Keep It Holy

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 24, 2006
The 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Keep It Holy
Nehemiah 8:1-8
Luke 4:14-20

Sunday morning – The Dream:
Your pillow purrs to you:
“Yes, you can roll over for another 10 minutes.”
Your blanket whispers to you,
“don’t go; it’s cold out there, but I will keep you warm”.
Sunday morning:
when the coffee smells richer,
the newspaper seems somehow more enticing;
when the day stretches ahead almost endlessly
and you think just how much you can get done
as soon as you finish the newspaper
and that second stack of pancakes,
bursting with fresh blueberries.

Ah, but Sunday morning the reality intrudes.
The alarm goes off, the pillow doesn’t purr,
the blanket is in tangles at your feet.
Sunday morning and you are off to church.

We all struggle to get ourselves up and out on Sunday morning.
Families with children seem to have a particularly difficult time.
The logistics of getting everyone ready is hard enough,
but then there is always that question,
that question that has been asked dozens times,
but is still asked yet again:
“why do we have to go to church?”
And the answers come in as many varieties
as there are Sundays in a year.
And when all else fails, there is that ultimate parental response,
the one that ends all conversations:
“We are going to church because I say so.”

Why do we go to church?
Why do we worship?
Why do we get ourselves out of bed,
without the pancakes,
and with a fast gulp of coffee
and come here on Sunday?
Well, the answer is simple:
because the answer comes straight from the parent’s mouth:
We come to church because God says so.

Don’t you remember your Sunday School lessons?
What did Moses bring down the mountain with him?
They were called “Commandments.”
“Commandments”, with a capital “C”.
God did not give Moses the “Ten Suggestions”,
or the “Ten Things to Think About”,
or the “Ten Things to Do
when you don’t have anything else to do.”
God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

And the Fourth Commandment is as clear
and straightforward as can be:
“remember the Sabbath day,
and keep it holy.”
(Exodus 20:8)
That’s the command:
Set the day apart,
consecrate it, hallow it --
The Sabbath,
the Lord’s day, as we now call it.

And part of keeping it,
part of keeping it holy and sacred, is worshipping.
Worshipping together, not by yourself,
but as part of the covenantal community
God has created here.
“Worship is a first-person plural activity”
as one writer once put it.
It is something we do together, we, all of us
the community of faith.
We come here to encounter the Holy
by listening, learning, singing, praying,
praising, and just being still.

We worship together,
young and old,
families together – let me say that again,
families together, young people sitting with their parents,
and parents with their children to help them learn about worship.

We worship because God commands us to worship,
We worship because God calls us through his Holy Spirit
to worship.
God’s call is what keeps us from falling back asleep after
we’ve hit the snooze button the second time;
it’s what gets us out of bed, and gets us going.

We gather here in this Sanctuary,
but we could worship anywhere.
Our summer worship services out on the side yard
are just as faithful
as the most elaborate service we have here.
The where of worship is not as important as the what.
There are certain things we must do in order to worship faithfully,
to assure that we are keeping the day holy.
In the Reformed tradition we have identified
four components of worship that we must have,
four elements that we must weave into our worship service.

The first is easy to figure out:
the Word of the Lord as it comes to us through the Bible.
We have to read from the text.
Old Testament, New Testament: either, both,
it doesn’t matter.
We simply must have a reading.
It is what Ezra was doing before all the people:
reading from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible
that we often call the books of Moses.
And almost 500 years later,
it is what Jesus was doing in the synagogue:
reading from the Book of Isaiah.

The second element that we must have
also has roots in our two lessons:
after we hear the word, we then interpret it,
talk about it, learn from it so we understand.
Did you hear in our first lesson,
“So they read from the book, from the law of God,
with interpretation. They gave the sense,
so that people understood the reading.”
(Nehemiah 8:8)
In that verse we have the roots of our modern day sermon.
It is what Jesus did after he read from the scroll of Isaiah;
He stood to read from the scroll,
and then he sat down to teach,
the custom in Jesus’ time.

Can we interpret the word in other ways?
Of course. Think about the children’s Christmas pageant.
What are they doing?
They are interpreting the birth narratives
from Matthew and Luke.
We can interpret through music, as well.
Or dance, or drama.
Over the centuries we have expanded the ways
in which we can interpret.
We have also shortened considerably
the time we spend interpreting.
Did you hear in the lesson from Nehemiah,
“He read… from early morning until midday…”
Keep that phrase in mind the next time
worship runs a few minutes longer than 60 minutes.


What is our third element, the third thing we must do?
Pray!
We must lift up our voices in prayer to God.
We offer prayers of adoration,
prayers of confession,
prayers of thanksgiving,
prayers asking for help for ourselves,
prayers asking for help for others.
Prayers that cause us to be still so we can listen,
and hear God’s voice.
We pray with heads bowed and hands clasped;
We pray as well when we stand and
open our hymnals and sing out.
Every time we sing, we are praying:
we are lifting up our voices to God.

So that leaves us with the fourth essential,
the fourth “must-have.”
Is it a Call to worship?
A benediction?
An affirmation of faith?
One of the two sacraments?
The fourth element that we must have is an offering.
We must have an offering.
It is not a worship service without an offering,
an opportunity for us to respond, to bring our “firstfruits” to God.
to bring our tithes to do the work of the Lord.
It is not a collection;
it is an offering each of us gives and gives freely
in response to God’s teaching
and in response to God’s blessings.

Did you notice that we put the offering plates
on the Lord’s Table this morning?
That was intentional.
They will be there each Sunday,
before and after we receive the offering,
as a reminder of God’s call to us to tithe,
to give freely as we have been freely given.

So there you have them, the four pillars of our worship service:
Reading from the Bible,
Interpretation,
Prayer,
and an Offering.
How we put all those together differs from church to church,
but as long as we have the foundation, the pillars
we have a worship service.

Now most church sanctuaries are set up like ours for worship:
worship leaders up on a platform, just like Ezra,
the congregation out on the floor in pews or chairs.
In many megachurches the sanctuaries are auditoriums
and the platform is a stage.
Worship services have taken on a theatrical feeling,
with the congregation as audience,
the worship leaders as the actors,
and of course, God as prompter, inspiring the service.

But more than a century ago, the philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard turned this model on its head.
He argued that the congregation – you - are the actors,
the worship leaders are the prompters,
and God is the audience.
And I think he’s right.

Worship is your opportunity to encounter God;
each of us, and all of us are here to feel ourselves
in the presence of God.
Deborah and I as the worship leaders prompt
by providing words, songs, prayers, and lessons.
We prompt so that you can respond,
and engage with God,
who really is not a passive audience,
that’s where I would disagree with Kierkegaard:
God is actively engaged in our worship through his Holy Spirit.

Long ago the Psalmist sang in joyful praise,
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord…
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God,
…for a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
(Psalm 84)

Experience what the Psalmist felt on the Sabbath.
Reach for that feeling each Sabbath, every Sabbath.
Come worship each Sunday.
Come because God commands you.
Come because you know
that there is no better way to be renewed,
to be refreshed,
to be restored,
to be centered, re-focused, energized,
filled with peace,
calmed, assured,
to know love.
Come join the Psalmist
and “sing to the Lord a new song,
sing to the Lord…
For honor and majesty are before him,
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary;
[We shall] bring an offering and come into his courts.
[As we] worship the Lord in holy splendor.” (Psalm 96)
As we worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
AMEN