More thoughts from ground level

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As you drive on the inner loop of New Circle Road just past the Nicholasville Road exit, there’s a billboard on the right side of the road. It caught my attention several weeks ago. The billboard shows a man jumping in the air. Large words next to him read: “Church was never meant to be boring.” Have you seen it? It promotes the New Mercy Church in Lexington, which I know nothing about, but their message is clear. Come see us if you want a church that’s not boring.

Of course that got me thinking. I couldn’t agree more with their message. Church was never meant to be boring. In a general sense their sign assures west-bound travelers on New Circle Road who never go to church, “Don’t worry, church isn’t boring. You might think it is, but it really isn’t.” That’s not, however, the point they are making with their sign though. What I really think they intend to convey is that their church, by comparison to other churches, isn’t boring. They are completely free to make this point, and I’m sure good and faithful people attend that church. Maybe even the person shown jumping on the billboard.

They’ve got me thinking. What would they point to in a church service and call boring? And how they do the same thing or something different in a way that’s not boring? Maybe a couple of you could visit and report back.

The dictionary defines boring as uninteresting or tiresome or dull, and to be fair, it needs to be said that what is boring to one person is not necessarily boring to another. To illustrate this, let me give you a boredom quiz. If you think any of the following is boring raise your hand. (1) Sitting on an airplane on the tarmac for nine hours because your flight has been delayed. (2) Walking through a modern art exhibit. (3) Watching television show about two people fishing on a lake. (4) Bird watching. (5) Eating the same thing for breakfast every morning. (6) Watching a chess tournament.

Isn’t the point here that each of us gets to decide what is boring for ourselves? There maybe some examples we can all agree on, but boredom is about personal preference.

So what makes a church service boring? I was thinking about this question after the confirmation class when a couple of weeks ago. The seventh graders said the service was sometimes boring for them. Can you remember what it was like to sit in a place where adults were talking? I understand why a seventh grader might call a church service boring, but attending a church service is such a singularly unique event in our culture. Here’s what I mean. Apart from a church service, how many of you participate regularly in with other adults singing together? Maybe you’re in a choral society or musical theater. How many of you are in a place the same person makes an extended presentation each week? Maybe that’s true for you as a student or teacher or if you on a jury or in the work place. This event we call worship is unlike anything else that is happening right now in our world: people assembled to hear the promises of God in Jesus Christ and respond to them.

The two texts for today are a study in contrasts about worship services. The first is Psalm 150, which begins with the words, Praise the Lord! Praise God in the Sanctuary. It lists several instruments (trumpet, tambourine, lute, harp, strings, pipe, cymbals) all to be used in praise—and dancing, too. Let everything that breaths praise the Lord, the psalm announces.

I hear much excitement in this psalm of praise. It’s a psalm that calls all creation to direct praise God—from every part of creation, by every creature, and with every instrument that can make music. Have you ever been to a worship service like that? I think we came close on Easter Day here. I’ve felt like I was part of a Psalm 150 kind of praise at Montreat surrounded by 1200 youth in a worship service. The worship leaders suggested that the youth dance their offering forward to baskets waiting in the front of the church. African chanting followed and the dancing lasted several minutes. When the music, liturgy, and scripture readings of Christmas Eve offer a glimpse into the majesty of God come near when half spent was the night, I sense a Psalm 150 kind of moment.

By contrast, the account from Acts 20 describes a worship service in Macedonia that goes late into the night and seems very subdued. Oil lamps burn to give light as a discussion continues until midnight. This account is one of the earliest references to a weekly gathering of Christians on Sunday. Have you ever been to a service like that? Subdued, quiet. I imagine a Quaker gathering to be like this.

Luke writes that Paul went on at length. A young man was sitting in a window listening to the sermon and fell asleep. He fell out of the window to the street below. Paul went down stairs and resuscitated him and then returned to the service to break bread and continue the conversation. The boy is taken away and those who attended to him were greatly relieved.

Does it sound strange that Paul would continue speaking after such a tragedy? Even though it turned out okay don’t you think he should have said, “Well, it’s getting late. Maybe we’re all a little tired.” He was, however, planning to leave the next day, and that may have weighed into his decision to return to the service and break bread. Who knows whether we would return to Troas? He never did.

These two texts—Psalm 150 and Acts 20—seem so different from each other and yet they describe the same event. At almost opposite ends of a worship continuum, they describe people of faith together in worship. One is a call to activity, music, dancing, and expansive praise. The other is a call to quiet stillness with discussion and listening. This is a study in the contrast of one kind of worship to another. Could one be called boring and the other not boring? And if so which one is the exciting service?

So what makes church boring or exciting? When worship is labeled boring, I usually hear that to mean that a person is not getting anything from it, or doesn’t know what to look for from the service.

Fred Rogers told a story about visiting a church with another seminarian while they were at Pittsburgh seminary. As they listened to the sermon, Fred Rogers thought to himself, this is the worst sermon I’ve ever heard. He was going to comment to his classmate at it’s conclusion but when he turned to her, he saw tears in her eyes. After the service she commented that that sermon was exactly what she needed to hear. The message Fred Rogers took away from that moment was the way the word of God proclaimed can speak right into a person’s life.

The purpose of worship is to offer praise and thanksgiving to God. In response to hearing God’s promises in Jesus Christ, we are called to make and offering of praise to the creator of the universe. It is God who invited us into this time of worship and as each of us participates in a service, we share in an amazingly diverse event. How could that ever be called boring? I pray we get to see how we are all changed because we came.

Marketing campaigns in our American me first world often appeal to the ego. Many modern churches have adopted this marketing strategy. If you put a billboard on the highway and appeal to a person ego by telling them they won’t be bored, you’ve chosen to promote your church by appealing self-interest. The result of this is that we confuse the purpose of worship with something that happens to us in worship, and promote what happens to us as the more important event.

Gathering together in worship can and should result in feeling fulfilled, encouraged, joyful, inspired to help another, or changed because of our time together. And I certainly pray that happens for all us here. All of that is the generous gift of the grace from the one to whom we direct our worship. It is, however, a product of our gathering and not the purpose of our gathering.

Church was never meant to be boring. The billboard has it right, if not completely accurate. I think it misses the different between what is boring and what is routine. I want to challenge you to look for meaning in the routine of our Reformed, traditional worship. It’s so easy to run through this service on autopilot. We all are quite skilled at that. If you do, though, you’ll miss the depth of meaning in so much of what is a part of service. We are a diverse gathering of people called to authentic expressions of praise. And for that thanks be to God. Amen.

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As you know very well, the Virginia Tech community was changed forever by the violence of one person. Last week you might have watched that community come together to grieve the sad loss of life at a convocation. You couldn’t help but see some coverage in recent days of what happened. You may also have seen pictures of a deeply troubled soul and wondered what is so broken in a person that he could be that destructive. What’s so broken in a person that he would give into such impulses of violence? That’s what I wondered.

It also caused me to reflect that I’ve grown used to hearing about destruction like this when it comes from a Baghdad market or the Al Anbar province. News like that has become commonplace from Iraq, but it’s a shock when such news comes from a Blacksburg, Virginia. It bothers me that I am not more moved when a suicide bomber in Iraq kills thirty people in waiting for a bus, but I am greatly saddened when a person kills thirty-two people one state away. What do I do with this inequity of compassion? Do you know what I mean?

It’s comforting to hear about students who have people around them to bear them up in their sorrow. I wonder what community of support is there for all who grieve a loss of life in the midst of war? What happens to those who have no one to care for them in the midst of their grief? This really shows the value of community. The church has something to offer all who the feel the emptiness and despair of tragedy? It’s good news and a net full of fish. I’ll come back to the fish in a moment.

The good news we proclaim on this third Sunday of Easter is that death does not have the final word in places where lives are lost, in Baghad or in Blacksburg. Death is not the end. Resurrection has the final word. And as people of the resurrection that means we speak a word of hope into hearts empty of hope, into places full of despair.

Hope and love stand against despair. I hear this in the gospel text from John. The empty despair of Good Friday and the three days of silence that followed is broken with the hope and love of Easter day. Everything is different after Easter, and the disciples are just beginning to catch on and realize what that difference looks like or what it means for them.

John writes about the disciples traveling back to Galilee and together they return to something familiar: fishing. It’s possible that as much as two weeks may have passed since Easter morning. Enough time at least for the disciples to walk ninety miles from Jerusalem back to Galilee.That morning, while they are in the boat, the risen Christ calls to them from the shore. They listen, cast their nets, and their net and it’s filled with fish. Here is yet another sign that resurrection has made everything different. Resurrection means the patterns of a dark night do not continue into the dawn as just more of the same. Resurrection challenges any claim to more of the same. How is that true in your life? After Easter everything is different: the tomb is empty. Violence doesn’t win. Fear is met with a word of peace. The net is filled.

The disciples bring the boat and the fish to the shore and then share breakfast with Jesus. I like that image from John. It’s what the resurrection community first looked like: a community with the risen Christ among them sharing a meal—and there’s a net full of fish, too. Much has been written about that net full of fish—especially how John wrote that the net contained specifically 153 fish. Some have suggested that in that first century it was believed that there were 153 ethnicities among people. This was interpreted to mean the gospel is for everyone. Someone else figured out it’s the sum of the numbers from 1 to 17. Someone else noted that are probably 153 different interpretations for the number 153.

The significance of 153 has been lost to us, but you have to admit that 153 fish are more fish than Jesus and the disciples can eat. So what if that says something about what the resurrection community has to share with others?

To be sure, the disciples have good news to share. It’s the good news of the empty tomb and of Christ who opened the way of eternal life. The good news of the lamb of God who was slain and now reigns in heaven as John wrote about with angels singing in great praise. This is an image of triumphant glory. Death is truly defeated and—in the powerful symbolism of John’s vision—the lamb is worthy to receive praise from every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth. Bruce Metzger notes that in this chapter of Revelation that our worship on earth is connected with the worship happening in heaven. The Apostles’ Creed lifts up this idea and calls it the communion of saints. We have good news to share with a world full of despair.

But is there something more the disciples are called to share? They have fish to share. Fish that didn’t come from their own effort, but from listening to the risen Christ tell them to cast their nets one more time in the early light of day, one more time after an unsuccessful night.Those first disciples have an abundance to share with others. Their abundance is not a product of their effort, but a result of their willingness to listen and obey. What does this say about how we are called to be church and listen and then invite others to share in the abundance and be filled.

We are called to bring hope into the emptiness of despair—wherever that is—to fill the void. The abundance of God is much more than we could ever keep for ourselves. It’s a sign of grace and so we share what we have.

The resurrection community has been empowered to announce good news and to go beyond words to share God’s abundance with others. Someone wrote our faith won’t last unless we give it away. So what abundance is God calling us to share? What is our net full of fish? I am curious about that question, and I pray we begin listening for an answer in the weeks ahead. Here’s how I think the answer comes. It begins with a question from someone on the shoreline.

Jesus stood on the shore and called out to the disciples: “You haven’t caught have any fish, have you?” Then he told them to cast their nets again. After that they couldn’t even bring the net into the boat. What I hear in that account is that the abundance of God matches what’s missing. What if we were to look around and ask what’s missing here—and then listen for what to do next?

What’s missing in our world? There are not enough places where people can come together and respect one another in the way words are used to speak about others. There are not enough places free of violence and war and injury. There are not enough places where “Peace be with you” are the first words any of us hears, where there is good news shared with all, the abundance of God is available to all. And thanks be to God. Amen.

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Today we announce that death does not have the final word any more. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the starting point both for this claim and for our Christian faith. Resurrection is not on the fringe of our faith—somewhere out there on the horizon or as a footnote—it is the central expression of our faith.

Jesus is Risen! This was the report the women brought from the tomb to the eleven disciples. Luke reports that the disciples, in a sort of caught-off-guard-moment, didn’t know what to do with this news. When they begin make sense of it, and experience the risen Christ, here’s what they said: Jesus was alive, and we saw him killed, and then three days later we saw him alive again.

When the church proclaims the news, Jesus is Risen, just as those first women did and then as the disciples did, we are lifting up emptiness. The cross is empty we say, and so is the tomb. And the reason for this emptiness is resurrection.

Our American culture doesn’t do well with emptiness. Instead our culture actually promotes filling things up. We fill up garages and storage places, portfolios, IRA’s, resumes, credit limits, stomachs, schedules, our children’s lives, hard drives, gas tanks, weekends, landfills, and silence. Our culture convinces us to pursue happiness in life by filling things, spaces, and ourselves until we are full or over filled. What is the cost of this to ourselves, to other places in the world, to the environment, and to people who live in poverty and have so little?

Against this backdrop of living over-filled lives, the news of Easter offers us something different than trying to be filled up. It offers us the good news of an empty tomb. On the first day of week when it was still that grey, pre-dawn light, women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, but discovered something that completely caught them off guard. They discovered emptiness.

The women were told that Jesus was not there, but had risen. In that moment of surprise—they were carrying pounds of spices fully expecting to find a body—in that moment of complete surprise, resurrection faith was born. They went to find the eleven disciples and told them what they had seen and not seen. They became the first to announce the good news of the gospel.

This good news is that death does not have the final word. The humiliating death of Jesus three days prior was not the end. It was only the beginning. Three days prior, they had thought everything had come to a sudden, violent, humiliating defeat, but at the tomb they discovered that God’s plans had really just started. He is Risen means there is a new beginning. He is Risen means there is more to tell about Jesus Christ. He is Risen means we are not bound to the joys or sorrows of this life as if that were all there is.

On Easter morning, the cross stood empty and the tomb stood empty. And Jesus, who had been at both, was now absent from both, and it is this triumphant emptiness that is the core of our faith gives meaning to who we are as a community of believers.

Harvey Cox a theology and ethics professor writes that everyday language describes everyday events. Resurrection, however, is not an everyday event. So how do we use everyday language to share describe the resurrection? We don’t even try. The gospel writers don’t either. When the women arrived at the tomb, it’s already empty. Resurrection has already happened. The gospel writers pick up the story with the stone rolled away and the women finding the tomb empty.

What New Testament does include is the way the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes lives–and that is an everyday event. Those first Christians were filled with resurrection faith and they shared the news they had received with other. I see that same resurrection faith at work in you and in this place.

So what does God want us to do with the news? Share it everywhere we go, share the good news of emptiness for it means that our truest calling in life is not to fill ourselves with the stuff around us, as if that would make us content, but rather to be filled with the Spirit of God. The empty tomb leads to the filling presence of God.

What does God want us to do with this news? Keep on talking about and living out how resurrection changes lives. If you seek such a change for your life, then I invite you to surround yourself not with the stuff of this world, but to surround yourself with others who journey as disciples of Jesus Christ.

What does God want us to do with this news? Announce it in these Easter days ahead. Announce it with song, with people of all ages, with flowers that tell of spring life after winter darkness, with a trumpet, with a font full of water, with bread and cup on a table, in a true spirit of welcome and openness.

On this Easter day, walk with gladness and see what God’s love can do and dare to accomplish for the sake of the world. Be filled with resurrection peace and the joy of this Easter day. And for that thanks be to God. Amen.