WORSHIPFUL PRAYER

It was during a session meeting one time we were talking about worship and one of the elders said, “We sure do pray an awful lot during the worship service. Do we really need to do that?”
I admit i was a little flummoxed by the question and I admit it was something I had not thought about before. Prayers just have always been a part of the service and I hadn’t delved any deeper into that. So we took out our bulletin and we looked at it and there were quite a few prayers - Opening Prayer, Prayer of Confession, Pastoral Prayer, Prayer for Illumination before the sermon, the Offering prayer and if we have communion we have the Prayer of Great Thanksgiving. Somewhere included in one of the prayers is the Lord’s Prayer.
As we continue our look at the worship service and how and why we do what we do during the service, today we are going to talk about the prayers which are a major part of our service.
Maybe first, what we need to do is look at exactly what prayer is.
Simply put, prayer is communication with God. Prayer is how we talk to God and how God talks to us. Our closeness with God is dependent upon our time spent in prayer with God. The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians “Pray without ceasing” emphasizing the need for us to spend time with God - praying without ceasing means that in everything you do there needs to be this running conversation with God - about anything and about everything. God is interested in you and in all of you and even in all those trivial things that go on in your lives every day. If you are always in this constant conversation with God, then you are recognizing God’s involvement in every aspect of your life.
Worship is an important part of our life and an important part of our relationship with God - so of course prayer needs to be integrated into all aspects of our worship service - which helps us remember things that might seem obvious when we talk about them - but as humans we need to have that constant reminder of who God is and how involved in our lives God is our lives as a church; as a congregation. Prayer helps us remember that.
You notice there are a couple types of prayers during our worship - there are corporate prayers and there is also time for individual prayer. Corporate prayers are prayers that are offered for us a a congregation. For example, in our prayer of confession as we read the prayer together, we are saying that as a group these are the tings we do wrong; as a congregation these are the ways our community of faith falls short. Likewise in our Prayer of Dedication after the offering, we are asking God to accept these offerings we gave as a group and allow our church as a congregation to use this money so the church can do the will of God. The offerings we give are not for any one person to use, but for the church to use as a whole. Corporate prayers are then the prayers in which we ask God, as this specific church, to use as a church for the work of God.
Included in our worship are also individual prayers. During the Prayer of confession we are each given the opportunity to pray silently for the sins of our own hearts - in other words here is your opportunity as an individual to confess the things you personally do wrong or have done wrong because each of us is going to have something different here to as forgiveness for.
Also during the Pastoral Prayer there is a moment where we are asked to pray silently for the needs of our own hearts - for those people who we really didn’t want to raise before the entire congregation and for our own needs - we have an opportunity to pray for what we know we need.
Having these corporate moments and these individual moments of prayers is a realization that we are a congregation, a community together, this church as a collective group of people. But we also recognize by our personal moments of prayer that God is not only part of this church, but also part of each of our individual lives.
We also have unison prayers and we have prayers that I pray where you follow along. Unison prayers are important in that it keeps you as a congregation engaged in the service. It gives us a sense of community and our understanding that we are one in the eyes of God. If I stood up here and did all the praying there would be a couple of problems - you would quit feeling like you as an individual mattered in worship - in fact I’d be the one worshipping and you would simply be a spectator - and you would lose the whole point of worship which was for you to be the one worshipping God. I am only suppose to be a guide as we gather here together to worship. We all need to be involved.
But usually the Pastoral Prayer is one where I do do most of the reading of the prayer - your responsibility is to listen during this prayer and silently interject into that prayer your own thoughts about whatever I may be mentioning in the prayer. Even though I am saying the words, you are to be actively praying along. That is true with any of the prayers that I pray - you are to pray along as we pray together. And a little aside - if at any time you as a congregation feel you would like to be more involved with the prayers we can always make more of the prayers unison prayers or more liturgical responsive type prayers.
Anytime we are praying in worship, we need to be sure that we are allowing that prayer not to be a ‘this is how I want it God” prayer but a prayer that helps us align our will to the will of God. I want you to think about the prayer Jesus said in the garden on the night of his arrest. Jesus ate the last supper with the disciples and then they went up tot he Garden of Gethsemane. Where Jesus falls on his knees and begins to pray - God, can we do this differently? I really don’t want to do this anymore. I’d like to find a way out.” A prayer I think we can all understand - who of us would be willing to do what Jesus had to do. And even Jesus was having second thoughts - and so Jesus teaches us that it is OK to verbalize to God that we want. But as we learn from Jesus we have to be willing to do hear God’s answer no matter what it is. Jesus pours out his heart to God and then ends his prayer with “Not my will God, but yours.” In other words, Jesus says “You have heard what I want God - but I agree to do what ever you decide is best.” And that is what we need to remember in our payers both as individuals and in our corporate worship. Our prayers during worship give us as a congregation a sense that we are here for God and regardless of our we see things, God has a handle on everything and God has a plan for our church and as we pray we need to always keep that in mind. Prayer in worship helps us focus on the things of God and takes us away from ourselves.
Let’s take a moment and open up our bulletins to look at each of the specific prayers we say during our worship service. The first prayer is called the Opening Prayer. The is the prayer at the beginning of the service. It is to be a prayer of adoration. In other words, we are acknowledging that we are coming before the Creator, the one who made us, the one who saves us. It is prayer to remind us that we are coming to worship as an act of humility - God is greater that we are and we are here to submit ourselves to the one who is greater and more powerful than anything else we know.
We end all of our prayers with the word “Amen”. Amen comes from the Hebrew word meaning “so be it”. We are affirming our participation in the prayer and embracing it as our own. In others words, whether we read the prayer in unison or it is read by someone else as we actively pray along, we are saying we agree with whatever was said.
Normally I say a Prayer for Illumination right before the sermon. The pray can be anything but I usually use the words of Psalm 19 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Which are words which help me focus on the words from God I am about to preach as the sermon, and for you to remember the words that I am speaking are actually the words of God. This prayer calls for the Holy Spirit to help me be receptive to the leading of the Spirit and for you to be receptive tot he work of the spirit.
We have the Pastoral Prayer - or often called the Prayers of the People. This prayer is suppose to help us acknowledge God’s presence in the world and in daily life. This prayer normally contains a time to pray for our church and to pray for the churches all over the world. This is a moment where we can remind ourselves that we are a part of the church universal - not just a church church on the corner - but a church which is part of the church of Jesus Christ all over the world regardless of how they are worshipping or practicing their faith. A time to remember that we are all one in God so we spend time praying for one another. We pray for the world because as messed up as it may seem, God created it and God loves it and that is significant. God sent Jesus to die for the entire world and even if we can’t see it or don’t realize it, God is concerned for every place on earth and is working to lead the world toward a relationship with him.
We have moments of intercession - which are those times where we pray for the names of those we have lifted up to the congregation whether aloud or in our hearts and we have a time to ask God to intercede for ourselves. We all have things in our own lives we need to pray about and her his our opportunity.
And we conclude the prayer with the prayer Jesus taught us - what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Now this could be a sermon in itself but briefly the Lord prayer reminds us again of a few things. First, notice this is meant to be a corporate prayer - one we pray together because all of the pronouns used in the prayer are collective - Our Father, not my father. We say give us several times - it is a prayer for us as a group; as a community of faith. The prayer points out to us the things that are important - We start by praising God; we are reminded that we are to submit to God’s way - thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We acknowledge God will provide whatever we need each day “Give us this day our daily bread” and that God will help keep us from doing the wrong things and we end again with the praise for thine is the kingdom. All those essential parts of what we need to pray for as followers of Jesus Christ.
We have the Prayer of Dedication after the offering to remember that we as a church collect the offering, but the money is God’s and we are to use to as God wills the church. Our prayer helps us remember that important part of our work as a church.
So yes, we pray a good bit during worship. But that is who we are - we are a community who prays. We are a community who realizes our constant need to be in contact with God and we do that through prayer. Each of our prayers plays a vital part of what we need to do in worship, coming before God, confessing to God, accepting the work of the Holy Spirit, dedicating ourselves to God and lifting before God our desire for God to be involved in our world and in our lives.
We come to worship - and we pray.
Amen!

THE SERMON

I have to admit, it is rather strange to be preaching a sermon on The Sermon! But as we continue our look at our worship, we need to understand the value and the importance of these 15 minutes where we listen to teaching about God and about our understanding of scripture. And because we are Presbyterian and much of what we do as Presbyterians is founded on the teachings of John Calvin, let’s spend a minute thinking about who Calvin was and why we base our theory and our practices on his teachings.
Calvin lived during the period of history known as The Reformation - late 1500’s and through the 1600s. He was one of several who were working to try and bring the church back into compliance with what was taught in the scriptures. The teachings and practices of the church had veered way off track and now was the time to make a correction.
Calvin wrote extensively on the practice of worship and what worship services should contain and even the order of the service based on his study of the Bible and how worship was conducted by the Hebrews in the Old Testament and the new church based on Jesus Christ in the New Testament. As we have talked about before, our worship service, the order and content, is based very intentionally on what Calvin taught and specifically today we are looking at what Calvin taught about the sermon as part of the worship service.
The first thing we understand about the sermon as part of worship is that it is designed to be instructional.
You are to learn something about what the bible teaches from the sermon. Not a lecture or a Sunday School lesson or a Bible study - but a teaching on something the Bible teaches and how that relates to you and your life. In what we are doing in our worship series, then, is to learn what the Bible teaches about how and why we worship and how that affects your life as a follower of Jesus Christ.
So from Calvin the first thing we learn about the sermon as part of our worship is that it is to be based on scripture. As you can see from our worship, we read passages from each part of the Bible each Sunday - the Old Testament, the Gospels which contain the stories of Jesus, the Epistles which are the letters that were written by Paul, Peter and John to the newly forming churches and from the Psalms which was the hymnbook of the Hebrew people used during their worship. We do this because we understand that hearing the word of God is not something you can do by pulling out a verse of scripture, but by recognizing the value of the Bible as a whole. It is all relevant to us - Old and New Testaments - the stories of the Hebrews, the stories of Jesus and the stories of the church which came to be after the death and resurrection of Jesus. So everything we talk about on Sunday morning is about what we are taught in The Bible using portions of the entire Bible.
The second important point Calvin emphasized is that the purpose of gathering here together for worship is to praise God and acknowledge God in our lives, but it is also so that we can learn to better live and work and worship as the people of God. The sermon is used to instruct and to inspire and sometimes to admonish. We are encouraged by these words given in scripture; we learn what it is we are to do and we do need to hear every now and again how it is we have fallen short so that we can correct ourselves and more forward.
Calvin saw the sermon as being the focal point of why we were here and so designed the worship so that the sermon was in the middle of the service. His design was pretty simple, we gather, we confess, we hear scripture and the Word from God - the Sermon. After the sermon we respond to what we have heard by offering our prayers to God, offering ourselves, our tithes and offerings and then we leave to continue our serving God throughout the week. So in Calvin’s worship, the sermon, being the central point of worship, is in the center of the service allowing us time to respond to what we have heard before we leave.
There is another aspect of worship and of hearing scripture and the sermon that is more difficult to understand. You may have heard of the sermon being called a ‘homily’ in other traditions and in the modern world the word ‘homily’ simply refers to a short sermon! But in the original Greek, the word homily actually means ‘conversation with God.’ The sermon, then, is to be a type of ‘conversation’ with God. Meaning for us, not so much that we talk back and forth with God during the sermon, but that we are listening to what God is saying to us during the sermon - and in our way of understanding worship and the parts of worship and what is happening in this sanctuary when we gather for worship - the Spirit of God is here and active in what we are doing and the one speaking to us in the words of scripture and the sermon.
The Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, is such a difficult concept for us to understand. The idea of the Holy Spirit in worship is kind of scary and I don’t know what background you may have or what experiences you may have had in churches oo other traditions, but if you have ever been to a true Pentecostal worship service, it is so far removed from our Presbyterian practice that it can be a little disturbing. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way saying it is not a valid form of worship for those who practice that tradition, I’m just saying that for


us as Presbyterians, it is way outside what we are use to. I know the first time I went to a Pentecostal service
it was very difficult because while we focus worship as being decently and in order, a Pentecostal service focuses their worship on the work of the Holy Spirit manifested in a physical way by speaking in tongues and dancing and loud exhortations. It is to say the least a very active expression of worship inspired by the Holy Spirit. And maybe when you hear ‘The Holy Spirit’ in worship that is the picture you get and you don’t see that happening around here. But we can’t think that just because we are not physically or verbally manifesting the spirit, doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit is not just as present here as it is in a more vibrant worship.
We believe our entire service, from conception of the service to our leaving the service is guided by the Spirit of God. When I sit down at my computer each Monday morning and begin to work on the worship service for the following Sunday, I am guided in everything I do by the work of the Holy Spirit - the liturgy, the hymns, the scripture passages are all guided by the Holy Spirit. And then as I read through the scripture passages and begin to craft the sermon from them, the Holy, Spirit is there to help me put together the words and the emphasis and the illustrations that are used. It is a process that cannot be explained until which time you do it.
In our scripture passages this morning, both Moses and the Apostle Paul tell us that they are totally inadequate for the teaching of God’s work. Neither one of them think that they are capable of doing what God wants them to do in going out and speaking for God, and teaching for God. And what does God say to them - “Don’t worry about it. I will guide you. I will put words in your mouth and give you the ability to say them.” And every preacher who stands in the pulpit and delivers a message, understands that.
This being up here would not be possible without the help of God’s spirit. And I admit it gives me some comfort to know that the great icons of the Bible - Moses and Paul - depended on the Holy Spirit to preach as God called them to.
And in the Gospel of Luke, the account we read this morning - even Jesus declares that it is the power of the Spirit of God that allows him to speak in worship. We get a glimpse of what worship was like in the synagogue where Jesus attended worship. They didn’t have ‘preachers’ as we think of them, but each Saturday as they gathered for worship and did their liturgy and their prayers, someone would pick a scripture passage from the Old Testament, read it and then talk about it. On this particular Saturday, Jesus is the one who is reading scripture and he specifically says as he begins his explanation of scripture, that he is doing it because of the power given him by the spirit of God.
So as we sit and listen to these words of the sermon, we have to understand they are not just something I dreamed up and these words are purely my opinion, but we are hearing a true message from God who helped with the process of reading and doing research and writing. And is even present to help as I speak.
Over the years I had often heard ministers I knew talk about the amazing work of the Holy Spirit doing the presenting of the sermon during worship. I wasn’t sure what they meant until I started doing it myself. I know the spirit is there when I put the service together and write the sermon because things happen that are not something I thought about previously, or in some cases even knew! But even more spectacular about the sermon process is what happens to you doing the time of the sermon.
Over the course of the many years I have been serving churches and leading worship, I would occasionally have someone come up to me after worship and say, “I really appreciated it what you said….’ and they would tell me something I don’t remember saying. Or someone would come up and say ‘I really needed to hear…..’ and they would say something I didn’t remember saying. And I mentioned this to a minister mentor of mine who laughed and say, “Isn’t the Holy Spirit something amazing”! When I stand up here and read my carefully put together sermon, if you open yourselves what you will hear is what God wants you or needs you to hear. The Holy Spirit works hard during this service to ensure you are having a conversation with God as you hear these words.
I don’t think I realized the scope of this spiritual activity until at one church I served we had a bag lunch after worship for anyone who wanted to stay and talk about the sermon over lunch. We gathered around a table - there was usually 6 or 8 of us, and as we ate our lunch, they talked about what they heard from the sermon as I listened - usually in wonder at what God was able to do with the words from my mouth. They all heard different things, in different ways and as they shared they themselves realized the work of God’s spirit through not only the sermon, but all aspects of the service.
And just a little bit of additional information, I always write the sermon first each week because it often doesn’t turn out like I first thought it would. So I don’t want to put the liturgy together until after the sermon is written because when I would try and do the responsive readings and the prayers and the hymns first, they
often didn’t apply because the sermon went in a direction I had not conceived it would go! So after the sermon is written, I can then go and write the readings and the prayers and pick the hymns based on what the message of the sermon ended up being!
This sermon is not a time for me to impress you with my vast biblical knowledge, but a time for you to encounter the living God through the words of scripture. God’s spirit is here and God’s spirit is working to help you grow as the people of God.
The Apostle Paul teaches us about how this process works and he uses the picture of a Baby drinking milk. As you all know, when babies are born and for the first year they have a diet based on milk - mother’s milk or formula based on milk. But they can’t live on that milk forever. As they get older, the babies get some mushy
food and then as they grow teeth the food becomes more substantial until over the years they begin to eat like any adult. That is what the spirit does for us - whether we are in the milk stage of our spiritual growth or
are more biblically astute, the spirit teaches us what we need, how we need it in our particular place in our spiritual growth.
I know this idea of the Holy Spirit, something we cannot see or touch, is difficult. But we need to have the faith and trust, that when we come into this sanctuary for worship, whether it be on a Sunday morning or for another special service, we know, we expect, the Holy Spirit to be here so that this time will help to transform us and help us grow into the people of God that God knows we can be.
So what have we learned about the sermon - it is the word of God for the people of God. It is based on scripture so that God can speak to us through God’s own words; it is in the middle of the service so that we have the opportunity after we hear God’s word to respond through our prayers and offerings, and it becomes a part of us through the work of the Holy Spirit who speaks to us in a way we need to hear.

Amen!

Communion

We continue our look at our worship service and the parts of that service. We have learned to Call Ourselves to Worship so that we remember we are here to worship God - to worship a God who is great and mighty and bigger than anything we can imagine, yet able to hear our small church as we gather to worship. We have learned to confess our sins before this God so that we can be free of the burdens of our sin before we truly worship - knowing that we are forgiven in the blood of Jesus Christ. We have learned that we are not only to confess our sins to almighty God, but to forgive one another before we can truly worship. Today, on this World Communion Sunday, we look at our practice of communion - the Lord’s Supper - which our Book of Order tells us - ‘should be a ‘normal’ part of worship’.
In 1936 the Presbyterian Church celebrated a special Sunday called World Wide Communion Sunday for the first time. At this time is was something done denominationally around the world to remember their togetherness in all the churches of the world. In 1940, the practice was picked up by the National Council of Churches which encouraged all the member denominations around the world to share in communion on the first Sunday in October.
This Sunday is a call for all followers of Christ, of whatever background and whatever theological tradition to remember that we are all one in Jesus Christ - that the table we receive from is not our table, but the table of Jesus Christ. We do what Jesus calls all his followers to do - to eat his flesh and drink his blood and receive his spirit. One Sunday a year we can put all our differences aside and remember that in Jesus Christ we are all one.
There are so many differences in this simple act of Communion. Some say we are going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, many will call it The Eucharist - which is a word meaning “Thanksgiving”. Others simply call it communion and in some traditions the phrase used for this meal is “The Love Feast”. Some call it the Table of the Lord.
And as varied as the name is the procedure variations of how too participate in this meal. Some traditions you come forward and kneel at a rail and are served the bread and drink out of a common cup. Others remain in their seat and are served with small cups and cubes of bread or wafers. In many smaller churches the common cup and bread are passed through the congregation by the congregation itself. In some you come forward and break bread and dip it in a cup. In Calvin’s day the members of the congregation would come forward in groups of 12 and stand around the table and pass the bread and the cup. In some traditions this meal is celebrated as part of a cover dish meal as it was in the New Testament church. And there are some churches that always have a foot washing as part of communion since the night of the first Lord’s Supper Jesus washed the feet of the disciples.
Today, there will be churches around the world who will be celebrating this meal in their own way in a sanctuary like ours, or in a school gym, or in a grass hut in the middle of an open plain or a tent in the desert or in homes.
And then we get into the differences in how people view even the bread and the drink. There are those that insist that wine be used because that is what Jesus would have used. Our tradition simply states that the bread and drink be from something we can grow locally. Some believe that upon blessing the bread and drink they transform into the actual blood and flesh of Jesus and some believe that this bread and juice are just used as a memorial to the acts of Jesus and a re-enactment of the original Last Supper. Presbyterians believe that there is a spiritual transformation involved in what we do. That when we are taking the bread and the cup we are spiritually taking in the body and blood of Jesus to renew us and to spiritually fortify us to be able to live and work and worship as the people of God.
However, what we must keep in mind, and what Paul reminds us in the book of Romans, is that we believe what we believe and we have good scriptural reasons to do so, but we are to respect the various other ways people will be participating in this Holy Meal this World Communion Sunday. This Sunday is a call for all followers of Christ, of whatever background and whatever theological tradition to remember that we are all one in Jesus Christ - that the table we receive from is not our table, but the table of Jesus Christ. We do what Jesus calls all his followers to do - to eat his flesh and drink his blood and receive his spirit. One Sunday a year we can put all our differences aside and remember that in Jesus Christ we are all one.
Today, through World Communion Sunday, we are also celebrating that though each church does things differently, we each and all of us need God and His grace. By participating together around the world in Holy Communion, we celebrate our common need for God, and together we celebrate receiving His love and grace through this meal.
But we also want to remember that we are studying to learn about communion being a part of our worship. Again, our Book of Order tells us that we should celebrate communion as ‘a regular part of worship’ and so many PCUSA churches celebrate communion every Sunday, some make it a monthly or every other month practice, some less frequently with it being a minimum of once a quarter. Just a little history, the reason for the once a quarter came from the days of the circuit preachers, when congregations, especially on the frontier, would only hold worship once a quarter as the circuit preacher would travel through their town!
We are also instructed that the communion portion of our worship should be the last thing we do during our worship, after we have heard the word and offered ourselves to God through our offering. Then, before we go out into the world to serve as God’s people, we are nourished with the body and blood of Jesus, spiritually, so that we are able to do God’s work knowing Jesus is an actual part of who we are!
The key story which helps us with our understanding of our practice of the Lord’s Supper happened on the day of Jesus’ resurrection. There was a Jewish couple leaving Jerusalem headed back home to their town of Emmaus, about 7 miles from Jerusalem. They were depressed and saddened because they had been followers of Jesus, but with Jesus’ death they thought all their hopes and dreams, the work they had done, the time they had invested, was useless. Jesus was gone. He was dead and now they had to figure out what their lives were going to be going forward. They were joined on their walk home by a stranger who asked them why they were so depressed and they told the stranger about Jesus and how he was gone and now they didn’t know what they were going to do. The stranger then began to teach them how all the prophets of the Old Testament foretold of the Messiah and how Jesus had fulfilled all of those prophecies. As the couple approached their home they were so enamored with the teachings of this stranger, they invited him in to share their supper as they wanted to hear more of his teachings.
So they sat at a table and as they were eating their meal, we are told the stranger took the bread and broke it and gave it to them - they their eyes were opened and they recognized who this stranger was! The one who had traveled with them and taught them and now sat at their table was none other than the risen Jesus! We are told their hearts were warmed and they were so excited to have shared this meal with Jesus!
They jumped up and ran the 7 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the others that they had just shared a meal with the resurrected Lord!
And that is what we do as well. We believe that we come to this table, with the risen Lord present with us where we are offered his body and his blood so that we too can recognize the resurrected Jesus who fills us with his spirit and empowers us to leave here praising God and doing the work God has called us to do!
It is not just a re-enactment of the Last Supper, it is a joyful celebration of the risen Lord! It is to be a happy, joyful time where we get to be with Jesus in this special way, around this table.
And today, as World Day of Communion, we not only get to share this intimate moment with Christ and with one another here, we get to share it with all those around the world who are also gathering for this meal. We are celebrating together not only our bond in Christ, but our trust that he is here with us, and that if we pay attention, when we take his body through the bread into ours, our hearts will burn within us as well as we really encounter the Risen Christ.
Amen