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What Would Make God Smile?

May 22, 2005                                                                                        Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

“Why did God create us, Daddy?” The father looked down at his seven year-old asking this deep question. He had a newspaper in one hand and the TV clicker in the other. He finally looked at his child and said, “Go ask your mom.” Mom was in the study doing some bills, doing some work. “Why did God create us, Mommy?” She looked down at her seven year-old and thought about it for a minute and said, “Go ask your father.” The seven year-old walked away going, “Two adults in the house and I can’t get the answer to a simple question.”

Why are we here? It is the age-old question. The answer given by some is that we are cosmic accidents. The universe arrived in a cosmic explosion and accident after accident, billions upon billions of them, have happened ever since…chance upon chance, billions of them. And here we are. But of course the Scriptures don’t say that. They tell another story, that we are made by a Creator, the omnipotent person God, as one theologian called Him. A God who has made us and we are not here by chance and we do have a purpose. And as Christians we particularly have several purposes and we’ve been talking about those over the last few weeks. We’ve talked about how we are made for missions, that one of the callings we all have is to tell the story, the good news about God and Jesus Christ, but also to help those who are homeless and those who are poor, those who are angry, to make the world a better place. We’re called to ministry – all of us are ministers, not just clergy. God has gifted us, each and every one, for something. We’re called to fellowship with both God and each other; we’re called to community, not just to be lone rangers. We’re called to discipleship.  We were made so that in the end, we’ll look and be like Jesus Christ because God has willed that, to use our lives to make us like Him. And last but not least – actually this is first – we are called to worship. When I say that I know there are some of you going, ‘Worship, you’ve got to be kidding.’ Because if we are honest with ourselves, some of us, when it comes down to worship, have a drug problem; we’re drug here on Sunday mornings. We are drug here by a spouse or by duty or because we think we ought to be here. But don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. There is a story about a prime minister of England named Ward George who said when he was a boy, the thought of heaven used to frighten him more than the thought of hell. He pictured heaven where time would be perpetual Sundays, perpetual worship services from which there would be no end. He thought it was a horrible nightmare and it made him be an atheist for ten years. The question perhaps today is why does worship seem so boring to us or why so unfulfilling. What is wrong with it? What keeps us from this purpose of worship being what it ought to be? I’ve chosen a few scriptures to read to you this morning; a couple from the Old Testament and a couple from the New.

From Psalms 149 we find that worship should be a part of our lives, from waking to sleeping and not just in the sanctuary, but also there. It says:

Praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints. Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the people of Zion be glad in their King. Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds.

And from Isaiah 6, Isaiah has a vision of God. It is the scripture which I call the ultimate ‘uh-oh’ situation. Isaiah sees God and this is what happens:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

And from Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2:

So here is what I want you to do, God helping you. Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.

From Revelations chapter 4, another picture of worship:

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Why isn’t worship the way it ought to be? I think part of it begins with what I believe is the fact that deep inside we don’t really know why we exist. Bear with me for a minute. I think we do know that God made us. I think we do know that somehow we are called to serve God, we’re called to follow Him, we’re called to obey Him. But I think few of us understand what Rick Warren says about worship. I think it’s a wonderful comment. He said that we were all made for God’s pleasure – we were all made for God’s pleasure. I know that may be hard to understand. I want to say first what that does not mean. It doesn’t mean that we are God’s playthings. Most of you know how I like movies and I like particularly science fiction movies. One of my favorite movies is Men in Black. In that movie, at least the first one, you have a bad being is looking for a galaxy but this galaxy happens to be in a marble-sized jewel which is on the collar of a cat and we hum around New York City looking for this cat. That theme kind of runs through it and we find it expanded, you see the camera back off from New York, from the Earth, from our galaxy to the universe and then suddenly our universe is seen within this ball which is being kicked around by some beings in another universe. The universe is not a play thing; it was created, made by God. We are not play things; we were made by God to bring Him joy, to bring God happiness. I think we forget that God is a person. We forget that God is like us. He receives joy and fulfillment. At the same time, what does this mean for us? If we are created for God’s enjoyment, how does that practically work out in our lives? I would say to you, if you are seeking happiness for your life without God you are not going to find it. You might find happiness from time to time, here and there. But God has made you and made us so that happiness is only found ultimately in Him. The same is true for fulfillment. All of us want to be fulfilled. We go to school for years to try and find fulfillment in a job or something like that. We read books, we do relationships; we want to find fulfillment in relationships, we want to find fulfillment in every area of our lives. But if we are not looking in the ultimate place, we are not going to find fulfillment. God has made us to find fulfillment in Him. The same is true with love or anything else in life. If it is not found in God, ultimately we are not going to find it. We exist because of Him. God, in fact, has given us all our longings – He has made us to have longings and longings are good, sometimes we think they are not. All our longings are good and they are all found fulfilled in Him. It’s not that finding fulfillment in other things is wrong, but if it’s only in other things, then ultimately we are not going to find it.

I also think that deep down we don’t know what worship really is. Again as I said I’m kind of a science fiction nut, I like science fiction movies, and of course the biggie came out this past week. I was a kid when the first Star Wars came out – I probably shared this with you – the first week I went to see the first movie four times, twice in the first day. It has been true with almost all of the movies, but I have to admit I didn’t stay in line to see this one. I am just getting a little too old to be there. But I am going to go see it. You know there is one thing I don’t care about in these movies, this whole concept of the ‘force.’ Because God is not the ‘force.’ We don’t get in touch with God just by “trust your feelings, Luke” and that sort of thing. God is the force but God is much more than that. As I was saying a minute ago, God is a person. We forget that God grieves, that He gets angry and gets jealous. God gets sad. On the other side we forget that God loves, that God has joy, that He enjoys us. We forget that God laughs just like us. God is a person and this is where we have to begin with the idea of worship. We have to begin with the fact that God is a person because worship is about knowing and loving and praising God. It’s about knowing and loving and praising God – that’s where worship begins. I suspect that most of us here have fallen in love at least once and if you haven’t you probably will. We remember the feelings about that…when you first fall in love you are giddy and all you can think about is the other person. All you think about is how to praise them and how to shower gifts on them. Then you get married and six months later all those things kind of go away (I’m just kidding). What really happens is that is when the real work of relationships begins. That’s when the real knowing and the real loving begins. And the times of romance and excitement come back from time to time, but knowing and loving and praising is a life-long job…it takes effort. And so does worship. Sometimes we have thrills in worship. we know God’s presence is right there with us. Sometimes they are not there and so we have to do the hard work of knowing God by reading the scriptures and listening to sermons even though sometimes they are boring. Sometimes it is the hard work of knowing and loving God by serving Him without feeling and we worship God that way in every part of our lives, not just on Sundays. And then our work, our work as the Bible says, becomes a living sacrifice. How we do in our relationships becomes a form of worship. It’s the hard work of worship because God is a person and it takes work to get to know a person. Of course there is a difference between us getting to know each other and God is obviously the big person and we are the little person. The natural place of the creature with the Creator is worship. It is a little different because we don’t worship each other but we worship God. God is a person who we need to get to know, we need to learn how to love more. And ultimately I really believe that a good bit of worship is about praise, telling God how much we love Him, telling God how wonderful He is because He is.

I also think that one of the bigger problems is that worship is deep-down inside just too much about us and not about God. I wonder if we shouldn’t change the idea of worship service because what it is has become is “worship serve-us.” Here is what I mean by that. It happens to all of us, why do we come at all? It’s what we get out of it. I have said many times and I really believe that if we came to worship every Sunday or if we did worship in our quiet times and we really felt God’s presence, you would have to take the hinges off the door there would be so many people in here. If God was experienced here every time, in such a way, people would be coming in here in droves rather than finding so many other reasons not to be here, whether it be hunting or fishing or birthdays or sporting events or any other thing you can name. Why is that so? Because I think we make worship about us. It’s not that God stays away because He is getting back at us for making it about us, it’s rather that when we make worship about us, we build a wall between God and ourselves because we come expecting “what is He going to do for me?” There is nothing wrong with discussing what happens in worship or what time they are or anything like that, we should discuss those things, but so often we come and say “If that worship service doesn’t have a Gloria Patri in it, it just doesn’t mean anything to me.” Well it’s about you then. Or “I wish the worship service was at a different time.” All kinds of things. They are all worth discussing but we make it about ourselves. I’m just as guilty as anyone. We need to make it about God first. God is the audience, we’ve heard that before. We have to appropriate that idea that this time or when you are with God alone, God is the audience, not us. It’s not about us. It’s about God. Ultimately, I believe that if we are going to experience worship in a way that we want to, it really is about surrendering to God. That’s what Rick Warren says and I agree with him; he says it is about surrendering to God. I think that we have the wrong perspective sometimes. It’s interesting when you look at these things (binoculars) and when you look at them in the right way, things come into focus. Suppose though that you didn’t know how they worked and you looked through them in the opposite way, nothing is in perspective. And realizing who God is in our lives, that He is God and we are not, realizing that worship is about God and not us, is keeping things in perspective. We come here on Sunday morning because we need to have a perspective adjustment every week, every day to be able to see things so much more clearly. I think it begins with surrendering. You see God really is a dictator. I know we don’t like to hear that, but He really is. God is a loving, benevolent dictator but God is the Lord, He made everything, He is telling the story and we are a part of it, His story will end in the way He has written it and He will win in the end. God is a dictator. We have to come to that place. You know the biggest lesson in life that I learn almost everyday is that God is the Lord and I’m not. It seems like a lesson I have to be taught over and over again. It’s true for all of us. It’s about surrendering but it’s about surrendering to someone who loves us, who wants the best for us, who wants to draw us in. And the more we are like this, keeping God at a distance, the less we will experience Him the way we want to. I encourage you to surrender; our job is to make God smile and we do that by allowing Him to draw near to us and us drawing near to Him. Let worship be what it should be. Surrender your life. Give Him your life once more. Let us pray.