Sermon:
June 20, 1999

Scripture:
Luke 4: 14-21

From time to time, I am met by a visitor at the close of the service whose sole purpose in waiting for me is to get me to sign his bulletin. Don't get the wrong idea. He is not seeking my autograph. What he is seeking is my verification that he has been present in our sanctuary. At issue is his attendance record and his desire to keep it spotless. Back home (in his own church) it is easy to have his presence noted and marked. But on vacation, he apparently feels some need of proof. So he takes home a bulletin signed by the pastor.

One such visitor was not even content with my signature. He wanted me to write a note to his pastor, so that his pastor would be sure to believe him. I can't imagine his pastor calling him a liar. But what do I know? It's possible he was going for some major attendance record (32 years - no misses), or perhaps he had reached the finals of some attendance contest, where a trip to Israel (by way of Hawaii) was first prize.

I have never been high on record-keeping or record-rewarding, although I am sure I earned one or two Sunday school attendance pins in my day. Such systems tend to produce the kinds of compulsive behaviors that the Gospel seeks to correct, while seducing people into doing a very good thing for a very poor reason. Still, I find myself wishing that more of my parishioners would take such matters with similar seriousness. I tend to take them so myself. If you total up the last 35 years of Sabbaths, I doubt that I've averaged one missed Sunday a year. Which has less to do with working for the corporation than with responding to a need. I don't know that I am necessarily compulsive about being in church, but I experience a certain awkwardness (and a not-inconsequential emptiness) when I miss a Sunday.

Chris Hall and I talk about this from time to time. If Chris had his druthers, no chorister or bell-ringer would ever be anywhere else but here. Especially on Sunday mornings when music is scheduled, expected and assumed. Chris hates to hear that the people he is counting on are planning to be absent. But the things Chris most hates to hear are the excuses rendered for the absences. Actually, where excuses are concerned, Chris has mellowed over the years. Deaths in the family ... complicated brain surgeries ... plagues on the household ... he understands such things. But lesser things still irritate him. Which is true of us all. Still, for Chris, the issue is not so much professional as personal. As a man whose life is organized around (and empowered by) weekly worship, he wonders how so many others can live, week after week, without the support and encouragement an hour like this affords.

The scriptures make it clear that Jesus worshiped regularly. We find repeated references to his Sabbath-day presence in synagogues. In today's text, the one where Jesus goes public with his ministry in his home town of Nazareth, we read in Luke 4:16 that he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day "as was his custom." Strange phrase ... "as was his custom." It occurs only twice in the New Testament. We find it in Luke 4:16, describing the priority Jesus placed on public worship. And we find it in Luke 22:37 (when Jesus went "as was his custom" to the Mount of Olives), describing the priority Jesus placed on private prayer.

I discovered all of this by reading a wonderful little book by Bill Hinson entitled, The Power of Holy Habits. It is Hinson's contention that well-cultivated habits (such as worship and prayer) expand rather than constrict our spiritual lives. But he also warns those of us who preach such things, that we ought never do so in ways that make them sound like "duties," but in ways that make them sound like "opportunities." People have enough "shoulds" and "oughts" in their lives, without the church becoming one more "should-house," from which escape is sought at the earliest opportunity. Rather, such habits (rightly understood) are like threads woven into cables, of the kind that support us, secure us, and keep us from falling.

That makes sense to me. And it would appear that it made sense to Jesus, too. In fact, I got to thinking about Jesus attending his home town synagogue. It couldn't have been a very "big time" place. I wonder how many bad sermons he heard there? I wonder how many less-than-prepared teachers he listened to there? I wonder how many hypocrites he sat next to there? And given all that he must have found himself in disagreement with there, I wonder why he went? Perhaps our only clue is contained in the notion that "it was his custom." But given Jesus' willingness to discard other customs that did not fit his greater purpose, why the tendency to hold onto this one ... unless it was more central to his self-understanding than many of us find it to be to ours.

The late Dr. Howard Thurman, beloved Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, was known for his habit of assigning 50-page papers on the prayer and devotional life of Jesus. On the bottoms of such papers, once returned, could often be found variations on a single hand-written comment: "I hope you have learned through this experience that one does not worship and pray in order to become religious, but to be true to the grain in one's own wood."

What a marvelous phrase: "...to be true to the grain in one's own wood." Every wood grain is distinctive. Every wood grain is rich. Every wood grain is deep. But any finish carpenter knows that relatively few things will draw the grain out, compared with any number of things that will mar, scratch, or cover the grain up. I think some of us have discovered the truth of Dr. Thurman's observation, and (with Bill Hinson) have discerned which "holy habits" have the highest potential for drawing out our grain.

Having owned my bias about the centrality of public worship, it is my intention to keep the rest of this sermon simple, speaking of three related matters ... the priority of worship, the place of worship, and the person of worship ... before putting this little exercise to bed, singing a hymn and allowing you to ride off to embrace whatever may be left of summer's first glorious weekend.

The priority of worship. When a colleague of mine was appointed to his first student church, his immediate neighbor in that remote rural community was a single mother with several small children. In conversations across the fence, he kept suggesting she bring her kids to Sunday school, and herself to worship. She kept finding excuses that were every bit the equal of his urgings. She couldn't begin to get them all ready in time, she said. Her house was a bedlam, she said. Getting everybody fed, bathed and dressed by 9:00 (without the clean ones getting dirty as the dirty ones were getting clean) was a physical impossibility, she said.

So, armed with the zeal found only among the idealistic, my colleague set his alarm clock one Sunday morning for 6:00, thus enabling him to stand knocking on her door at 6:30. She came, at long last, stumbling to the door, minus make-up, curlers, or anything other than a flannel nightgown and a terry cloth robe she was still trying to wrap around her. "What do you want?" she said. "It's still the middle of the night."

"I've come to help you get ready for Sunday school and church," he answered. "Would you rather have me bathe the kids? Or would you rather have me start by cooking breakfast?"

Which led her to respond: "What I really want is for you to go home. But if you will go home, we will be in church by 9:00." Which she was ... from that day forward. Later, she was to confess to that same young pastor: "I guess it had been a possibility all the time. What it had not been was a priority.

Some of us come to that understanding earlier ... and easier ... than others. Along about the sixth or seventh grade, I decided what I needed to do, worship-wise, to keep my life (and my act) together. As did the late William Few, beloved former President of Duke University. It seems that President Few was walking to the Duke Chapel one Sunday morning in a downpour, when some students recognized him and offered him a ride. Once in their car, they asked why he had decided to go to church that morning, given the fact that it was such a rainy day. To which he is said to have replied: "I didn't decide to go to church this morning. I decided that matter 55 years ago, and it has been a settled issue ever since."

Glen Reimers would have liked that answer. Glen Reimers (along with his wife, three kids, and his father-in-law) joined my former church two months after I arrived as its preacher. Then one day, at age 69, Glen walked into Arby's, ordered a roast beef sandwich, and died. Just like that. Glen was one of those guys who never said much about his faith. But open the door ... he was there. Call for a volunteer ... he was there. Surface a need ... he was there.

Over the passage of time, Glen's oldest grew up, got a job, rented an apartment, and set up housekeeping on his own. But since Glen's wife (Helen) was one of those women who believed in the big Sunday dinner routine, that son always managed to drop by the house on Sunday, just about the time the roast was coming out of the oven. And Glen liked seeing him, every bit as much as Helen liked feeding him. But something about that arrangement grated on Glen, until one day he took his son aside and said: "Tom, you know we love seeing you. And you know we'd never let you starve. But Sunday dinner at our house has always kinda been something we eat when we come home from church, so much so that (to my mind) it's a package deal. And I hope you'll take this in the right spirit. But I also hope you'll think twice before you automatically assume that without showing up in church, you can just go on showing up here every Sunday."

I'd like to be able to say that Tom was in church the following Sunday. As I remember it, he wasn't. I don't imagine he was at the dinner table the following Sunday, either. I do know we eventually began to see a little more of Tom. As for me, I don't know if I could say something like that ... or stick by it, once I'd said it. But Glen could. And did. In part, because he believed that strongly in the priorities and habits he lived by. And he believed ... without strong-arming anybody ... that such priorities could do as much for his son as they had done for him.

The place of worship. Does one have to do it here? No! Does one have to do it in a place that looks like here? No! Can one do it anywhere? Yes! But the fact is, most of us don't. We tend to worship most naturally in the present, in those locations where we have worshiped most fruitfully in the past.

The other night Kris and I went to a pub ... an Irish pub ... in downtown Birmingham ... to listen to a priest talk about prayer. You probably read about this (as did we) in the newspaper . Down at Dick O'Dow's, they've started this thing called "Theology on Tap." It takes place every Tuesday night at 7:30. A priest from Cardinal Maida's staff leads the discussion. There is a different topic every week. Prayer was the topic being served up last Tuesday ... along with burgers ... beer ... and ice-cold glasses of lemonade.

The place was packed. We had to stand ... in a back hall ... just inside the alley door ... where we couldn't see squat. To the degree I could scan the crowd, I noticed it was multi-aged. Not as young as I expected. And not as non-churched as I expected. There was a lot of good talk about prayer. But we didn't do any praying ... not that I expected we would. Meaning that everybody talking 'bout worshiping, ain't necessarily worshiping ... if such distinctions matter ... as I kinda think they do.

Other people are fond of telling me that golf courses are great places for worship. This strikes me as being somewhat accurate, given the number of times I have heard God's name mentioned there. As for me, golf is a sufficiently difficult game to master, to the degree that I'd rather not "muddy up" my attempts to play it by trying to worship at the same time. I can't remember to keep my head down, knees flexed, shoulders square and backswing slow, let alone trying to "praise God from whom all blessings flow" at the same time.

But it's not an either-or issue (golf courses versus sanctuaries, Irish pubs versus wayside chapels, canyons versus cathedrals, etc.) Jesus preached on hillsides. Jesus prayed in boats. But Jesus was grounded in regular visits to the synagogue "as was his custom." The power was in the continuity. The continuity was in the habit. And the habit was rooted in the particularity of a place ... to which he repeatedly returned.

I do understand that, where worship is concerned, familiarity sometimes breeds contempt. After all, listen to the disparaging tone of voice with which most of us say the words: "Same old, same old." And which explains why the most passionate testimonies I hear (concerning worship in this church) are often from people who move away from it and find they can't replace it, or from people who come freshly to it and tell me they have never seen anything like it.

Following our Pentecost celebration, one of you told me about your friends from Russia. There were five in all. One had worshipped here previously. The other four had come for the first time, just that morning. Even with limitations of language, they "got" most of the sermon. They were surprised to see everyone smiling and dressed in bright-colored clothing. Said the endocrinologist from Moscow: "In my church (which is Protestant, not Orthodox) it is very dark inside. The minister wears a robe with much gold on it. Every one is very serious. No one smiles. And I leave church, feeling I can never be good enough to be a Christian. Often, upon departing, I feel physically ill."

They found the sermon to be uplifting. And they also enjoyed the richness of the music, including the trio of "Songs of Joy" singers ... who, in her church, would have been told they were going "straight to Hell." Like I said, the most interesting testimonies come from the lips of strangers.

The person of worship. By "person," I don't mean "your person," but the person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. High on the list of criteria of Christian worship is the degree to which any activity, so named, draws us closer-to, on the way to becoming more-one-with, Jesus Christ.

Remember the story about the trip that Mary and Joseph made with Jesus to Jerusalem when Jesus was but 12 years old? Remember how they lost him, leaving him behind in the Temple when they started back to Nazareth? It was an oversight that had nothing to do with bad parenting. Leaving him behind was easy. Whenever there were important religious festivals in Jerusalem, whole towns traveled together. Men walked with men. Women walked with women. Jesus was just with the other group. Right? Right! Until night came and Mary and Joseph touched base, only to realize each had "assumed" he was elsewhere in the company (Luke 2:44).

My friends, I have got to believe that one of life's most shocking realizations is to have traveled a long way down life's highway, only to come to a longer, darker night, and realize you have only "assumed" Jesus to be in your company. There may be worse things in the world than losing sight of Jesus. And one of them is to lose sight of Jesus and not even know when and where you lost him. Which is one of the things that worship, as a periodic check point, is meant to correct.

All of which you may already know. And some of which you may already believe. So much so, that some of you may be smugly saying: "This message is not for me. This message is for those who are not here."

Maybe so. But I like Bill Hinson's response to such assertions. Says Bill:

Growing up on the farm, we would occasionally try to catch all the hogs in order to smear them with some awful concoction designed to keep fleas, ticks and a host of other critters off their backs. And my father would say: "Now boys, there will be some hogs you will never catch. So put an extra dose on those you do, and trust that (sooner or later) they'll rub up against the rest."

My friends, having done a little preaching ... we're going to do a little singing ... and then we're all going to fan out and do a little rubbing ... that the grain of our wood might show and shine ... and that the Christ we have caught in this place might be contagious.

Amen.