and delivered to his hearers: “that Christ died for
our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” The heart of right worship is contained in
this wonderful phrase.
First,
the reality of my need, my sin, my guilt, is revealed in the tragic fact that
it was necessary for Christ to die, because of my sins. I am the sinner, the cause
of His suffering. You may be too, but
that doesn’t matter when I’m standing before the Lord. Before the Judge, I must plead guilty of all
sin.
Second,
the Good News of justification, God’s not guilty verdict, rings out in Paul’s great
“for our sins.” Jesus did not die
without purpose; His death was not a waste.
He died for us, for our benefit, in
accordance with the Scriptures, in keeping with God’s plan and foreknowledge,
the pinnacle of Divine Service. As
painful as is the reality of our guilt, even more wonderful is the reality of
His death, “for sinners.” In order to
have you for His very own, Christ died for you, and for me, for all, in
accordance with the Scriptures. He died,
burying our sin and guilt, and He has risen again, to reveal our justification. Just as God had promised.
So, as Luther said: Everything…in
the Christian Church is ordered to the end that we shall daily obtain there
nothing but the forgiveness of sin, through the Word and signs, to comfort and
encourage our consciences as long as we live here. (Large Catechism, Apsotles’ Creed,
paragraph 55) This is the heart of true
worship, sinners coming to God so He can serve you with His grace and mercy.
So, let us come to pray and
worship honestly. By the power of the
Holy Spirit, we come confessing our need, and relying 100% on the great work of
Jesus, for us sinners. Then, forgiven,
restored, and renewed, we pray, praise and give thanks. We rejoice, and proclaim the excellencies of
Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. We leave this New Testament Temple refreshed,
and with a desire to live differently, because Christ lives within us. Indeed, by God’s indwelling, our own bodies
become temples of the Holy Spirit. Connected
to Christ by faith, fed by His Body and Blood, we desire to walk in God’s Way, to
follow the 10 Commandments, and love God with all our heart, and to love our
neighbors as ourselves, most especially by telling them about the reason for
our hope, our joy.
As we pursue this Christian
life, the Spirit of Jesus calls us to return to the Temple, again and again. That is to say, pursuing the Christian life
will lead us to return to the places that God is delivering forgiveness. This is because in this life, we will not
achieve our goal of always loving and never sinning. As we stumble, as we fail, and as others fail
us, we will feel again and again the need and the desire to return to God in
repentance and faith. We return because,
like the tax collector. we know our sin, and we know His mercy. We return out of necessity, and we
return eagerly, because we know and trust in the merciful heart of God,
revealed in the face of Christ Jesus. And
this is the peace of God, which passes all understanding, and which will keep
our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting, Amen.
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