Message 09-09-07
Series: Marks of a Christian
Scripture: Mark 1:29-34
Title: Encounter
Do you watch reality shows? A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a conversation with someone who was trying to convince me that “Beauty and the Geek” had real significance. It reminded me of the conversation I had with a teenage girl who was trying to convince me that “kick-line” was really athletic. You know… there are times when you like something and you should just accept that you like it without trying to make it more than what it is. You just like it and that’s it. You don’t have to prove it. You just do.
I’m afraid that sometimes Christ-followers get into that kind of position when they talk about worship. You can be talking with someone who you think should come to church and you say things like, “It’s really good” or “I get such a good feeling from it” and that might seem to impress them. And then you start grasping at things like “The worship leader is really cool. He used to have long hair, but he cut it, and he doesn’t wear shoes when he’s on stage.” And your friend might be looking at you like, “what?” And so you grasp for even something more like, “Oh, the pastor said this funny thing. And you start to repeat it, but then, even as you’re saying it you’re thinking, “this really isn’t that funny.”
This is the point where people say something like, “Well, that’s good for you. I’m glad that works for you.” You can walk away from a conversation like that feeling frustrated like you haven’t communicated what you wanted to.
And I think that’s because it’s easy to confuse worship with this time, the worship service. But this isn’t worship. Fundamentally, worship isn’t a collective experience; it’s a personal one. Fundamentally, at it’s core, worship is a personal experience, an individual encounter with the living God. When we join together in worshipping, it’s not the bigness that accomplishes worship. It is the fact that each of us is encountering God. It’s when we realize that we’re sharing the presence of God, joining us here and joining all of us together that we experience that bigness of worship. But worship isn’t this time. Worship is when our individual hearts and mind encounter the living God and respond with awe and adoration. Worshipping together just makes it better because God’s Spirit can be felt reaching all of us.
But worship isn’t the songs and it isn’t the preaching and it isn’t time. Worship is getting into the presence of God and responding with awe and adoration. We use the songs and the prayers and the Scriptures to clarify our hearts’ love and understanding. We use this time to remind ourselves that we’re not alone in this and that God is speaking to everyone on the planet.
But God’s not just here, not just in this time and not just in this place.
When we start talking about worship to someone who we think might benefit from worship the place to start is with whether you meet God here or not. Fundamentally, worship is a personal encounter with the living God in which we respond with awe and adoration.
That’s why, when I read this passage about Jesus getting up early in the morning and going off to pray I connect it with worship. I think of prayer and worship and so intimately connected that you can’t separate them.
We’re talking about worship today because it is the last in the list of five marks of a Christian that we find in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. These are five things that Jesus did that were noticed publicly, as part of the beginning of his ministry. I’m lifting up these examples of how Jesus lived out his relationship with God and suggesting that we who claim to follow him should find these in our lives as well. If you’re following Jesus then we should see these in your life. It says that when John the Baptist was arrested Jesus began preaching and teaching. Those were the first two. Then we find that Jesus moved into fellowship – simply eating and drinking with friends. Last week Rick Bennett led us through the mark of reaching out to those in need around us and this week we come the fifth mark – Worship.
Jesus, we read, left the house early, before it was light, when no one else was up and he went out to a solitary place to pray. Why would he do that? Some people have tied this to what they call “Quiet Time”. That’s how I was brought up. Jesus went off to have some quiet time with God. He got alone with God and got quiet.
Quiet time, the way it was presented to me as I grew up and what I’ve practiced, is a time, usually in the morning, when I go to pray, to study the Bible and to get my head focuses on God’s presence in the world. One day I realized that my picture of Jesus doing this always included him being by a big rock. Do you have that picture in your mind [show pictures of Jesus by a rock]? This is big in people’s imaginations. I realized one day that I always pictured Jesus by a big rock. It made me wonder if maybe Jesus couldn’t pray without a rock.
But one day as I was reading this chapter of the Bible I was caught up by everything that had happened to Jesus during that day. And I began to wonder, what if Jesus didn’t get up because of discipline. What if Jesus got up because he just couldn’t sleep – because he was so excited? Think through the day he’d had. He comes to Capernaum. He teaches in the synagogue there. He is surrounded by his first disciples. People are all a buzz around him and then he goes for a meal with his friends and new supporters and then people come with their needs for healing and he heals them.
Some people imagine a mystical, quiet, totally “in control” Jesus. But what if was just lying there, early in the morning, unable to sleep. You and I talk about quiet time like we’re going to a place where God is going to show up. I don’t think there was every a moment in the whole life of Jesus when God wasn’t just there. In fact I believe that’s the main difference between Jesus and us – Jesus was never out of communication with God. So, what if he was lying there thinking through and talking with God about everything that had happened? What if he, finally, just got up because he had to talk it over with his best friend? Suppose he went off to a solitary place, not so he could get quiet, but so he could get loud? Maybe he was just excited.
How do you picture Jesus getting into the presence of God? Like I said I always used to think that he needed a rock. I don’t think that anymore. Now I picture Jesus as simply talking. I picture Jesus getting out on some hillside, outside the village and just letting loose. God is all around him. God is with him. Jesus isn’t coming to some place to find God. Jesus is just breaking free so he can down to it. Can you imagine talking over with God everything that had happened that day?
“These guys, the fishermen you led me to, they are getting it. These are great guys. You can see it. And the people today, the people in the synagogue, they were listening. But then the demon breaking out and the sense of the truth just coming to bear, healing, driving out the darkness, and then the conversation and then the healing. And that little girl, the one with the leg that was all twisted and how it just relaxed. I took it and it just straightened out in my hands and she got up and danced. Was that wild are what?!”
I have this friend who says things like “Bananas!” when he’s excited. And maybe Jesus would say that, but what I’m suggesting is that when Jesus got up, early in the morning, before everyone else was up – he went out for a personal encounter with the living God. There’s no reason not to think that, when the disciples found Jesus he was just sitting back cracking up. We’re told that Abraham did that, that he fell on his face cracking up in front of God. Look it up in Genesis 17. So I have to ask, if it was okay for Abraham to fall down laughing in the presence of God, why would it be impossible for Jesus to be sitting on some hillside cracking up over everything that had happened to him?
So the question comes to this – how do you imagine worship? How do you see a personal encounter with the living God of the universe? There was a time when in order for worship to “happen” you needed black robes and candles and an organ and stained glass windows. There was a time when a lot of people imagined that Jesus needed a rock to pray. Worship and prayer is not about a specific set of elements. There’s a passage in the OT that says that Jacob “worshipped” as he leaned on his staff. How do you do that? How do you worship without robes or candles or organs or stained glass? How do you worship without a band or banners or a sermon? Worship is a personal encounter with the living God that is expressed in awe and adoration.
The example of Jesus is that certain things were included in life. We’ve lifted up these five things, not because they’re all in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, but because these are the five things that Jesus does at the beginning of his ministry and then are repeated and repeated and repeated throughout his ministry. These five things are the way he lived out his relationship with God and we find examples of them throughout the Gospels.
Jesus had habits of living. It was his custom to go to the synagogue every week. It was his habit to go to Jerusalem and worship in the Temple at least once a year during Passover. It was his habit to talk with God all the time. Jesus had habits of worship and we are to have habits of worship. I’m just suggesting that our worship should be more thoroughly a part of every day.
Don’t wait for a time to worship. Remind yourself of the thing that Jesus knew every moment – God is right here. Talk with him. Listen to him. I’ve talked about getting loud, but there’s nothing wrong with getting quiet. Talk with God in conversation, but say it, do it.
Look at your room as you wake up and tell God how great he is. Look at the sky as you get outside and tell God how great he is. Find money in your pocket that you didn’t know you had and tell God how great he is. Go to work and get into your day and tell God how great he is. Sit down to eat and tell God how great he is. Finish a conversation with a friend and tell God how great he is. Look up and notice the sun is setting and lighting up the sky and tell God how great he is.
Jesus says that if you come to worship God and realize that you know someone who has something against to leave your gift and go and reconcile with that person. Then come back and bring your gift to God. Do you know what that says to me? It’s Jesus telling us – worship God in life, in reality, then we’ll be worshipping. If we live out our worship daily, in the real relationships of our lives, in the work we do and in the time we experience then when we come together we’ll actually have something to worship God about. We’ll have come through a week where we’ve reminded ourselves that God supplied our needs, God walked us through hard times, God gave us answers, God helped us clear up our broken relationships.
Christ followers are people who live differently than people who don’t follow Jesus. We proclaim that God loves the world. We share the truth that will help others from what we’ve been studying. We get together with people of the community and we eat and have good conversation. We reach out to those in need and we live in the presence of God every moment. Now that’s living.
