-- Alfred North Whitehead
Meditation: by the Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Jacob Trapp “To Worship” (SLT #441)
To worship is to stand in awe under a heaven of stars,
Before a flower, a leaf in sun light, or a grain of sand
To worship is to be silent, receptive,
before a tree astir with the wind,
Or the passing shadow of a cloud.
To worship is to work with dedication and skill;
it is to pause from work and listen to a strain of music.
To worship is to sing with the singing beauty of the earth;
It is to listen through a storm to the still small voice within.
Worship is loneliness seeking communion;
it is a thirsty land crying out for rain.
Worship is the kindred fire within our hearts;
It moves through deeds of kindness and through acts of love.
Worship is the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond.
It is the inarticulate silence yearning to speak;
It is the window of the moment open to the sky of the eternal.
Reading: by the Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Joan Kahn-Schneider from an essay entitled “Worship: The Context for Preaching”
Effective worship has integrity, a theological, artistic integrity. In many ways this integrity reflects life, all life, all human needs and desires from birth to death: the need for community and for aloneness, for understanding our world and how we fit into that world; the need for sabbath – the time in which “we care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.”
Worship, like life, is sometimes smooth and harmonious; sometimes discordant; sometimes predictable; sometimes surprising. Effective worship engages us. Effective worship nourishes us. It feeds our hunger for transcendence; satisfies our need to reach beyond the limitations of the here and now; quenches our thirst for the holy. Effective worship leaves us feeling more whole, more connected; effective worship has organic unity and coherence. Anything less is not worship.
Reading: by Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk (p. 27)
I have been attending Catholic Mass for only a year. Before that, the handiest church was Congregational. Week after week I climbed the long steps to that little church, entered, and took a seat with some few of my neighbors. Week after week I was moved by the pitiableness of the bare linoleum-floored sacristy which no flowers could cheer or soften, by the terrible singing I so loved, by the fatigued Bible readings, the lagging emptiness and dilution of the liturgy, the horrifying vacuity of the sermon, and by the fog of dreary senselessness pervading the whole, which existed alongside, and probably caused, the wonder of the fact that we came; we returned; we showed up; week after week…
Recently I returned to that Congregational church for an ecumenical service. A Catholic priest and the minister served grape juice communion.
Both the priest and the minister were professionals, were old hands. They bungled with dignity and aplomb. Both were at ease and awed; both were half confident and controlled and half bewildered and whispering. I could hear them: “Where is it?” “Haven’t you got it?” “I thought you had it!”
The priest, new to me, was in his sixties. He was tall; he wore his weariness loosely, standing upright and controlling his breath. When he knelt at the altar, and when he rose from kneeling, his knees cracked. It was fine church music, this sound of his cracking knees.
Reading: by Jeffrey Skinner from The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: a Self-Help Memoir (p. 41)
The music of poetry is always there. But just out of reach. I like that notion; it seems exactly right. We look for ways to come closer to the sound, or ways to go to where the sound is clearer and louder, and sometimes we succeed. Some of us develop complex rituals or superstitions. Some of these work some of the time; none are failsafe. Many or most poets will say that they hardly ever think about inspiration or the muse, because it gets them nowhere, and they have to write regularly, with or without inspiration.
But there is always an element of either chance or grace involved in writing poetry; I don’t believe the muse is total fantasy. It is a matter, as in much of life, of finding what we can control and what we cannot. And then concentrating our efforts on what is within our control, and letting go of the rest. There are methods that may bring us to the liminal state, methods that have been tested and proven by poets past and present. But even in the liminal state we can’t be sure what we hear is the real deal, or some form of interesting nonsense. Listen, listen: you can move yourself closer to the angel, but you can’t make her sit down and whisper in your ear.
What We Worship
A Sermon Delivered on September 8, 2013
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
“Worship” is one of those words that gets tossed around easily in religious circles, as if we all knew what it meant, as if its meaning were self-evident. “Worship.” That’s what we’re doing right now. It says so on the back of our Sunday bulletin. This is a worship service. Of course.
As a minister, I am very comfortable with the word “worship.” It rolls easily off my tongue. And most of the time I get by, invoking the idea of worship, or the value of worship, or the beauty of worship, without ever needing to explain what the heck I mean by worship.
What is it we are trying to do, when we gather for worship?
* * *
This year, we as a congregation developed and adopted a five-year strategic plan. The top goal we set for ourselves was to create a new staff position this year, and hire a Membership Coordinator.
But the second highest goal, the close second in terms of congregational support, had to do with worship. We said, we would like to support our current worship services and explore, experiment, and evaluate new and innovative worship services.
This invariably leads to the question: What is worship?
* * *
Worship at its best, feeds our hunger for transcendence. It quenches our thirst for the holy. It leaves us feeling more whole, and more connected. Anything less is not worship, Joan Kahn-Schneider says.
Worship is loneliness seeking communion, like thirsty land crying out for rain. It is the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond, says Jacob Trapp.
These words and imagines strike a chord for me. They point toward something I can vaguely sense, but not fully grasp. They point toward a profound experience, the way a finger at night points to the moon in the sky.
Worship points to something lofty and elusive. But, of course, there is a big difference between the finger and the moon. There is a big difference between the practicalities of worship, and the experience they try to evoke. The gap between our actions and aspirations is so striking, it’s almost comical.
I think Annie Dillard captures some of the comedy of congregational worship, when she describes the bumbling air of the minister and priest, who lose track of the symbolic holy wine during their joint communion service.
I can’t help but be reminded of our own worship services, and times we have struggled with our own liturgy – accidently skipping worship elements, losing track of what we were saying, or solemnly lighting the chalice only to watch it immediately go out, again and again.
Some would say, our worship efforts are especially comical, because we aren’t even agreed on what it is we are worshipping. Our Christian neighbors generally have a cross or crucifix prominently placed in the front of their churches, a clear sign that they are worshipping God, as incarnated in Jesus Christ. Our Muslim neighbors gather for worship facing Mecca, a clear reminder that they worship Allah, as revealed by his prophet, who was born and had his first revelation in Mecca. Our Jewish neighbors clearly worship the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, studying the stories passed down in the sacred Torah.
But among us there is no agreement which God we worship, or whether we worship God at all. There is no cross front and center in our sanctuary. And as our wall-hangings make clear, we embrace a wide variety of traditions and perspectives.
What we should worship, and how we should worship, are questions that, in our tradition, have no single correct answer. Each of us has our own answers. And for each of us, these answers will change, as we ourselves are continually changing, learning, and growing.
An insight that yesterday seemed profoundly true and relevant, today may strike us as trivial. A poem that inspired us yesterday, today may sound trite. A story that moved us to tears yesterday, may leave us shaking our heads because it seems so corny today.
Part of the reason I come to church, week after week after week, is because I need something that nourishes my spirit today. I need something that rings true today.
And so I go through the motions of worship. Lighting candles, listening to music, pondering the words of sages and saints, singing songs, and sitting in silence, all the while hoping to become transfixed, once again, by a sense of sacred truth.
* * *
For Joan Kahn-Schneider, worship at its best, touches on the spirit of Sabbath. Last week I preached about the Sabbath. I quoted a book by Wayne Muller by the same title. In it, he describes a distinct quality of experience found across religious traditions, when we are able to create a period of worship. He writes:
When the Mass begins in a cathedral, the space is transformed the instant the first prayer is offered. The space is not different, but the time has been transformed.
When monks enter an ashram or monastery and sit in silence, only when the bell is rung does the meditation begin. The space may be the same, but the time is consecrated by the mindfulness that arises in the striking of the bell…
Just so, during Sabbath for Jews, by keeping [a day of] sacred rest, [they] could maintain their spiritual ground wherever they were. (p. 9)
The anthropologist Victor Turner uses the term “liminality” to describe the quality of experience we seek, when we create sacred time through ritual act. “Liminal” means a boundary or a threshold between two places, or two modes of being. Neither here nor there. The liminal it is a place of transition or transformation. It is on the cusp of what is and what could be. It is a place of possibility and creativity.
The poet Jeffrey Skinner, speaks of his efforts to enter a liminal state, in order to engage in his creative work. Our habits might involve sitting in a particular chair, with just the right writing implements, at the same carefully chosen time every day. We each come up with our own rituals and superstitions. They work some of the time, but not always.
Worship, at its best, evokes a sense of wholeness and holiness, and reflects the real complexity of our lives: our hopes and fears, our weaknesses and our strengths. It seeks to engage us on several different levels, speaking to both mind and heart, touching both body and soul. Thus worship involves several dimensions: there are the aesthetics of our surroundings, the beauty of our meeting space, and the decorations carefully arranged every week; there are the symbols we use – the symbols on our wall hangings and chalice, and the flaming chalice itself; there is a period of centering and silence; there are inspirational words of prayer, poetry or contemplation; there is music, that moves and touches is in ways words cannot; and there is ritual, for instance when we ring a chime to open and close our services, or when we light candles for the people who are with us in spirit today.
There is an infinite variety of ways the elements of worship can be arranged and shaped and understood
* * *
Participating in worship, is like writing poetry. It is a creative act. But rather than transforming words, our goal is to allow ourselves to be transformed. When worship happens, the events of the world and of our lives are re-arranged, and seen in a new light that yields new insight and new meaning, and our lives are given new shape.
Like the music of poetry, the spirit of worship is always there. But often just out of reach. It blows in the wind, and rises in the sea. We try to get closer to the spirit. We invoke it by name or by ritual act. But no matter how carefully we approach it, there is always an element of chance or grace involved. The spirit of worship is like a muse, or an angel. We can move closer to the angel, but we can’t make her sit down and whisper in our ear.
* * *
In the months ahead we hope to explore and experiment with new and innovative approaches to worship. We want to find new ways to control what we can, and increase the odds that we might experience moments of grace here.
We will each be asked to reflect on our own experiences of worship – whether in this church, or at other times and places of worship we have known. We will be invited to ponder what has worked well for us in the past, and imagine what might work for us in the future. We will think about worship that is feels familiar, and worship that seems different, and how we envision worship at its best.
Along these line, I think about times I have worshipped with thousands of UUs at General Assembly, when the words of the songs we sing are projected on giant screens, and jazz musicians carry and accompany the tunes.
I think of times I have worshipped with a few dozen colleagues, sitting a circle, relaxed and with eyes closed, being led in guided meditation.
I think of times here, when our worship included interpretive dance, or music played on clay flower pots, or children performing a play.
I think of a UU church in Syracuse I attended, where in addition to the usual hymns and readings and sermon, the worship services included a period of open conversation. Toward the end of the service, they had what was called a “Talk Back” – a chance for listeners to respond to what they had just heard, perhaps disagreeing with the point of the sermon, perhaps adding additional insights, thus completing a picture of which a few pieces still seemed to be missing.
I don’t recall ever having had a “Talk Back” here. If I were ever to try it, I wouldn’t call it a “Talk Back,” because the term itself reminds me of a debate, where we argue over who is right and who is wrong. I would call it simply “Response”: a period set aside for you to offer a few words, an idea or insight that was triggered for you this morning, which you would like to share with all of us.
And actually that is just what I would like to try now. In the spirit of worship exploration and experimentation, I invite you to think about what worship means to you. Think about services you have experienced, in which worship happened. Think about moments when a spirit of worship was palpably present. I invite any of you so moved, to share a few words about what you know about worship at its best.
(Passing a handheld mic through the pews, four responses are heard.)
Whether spoken or unspoken – we all carry within us important insights into the meaning of worship. Our worship reflects our lives, and all life, all human needs from birth to death: our need for community and for aloneness, our need for understanding the world and how we fit into it.
May our worship inspire us with a spirit of creativity and courage,
May we dare to share of our lives, and be transformed,
So that we may find ever new ways to love and do good.
Amen.
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