Sermon For June 18, 2000
Trinity Sunday
HEBREW TESTAMENT: Isaiah’s Vision ~ Isaiah 6:1-8
Over the last couple of weeks of adult Sunday school, we have had a bit of a debate going on. The question that was before us was what it meant to worship. Whether you could worship by yourself, or whether worship implied being together with a group of people. So I thought as we began today I would do a survey. Let me give you a moment to think about this. If you are defining worship for yourself, is worship primarily an individual experience or is it primarily a corporate experience, a congregational experience? Right now, I’m going to ask everyone to hold up his or her hand. This is the forced choice. You have to take one or the other. How many people think that it is primarily an individual experience? How many people think that it is a corporate experience? It looks like the vote is pretty close to half-and-half. There may have been a few more that said individual experience. Do you know which side I was on? The fence? No, I’m not on the fence. I decided in my completely un-opinionated way. There used to be a time when I would have said that worship could be an individual experience. But the more time that I have spent in the church, the more I have come to the opinion that when you are talking about the Christian worship, you are talking about a corporate event. I’m not discussing spirituality or asking, “when do you feel close to God” or “when do you feel at prayer?” talking about Christian worship, I am very much convinced that worship is a community activity. I am saying that when I talk about Christian worship I'm referring to a community activity. I don’t think you worship by yourself.
In a lot of things that go on in the church, I’m very flexible and willing to compromise and do my best to help meet peoples’ needs. One of the few places where I dig in my heels is when someone talks to me about baptism. Often we will get a call and someone wants a child baptized. Perhaps the grandparents are part of this church. Maybe the parents grew up in this church and now live a long way from here. Those are difficult decisions because people have emotional ties to the church and they want to come here to have their child baptized. But baptism in the Protestant faith, in the reformed tradition, is not some kind of a magical bestowing of a blessing. Instead, it’s really something that takes place within a church community. If you recall whenever we have a baptism, not only do the parents and god-parents promise that they are going to do their best to raise the child up in the faith, to know and love God so that at some point that child can make a decision for herself whether she want to confirm her faith in the Christian church and become a member of the congregation, but all of you are asked to stand, to represent both this church and the church universal, in promising to aid the parents in raising the child to know and love God. If you are never going to see that child again, it is difficult for you to carry through on those responsibilities. If people request a private baptism, then there is no one to stand up and take those vows at all. Baptism is very much a communal event. I believe the same argument can be made for Christianity itself – it is a communal activity.
We are called on to be the body of Christ, the followers of Jesus, to be the hands and the feet of Jesus, carrying on ministry in this world. That is not to say that you can’t be a spiritual person, by yourself. Obviously, you can. You can believe in God by yourself. You can believe in Jesus by yourself. To be involved in Christian worship implies coming together in community. An argument that some of the folks in the Sunday school class could have used was to point to today’s passage from Isaiah. Where is the congregation? If this is a model for reformed worship, where is everybody? It was a light vacation Sunday that week. Temple was empty and Isaiah had a choice of seats. Isaiah walked in and he had this overwhelming sense of the presence of God. Mythological characters flying around, calling out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is God the Lord of hosts.” In the face of all of that awe and wonder, Isaiah sees his own inadequacies. He said, “Here I am in front of God. I know that I am not worthy to be here, not worthy of God’s love. Not worthy to stand before the Holy One.” So he cries out his prayer of confession. “Oh God, I am a person of unclean lips. I dwell among a people of unclean lips. Forgive me my sins.” Isaiah says then that one of the winged creatures took tongs and picked up a coal from the fire and touched his lips, cleansing him of his sins making him fresh and new. Then after awe and wonder, confession, after forgiveness, the voice of God calls out, “Who will go and do my work? Who will go out into the world.” Isaiah said, “Here I am, send me.” That is a powerful sequence. If you look at our worship service it follows, roughly, that format. We start out with a hymn of praise, a call to worship acknowledging God as creator as the source of all our blessings. Then we often move to confession, never confession alone, though. Always confession with words of forgiveness. Then after we hear the word of God from the scriptures and hopefully from the preaching, the call is for a response from us. The benediction is a sending out into the world in ministry. “Here I am God. Send me.”
It is a confusing issue, individual worship or corporate worship. But it is very clear in the Hebrew Testament that the Jewish people understood themselves to be not individuals saved by God, but instead they knew themselves to be a People saved by God. “God delivered us from bondage in Egypt.” Not, “God delivered me from bondage”, “God delivered Us from bondage in Egypt.” Each Passover those words are repeated so that each new generation can participate in salvation history. Deliverance is not just something accomplished 3000 years ago. It happens again as the words are spoken and remembered.
Paul reminds us that we, too, are a people. Not individuals, in a personal relationship with Jesus, but people called to be the body of Christ. All of us necessary, as described in Paul’s image of the body. The hand cannot do without the foot, the eye without the stomach; all the parts of the body are needed in order to carry out the work of ministry.
The idea of democracy is rooted in the common good, but we often understand it to mean our rights are protected as individuals. No one else is going to come and tell us what we have to do. We have a vote, we have a say, we can help determine the laws of our country. We can help determine what is going to happen. Individual rights, individual property rights, voting rights, rights of all kinds are affirmed as part of the democratic process. Much of that democratic process has its roots in the community meetings of the Puritans and the Pilgrims, congregational gatherings. In those congregational gatherings, individuals did indeed have the right to stand up and have their say, to speak. The point of the congregational meetings was never to find out what the majority wanted. It was never a popularity contest to see what the bulk of the people thought was most convenient or most comfortable, most desirable for them in their personal life. Instead, the purpose was for everyone together to try to discern the will of God for the congregation. God does speak to each and every one of us. There is no requirement that we have a mediator between God and ourselves. The voice of God does not speak to us to tell us what is good only for us at the expense of someone else. It is only the voice of God if the words are for the general good of the congregation. So in our society today we have democracy, but the call is not for us to decide what we would like to have done, what would be best for our family. Instead, we are asked to consider what is best for each and every one in our society? Last night on KIRO radio, the host was talking about a photographic exhibit that has been on display on the East Coast. You’ll have to get on the Web and find out some of the details because I’ve heard the story a number of times, but I’m not precise about exactly who or what. They’re a series of photographs, some of them postcards, about the lynching of Black Americans. Lynching that took place primarily in the South, at the turn of the century and later, I think even into the twenties, thirties, and forties. A postcard of someone hanging from a tree. On the back side sometimes a message back home, “Hi Mom and Dad, We’re having a great time on vacation. The other day we were at a lynching.” Very powerful pictures. A gut wrenching issue for us to even consider.
Most of us would claim that we don’t carry any responsibility for those events. After all, we weren’t living down in the South. We weren’t the ones who dragged somebody out of jail. We weren’t the ones who threw the rope over the tree or slipped it around a neck. We weren’t the ones who applauded as the body dangled in the wind. The KIRO host was also talking about the number of Black Americans that are arrested. That are convicted on drug charges. That are sent to prison. That are put to death for capital offenses. The number far exceeds the number of Whites that are arrested or are in prison, or the number of Whites who are put to death. There are more Blacks arrested for drug offenses than there are Whites, while statistics will say that five times more White use drugs than Blacks do. If you want to, you could say, “Well, of course there are more Blacks arrested because they are the ones using drugs.” But, that is not what the statistics that she reported said. She called it, “A public lynching. A racist response.” Now again, we could say, “Well, we’re not the ones that are arresting people. We haven’t been members of the jury. We’re not the prosecuting attorneys. We are not the judge watching over the deliberations.” If we want to claim that living faithfully is an individual thing, then what difference will we make as an individual? We could write a letter to the editor. We could make up a sign and go march around the county Court House. We could send an E-mail to the President. But by ourselves we are not likely to change very much. You see there are many issues in our society that require a corporate response. It’s not enough to say, “I’m saved as an individual.” It’s not enough to say, “I’m a Christian person, I believe in God, I’m a follower of Jesus.” We have to live our lives as people that are part of a community of faith. We have to work for justice and love in our society. In order to achieve justice, we can’t be speaking by ourselves, we have to fix these things together.
When the call comes, we can say with Isaiah, “Here I am, send me.” There are things that we can do as individuals. Help a child to read. Go and talk with a lonely neighbor. Assist someone who doesn’t speak the English language very well. But there are many more occasions when our response needs to be, “Here we are God, send us.” That is the only way that things will change. Now we will have our congregational meeting in a few moments and when we have our meeting, each one of you gets to have your say. Each one of you gets to speak if you would like to. But I encourage you to have your words be not what you would like to have happen, but what you think God would like to have happen for this people and for our community. Here we are God, send us.