Old South Sermons:

Praise!

by Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, Senior Minister

Based on Psalms 100 and 150

Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2009
(Refreshment Sunday)

Listen to this sermon

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Millennia ago our forebears in the faith fell in love. They fell madly, head-over-heels in love with a God who first loved them … a God who loved them enough to rescue them, liberate them from slavery, escort them to safety, and provide for them along the way.

They fell in love, madly, head-over-heels in love with the God above all gods, Author of the Universe, Master of the whirling planets … the One who put the blue in lapis lazuli, the One who designed orchids and fashioned giraffes … the One who breathed life into Adam and by whose breath we ourselves are sustained.

Since ancient times people of faith have struggled to discern how show our love for and gratitude toward this God who first loved us.

Since ancient times people of faith have fashioned and devised for God gifts as an expression of gratitude and love.

Giving gifts to those whom we love is one of the pleasures in life.

During my marriage, before my husband Peter died, I loved to bring him presents. I delighted in thinking up, or happening upon, or making, or planning, just the right gift. I wished by this gift-giving to make Peter happy, to gladden his heart, to let him know who he was to me.

Presenting Peter with gifts was one of the ways I expressed to him my gratitude that he was in my life and one of the ways I sought to assure him that he was the object of my affection, of my love and thoughts.

I was not always 100% successful, however, in the gifts I chose. I would like to have presented Peter with just the right CD, or art book, or tickets to just the right opera. But as these were areas in which I was less confident, areas in which I felt somewhat inadequate, especially compared to Peter’s deep knowledge. I reverted, therefore, to things about which I felt some confidence. And so it was that I too often presented him with things about which he actually cared very little: a tie, a belt, a shirt.

Still, whether or not he thrilled to the gift itself, I know he cherished the thought.

We do sometimes give gifts that reveal more about ourselves than about the one to whom we are giving.

For instance, this past Valentine’s Day I received a wonderful gift from Sam Byers. Many of you know Sam. He is eight-years old, a member of our Church School, and the son of Darrell Byers and Maggie Mode. On this past Valentine’s Day Sam presented me with the gift of a superhero action figure.

 

I cherish it, of course, but I did have to Google this gift to learn just how special it is. I learned that he is named Iron Man; he is invincible; he possesses the ability to fly faster than a jet plane; he has incredible repulsor blasters and missiles and, Iron Man is the most powerful high-tech super hero in the world.

Imagine how special it made me feel to have been presented with such a gift!

Or, here is another example. Many of you know Willie Sordillo of the Willie Sordillo Trio. Willie is responsible for our music at our Thursday evening Jazz Worship Service. He is recently returned from a mission trip to the Pentecostal Church of Chile … a church with whom we are in partnership through the United Church of Christ.

 
The Pentecostal Church of Chile has developed a tender outreach to prostitutes … inviting them in off the street, providing them with healthcare, training, jobs, parenting classes and childcare … and welcoming them into the life of Christian faith. This ministry has transformed, even saved, the lives of many women.

In gratitude for what they have received, in profound thanksgiving to the God who has rescued them, calling them from death to life, from sin to salvation, these former and reformed ladies of the night got together to surprise the Bishop of the Pentecostal Church of Chile with a gift of their own devising: a liturgical dance which they themselves choreographed and performed.

Willie Sordillo confessed to me that, as he watched those women dance (those limbs, those torsos) it took a mighty effort to focus the mind and the heart on the things of God.

We sometimes give gifts that reveal more about ourselves than about the one to whom we are giving them. But that’s okay. It is the thought that counts.

 

So, here we are: in love with God, madly, head-over-heels in love with a God who first loved us and the question arises: How shall we express that love? How do we assure our God that God is, indeed, the object of our affections, the One to whom we are loyal above all other loyalties?

What gift can we bring? What does one get for a God who has everything?

Ancient Israel discerned several ways to please God, to thank God, to show their love and adoration:

First, by responding in kind. If God loves us, we ought also to love one another. If God liberates slaves, loves justice, cares for the dispossessed, acts with healing and mercy … than so shall we.

Second, not unlike Sam Byers, reformed prostitutes in Chile, and spouses in love, we can plan and devise, compose and present gifts that come from our hearts, from what we know and who we are. And so it is that since ancient times people of faith have sought to gift our God with music, with instrument and song, with banners and processionals … turning into instruments of praise and thanksgiving our own bodies: our voices, tongues and lungs, our feet, our fingers; even our limbs and our torsos.

Worship – this thing we have gathered to do, and for which we gather week in and week out – is essentially an act of love. It is a gift-giving.

Worship is our glad response to the God who first loved us: who loves and liberates slaves, who Authored the Universe and gave us life, who comes to us in frail flesh on Christmas morning, who suffers for us on Good Friday, who companions us in the valley of the shadow of death, who, for us, breaks the bonds of death on Easter … the God of Jesus who ate with sinners: with tax collectors and prostitutes.

 
Through worship we hope to gladden the heart of God, to prove that God is the object of our affections … to express our profound adoration.

The Psalmist summons us: Make a joyful noise! Worship with gladness! Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving! Give thanks and bless God’s holy name!

Since ancient times music, and especially the organ, has been judged to achieve something of what is wanted in this matter.

The Talmud, a central text in Judaism, describes in detail the many and varied musical instruments that were used in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem to raise a glad sound to reach the ears of heaven.

Among them, the Talmud describes the organ (an organ contemporaneous with Jesus and which he would likely have heard). It is reported to have been powered by hydraulics, to have emitted as many as a thousand different musical sounds and, it was boasted of this ancient instrument, that it could be heard as far away as Jericho.

The organ has volume, majesty, profundity and complexity. It can be thunderous and throbbing, high and sweet, gentle and melodic. It can hold a chord like no other instrument on earth.

Now, the truth is, we cannot know for sure whether God is, in fact, delighted with the organ (any more than a group of reformed ladies of the night could be certain that their gift of dance would delight the Bishop of the Pentecostal Church of Chile). It is possible that we have gotten it wrong. It is possible that God prefers acoustic guitar.

The point is that we do our best to offer to God the sacrifice of praise with the grandest, most majestic noise-maker we can conjure (not unlike the gift of the most powerful high tech super hero in the world).

We come to this place to serenade God. One of the best ways we know how to do that is with the E. M. Skinner organ. We do so hoping that if this instrument can reach from Jerusalem to Jericho, it has at least a chance of reaching to heaven. And whether or not this is God’s favorite of all instruments, we can hope and pray that God will cherish our best efforts.

In the end, we are here to give God our thanks and praise. We bring to this labor of love all that we are and all that we have. We do it because we are in love with God and cannot help  ourselves.

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