June 2, 2025 • 32 mins
Have we lost our breath in the modern world? In this profound exploration of worship, we discover that for ancient peoples, worship wasn't a scheduled event but as natural and necessary as breathing itself. It was woven into the fabric of their daily existence, punctuating their lives through prayers, celebrations, and sacred rituals.
The word "worship" derives from "worth-ship" – showing something its true worth and value. When we worship, we turn our whole being toward something, recognizing its beauty and worthiness. This raises the crucial question that shapes our entire existence: what sits on the throne of your life? What receives your primary attention, resources, and devotion?
Our culture offers countless substitutes for authentic worship. We build our lives around sports, social media, work, intellect, appearance, or wealth. Yet despite living in an increasingly secular age, humans remain fundamentally religious beings with deep longings for transcendence and connection to something greater than ourselves. We seek these experiences in nature, at concerts, even through modern wellness practices – all echoing ancient ritual patterns because we hunger for the sacred.
As David Foster Wallace profoundly observed, "There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." The danger comes when we center our lives around things that cannot sustain us, that ultimately rob us of life rather than giving it. This is why proper worship matters – it's about putting things back in their right order.
Whether you're reconnecting with practices of worship or exploring them for the first time, you're invited to awaken to the longing deep in your soul – to experience awe, wonder, and mystery in a world that tries to flatten everything into materialist explanations. Through body prayers, intercession, confession, scripture meditation, art, or simply attentive presence, discover what happens when you center your life on the divine source of all breath.
What will you choose to place at the center of your life? Your answer shapes everything.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
this morning.
(00:00):
God, we give you thanks thismorning for your presence here
and we do, god, just take aminute to acknowledge that you
are here with us in this timeand place, that you, the creator
of the whole world, thesustainer of the universe, the
one who allows the breath toflow in and out of our lungs,
(00:22):
the one who ignites the world tohave life, the ground of all
being, you, god, you are hereand in some way, for some reason
, you want to know us and for usto know you as much as it's
possible.
So we pray this morning, wewould turn our hearts towards
(00:46):
you, god, would you captivate usagain with awe and wonder?
Help us to be people who haveour eyes wide open, our ears
attuned to your voice and thethings you might want to tell us
.
May our eyes see you at work inthe world.
May we recognize the sacrednessof this moment.
(01:10):
So here we are, we gather forworship, and may you show us
your presence here in our midst.
In Jesus' name.
Amen, you can be seated.
Good morning everyone.
Amen, you can be seated.
Good morning everyone.
One second Almost forgotsomething here.
(01:41):
Yeah, ooh, yeah, Admire thechair.
Is that centered?
Okay, good, okay, good,excellent.
Yeah, that's good.
Okay, you should have alsogotten a sheet of paper when you
came in.
If you did not get a sheet ofpaper, would you raise your hand
?
You're gonna need it later on,so raise your hand high and
(02:01):
proud, loud and proud.
Keep it up high.
Ushers, could you, gary, couldyou?
Thank you, todd, can I get someushers to come?
Just pass some of these out.
Thank you, heidi.
Sorry, I didn't give them aheads up, but keep them up.
You're going to need it.
And, yeah, once you get it, youcan put your hand down, but
just keep it up in the meantime.
Thank you everybody.
Now you, now you can.
Probably many of you alreadycheated and looked at that sheet
(02:22):
.
That's fine, but later we'regoing to use it.
I'm going to invite you to tryone of these prayer stations out
.
You don't have to move around awhole lot, you can, but we'll
get into it.
But I want you to try somethingmaybe a bit new this morning or
something that will stretch you, that you've never done before,
and so we'll see what happens.
You never know.
So we'll see what happens.
You never know.
Okay, great, thank you.
(02:44):
Thank you, keep them up if youdon't have one yet, and if you
haven't looked at it yet, don'tlook at it.
It's kind of more fun to justsee what happens.
We'll see what emerges.
I'm going to test.
Okay, perfect, we're good to gothere.
(03:06):
So we are in the middle of ourrhythm gathering, our rhythm
series, and we're talking aboutthe rhythms that shape our lives
.
Aristotle said that we arepeople.
What we do shapes who we are,and so we know that the rhythms
we have, our habits, our actions, the more we do them, they can
change our neurology, ourneurobiology, they change our
physical biology, they canchange all kinds of things about
us.
They impact our and if we'renot divided beings, if we're
holistic beings, they impact ourbody, mind, soul and spirit.
So the things we do matter andthe rhythms we have shape us,
(03:29):
and so you should be mindful,then, of what are the things
that you're doing on a repeatedbasis, because they will shape
who you are.
In fact, I would argue theyshape the things that you desire
and your love.
So be careful of the rhythmsyou have.
This morning, and we're engagingin all these ancient christian
practices that christians havebeen using for many years.
Everyone got one Raise yourhand.
If you didn't get one, stillPerfect, and so I want to
encourage you to try them allout that following week as well.
(03:51):
So this morning we're going totalk about worship, but before I
do, I want to talk about breath.
So you might know this already,but you don't have to remind a
relatively healthy person tobreathe.
They don't need a reminder,they just breathe.
Breathing, for most of us, isthis natural thing that happens
all the time and we breatheconstantly.
(04:12):
It's actually the center of ourlife.
With no breath, there's no life, and so we breathe all the time
.
We breathe while we're laughing, in case you hadn't noticed,
you don't have to remindyourself to breathe while you're
laughing.
Maybe you do if you're laughingreally hard.
When you're walking around,when you're talking, when you're
sleeping, your body justbreathes on its own.
You don't have to tell yourselfor remind yourself to breathe.
For most of us who are healthy,you don't even notice that
(04:33):
you're breathing.
You probably didn't notice ituntil I said it just now,
because breathing is like life,it's just a natural part of the
rhythm of our life.
In fact, the only time youreally notice that you're
breathing is when you're notbreathing, like when you're
underwater.
You suddenly realize, oh mygosh, I need air and I need it
quickly, because you'reunderwater and you can't breathe
.
Or if you're winded, like aftera long run, or whatever you do
(04:54):
that winds you, it's like you'vegot to breathe.
Or if you're nervous or anxiousor afraid, you've got to
remember to breathe.
Hey, breathe, breathe.
But for most of us, it's justthis natural part of life.
This is what worship was.
For the ancient people In theancient world, worship was like
breathing.
It was a natural part of thefundamental pieces of life.
(05:15):
They just did it.
It was like everything in theirlife was surrounded by worship.
They worshiped through theseasons.
They had rituals that were likeseasonal and they worshiped all
the time.
They had prayers that were verymuch a natural part of their
lives.
They had liturgies, things thatthey did that were just very
much a natural part of theirlife.
It was like breathing for mostof these ancient people, and so
that was what it was like.
It was that they didn't evennotice it, that their whole
(05:36):
lives were built around thisthing that we might call worship
.
It was a part of the rhythm oftheir life.
It wasn't just something theydid once a week.
Their lives were worship.
It was just like breathing forthem.
They had rituals and seasonsand celebrations and suffering,
and all these things were sortof encompassed and woven into
(05:56):
their fabric of their worship.
Their lives were punctuated byprayers and collective songs and
celebrations and all thesekinds of things.
They didn't attend worship,they lived worship.
Worship was like breathing forthem.
In fact you could say it thisway Worship was like breath for
them.
(06:17):
They just did it.
I'm kind of afraid that in themodern world, which is 100,000
miles an hour, with distractionsall around us and anything we
want at our fingertips, I'mafraid that many of us have lost
our breath.
And don't blame us all thewhile or all the time.
(06:39):
I just think we're sort of apart of this fabric, of this
system that has just sort oflost its collective breath,
think we're sort of a part ofthis fabric, of this system that
has just sort of lost itscollective breath and we've lost
the sense of the sacred or ofworship or religion in its
purest forms.
Here's what I mean by worship.
So worship comes from this oldEnglish word, which really means
worth-ship.
So worship means to showsomething, whatever it is, its
(07:00):
worth or its value or its beautyor grandeur or worthiness.
This is what it means toworship, to show its worthship.
One scholar defines it like thisthis is worship.
It's an intentional actalthough I would argue it might
sometimes be accidental but ofturning our whole being towards
something our heart, our mind,our soul, our strength and to
(07:23):
recognize its worth Our heart,our mind, our soul, our strength
and to recognize its worth, itsbeauty, its majesty.
So you could say it's likehaving your life center around
something.
This is worship, like centeringyour whole life around
something, like giving yourattention to it, building your
life around it, maybe throwingresources at it, what you give
your money to, maybe how youshape your calendar and how you
(07:46):
raise your kids, or things youtalk about, how you organize
your life, what things are atthe top of the list, what things
get cut.
This is considered worship.
It's what you sort of put atthe middle of your life, or, you
could say, on the throne ofyour life, which raises the
question then what are youworshiping?
What's at the center of yourlife?
(08:07):
What do you give your life to?
What do you give your heart andsoul to?
Your attention, your resources,your calendar?
What do you give it to?
Now, maybe for many of us, wethink it's hopefully I don't
know Jesus, and so we center ourlives around Jesusesus and we
build it into our calendar andeverything goes around that and
(08:27):
like breathing, we just sort oflive and move and.
But maybe it's not always thecase for many of us, maybe it's
some other things, like maybe Idon't know, but don't get mad,
(08:48):
don't get mad.
This is signed by the greatestquarterback of all time, john
elway.
Thank you, thank you.
Yeah, don't get mad.
I would have had a.
I would have had a vikingshelmet, but I only allow
championship teams in my house,so we didn't do the.
Uh, just kidding, just kidding,I don't know.
(09:11):
Maybe it's sports that you kindof revolve your life around.
Maybe it's watching thesesports.
You know, you ever been to afootball game?
It's kind of like a religiousexperience, raising our hands
and cheering in unison.
Maybe it's not sports, maybeit's something else.
Maybe it's something like thisoh yeah, this is.
(09:40):
Am I getting warmer?
Yeah, maybe it's constant work.
Maybe it's social media likesand videos and reels or doom
scrolling or other things, orbinge watching.
Maybe that's sort of the centerof your life and you sort of
shape everything in your lifearound it.
Or maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's like just thisincessant need or desire to work
and to prove your value andyour worth, because you just
know that if you work a littlebit more and a little bit harder
(10:00):
and have your life put togetheraround your work, then you'll
be a valuable person and acontributor to society.
I mean, we're good Protestantshere in this country, so we like
to show off our work ethic.
Maybe not that.
Maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's something like thisthat your life is centered and
shaped around.
Maybe you're just a veryintelligent person and you just
(10:20):
want to sort of let everyoneknow.
Or you want to shape your ownlife around reading big, fancy,
heavy books like this one.
Look at that fancy book, am Iright?
And maybe your intellect oryour education is so important
to you it's actually become thecenter of your very life and
everything is sort of shapedaround that.
Or maybe not that.
(10:42):
Maybe it's something else, likethis one here Don't worry, it's
communion wine.
Actually it's not.
This is barefoot fruscato peach.
This is not mine, that'slow-hanging fruit, but right.
Maybe your life has sort ofbecome built around whatever
your addiction is, that sort ofnumbs the pain of your life.
(11:03):
By the way, no one's immune tothese kinds of things, even
myself.
And these things are notinherently bad in and of
themselves, of course not.
They're just things.
It's this relationship ofcentering my life around this
thing, where I give all myattention, all my desires, all
my resources, where I becomesort of this thing on the throne
of my life.
Maybe that didn't resonate withyou.
Maybe, how about these ones here?
(11:24):
I've got two more for you.
Maybe it's just looking reallygood and buff and getting that
pump going.
This is a 50-pound weight, justso you know.
Did I say 50?
I meant 100.
98, 99.
I don't know.
Maybe image is your thing andyour life is shaped around that.
(11:45):
You gotta go to the gym or doone more yoga session or get out
and get tan or whatever yourthings are.
Or lastly, how about this onehere?
Yes, sir, these are all singles.
By the way, don't come and robme right now.
I had to borrow these from myson, gavin.
I don't carry cash anymore.
(12:06):
Do you have any cash on you?
Yeah, maybe that's your thing,you know, and you just sort of
that's at the center of yourlife.
What is it?
What's on the throne of yourlife.
Actually, the modern problem ismore like this I put myself on
the throne of my own life.
I'll be the God of my own lifeand I sort of shape everything
(12:26):
around myself and my own ego andmy ambitions, my own life.
I'll be the God of my own lifeand I sort of shape everything
around myself and my own ego andmy ambitions, my desires, and I
fulfill all my longings and mywishes and I become this
self-absorbed person and that'smy thing.
But worship is this act ofsomehow turning your attention
to this thing that's at thecenter of your life and carving
out space just to show thatthing.
Whatever it is, it's worthship.
(12:48):
I asked on my social media page,my Facebook account, because
I'm an older person, you useFacebook still and I said hey,
how do you define worship?
And some friends of mine saidthis One person, a very wise
young man who's very handsome aswell.
Where is he there?
He is Jeremy Peterson.
I didn't ask if I could quotehim, but he said it's
(13:11):
intentional, focused, honoring,directed at the highest priority
.
What is your highest priority?
How about this one?
One of my friends said you canworship anything and we worship
lots of things.
It's what you give yourattention to the most and focus
and love and adoration.
Hopefully it's God, but maybeit's not.
How about this one?
My husband is very ill.
She said I take care of himdaily.
I have deeply considered thisto be my worship.
(13:34):
Is that worship?
How about this one?
Awestruckness at the unfoldingcreativeness of Yahweh Is that
worship?
How about this one?
Glorifying God in all that wedo, whatever it is, it does not
have to be music, but music is agreat way to express ourselves
to God.
But it could be picking uptrash, smiling at somebody
(13:55):
because they're a child of God,loving your family or your
husband when he's ill or whenit's hard, crying out to God,
just acknowledging him witheverything that you do.
You know one more here.
How about this one?
Worship this person said.
One of my friends says it's ourresponse to the gospel Worship.
Yeah, today I want to invite usto worship, and to worship God
(14:20):
this morning.
This is a sermon about aninvitation.
We're going to practice ittogether.
For the ancient people, worship.
Their experience of life wasfundamentally sacred and
worshipful, or, you could say,religious.
They were fundamentallyreligious people.
They had a deep sense of thesacred, the divine.
They had sacred places, so theyhad temples and altars and
(14:43):
sacred mountains and rivers.
It was very much a part oftheir ordinary lives.
It was their breath.
They didn't even notice it.
This is how they organizedtheir very lives.
It was their breath.
They didn't even notice it.
This is how they organizedtheir very lives.
They had sacred time.
Time was sacred.
They had rituals that didn'tjust commemorate time or events,
but it brought them back.
It reconnected them to theseevents in the past.
By the way, when we do communion, we do this.
(15:05):
Communion, at least for usLutherans, is not just bringing
back to mind that Jesus died.
That's fine and good.
It somehow reconnects us to thestory of Jesus dying on the
cross.
You know, I might say weremember it.
By remembering ourselves to God, we actually bring back into,
like the present moment, thedeath and resurrection of Jesus.
It's this ritualistic thing wedo to remember that time itself
(15:27):
is sacred.
This is how the ancients were.
It was all about sacred time.
They also had sacred stories.
The Jews, for example, had thissacred story about God creating
the world and then sort of thepeople being enslaved and then
God liberating them through thiswonderful man called Moses and
his sister Miriam and hisbrother Aaron, and they're
liberated, and then thiscovenant that God creates with
his people.
This is a sacred story for thepeople of God in the ancient
(15:52):
world.
Yeah, because for them, worshipwas like breathing.
It wasn't a belief system perse or a thing you did on Sunday
mornings for an hour.
It was a way of being in theworld.
It was a centering of one'slife, giving all your attention,
time and energy, resources, itsworthiness, towards this one
thing that you worship.
That's what it was.
It was a way of being in theworld.
(16:12):
It was just like breathing.
One scholar says this.
He says that, uh, people, inthe ancient world, they didn't
live in order to worship.
They worshipped in order tolive and live rightly.
They knew they got this right.
Everything else would flow outfrom that.
That was worship.
That was like breathing.
If they got their, they knew ifthey got this right, everything
else would flow out from that.
That was worship.
It was like breathing.
If they got their breath right,if they had breath in their
(16:33):
lungs, everything else wouldsort of fall into place and be
just like it's supposed to do.
Here's my fear, though as Imentioned, I fear in the modern
world.
We've lost the sense of thesacred and we've lost our breath
.
We sort of lack the words anylonger, or the structures or the
directions or like sort of theinsight or the wisdom about how
(16:54):
to do this kind of thing.
But I wonder if it's uh, if itdoesn't, well, it's this, I'd
say.
But also, at the same time thatwe've lost these handholds,
I've realized that people stillare inherently, fundamentally
kind of religious people at our.
We all have these deep longingsfor religious type experiences,
you could say for theconnection to the divine, that
(17:17):
even though we've lost thelanguage around the sacred or
the holy or for God, we stillare fundamentally religious type
people, that we seek meaningand transcendence and sort of
these connections to things thatare bigger and larger than us.
We have these longings in oursoul.
We're still religious people.
I mean, you don't have to lookthat far to find alternatives to
(17:38):
church.
There's all kinds of religiousgatherings around the world.
You probably know this.
There's the religion, themodern religion, of CrossFit.
You know this.
Right, you guys know CrossFit.
Yeah, this is a modern religion.
Here they have their own sortof liturgies, they have their
own language.
They call it the WOD.
The WOD, the workout of the day.
They have their own ritualisticdietary restrictions paleo or
(18:02):
keto, only right.
They have their own evangelists.
You've got to try CrossFit.
You've got to try, it's great.
They have their own weeklySabbath.
It's called Leg Day.
These are religious peoplegathering for sacred events.
We also have this religion, themodern religion of politics, of
the red and the blue andsometimes the beige.
(18:22):
We have our daily worshipgatherings at night on cable
news TV, am I right?
And we have our saints.
These would be our formerpresidents.
And we have a devil too.
It's whoever that guy'spresident candidate is.
That's the devil.
Oh, no laughter on that one.
I guess I hit a little tooclose to home, maybe for someone
(18:44):
.
Okay, fine, how about this one?
How about the sacred ritual ofthe pumpkin spice latte?
Are you with me?
This is a sacred event here inour culture, especially.
The first sip of this bad boybegins a new liturgical season.
We call it basic autumnis.
Thank you, that got a littlebit more left than left.
(19:07):
Yeah, cinnamon, be upon you.
I don't have a slide for itbecause I thought about it this
morning.
But what about, uh, our worshipat the, at the complex of the
altar of youth sports.
Oh, that one hit home, didn'tit?
Yeah, we gather at the sacredarena or field, the temple of
the field, and our ritualsinclude 5 am, optional practices
(19:32):
and pilgrimages to the greattournament destinations that are
exotic, such as Des Moines,iowa.
And if my kid isn't recruitedD1 by the time he's 12, have I
even parented?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, we're still folks wholong to worship and we have
these gatherings, sort of thesepseudo places of worship.
But we still do it.
(19:52):
We still long for worship, andthose are joking ones.
But here's something else thelonging to worship is deep in
our soul, because I believe it'sactually human to want to
worship.
We have these longings as humanbeings, what it means to be
human.
Here's how I know that Many ofus go outside into the woods and
(20:13):
we go stand on mountains and wego to visit the ocean and we
walk deep into the forest andwe're sort of in awe and in
wonder of what's going on.
And we go out there not justfor fun but to connect to
something bigger and granderthan ourselves.
And when you're out there,bigger and grander than
ourselves, and when you're outthere, you can kind of feel it
and sense it and even taste it.
You get like an itch, you getlike a feeling of it.
What is this?
Yeah, because deep in our souls, as humans, we long to be
(20:35):
connected to the sacred and youget hints of it out in these
places.
It's beautiful.
Or whenever you go to like aconcert or a theater and you're
with other people and you havelike this transcendent
experience, you're connectedwith all kinds of people and
you're singing the same songs oryou're laughing at the same
joke in the theater, yeah,you're having this ritualistic
connection with people and thedivine in this incredible way.
(20:56):
It's beautiful Because deep inour souls, this is what it means
to be human.
Or how about this one?
I love this, this modern maybemodern kind of at least in the
Western world sort of obsessionwith wellness and sort of
meditation apps and cold plungesand yoga studios, and when
we're there, we're actuallyreenacting or mirroring these
ancient ritual practices fromthe ancient world, because we
(21:20):
long to be connected to thedivine and the sacred.
That's what we long for aspeople of God.
We long for it.
It's sort of an itch in oursoul.
A couple of years ago, my sonGavin, who's here.
He goes to a school calledNorth Central College in Chicago
, west of Chicago, and we wentto a visit there when he was a
senior in high school Went for avisit and it was late one night
(21:40):
and our tour guy was a seniorand he was a lacrosse player,
because my son, gavin, playslacrosse and so this guy's name
is Tom.
Super cool guy, very fun.
But right from the jump I couldtell that this guy was a
lacrosse player.
He was all lacrosse all thetime and he was like very casual
, just like you could just tell,like he loved lacrosse.
He wanted to be an All-Americanthat next year he practiced all
(22:04):
the time he goes.
Actually the only reason I'mhere is for lacros half as he's
touring us around Like this guylike loves lacrosse.
And then at the end we come tothis intersection on the road
and there's a church there andGavin goes oh, is there a church
here?
And Tom goes.
I don't really know, I'm notvery religious and I was like,
uh, yeah, you are, thank you.
(22:35):
It's just not God that youwould have on this interview,
but you're religious for sure,man, because we all are.
That's what it means to behuman.
We all have these deep longingsto connect to something bigger
than ourselves.
We're all religious, but whatit means to be, fundamentally, I
think, a human, yeah, Now, thatmeans, then, that we're all
trying in some ways to connectto the sacred.
(22:58):
Last week, ben talked about thegolden calf story.
You might know this story andthere's a part of me that wants
to not blame them.
Like I get it.
Like they wanted to worshipsomething so badly, deeply and
I'm reading into the text butthey wanted it so badly that
they made a golden calf.
And there's a part of me that'slike, yeah, I totally get that.
I get that that desire, thatlonging.
(23:18):
It's not a bad thing, it'sactually quite intuitive and
it's actually quite fundamentalto what it means to be a human
being.
They're trying to connect tothe sacred.
The problem is that we'redisplaced people.
We've lost our connections andthe language.
In our modern society, peoplesay, oh, I don't believe in God
any longer, or churches arearchaic and antiquated, so we've
(23:39):
lost the structure, and I getit.
There's all kinds of like theinstitutions have sort of in
some ways have gotten defunct.
I get that too, but we've sortof torn it all down.
There's nothing left, and sowe're people who are like
wandering around blind, lookingfor handholds, longing for the
divine and the sacred.
But we have nowhere to go tofind it, so we wander around
displaced.
But what if we need thoseexperiences as humans?
(24:01):
What if we need the connectionto the divine and sacred spaces
and times?
And for someone like, hey, thisis a sacred, holy moment.
Let's just wait here.
For just what if we need that?
What if we need to worship?
What if we're beings of worship?
The great David Foster Wallacesays this.
He says there's no such thingas not worshiping.
Everybody worships, evenatheists worship their own
(24:24):
rationalism sometimes.
The only choice, he says, iswhat we get to worship, and the
compelling reason for maybechoosing God is that pretty much
anything else that you worshipwill eat you alive.
You ever been around someone whojust drinks all the time?
They're not fun to be around.
Or someone who worships moneyman, unless they're making you
(24:48):
some money, it's not that fun tobe around them, is it?
Or someone who just worships atthe throne of the computer
screen, because those thingswill eat us alive.
And I'm telling you, no one'simmune to this, not even me.
So these longings that we have,if we don't tend to them
carefully, like the great CarlJung once said, the gods will
become diseases.
(25:09):
These are problems for us, andso we live in a disease culture,
worshiping all kinds of falsegods.
Yeah, All the while you and Iare longing to breathe, we
attach ourselves to all kinds ofthings that can't really give
us breath or life in any way.
Yeah, we're beings who worship.
(25:29):
That's what it means to be ahuman being.
This is why, then, the commandgoes to the people of Israel hey
, you shall have no other godsbefore me.
It's not like God's anegomaniac, he's like I'm deeply
insecure.
You better worship me, nobodyelse.
No, he knew, if you don'tworship me, you'll worship the
profane.
You'll worship things that roblife from you as opposed to
(25:51):
giving it to you.
Only I can give you life.
We live in a culture wherethey're all worshiping something
.
It doesn't matter what is it,but all the things that they
worship are generally robbingthem of life.
Jesus says it this way, but thesame thing Worship the Lord,
your God, and serve him only.
This is why, now, how do we dothis?
We're going to practice now, sotake out your sheet, because
(26:12):
here's the thing behind thething.
Worship is just turning yourattention, your heart, your mind
, body, soul and spirit towardsthis thing.
This morning I want to inviteyou to worship God with me
together in this place.
So we're going to turn ourhearts towards God and you can
do it in all kinds of ways, butas you do it, I want you to come
awake to the longing deep inyour soul to connect with God.
(26:34):
So, if you're here, you're likeI've never had that longing,
I've never well start to noticeit, like this desire in you to
have meaning or purpose ortranscendence, or an experience
that's probably your longing toworship God.
Or if you're here and you feelit often, yeah, yeah, foster
that like water, that longingthat can draw you to worship God
, and then also then foster,then too, this, you know, this
(26:56):
idea of awe and wonder.
I shared about this a coupleweeks ago.
But the great Abraham JoshuaHeschel I love this he says this
.
I'll read the first part of it.
He says that there's neitherworship nor ritual without a
sense of mystery.
So may we be people who fostermystery and awe and wonder,
especially in this culture thatwants us to just be materialist
and kind of flatten everythingout.
May we experience awe andwonder and mystery.
(27:20):
This is why, when we go outinto the woods or out on the
lake, we're filled with awe andwonder that can lead to faith.
So foster that.
And when we practice worshipingtogether this morning I'm going
to sort of water that sense ofawe and wonder and mystery.
Now there's two kinds of waysgenerally to worship.
I'm going to skip that.
There's individual worship andthere's collective worship.
Now, individuals like just me,by myself, connecting to the
(27:42):
divine, to God Now that can bein here, it could also be in a
forest somewhere, it could be ona lake, it could be in a car
driving, it could be at a coffeeshop where I bring my full
attention, my awareness to Godand I begin to sort of like show
God that he's worth myattention, my resources, my time
, my energy.
And I do that alone, by myself.
(28:03):
That's fine, it's great.
Then there's also this rhythmof gathering together
collectively for worship.
And when we do that here,something happens, something
emerges.
They call it an emergentphenomenon.
When we're singing songstogether and we're breathing in
unison, we're saying the samewords, that collectively we
experience something divine andsacred.
(28:24):
Because we're together, it'sbeautiful and if you didn't do
it, you wouldn't experience it.
So that's a rhythm of ours.
Now, worship can happen onaccident.
You might be out in the woodsone day like, oh my gosh, you're
overcome with awe and wonder.
Or it can be on purpose, whereyou just turn your attention
towards God as a rhythm, inother ways fine.
And then your response isworship.
You might respond by raisingyour hands because you don't
(28:45):
know what else to do.
You might laugh, or you mightdance, or you might just sit in
the silence and the quiet.
There's all kinds of ways torespond to the divine presence,
the awareness, the awe andwonder of God.
Does that make sense?
Okay, so we're going to singtwo songs and then we'll do a
third one at the very end.
(29:06):
We'll sing two songs and when wedo, I want you to pick one of
these ways to worship on thatsheet of paper and that sheet
has six ways.
There's front and back.
The first one is body prayers.
So you know, for centuriespeople have used their body as
worship.
So you might fold your handswhen you pray.
The reason folks do that isbecause they're saying way back,
when they first started in theearly church, they were saying,
hey, I don't want to, I don'twant to, I don't want to reach
(29:27):
out and grab for anything elseother than God.
I'm going to fold my hands.
Or when you raise your hands inworship, you might, or you know
, anytime it's like I give up, Isurrender, or like this is just
sort of like you know, you'rekind of humbling yourself and
opening yourself to God.
I'm open God.
Or laying on the ground orkneeling these are body prayers
or body worship.
You can do that, okay.
Number two you can intercede orpray for somebody.
(29:49):
These are all prayers from thelast gathering.
There's post-it notes at theend of your pews.
You can write a prayer out asworship to God and turn your
heart, your attention to God asyou're praying for that person.
Then walk up during one of thetwo songs and slap it on the
board as your prayer and yourworship.
Number three you can doconfession.
So you can write down I don'tknow, a sin, a thought, whatever
on here somewhere, tear it offand come, bring it up to the
(30:11):
front here and just throw it atthe cross, which I'll put back.
The cross got moved.
But that's confession asworship, confession as worship.
You can also meditate onscripture.
Here's a great scripture versefrom Mark, where Jesus is in the
boat with the disciples andthere's a storm and he says
peace, be still.
You can read this over and overand over again, slowly, and see
what emerges for you as yourworship.
You're drawing your attention,your focus to God in this story
(30:34):
and see what happens.
You can also you can draw asworship.
My daughter loves to drawduring worship.
You can draw down here as Mikeand the band are playing a song,
listen to the words and justdraw whatever comes up as
worship to God.
You're drawing your attention,your focus, your awareness to
God and just as a response whichis what worship is, a response
to God, draw whatever comes upand just let it be a sacred holy
(30:56):
place.
Or in the back there's a reallycool artist named he Qi.
There's a sacred holy place.
Or in the back there's a reallycool artist named he Qi.
It's this painting called.
Actually, the painting iscalled Peace, be Still.
It goes with the Bible verseback here and you can just look
at it and you can kind ofreflect and meditate on this
story.
And there's the Bible verses inthere too.
You can look it up and read thestory and just see what you
notice about this story or aboutthis drawing, this painting
(31:18):
that was done by he Qi, and seewhat God might share with you
through this artwork.
Are there any questions?
Wonderful, we're going to tryit and my only encouragement
would be as you do them.
What you're doing is this isall you're doing when you're
worshiping God and when you'resort of coming into this space.
You're doing this Careful now.
(31:59):
Careful, you're sort of justputting things back in proper
order here and making sure thatyour life is centered and
focused on the right things thatcan give you life.
Whatever one jumps out at you,we're going to dim the lights
and we're going to go for it.
Whatever one jumped out, justtry that one.
Don't overthink it.
They're all fine, anyone's good.
So there's no right one orcorrect.
(32:19):
Just whatever one you got, orthe one that you're like I'm
never gonna do that one.
Try that one and see whathappens.
Or the one that will stretchyou the most.
Try that and let's see whathappens.
So, central as you turn yourheart towards God, may you be
overwhelmed with the awe andwonder of God, and we worship
God together.
Amen.
this morning.
(00:00):
God, we give you thanks thismorning for your presence here
and we do, god, just take aminute to acknowledge that you
are here with us in this timeand place, that you, the creator
of the whole world, thesustainer of the universe, the
one who allows the breath toflow in and out of our lungs,
(00:22):
the one who ignites the world tohave life, the ground of all
being, you, god, you are hereand in some way, for some reason
, you want to know us and for usto know you as much as it's
possible.
So we pray this morning, wewould turn our hearts towards
(00:46):
you, god, would you captivate usagain with awe and wonder?
Help us to be people who haveour eyes wide open, our ears
attuned to your voice and thethings you might want to tell us
.
May our eyes see you at work inthe world.
May we recognize the sacrednessof this moment.
(01:10):
So here we are, we gather forworship, and may you show us
your presence here in our midst.
In Jesus' name.
Amen, you can be seated.
Good morning everyone.
Amen, you can be seated.
Good morning everyone.
One second Almost forgotsomething here.
(01:41):
Yeah, ooh, yeah, Admire thechair.
Is that centered?
Okay, good, okay, good,excellent.
Yeah, that's good.
Okay, you should have alsogotten a sheet of paper when you
came in.
If you did not get a sheet ofpaper, would you raise your hand
?
You're gonna need it later on,so raise your hand high and
(02:01):
proud, loud and proud.
Keep it up high.
Ushers, could you, gary, couldyou?
Thank you, todd, can I get someushers to come?
Just pass some of these out.
Thank you, heidi.
Sorry, I didn't give them aheads up, but keep them up.
You're going to need it.
And, yeah, once you get it, youcan put your hand down, but
just keep it up in the meantime.
Thank you everybody.
Now you, now you can.
Probably many of you alreadycheated and looked at that sheet
(02:22):
.
That's fine, but later we'regoing to use it.
I'm going to invite you to tryone of these prayer stations out
.
You don't have to move around awhole lot, you can, but we'll
get into it.
But I want you to try somethingmaybe a bit new this morning or
something that will stretch you, that you've never done before,
and so we'll see what happens.
You never know.
So we'll see what happens.
You never know.
Okay, great, thank you.
(02:44):
Thank you, keep them up if youdon't have one yet, and if you
haven't looked at it yet, don'tlook at it.
It's kind of more fun to justsee what happens.
We'll see what emerges.
I'm going to test.
Okay, perfect, we're good to gothere.
(03:06):
So we are in the middle of ourrhythm gathering, our rhythm
series, and we're talking aboutthe rhythms that shape our lives
.
Aristotle said that we arepeople.
What we do shapes who we are,and so we know that the rhythms
we have, our habits, our actions, the more we do them, they can
change our neurology, ourneurobiology, they change our
physical biology, they canchange all kinds of things about
us.
They impact our and if we'renot divided beings, if we're
holistic beings, they impact ourbody, mind, soul and spirit.
So the things we do matter andthe rhythms we have shape us,
(03:29):
and so you should be mindful,then, of what are the things
that you're doing on a repeatedbasis, because they will shape
who you are.
In fact, I would argue theyshape the things that you desire
and your love.
So be careful of the rhythmsyou have.
This morning, and we're engagingin all these ancient christian
practices that christians havebeen using for many years.
Everyone got one Raise yourhand.
If you didn't get one, stillPerfect, and so I want to
encourage you to try them allout that following week as well.
(03:51):
So this morning we're going totalk about worship, but before I
do, I want to talk about breath.
So you might know this already,but you don't have to remind a
relatively healthy person tobreathe.
They don't need a reminder,they just breathe.
Breathing, for most of us, isthis natural thing that happens
all the time and we breatheconstantly.
(04:12):
It's actually the center of ourlife.
With no breath, there's no life, and so we breathe all the time
.
We breathe while we're laughing, in case you hadn't noticed,
you don't have to remindyourself to breathe while you're
laughing.
Maybe you do if you're laughingreally hard.
When you're walking around,when you're talking, when you're
sleeping, your body justbreathes on its own.
You don't have to tell yourselfor remind yourself to breathe.
For most of us who are healthy,you don't even notice that
(04:33):
you're breathing.
You probably didn't notice ituntil I said it just now,
because breathing is like life,it's just a natural part of the
rhythm of our life.
In fact, the only time youreally notice that you're
breathing is when you're notbreathing, like when you're
underwater.
You suddenly realize, oh mygosh, I need air and I need it
quickly, because you'reunderwater and you can't breathe
.
Or if you're winded, like aftera long run, or whatever you do
(04:54):
that winds you, it's like you'vegot to breathe.
Or if you're nervous or anxiousor afraid, you've got to
remember to breathe.
Hey, breathe, breathe.
But for most of us, it's justthis natural part of life.
This is what worship was.
For the ancient people In theancient world, worship was like
breathing.
It was a natural part of thefundamental pieces of life.
(05:15):
They just did it.
It was like everything in theirlife was surrounded by worship.
They worshiped through theseasons.
They had rituals that were likeseasonal and they worshiped all
the time.
They had prayers that were verymuch a natural part of their
lives.
They had liturgies, things thatthey did that were just very
much a natural part of theirlife.
It was like breathing for mostof these ancient people, and so
that was what it was like.
It was that they didn't evennotice it, that their whole
(05:36):
lives were built around thisthing that we might call worship
.
It was a part of the rhythm oftheir life.
It wasn't just something theydid once a week.
Their lives were worship.
It was just like breathing forthem.
They had rituals and seasonsand celebrations and suffering,
and all these things were sortof encompassed and woven into
(05:56):
their fabric of their worship.
Their lives were punctuated byprayers and collective songs and
celebrations and all thesekinds of things.
They didn't attend worship,they lived worship.
Worship was like breathing forthem.
In fact you could say it thisway Worship was like breath for
them.
(06:17):
They just did it.
I'm kind of afraid that in themodern world, which is 100,000
miles an hour, with distractionsall around us and anything we
want at our fingertips, I'mafraid that many of us have lost
our breath.
And don't blame us all thewhile or all the time.
(06:39):
I just think we're sort of apart of this fabric, of this
system that has just sort oflost its collective breath,
think we're sort of a part ofthis fabric, of this system that
has just sort of lost itscollective breath and we've lost
the sense of the sacred or ofworship or religion in its
purest forms.
Here's what I mean by worship.
So worship comes from this oldEnglish word, which really means
worth-ship.
So worship means to showsomething, whatever it is, its
(07:00):
worth or its value or its beautyor grandeur or worthiness.
This is what it means toworship, to show its worthship.
One scholar defines it like thisthis is worship.
It's an intentional actalthough I would argue it might
sometimes be accidental but ofturning our whole being towards
something our heart, our mind,our soul, our strength and to
(07:23):
recognize its worth Our heart,our mind, our soul, our strength
and to recognize its worth, itsbeauty, its majesty.
So you could say it's likehaving your life center around
something.
This is worship, like centeringyour whole life around
something, like giving yourattention to it, building your
life around it, maybe throwingresources at it, what you give
your money to, maybe how youshape your calendar and how you
(07:46):
raise your kids, or things youtalk about, how you organize
your life, what things are atthe top of the list, what things
get cut.
This is considered worship.
It's what you sort of put atthe middle of your life, or, you
could say, on the throne ofyour life, which raises the
question then what are youworshiping?
What's at the center of yourlife?
(08:07):
What do you give your life to?
What do you give your heart andsoul to?
Your attention, your resources,your calendar?
What do you give it to?
Now, maybe for many of us, wethink it's hopefully I don't
know Jesus, and so we center ourlives around Jesusesus and we
build it into our calendar andeverything goes around that and
(08:27):
like breathing, we just sort oflive and move and.
But maybe it's not always thecase for many of us, maybe it's
some other things, like maybe Idon't know, but don't get mad,
(08:48):
don't get mad.
This is signed by the greatestquarterback of all time, john
elway.
Thank you, thank you.
Yeah, don't get mad.
I would have had a.
I would have had a vikingshelmet, but I only allow
championship teams in my house,so we didn't do the.
Uh, just kidding, just kidding,I don't know.
(09:11):
Maybe it's sports that you kindof revolve your life around.
Maybe it's watching thesesports.
You know, you ever been to afootball game?
It's kind of like a religiousexperience, raising our hands
and cheering in unison.
Maybe it's not sports, maybeit's something else.
Maybe it's something like thisoh yeah, this is.
(09:40):
Am I getting warmer?
Yeah, maybe it's constant work.
Maybe it's social media likesand videos and reels or doom
scrolling or other things, orbinge watching.
Maybe that's sort of the centerof your life and you sort of
shape everything in your lifearound it.
Or maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's like just thisincessant need or desire to work
and to prove your value andyour worth, because you just
know that if you work a littlebit more and a little bit harder
(10:00):
and have your life put togetheraround your work, then you'll
be a valuable person and acontributor to society.
I mean, we're good Protestantshere in this country, so we like
to show off our work ethic.
Maybe not that.
Maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's something like thisthat your life is centered and
shaped around.
Maybe you're just a veryintelligent person and you just
(10:20):
want to sort of let everyoneknow.
Or you want to shape your ownlife around reading big, fancy,
heavy books like this one.
Look at that fancy book, am Iright?
And maybe your intellect oryour education is so important
to you it's actually become thecenter of your very life and
everything is sort of shapedaround that.
Or maybe not that.
(10:42):
Maybe it's something else, likethis one here Don't worry, it's
communion wine.
Actually it's not.
This is barefoot fruscato peach.
This is not mine, that'slow-hanging fruit, but right.
Maybe your life has sort ofbecome built around whatever
your addiction is, that sort ofnumbs the pain of your life.
(11:03):
By the way, no one's immune tothese kinds of things, even
myself.
And these things are notinherently bad in and of
themselves, of course not.
They're just things.
It's this relationship ofcentering my life around this
thing, where I give all myattention, all my desires, all
my resources, where I becomesort of this thing on the throne
of my life.
Maybe that didn't resonate withyou.
Maybe, how about these ones here?
(11:24):
I've got two more for you.
Maybe it's just looking reallygood and buff and getting that
pump going.
This is a 50-pound weight, justso you know.
Did I say 50?
I meant 100.
98, 99.
I don't know.
Maybe image is your thing andyour life is shaped around that.
(11:45):
You gotta go to the gym or doone more yoga session or get out
and get tan or whatever yourthings are.
Or lastly, how about this onehere?
Yes, sir, these are all singles.
By the way, don't come and robme right now.
I had to borrow these from myson, gavin.
I don't carry cash anymore.
(12:06):
Do you have any cash on you?
Yeah, maybe that's your thing,you know, and you just sort of
that's at the center of yourlife.
What is it?
What's on the throne of yourlife.
Actually, the modern problem ismore like this I put myself on
the throne of my own life.
I'll be the God of my own lifeand I sort of shape everything
(12:26):
around myself and my own ego andmy ambitions, my own life.
I'll be the God of my own lifeand I sort of shape everything
around myself and my own ego andmy ambitions, my desires, and I
fulfill all my longings and mywishes and I become this
self-absorbed person and that'smy thing.
But worship is this act ofsomehow turning your attention
to this thing that's at thecenter of your life and carving
out space just to show thatthing.
Whatever it is, it's worthship.
(12:48):
I asked on my social media page,my Facebook account, because
I'm an older person, you useFacebook still and I said hey,
how do you define worship?
And some friends of mine saidthis One person, a very wise
young man who's very handsome aswell.
Where is he there?
He is Jeremy Peterson.
I didn't ask if I could quotehim, but he said it's
(13:11):
intentional, focused, honoring,directed at the highest priority
.
What is your highest priority?
How about this one?
One of my friends said you canworship anything and we worship
lots of things.
It's what you give yourattention to the most and focus
and love and adoration.
Hopefully it's God, but maybeit's not.
How about this one?
My husband is very ill.
She said I take care of himdaily.
I have deeply considered thisto be my worship.
(13:34):
Is that worship?
How about this one?
Awestruckness at the unfoldingcreativeness of Yahweh Is that
worship?
How about this one?
Glorifying God in all that wedo, whatever it is, it does not
have to be music, but music is agreat way to express ourselves
to God.
But it could be picking uptrash, smiling at somebody
(13:55):
because they're a child of God,loving your family or your
husband when he's ill or whenit's hard, crying out to God,
just acknowledging him witheverything that you do.
You know one more here.
How about this one?
Worship this person said.
One of my friends says it's ourresponse to the gospel Worship.
Yeah, today I want to invite usto worship, and to worship God
(14:20):
this morning.
This is a sermon about aninvitation.
We're going to practice ittogether.
For the ancient people, worship.
Their experience of life wasfundamentally sacred and
worshipful, or, you could say,religious.
They were fundamentallyreligious people.
They had a deep sense of thesacred, the divine.
They had sacred places, so theyhad temples and altars and
(14:43):
sacred mountains and rivers.
It was very much a part oftheir ordinary lives.
It was their breath.
They didn't even notice it.
This is how they organizedtheir very lives.
It was their breath.
They didn't even notice it.
This is how they organizedtheir very lives.
They had sacred time.
Time was sacred.
They had rituals that didn'tjust commemorate time or events,
but it brought them back.
It reconnected them to theseevents in the past.
By the way, when we do communion, we do this.
(15:05):
Communion, at least for usLutherans, is not just bringing
back to mind that Jesus died.
That's fine and good.
It somehow reconnects us to thestory of Jesus dying on the
cross.
You know, I might say weremember it.
By remembering ourselves to God, we actually bring back into,
like the present moment, thedeath and resurrection of Jesus.
It's this ritualistic thing wedo to remember that time itself
(15:27):
is sacred.
This is how the ancients were.
It was all about sacred time.
They also had sacred stories.
The Jews, for example, had thissacred story about God creating
the world and then sort of thepeople being enslaved and then
God liberating them through thiswonderful man called Moses and
his sister Miriam and hisbrother Aaron, and they're
liberated, and then thiscovenant that God creates with
his people.
This is a sacred story for thepeople of God in the ancient
(15:52):
world.
Yeah, because for them, worshipwas like breathing.
It wasn't a belief system perse or a thing you did on Sunday
mornings for an hour.
It was a way of being in theworld.
It was a centering of one'slife, giving all your attention,
time and energy, resources, itsworthiness, towards this one
thing that you worship.
That's what it was.
It was a way of being in theworld.
(16:12):
It was just like breathing.
One scholar says this.
He says that, uh, people, inthe ancient world, they didn't
live in order to worship.
They worshipped in order tolive and live rightly.
They knew they got this right.
Everything else would flow outfrom that.
That was worship.
That was like breathing.
If they got their, they knew ifthey got this right, everything
else would flow out from that.
That was worship.
It was like breathing.
If they got their breath right,if they had breath in their
(16:33):
lungs, everything else wouldsort of fall into place and be
just like it's supposed to do.
Here's my fear, though as Imentioned, I fear in the modern
world.
We've lost the sense of thesacred and we've lost our breath
.
We sort of lack the words anylonger, or the structures or the
directions or like sort of theinsight or the wisdom about how
(16:54):
to do this kind of thing.
But I wonder if it's uh, if itdoesn't, well, it's this, I'd
say.
But also, at the same time thatwe've lost these handholds,
I've realized that people stillare inherently, fundamentally
kind of religious people at our.
We all have these deep longingsfor religious type experiences,
you could say for theconnection to the divine, that
(17:17):
even though we've lost thelanguage around the sacred or
the holy or for God, we stillare fundamentally religious type
people, that we seek meaningand transcendence and sort of
these connections to things thatare bigger and larger than us.
We have these longings in oursoul.
We're still religious people.
I mean, you don't have to lookthat far to find alternatives to
(17:38):
church.
There's all kinds of religiousgatherings around the world.
You probably know this.
There's the religion, themodern religion, of CrossFit.
You know this.
Right, you guys know CrossFit.
Yeah, this is a modern religion.
Here they have their own sortof liturgies, they have their
own language.
They call it the WOD.
The WOD, the workout of the day.
They have their own ritualisticdietary restrictions paleo or
(18:02):
keto, only right.
They have their own evangelists.
You've got to try CrossFit.
You've got to try, it's great.
They have their own weeklySabbath.
It's called Leg Day.
These are religious peoplegathering for sacred events.
We also have this religion, themodern religion of politics, of
the red and the blue andsometimes the beige.
(18:22):
We have our daily worshipgatherings at night on cable
news TV, am I right?
And we have our saints.
These would be our formerpresidents.
And we have a devil too.
It's whoever that guy'spresident candidate is.
That's the devil.
Oh, no laughter on that one.
I guess I hit a little tooclose to home, maybe for someone
(18:44):
.
Okay, fine, how about this one?
How about the sacred ritual ofthe pumpkin spice latte?
Are you with me?
This is a sacred event here inour culture, especially.
The first sip of this bad boybegins a new liturgical season.
We call it basic autumnis.
Thank you, that got a littlebit more left than left.
(19:07):
Yeah, cinnamon, be upon you.
I don't have a slide for itbecause I thought about it this
morning.
But what about, uh, our worshipat the, at the complex of the
altar of youth sports.
Oh, that one hit home, didn'tit?
Yeah, we gather at the sacredarena or field, the temple of
the field, and our ritualsinclude 5 am, optional practices
(19:32):
and pilgrimages to the greattournament destinations that are
exotic, such as Des Moines,iowa.
And if my kid isn't recruitedD1 by the time he's 12, have I
even parented?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, we're still folks wholong to worship and we have
these gatherings, sort of thesepseudo places of worship.
But we still do it.
(19:52):
We still long for worship, andthose are joking ones.
But here's something else thelonging to worship is deep in
our soul, because I believe it'sactually human to want to
worship.
We have these longings as humanbeings, what it means to be
human.
Here's how I know that Many ofus go outside into the woods and
(20:13):
we go stand on mountains and wego to visit the ocean and we
walk deep into the forest andwe're sort of in awe and in
wonder of what's going on.
And we go out there not justfor fun but to connect to
something bigger and granderthan ourselves.
And when you're out there,bigger and grander than
ourselves, and when you're outthere, you can kind of feel it
and sense it and even taste it.
You get like an itch, you getlike a feeling of it.
What is this?
Yeah, because deep in our souls, as humans, we long to be
(20:35):
connected to the sacred and youget hints of it out in these
places.
It's beautiful.
Or whenever you go to like aconcert or a theater and you're
with other people and you havelike this transcendent
experience, you're connectedwith all kinds of people and
you're singing the same songs oryou're laughing at the same
joke in the theater, yeah,you're having this ritualistic
connection with people and thedivine in this incredible way.
(20:56):
It's beautiful Because deep inour souls, this is what it means
to be human.
Or how about this one?
I love this, this modern maybemodern kind of at least in the
Western world sort of obsessionwith wellness and sort of
meditation apps and cold plungesand yoga studios, and when
we're there, we're actuallyreenacting or mirroring these
ancient ritual practices fromthe ancient world, because we
(21:20):
long to be connected to thedivine and the sacred.
That's what we long for aspeople of God.
We long for it.
It's sort of an itch in oursoul.
A couple of years ago, my sonGavin, who's here.
He goes to a school calledNorth Central College in Chicago
, west of Chicago, and we wentto a visit there when he was a
senior in high school Went for avisit and it was late one night
(21:40):
and our tour guy was a seniorand he was a lacrosse player,
because my son, gavin, playslacrosse and so this guy's name
is Tom.
Super cool guy, very fun.
But right from the jump I couldtell that this guy was a
lacrosse player.
He was all lacrosse all thetime and he was like very casual
, just like you could just tell,like he loved lacrosse.
He wanted to be an All-Americanthat next year he practiced all
(22:04):
the time he goes.
Actually the only reason I'mhere is for lacros half as he's
touring us around Like this guylike loves lacrosse.
And then at the end we come tothis intersection on the road
and there's a church there andGavin goes oh, is there a church
here?
And Tom goes.
I don't really know, I'm notvery religious and I was like,
uh, yeah, you are, thank you.
(22:35):
It's just not God that youwould have on this interview,
but you're religious for sure,man, because we all are.
That's what it means to behuman.
We all have these deep longingsto connect to something bigger
than ourselves.
We're all religious, but whatit means to be, fundamentally, I
think, a human, yeah, Now, thatmeans, then, that we're all
trying in some ways to connectto the sacred.
(22:58):
Last week, ben talked about thegolden calf story.
You might know this story andthere's a part of me that wants
to not blame them.
Like I get it.
Like they wanted to worshipsomething so badly, deeply and
I'm reading into the text butthey wanted it so badly that
they made a golden calf.
And there's a part of me that'slike, yeah, I totally get that.
I get that that desire, thatlonging.
(23:18):
It's not a bad thing, it'sactually quite intuitive and
it's actually quite fundamentalto what it means to be a human
being.
They're trying to connect tothe sacred.
The problem is that we'redisplaced people.
We've lost our connections andthe language.
In our modern society, peoplesay, oh, I don't believe in God
any longer, or churches arearchaic and antiquated, so we've
(23:39):
lost the structure, and I getit.
There's all kinds of like theinstitutions have sort of in
some ways have gotten defunct.
I get that too, but we've sortof torn it all down.
There's nothing left, and sowe're people who are like
wandering around blind, lookingfor handholds, longing for the
divine and the sacred.
But we have nowhere to go tofind it, so we wander around
displaced.
But what if we need thoseexperiences as humans?
(24:01):
What if we need the connectionto the divine and sacred spaces
and times?
And for someone like, hey, thisis a sacred, holy moment.
Let's just wait here.
For just what if we need that?
What if we need to worship?
What if we're beings of worship?
The great David Foster Wallacesays this.
He says there's no such thingas not worshiping.
Everybody worships, evenatheists worship their own
(24:24):
rationalism sometimes.
The only choice, he says, iswhat we get to worship, and the
compelling reason for maybechoosing God is that pretty much
anything else that you worshipwill eat you alive.
You ever been around someone whojust drinks all the time?
They're not fun to be around.
Or someone who worships moneyman, unless they're making you
(24:48):
some money, it's not that fun tobe around them, is it?
Or someone who just worships atthe throne of the computer
screen, because those thingswill eat us alive.
And I'm telling you, no one'simmune to this, not even me.
So these longings that we have,if we don't tend to them
carefully, like the great CarlJung once said, the gods will
become diseases.
(25:09):
These are problems for us, andso we live in a disease culture,
worshiping all kinds of falsegods.
Yeah, All the while you and Iare longing to breathe, we
attach ourselves to all kinds ofthings that can't really give
us breath or life in any way.
Yeah, we're beings who worship.
(25:29):
That's what it means to be ahuman being.
This is why, then, the commandgoes to the people of Israel hey
, you shall have no other godsbefore me.
It's not like God's anegomaniac, he's like I'm deeply
insecure.
You better worship me, nobodyelse.
No, he knew, if you don'tworship me, you'll worship the
profane.
You'll worship things that roblife from you as opposed to
(25:51):
giving it to you.
Only I can give you life.
We live in a culture wherethey're all worshiping something
.
It doesn't matter what is it,but all the things that they
worship are generally robbingthem of life.
Jesus says it this way, but thesame thing Worship the Lord,
your God, and serve him only.
This is why, now, how do we dothis?
We're going to practice now, sotake out your sheet, because
(26:12):
here's the thing behind thething.
Worship is just turning yourattention, your heart, your mind
, body, soul and spirit towardsthis thing.
This morning I want to inviteyou to worship God with me
together in this place.
So we're going to turn ourhearts towards God and you can
do it in all kinds of ways, butas you do it, I want you to come
awake to the longing deep inyour soul to connect with God.
(26:34):
So, if you're here, you're likeI've never had that longing,
I've never well start to noticeit, like this desire in you to
have meaning or purpose ortranscendence, or an experience
that's probably your longing toworship God.
Or if you're here and you feelit often, yeah, yeah, foster
that like water, that longingthat can draw you to worship God
, and then also then foster,then too, this, you know, this
(26:56):
idea of awe and wonder.
I shared about this a coupleweeks ago.
But the great Abraham JoshuaHeschel I love this he says this
.
I'll read the first part of it.
He says that there's neitherworship nor ritual without a
sense of mystery.
So may we be people who fostermystery and awe and wonder,
especially in this culture thatwants us to just be materialist
and kind of flatten everythingout.
May we experience awe andwonder and mystery.
(27:20):
This is why, when we go outinto the woods or out on the
lake, we're filled with awe andwonder that can lead to faith.
So foster that.
And when we practice worshipingtogether this morning I'm going
to sort of water that sense ofawe and wonder and mystery.
Now there's two kinds of waysgenerally to worship.
I'm going to skip that.
There's individual worship andthere's collective worship.
Now, individuals like just me,by myself, connecting to the
(27:42):
divine, to God Now that can bein here, it could also be in a
forest somewhere, it could be ona lake, it could be in a car
driving, it could be at a coffeeshop where I bring my full
attention, my awareness to Godand I begin to sort of like show
God that he's worth myattention, my resources, my time
, my energy.
And I do that alone, by myself.
(28:03):
That's fine, it's great.
Then there's also this rhythmof gathering together
collectively for worship.
And when we do that here,something happens, something
emerges.
They call it an emergentphenomenon.
When we're singing songstogether and we're breathing in
unison, we're saying the samewords, that collectively we
experience something divine andsacred.
(28:24):
Because we're together, it'sbeautiful and if you didn't do
it, you wouldn't experience it.
So that's a rhythm of ours.
Now, worship can happen onaccident.
You might be out in the woodsone day like, oh my gosh, you're
overcome with awe and wonder.
Or it can be on purpose, whereyou just turn your attention
towards God as a rhythm, inother ways fine.
And then your response isworship.
You might respond by raisingyour hands because you don't
(28:45):
know what else to do.
You might laugh, or you mightdance, or you might just sit in
the silence and the quiet.
There's all kinds of ways torespond to the divine presence,
the awareness, the awe andwonder of God.
Does that make sense?
Okay, so we're going to singtwo songs and then we'll do a
third one at the very end.
(29:06):
We'll sing two songs and when wedo, I want you to pick one of
these ways to worship on thatsheet of paper and that sheet
has six ways.
There's front and back.
The first one is body prayers.
So you know, for centuriespeople have used their body as
worship.
So you might fold your handswhen you pray.
The reason folks do that isbecause they're saying way back,
when they first started in theearly church, they were saying,
hey, I don't want to, I don'twant to, I don't want to reach
(29:27):
out and grab for anything elseother than God.
I'm going to fold my hands.
Or when you raise your hands inworship, you might, or you know
, anytime it's like I give up, Isurrender, or like this is just
sort of like you know, you'rekind of humbling yourself and
opening yourself to God.
I'm open God.
Or laying on the ground orkneeling these are body prayers
or body worship.
You can do that, okay.
Number two you can intercede orpray for somebody.
(29:49):
These are all prayers from thelast gathering.
There's post-it notes at theend of your pews.
You can write a prayer out asworship to God and turn your
heart, your attention to God asyou're praying for that person.
Then walk up during one of thetwo songs and slap it on the
board as your prayer and yourworship.
Number three you can doconfession.
So you can write down I don'tknow, a sin, a thought, whatever
on here somewhere, tear it offand come, bring it up to the
(30:11):
front here and just throw it atthe cross, which I'll put back.
The cross got moved.
But that's confession asworship, confession as worship.
You can also meditate onscripture.
Here's a great scripture versefrom Mark, where Jesus is in the
boat with the disciples andthere's a storm and he says
peace, be still.
You can read this over and overand over again, slowly, and see
what emerges for you as yourworship.
You're drawing your attention,your focus to God in this story
(30:34):
and see what happens.
You can also you can draw asworship.
My daughter loves to drawduring worship.
You can draw down here as Mikeand the band are playing a song,
listen to the words and justdraw whatever comes up as
worship to God.
You're drawing your attention,your focus, your awareness to
God and just as a response whichis what worship is, a response
to God, draw whatever comes upand just let it be a sacred holy
(30:56):
place.
Or in the back there's a reallycool artist named he Qi.
There's a sacred holy place.
Or in the back there's a reallycool artist named he Qi.
It's this painting called.
Actually, the painting iscalled Peace, be Still.
It goes with the Bible verseback here and you can just look
at it and you can kind ofreflect and meditate on this
story.
And there's the Bible verses inthere too.
You can look it up and read thestory and just see what you
notice about this story or aboutthis drawing, this painting
(31:18):
that was done by he Qi, and seewhat God might share with you
through this artwork.
Are there any questions?
Wonderful, we're going to tryit and my only encouragement
would be as you do them.
What you're doing is this isall you're doing when you're
worshiping God and when you'resort of coming into this space.
You're doing this Careful now.
(31:59):
Careful, you're sort of justputting things back in proper
order here and making sure thatyour life is centered and
focused on the right things thatcan give you life.
Whatever one jumps out at you,we're going to dim the lights
and we're going to go for it.
Whatever one jumped out, justtry that one.
Don't overthink it.
They're all fine, anyone's good.
So there's no right one orcorrect.
(32:19):
Just whatever one you got, orthe one that you're like I'm
never gonna do that one.
Try that one and see whathappens.
Or the one that will stretchyou the most.
Try that and let's see whathappens.
So, central as you turn yourheart towards God, may you be
overwhelmed with the awe andwonder of God, and we worship
God together.
Amen.
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