The Joy of Christian Worship

Sermon for the 20^th Sunday after Trinity
October 18^th, A+D 2026
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota

Audio of the Sermon can be found HERE. 

 

When in our music God is glorified, And adoration leaves no room for pride, It is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!  

How often, making music, we have found, A new dimension in the world of sound, As worship moved us to a more profound Alleluia!  

So has the Church, in liturgy and song, In faith and love, through centuries of wrong, Borne witness to the truth in ev'ry tongue, Alleluia! 

   Nothing on this earth is quite like faithful, joyful Christian congregational worship, singing and making melody in our hearts to the LORD, our Savior.  For Shelee and me and all the youth we have ever taken to Higher Things conferences, the highlight is always the worship.  To be in a crowd of souls who share the same faith, and so freely and robustly worship the same LORD, is wonderful.  Maybe you think of an LWML convention, or a Circuit Reformation festival.  Or maybe simply a Sunday when the Lord blesses us with a congregation that fills our little space, and our voices blend into beautiful praise of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the One True God.  I have also been privileged many times to experience wonderful worship in tiny little sanctuaries: a hospital room, a living room, a hotel meeting room. 

   Faithful, joyful Christian worship is fantastic.  Which makes it all the more bitter and strange that so often worship becomes a source of division and strife in the Church.  Why is this?  How should we understand and deal with the differences that arise in our midst? 

   Well, we can start by remembering that strife over worship has been a constant companion of humanity, ever since Adam and Eve failed to fear, love and trust in God above all things.  The first murder flowed from disappointing worship.  When Adam and Eve’s first two sons gathered to offer sacrifices to the LORD, God praised Abel’s sacrifice, who gladly brought his best.  But the LORD was not pleased with Cain’s offering, some of his harvest, given grudgingly.  Cain was crestfallen, but had no power to lash out at God.  So, he poured out his anger on Abel, and killed his brother. 

   Today we mortals continue to lack the power to do anything to God, but we still know how to lash out at each other.  Thanks be to God, rarely, if ever, do differences over worship within our beloved Missouri Synod lead to violence.  But we, and every other Christian communion suffer sharp disagreements over what we say and do and sing when we gather in the Name of Jesus. 

   The pattern is consistent.  The newly born nation of Israel was waiting at the bottom of Mt. Sinai for Moses, in tragic irony, to come back with God’s instruction for right worship.  But, they grew impatient.  They demanded that Moses’ brother Aaron make them an idol to worship, in the way they wanted.  Aaron complied with the Golden Calf, and called the gathering they made around it a “feast to Yahweh, that is, a worship service to the LORD God.”  But no, it most certainly was not.  God rather directly and severely corrected that error, and He would have to do this many more times. 

   Once they arrived in the Promised Land, Israel was instructed only to bring sacrifices to the place where the LORD instructed them to set up His tabernacle, or tent temple.  Later that one place for sacrifice became the stone Temple built by Solomon in Jerusalem.  But, all through their history, Israelites ignored God and sacrificed all over the place.  Worse, much worse, they also made sacrifices and worshiped the false gods, the idols, of their neighbors.  Sometimes the Israelites tried to do both, worshiping the true God and the idols.  Sometimes they mixed the worship.  Sometimes they abandoned Yahweh altogether, and only served Baal, or Asherah, or Molech.  This was the sin that led to their frequent defeats, their deportations and exiles, their near disappearance. 

   The Prophet Isaiah gives the most wonderful invitation to God’s people Israel: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.”  But long before Isaiah preached, and ever after, worshiping rightly has been a struggle for God’s people.  What should be pure joy, the highlight of every week, sometimes become the biggest problem in the lives of the faithful.  The sources of conflict are manifold, and yet the underlying factors driving the strife always come from a pretty short list. 

   First of all, Satan, that great angel of God, who refused to continue worshiping Him, has, ever since he fell, really hated true and faithful worship.  The Evil One does all he can to corrupt it.  Remember, one of his three temptations of Christ Jesus was about right worship.  He offered to give Jesus all earthly power, if only, for one time, Jesus would bow down and worship him. 

   Along with Satan’s opposition comes the world’s.  Unbelievers are offended by faithful Christian worship.  An atheist, who pretends there is no God, finds our worship insane, and pitiable.  Run-of-the-mill sinners know neither the depth of their sin and need, nor the infinite glory and love of Christ and His forgiveness.  So Christian worship’s insistence on keeping human sin front and center is very off-putting.  Everybody wants to think they are a pretty good person, but Jesus says otherwise.  That’s not polite, not nice, not well received.  And of course, souls who believe in and worship a full-on idol, Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists, etc., do not take well to the exclusive claims of Christ, who says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father, except through me.”  How rude.  Who does He think He is, God?

   These are all pressures from the outside, and they can threaten to corrupt our gatherings.  But, sadly, most of our trouble rises from within, and each one of us is a threat.  For each Christian in this life remains a sinner, and the true worship that Jesus has laid out for us is offensive to our sinful nature, our fleshly hearts, minds and wills, still opposed to God, that continue to plague us all. 

   This all can be very depressing.  Some Christians, hating strife, are tempted to give up on the Church altogether.  Others try to sweep everything under the rug, pretend that differences over worship are never worth addressing.  Can’t we just agree to disagree and choose to get along? 

   Well, no.  Certainly Christians should be patient with each other, and humble.  Each Christian should be willing to examine their own motives and seek to love their brothers and sisters in Christ, even as we face disagreements.  Above all, we must all submit to the Truth of God’s Word.  And pastors, myself included, must recognize, especially in the age of instant internet theologizing, that we often fail at this standard.  But please know that ‘giving up’ or saying ‘differences do not matter’ are both goals of the Devil. 

   It is the Lord God Almighty, the only Source of Life and Joy, who is the One who is truly picky about how we worship Him.  To misunderstand this is to miss out on the true joy God wants for each of us.  It is to risk missing out on God and His joy, forever and ever.  So, we need to seek another way forward.  And thanks be to God, the Holy Spirit has not left us without clear guidance.    

   In this vein, I must thank Roberta for suggesting our opening hymn, which I quoted to begin this message, because right away in the first three stanzas we are pointed to the balance that is required for the Church to engage in faithful, joyful Christian worship. 

   Stanza one begins and ends with “When in our music God is glorified…, It is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!”  This is our goal; this is what we love.  And the line in between is crucial:  “And adoration leaves no room for pride.”  In true Christian worship on this earth, we are always sinners, deserving of God’s wrath, daring in faith to gather around the real presence of the Holy, Holy, Holy LORD.  Human pride has no place in God’s House. 

   God is in the business of rescuing sinners so they can live with Him in glory, forever.  The Lord’s quest to win forgiveness for sinners runs from Genesis 3 to Matthew 28, and His mission to deliver Christ’s forgiving victory started at the Resurrection and continues everyday until the Last Day.  Whenever we lose sight of this reality, we begin to corrupt our worship.  But when we confess and embrace this reality, true joys are found.  Or, better said, true joy finds us, as our lives are renewed by Christ.

   And so stanza three describes the life of the Church: So has the Church, in liturgy and song, In faith and love, through centuries of wrong, Borne witness to the truth in ev'ry tongue, Alleluia!  Until the last day, true and faithful Christian worship will be confronting and correcting wrongs, most especially the wrongs that you and I by our sinful nature bring into God’s house.  This necessary dealing with problems is not to be lamented but rather celebrated.  The Truth of God has become a Man and carried all our sin to His Cross.  In Him we have forgiveness, life and salvation.  Yes, we must confront sin, even when it is exceptionally unpopular to do so.  We do this, in Christian love, knowing that the Son of Man came to seek and to save sinners, to seek and to save us, and all who hear and believe His Good News.    

   Is true and faithful Christian worship about using particular instruments, or singing in a particular style?  No, it is about faithfully and effectively declaring God’s Truth in speech and prayer and song, which will take many different forms.  But all the forms need to be judged as to whether they are the best choice for God’s people in a given time and place.  And particularly in music, this calls for wisdom.  First of all, everything we sing should be faithful, and teach Christ’s truth.  Sadly, many songs written for the Church contain errors, or fail to say much at all. 

   In terms of style, we know there is a lot of music in the world: secular popular music, non-Christian religious music, music that is tied to certain activities and cultures.  If in a particular time and place, the associations that come with a particular form or style of music carry a message of their own, the Church is wise to be cautious. 

   My favorite example to use, for its clarity, is the Polka Mass that a Midwest LCMS congregation not far from Fort Wayne, IN used to celebrate every summer.  I, for one, do not mind a good polka at Oktoberfest.  Brats, schnitzel, beer and dancing can all be fine things, if not taken to excess.  But can we separate the ‘oom pah pah’  music from that context in our hearts and minds?  Can we do the Divine Service with polka music, and not end up clouding the message?

   Christian worship is necessarily different than the world.  We need to be intelligible to worldly people, to be sure, but what God is doing in the midst of His Church is truly unique: Prophesying the future.  Convicting sinners, in order to forgive them.  Giving new life.  Feeding His family with the true Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  No matter what form we use, no matter what music we use, if we are truly proclaiming and distributing these mysteries, our gatherings will be different.  It will take some time for those coming from outside the Church to adjust; we can be patient and help them along.  But if we become just like the world, if we never point out the problems that every person brings with them, if we lose our focus on our sin and God’s grace, and instead just try to be a pleasant place, with no sharp edges, then we will lose the things we need.  We will lose the things God uses to give forgiveness and new life, to newcomers, and to all of us.

   Of course, the least popular thing in the Church today is to rightly administer the Lord’s Supper.  That is, to practice closed communion, to only give the Supper to souls who have publicly confessed the same Biblical understanding of the faith that we confess. 

   The Supper is for baptized believers who confess their sins and their faith in Christ alone for salvation.  We want everyone to receive this miraculous gift, in with and under the bread and wine, because this is God’s desire.  But fellowship in the Supper flows from agreement in the teaching of Jesus.  Only the Truth can set sinners free. 

   Indeed, Paul teaches us that communion is a danger to those without a right understanding of the faith, and also that our communing together is a joint proclamation of Christ crucified, a proclamation which should be made with a unified voice and understanding. 

   And so, we are careful.  We study first, we ask and answer questions, before we join together in the Supper.  We do this with our children who are in church with us every Sunday, and with guests, whom we truly desire to bless, in the way Jesus has instructed.

    Think about it this way:  We practice closed communion to avoid the frightening scenario that played out at the end of our Gospel reading.  The parable speaks of the heavenly Wedding Banquet for the Son of God.  The Father, the King, graciously supplies proper wedding garments for all His guests, the good and the bad that He has invited.  That wedding garment represents the free gift of Christ’s righteousness, His blood-bought gift of saving forgiveness, won on the Cross.  The guest who took a seat at the feast without the proper wedding garment is a sinner who denies that he needs his sins to be covered by the Son.  This proud, false faith is unacceptable to the Father, and the guest is cast out, forever. 

   The Lord’s Supper is a foretaste of the heavenly Wedding Feast to come.  We carefully administer Communion today, in an effort to make sure everyone is truly prepared for eternity.  That’s a sharp edge, to be sure.  It is also the way we love our neighbors best, for when sinners like you and me truly understand our need, and then truly grasp the gift that God gives us here, then we are caught up in God’s true joy.      

    The last two stanzas of our hymn do a tremendous job of reminding us of the truth about worship, what Jesus did to make it possible for us, and the reward we receive, when we let God’s way reign among us. 

   “And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night, When utmost evil strove against the Light?  Then let us sing, for whom He won the fight, Alleluia!”  Jesus sang Psalms to make it through His great suffering, so that we can sing in thankfulness and joy, today, and forever and ever.  So, Let ev'ry instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise!  And may God give us faith to sing always, Alleluia!   Amen.