May God’s mercy transform our hearts and minds daily, brothers and sisters. Amen.
“John” and “Jane” are husband and wife. Married for twenty-seven years. John is a good man. Jane is a good woman. They’re both considerate, trustworthy, helpful. Jane goes to church. John does not. John has gone to church. He doesn’t see a point in it. Jane still regularly invites him to worship with her. He does, occasionally, on Easter and Christmas, and maybe for a baptism. They don’t argue, but when Jane invites him to hop in the car on Sunday mornings, John will often ask, “Why should I?” Jane’s response? “God wants you to.”
When Jane goes to church, Jane feels confident that she is doing what God wants her to do. She is following his rules. Therefore, Jane knows, God is happy with her. She only hopes that she can, someday, convince John to also follow God’s rules, so that God is happy with John too. And - not that this is first in her mind - but God will probably be even happier with her! If she can get someone else to start following his rules.
Neither of them - not Jane, not John - understands what worship is. They both view worship as something of a chore, or an obligation. And John is happy to do things which he understands need doing. Fixing the dryer; changing the oil; picking up their granddaughter. But he does not see why he needs to do church. Jane understands why - or, she thinks she does. God wants her to. God will be happy with her if she goes to church. That’s it. She has not yet managed to convince John of that proposition. But she’ll keep trying.
Is that why we come to church? Does going to church make God happy with us? A lot of people think that! Nonchurchgoers, like John, think it, because it’s what churchgoers, like Jane, tell them! Janes may think it’s true, Johns may not; regardless, they both think that’s the point of churchgoing. Of worship. But it isn’t.
In our Lent message series this year, Rethinking Religion, we’re reexamining some of these common thoughts about religion. Not to come up with our own new ideas, but to ask whether what we believe about these things is what the Bible teaches. Today, we’re rethinking worship.
Our Gospel reading gave us two little vignettes from Jesus’ life, interactions he had with a group called the Pharisees. Both interactions revolve around the concept of worship.
In the first instance, the question of fasting comes up. Both the disciples of the Pharisees and those of John the Baptist - Jesus’ cousin, his forerunner, the man who baptized him - are fasting. Fasting, to make sure everyone understands, is a custom of not eating for a defined period. Sometimes people do this for health reasons, but it’s often been a religious practice. Some Christian groups practice fasting during Lent.
God had, in the Old Testament laws, commanded that there be one specific day of fasting every year, on the festival called the Day of Atonement. Otherwise, fasting was an entirely optional thing. The Pharisees decided to take that “option” and run with it. Not only did they suggest fasting on additional holidays, but they themselves fasted twice a week every week!
Most people did not do the weekly fasting. But the additional fasts for additional holidays had become longstanding tradition. Even John’s disciples, who were not Pharisees, were joining in this particular fast. But Jesus and his disciples were not. So the Pharisees came to Jesus. “What gives? Why aren’t you joining in?”
In response, Jesus tells three short parables; these illustration-stories he used to teach. He compares himself, first, to a groom who’s getting married, and his disciples to the groomsmen. The translation here “guests of the bridegroom” isn’t quite correct. What’s specified here are the male members of the wedding party. If we would modernize this parable, Jesus is saying, “Would you expect a groom and his groomsmen to fast at the bachelor party? No!” The groom and his friends are celebrating. Later, when the groom is no longer with them, they may fast.
The other two parables go together. First, Jesus pictures a torn piece of clothing. Unlike us modern wealthy Westerners, no one in that time would throw away torn clothing. You’d fix it. Clothing was precious then. We see this in Jesus’ crucifixion, when the soldiers stripped him naked and then gambled for his clothes. Getting to divvy up the clothes of the condemned was a major perk of their job!
But care had to be taken while patching a rip. A new piece of cloth could not be used; otherwise, when the garment was washed and dried, the new cloth of the patch would shrink, as new cloth does, and tear away from the stitches, making the rip worse.
Similarly, Jesus pictures new wine, still fermenting, being put into wineskins for storage. New wine produces gas as it ferments, and that gas slowly pushes at the bag, inflating it. A new skin bag will stretch with the gas. But an old one, which has already stretched, will burst open.
In Jesus’ first parable, this is his point. “My presence is what should guide your religious observances.” What a shocking claim! Jesus is saying, “I am the center around which you should arrange your religion.” This is a claim of divinity. He claims here that he is God, as he does throughout the pages of the New Testament. Sometimes he does so by inference, as we see here. At other times, he makes the claim more directly, as when he tells the Pharisees on another occasion that “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
In the latter two parables, his point is this. “My presence in the world is ushering in a change.” The forms and traditions which God’s people had been given by God through Moses on Sinai fulfilled their purpose when Jesus came. All of the Old Testament law pointed to him.
This leads into the second vignette. The Pharisees don’t have much to say to him about the fasting issue in general. After all, their fasting was not commanded in the Bible. Fasting may be a useful spiritual discipline, but they couldn’t accuse Jesus or his disciples of a specific offense against the commands of the Almighty God.
But here, they can! Verse twenty-three, “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain.” Now the Pharisees are shocked! And they have reason to be. We heard in our Old Testament reading: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work.” God forbade work on the Sabbath; the disciples are working. They’ve broken God’s Law.
Well - it turns out, no. They haven’t. Jesus points this out by telling a story from the Old Testament. Once, when not-yet-King-David was on the run from his enemy Saul, he asked the priest in God’s temple to provide him with some of the bread that had been on the altar. Comparable to the bread wafers we use in communion. David and his men needed food for the journey, and the priest allowed them to take the offering bread, even though, as Jesus notes, that was “lawful only for priests to eat.”
Jesus goes on. ““The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” This is a major point. What Jesus means is this. The religious ceremonies which God required in his Law - rules about who could eat the offering bread, about Sabbaths and festival days, and more - were not given as the means by which God’s people could please him. God gave them to his people for their benefit.
The Sabbath reminded God’s people - just as we often need to be reminded - that we cannot guarantee our own survival, and that’s okay. God promises to care for us. In the Old Testament, he was able to administer the society in which his people lived in such a way that they could expect the ability to take at least a day off. As modern Christians, we may face choices which they didn’t. Someone may need to work seven days a week in a difficult season of life to make ends meet. God does not condemn such actions, just as he did not condemn David for eating the consecrated bread.
And this, to bring them back into the picture, is what Jane and John both misunderstand about “going to church.” They both have a Pharisee’s view of it. They both think, “Church is something I do if I want to make God happy.” Jane happens to want to do that. John doesn’t.
By going to church, we don’t cause God to be satisfied with us. Not that he doesn’t rejoice to see his children gathered together! He certainly does. But the goal of worship is not to produce an effect on God; to cause him to move from anger with me to contentedness. Worship, instead, has its effect on us, as individuals and as a group.
As individuals, we receive in worship. We are shown our sinfulness. God opens our eyes to our need for him. He reminds us that we will die one day; indeed, that we have earned death!
After receiving such knowledge of our sin, we receive his forgiveness. Not because we’ve done such a good thing in showing up for worship, but because God is a forgiver. God is not a vending machine, into which we put the coin of “worship” and receive a refreshing can of “Salvation-Up.” (Okay, weird metaphor.) No - Jesus calls himself “the bread of life,” and elsewhere, “wine and milk without cost.” He pictures himself, and what he offers when we gather, not as a grab-and-go pay-by-plate restaurant, but as a banquet table, laden with rich fare, all free for the taking. Do we walk away from such a table with a full plate telling ourselves, “You know, I deserve this. After all, I showed up and grabbed a plate.” Foolishness!
Here’s what we want to rethink about worship. Worship - coming together as a group to hear from God in his Word - is not something God demands of us. It is something God has given to us. Given so that we might rest, and be refreshed by his promise to love us always. His assurance that in Jesus, we are reconciled to him.
Before I wrap today’s message, a word about the Lord’s Supper - about Communion - is appropriate as we talk about worship. Participation in the Supper is not an act by which we bring ourselves closer to God. Here, God has made himself close to us; presents himself for our benefit. Here, we receive Jesus’ body and blood for our strengthening and comfort. And we do so with the knowledge God gives us of our sin in his Law. God tells us that this meal is for our benefit, not his. But he is also clear in his Word; anyone who wishes to receive it should be able to examine themselves according to his Word, and see their need for his forgiveness.
For this reason, our church’s practice is that those who want to start participating first study the Bible with us. We do that because participation isn’t something that makes God happy with us. If it was, we’d want everyone to jump in immediately! But Communion is not an action by which God becomes magically happy with the one taking it. Instead, communion is a public action declaring, “I believe that I am a sinner. I believe that here, Jesus is offering his body and blood, to give me comfort in my guilt. And I stand with these believers, in this place, in those beliefs.”
No one should be pushed into such a weighty confession of faith. Because, again, worship is not truly about what we do. True worship is centered on what God has done for us. Amen.