So many excuses I hear. I can’t go to church; I don’t have the time. I have to watch golf on tv and Sunday morning is the best time to do that. I can’t come to church; Sunday is my only day to spend with my family, it is my only day to sleep in, read the funnies in my pajamas and eat a nice breakfast. I can’t come to church; because those people are just hypocrites and they are as messed up as I am; so why should I go? I can’t go to church; the people there know all the things I’ve done, or at least some of them. I’ll be embarrassed, I’ll feel uncomfortable. I can’t come to church, I don’t understand it, I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t come to church.
I have met many people during my time as a pastor and before, during my time as a parishoner, with many diverse reasons as to why they can’t come to worship services. And I get tired of explaining why they should come to church, because as soon as I do my best to explain away one of their reasons, they come up with another one. I’m sure they think their reasons are valid, but I have stopped begging people to come to church. Instead I hope and pray that they will find a reason to come to church. I pray that they will understand their need for God, understand that God loves them, God made them, and God cares deeply for them, and in return we worship Him communally, together. But I’m done begging people to come to church. I ask them, I invite them, but begging never gets it done. There certainly are many others things we all could be doing with our time. We could be relaxing, or reading, or watching tv, or our jogging or competing in sports activity. But God wants us to worship Him, God wants us to grow closer to Him, so we worship. We gather together, this band of pilgrims each Sunday, to praise and glorify God, to thank Him, to be encouraged in our pilgrimage. Listen to the way the Jewish pilgrims expressed their desire for worship in Psalm 122…
I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
2 Our feet are standing
in your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.
4 That is where the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
to praise the name of the LORD
according to the statute given to Israel.
5 There the thrones for judgment stand,
the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
7 May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
8 For the sake of my brothers and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
Let’s pray.
We are taking a look during the months leading up to Easter at a group of Psalms called the Psalms of the Ascent. They are numbers 120-135; more important than their numbers is their context. These were the songs Jewish pilgrims would sing as they traveled up to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts, or to offer the required sacrifices several times a year. These are songs of the journey toward God, songs they would sing as they traveled physically up to Mount Zion, where Jerusalem was, and then through Jerusalem up to the top of that city to where the Temple was. The journey of going up to Jerusalem was both physical and literal. The pilgrims were going up to where God was, going up to the Temple where God dwelt specially in the Arc of the Covenant, located in the inner sanctum of the Temple, a place called the Holy of Holies. It was so holy because of God’s presence that only the chief priest was allowed to enter the room, and then only once a year. The Psalms of Ascent are songs of the pilgrims traveling upwards, just like us.
Part of the traveling we do as pilgrims working our way upward toward God is worship. We worship God. We decided to worship God, faithfully, continually in our walk upwards. We decide worship of the God who loves us and made us is more important than reading for a few hours; it is more important than sports events; it is more important than sleeping in and reading the comics. There are more people in this country on a given Sunday morning in church than there are on golf courses, or going shopping to heading out for a day of recreation. Worship is a popular decision to make each Sunday, and it is just that. Worship is a decision we make, to go to worship with other, to worship God each day with our lives.
I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
I must confess I don’t think the NIV’s translation of this is as alive as some of the other versions. Listen to the New Revised Standard…”I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” I was glad to go and worship, glad to praise God’s name and let Him know that I love Him, says the psalm, says us. When someone says that it isn’t forced. That kind of enthusiasm for worship is infectious, it is life giving. Worship cannot be forced. Sure, some kids are brought to church, as were many of us when we were younger, but at some point our faith either became ours or we found other things to do on Sunday morning. Worship is rarely forced; forced or coerced worship lasts only so long, but we are on this pilgrimage for the long haul; this is our life. And worship is transformed from something hard to endure to a life-giving event each Sunday. Maybe the sermon isn’t always outstanding, maybe the music sounds a little off, maybe the order of worship is odd, but in the end it works. Our time with God is not wasted, but we get our spiritual food for the long journey of discipleship we are on.
Yes, always lets rejoice, let’s be glad as we go to the house of the Lord to worship. Come to be blessed, come to enter God’s quiet presence, come to confess and be renewed, come to sing praises and hymns to God, and to do all that with fellow pilgrims who are also traveling the hard road of discipleship. We are blessed with fellow travelers, fellow pilgrims who hold our feet to the fire, who don’t let us make excuses for our behavior, who encourage us to grow in Christ. It is nice to have fellowship with other believers, but that’s not the primary purpose of worship. It is instead to come to God, express our feelings for Him, learn about Him, be renewed in Him.
Yes let’s be glad, and rejoice as we go on up to worship the Lord. I have had enough of folks who view worship as a painful duty- who praise God grudgingly, I have had enough of folks who desire to reap the benefit of Heaven while complaining about worshipping on earth. If your heart is heavy, unburden it here in worship. If you are bringing your troubles in from the world, good. This is a place for them, but in that, be glad that there is a place for worship in the midst of our troubles.
A quick reminder: we worship because we are called to worship, not because we feel like it. If we only did things for God, or for ourselves really, that we felt like doing, we would be completely lost, and there would be very little worshipping happening. We worship because that is who we are, it is what we were created for. When we worship we are being true to ourselves and the way God made us.
Our feet are standing
in your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.
4 That is where the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
to praise the name of the LORD
according to the statute given to Israel.
5 There the thrones for judgment stand,
the thrones of the house of David.
Jerusalem of course, was the number one city in Israel. It was the center of the country, both physically and spiritually. It was where God dwelled, where the ruler of Israel made his home further down the hill so he was always looking up, always looking up toward the Temple. The Temple, sitting at the top of Jerusalem, at the top of Mount Zion, that is the reason Jerusalem was really so important. Even the king’s palace was below the Temple; very different than most other nations. You must understand there was only the one Temple, it was the only place for the Israelites to go to really worship. They could sit in local synagogues and listen to the Word of God, perhaps even sing a psalm or two. But really, worship only happened in Jerusalem. Worship only happened before the presence of the Lord, celebrating God’s goodness and forgiveness, going through the Yahweh prescribed rituals in order to please God. This only happened at the Temple, it only happened in Jerusalem where the tribes of the Lord would go on up to praise the name of the Lord.
It was in Jerusalem, through the rituals of worship, that the Jews were reminded; God created you, God loves you, God has given you good things, God has made a way for sins to be transferred to something else, a lamb, an ox, whatever, God had made a way for His people to be cleansed from their sins. But we don’t go to Jerusalem anymore. When the Holy Spirit was sent at Pentecost it meant that God’s presence was no longer only at Jerusalem, but spread to the whole world. Wherever we might go, God is already there. There is no need to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There is also no need any longer for us pilgrims to sacrifice any animals, after transferring upon them our sins, because that has already been done. Jesus was our sacrificial lamb, Jesus is our sacrificial Lamb of God, and there is no need to perform any of the old rituals in order to get straight with God. There is no need.
In Christ Jesus, our Lord, we simply need to repent, to offer our lives to Jesus in response to His offer of His blood on the cross as a acceptable sacrifice for our sins. There is no need to go to Jerusalem, there is just the need to repent, to turn from our evil ways and strive to follow Christ. The image of the tribes going up to worship would have embodied these images of forgiveness and closeness to God, just as worship, our worship, should have those images for us as well. We need to be reminded that God loves us, that God has provided a way for us to come close to Him through Jesus. This is worship, this is going up toward God, over and over recognizing our fallenness, our need for God, and putting concrete actions on our love for God.
Eugene Peterson wrote that this trekking to Jerusalem would form a framework for the lives of the Jewish people, the pilgrims. We all need a framework within our lives to help us place understanding on what happens, to place events within our lives into a larger picture of God’s interaction with us, with the world. You all know people, or may have been one, who have lost that framework, and appear to be floating through life with no particular convictions, nothing that grounds their lives. Worship provides that framework. Time before God regrounds us in the knowledge that God is God and we are not; that we need to worship Him in order for our lives to really have meaning. The framework of worship has not changed through thousands of years. Worship of Yahweh gives us a framework. We know who we are and where we are going when we worship before God’s throne. We remember that we are only sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus, but we are also deeply and completely loved sinners.
Then the Psalm goes into a sort of blessing to end.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
7 May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
8 For the sake of my brothers and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
These last few verses are almost a blessing as the psalmist finishes the psalm. Maybe a final thought, but it is still about worship. There is the encouragement to pray for the city where God dwelt, to pray for peace in a place that did not have a history of peace. The pilgrims are exhorted to pray for the security of Jerusalem, a city that didn’t have a history as a secure place. The pilgrims would not be staying forever in Jerusalem. After their travels to Jerusalem, they would perform the necessary rituals, and then they would return home. They would travel back until the next time it was necessary to travel to Jerusalem. There was an orderedness to life, an ebb an flow. To Jerusalem, home again. You see, they couldn’t stay in Jerusalem. Nor can we stay at church 24/7. We are called to go into the world to proclaim Christ. So the time at Jerusalem is just part of their lives, just as our time at church is a part of our lives, not the totality. But their worship didn’t end at the Jerusalem city limits. Their prayers for the peace and security of Jerusalem, of the city where God dwelt, would last all year, would last until the next time they were in Jerusalem.
We have the same experience. Our worship time here, however good it is, cannot last. I have been at some wonderful camps when I was in high school, I have been on some great retreats. But the truth is that those end. Our time in a focused, concentrated time of worship always must end on this earth. We have to earn livings, we have to be sent out to call more people to the worship of God. But in a sense, our worship time doesn’t end as we head out of the sanctuary this morning. I heard a pastor describe his church one time, and his description is one I crave for us. He said this, “Our church is voracious about its worship. We try to worship in everything, all the time. When the sun rises, it is a reminder to praise God. When the sun sets, it is a chance to thank God for the day. When we see a flower, we praise God for His creation and His creative power. When we hear a great song, or some sort of a hymn, we can thank God for gifting people with the talents to write songs, and we can thank God for our hearing.
When troubles come, we can worship God all the more, and thank Him for the chance to suffer for the Kingdom of God. The pilgrims of God, the pilgrims traveling toward God worship; it is part of who we are, it is what grounds us and remakes us into God’s image. I pray that the worship time here each Sunday moves you closer to God, more in love with Christ, that you are refreshed and rejuvenated, but I also pray that you don’t stop worshipping when you aren’t here. The Jewish pilgrims would worship going on up to Jerusalem, would worship at Jerusalem, would worship on the return trip and while waiting to make the next trip on up. We were created to worship God. It is how we function best, it is who us pilgrims are. Worship the Lord God almighty with everything that you have, all the time. It takes discipline to learn how to do that, but start this week. Start by praising God for something small, like a good meal, or a phone call from a friend. And then work on expanding your worship to times in the car and so forth. I would love to someday describe us as voracious, continuous worshippers.
Let’s pray.