From a very young age, I had an awareness of God’s presence. I talked to God whenever I was alone, especially when I was outside. When I was afraid, I talked to God, and I had the sense that God was right there near me, protecting me and holding me close. I was excited to go to church because that’s where I got to spend time with other people who had an awareness of the presence of God. Even as a preteen, I would tell my parents I didn’t want to go to church. I said it was “boring” and that I would rather be doing most anything else, but once I was at my church, I felt surrounded by the love of God and the love of the community, and I was so glad I came.

In high school, I started becoming what Rae Whitney describes as a “conscious Christian.” I didn’t have a dramatic salvation experience like you read about in church history books or see in movies, but I started to ask deeper questions of my faith, and I began to ask God what it would look like for me to offer my whole self in worship. Right around that time, the pastor of the church we were visiting said in his sermon that if anyone was a new Christian and wanted a place to start reading their Bibles that he recommended they start with the book of Romans. The pastor thought that Romans explained the whole gospel message in a way that was transformational. 

I’m not saying this pastor was wrong. In fact, I think if we took a secret ballot vote from every person here and asked which book of the Bible someone new to the faith should read first, we would likely come up with about as many different answers as there are people in this room. One of the beautiful things about the church is that we each see things differently, and different books of the Bible resonate differently with each of us. It’s a good thing there are 66 books in the Bible. Surely there’s a book in here for everyone.

For myself personally, I find the book of Romans challenging. It is theologically complex, and the book makes a theological claim that spans the entire book. It’s tough to select a passage from Romans and study it all by itself or preach on it without referring to the rest of the book. In order for the book to make sense, you really need to look at the whole thing. 

When Paul wrote the book of Romans, he was writing to a church he had never visited. Unlike most of the letters in the New Testament, Paul had neither started the Roman church nor spent time there personally. He did know some of the people in the church–like Priscilla and Aquila–but he did not have the personal relationship with the congregation that he did with the other congregations he wrote to. Because of that, Paul spends more time explaining his own convictions about God than he does about correcting the people’s behavior or misguided beliefs. He wants the Roman church to know who he is and what he believes, and he lets them know he is looking forward to being with them in the future.

Today, we are continuing our sermon series on the “Great Ends of the Church.” If you missed the first two sermons in this series, the “great ends” of the church are 6 mission statements or convictions about the church that are listed in the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Book of Order. The first “great end” is ”the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind” and we asked ourselves what it might look like for us to proclaim the gospel. Is it all about our words, or more about the way we live and the choices we make. Last week, Pastor Jeff talked about the second “great end” of the church: the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. Our challenge was to immerse ourselves, to sink into, compassion and kindness, humility, meekness and patience.

This week, we are exploring the third “great end” of the church: the maintenance of divine worship. As we consider what it means to live into this “great end” of the church, we have before us Psalm 81 and Romans 12. These two passages of Scripture give us a glimpse of what worship is–or at least what it should be–-and they will help us as we seek to be a worshiping people.

But, before we get into the topic of worship, I want to explore the word “maintenance.” When I first read this “great end” of the church, I bristled at the word “maintenance.” One way to begin to ask questions and to explore faith is by paying attention to how we react to certain words. If you’re reading a passage of the Bible, you may even want to underline or highlight a word or phrase that brings emotions up to the surface for you. Ask why those words caused the reaction, and explore what your underlying thoughts or questions might be. 

As I read the third “great end” of the church–the maintenance of divine worship–I almost felt the little hairs on the back of my neck prick up when I read the word “maintenance.” I realized that “maintenance” can have two almost conflicting meanings. Maintenance can mean not rocking the boat, keeping things even keel, keeping things the same. We talk about “maintaining the status quo,” or “maintaining equilibrium.” Surely that can’t be what the third “great end” of the church is talking about, can it? 

Maintenance isn’t just about keeping something going, though. It’s also about attending to it. It’s about paying attention. It’s about making sure we’re focused on the right thing, and making sure we are making adjustments as needed. Imagine buying a car and then never doing anything to keep it up. You never change the oil, never replace filters, never change the tires. Eventually, it’s going to fall apart and it won’t work the way it’s supposed to anymore. “Maintenance of divine worship” means keeping the worship going. It means keeping worship as a centerpoint of our lives. It means asking hard questions, making adjustments, caring for our worshiping lives, both as individuals and as a church, to make sure we are worshiping the right thing–the right One. 

But, what is worship? Leaning on our two Scripture passages for this morning, I propose that worship includes at least two things: paying attention to the voice of God, and making space for others by giving our whole selves to God. 

First, worship is paying attention to the voice of God. Psalm 81 is a perplexing psalm because it doesn’t neatly fit into a category. Some scholars consider this psalm a “liturgical psalm” because it talks about worship, but others consider this a “prophetic psalm” because in the middle of the psalm the people hear from the voice of God. In the psalm, the people worship and then they hear from a prophetic voice. The psalm continues in verse 11 this way: “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!”

This psalm is interesting because it begins with worship and is interrupted by a prophecy the people do not want to hear. I feel personally convicted by this psalm. It reminds me of how quickly I can move from worshiping God to worshiping my own idea of how things are supposed to be. As Pastor Brian Hazard put it, “Maintaining a connection to a vision can get morphed into maintaining an institution pretty fast.” In other words, we can get so caught up in maintaining our way of doing things, in maintaining what makes us feel comfortable, that we forget what we are supposed to be maintaining is our worship of God. When we bring our whole selves into worship and we offer our whole selves to God, we may hear things that challenge us. We might be forced to confront things in ourselves we’d rather ignore. Maintaining divine worship means maintaining an openness to the voice of God, continuing to listen with faithfulness. 

Sea turtles come to shore every year to lay their eggs. When the baby turtles hatch, they have an instinct to move toward the brightest light–the moon-to find their way back to the water. The only problem is that beaches now have many more sources of artificial light than what there were years ago, and so these hatchling turtles can become distracted by bright lights that do not lead them to the water. This can have terrible consequences for the turtles, and so efforts are being taken in some places to restrict bright lights during certain hours so that baby turtles can find their way safely to the ocean.

We get distracted too. When we gather for worship on Sunday mornings, our call to be a people who worship God is clear. Our focus is on God. We sing hymns to God. We study Scripture and we encourage each other to follow after God’s lead all throughout the week to come. We hear God speak to us and call us to leave as ambassadors of Jesus in this world, and then we go out into the world and forget what God called us to do. Or, maybe we know what God is calling us to do, but we follow after other voices instead. Psalm 81 shows us the struggle of staying faithful as the worshiping people of God. 

Romans 12 offers us an encouragement. As I mentioned before, the book of Romans is one, long theological treatise. In chapters 9-11 right before the chapter we read together this morning, Paul deals with the relationship between God’s chosen people–the Jews–and the Gentiles who were coming to faith in Christ. Presumably, the church in Rome was a diverse church, with both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Throughout Paul’s ministry, there was tension between those who believed new converts to Christianity needed to observe Jewish law before they could be part of the church and those who believed the law did not apply to Gentiles. Paul was solidly on the side of full inclusion of the Gentiles even though he had been raised as a law-abiding Jew and had kept the law his whole life. 

In Romans 9-11, Paul argues that even though God pruned the vine, and cut off his own people for a time so the Gentiles could be grafted in, the Gentile believers should not feel as though they have taken the place of the people God first called. In the end, God may bring Jew and Gentile together and have them part of the same plant. In the churches where both Jewish Christians and Gentiles Christians worshiped together, this was already happening. 

This is the context for what we read in Romans 12: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

When I was a younger Christian, I always thought “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” was a command God was giving to me personally. I think that may still be a part of it. But, even more than that, this is a call for the whole church. I love how Israel Kamudzandu, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, puts it. He writes, “While some scholars think Romans is a doctrinal letter, I think of Romans as a call to abandon the sin of individualism and to embrace the cross-cultural Christian life. The life to which Paul calls Christians in Rome, and consequently those in the 21st century, is a life that exhibits the essence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Put differently, a holy life is one through which all one says and does is governed by sacrificial living (Romans 12:1; see also Isaiah 6:3; Philippians 2:5-11). To worship the God proclaimed in this letter, and throughout Scripture, is to adopt a stance of humility and 

self-denial.” Oof. 

What if the body Paul is writing about in Romans 12 isn’t just about the individual Christian, but about the whole church? What if the Holy Spirit, through the words in Romans 12, is calling us to offer our whole selves to God as a church body, to embrace a life of humility, self-sacrifice, and giving to one another? When we gather for worship, God reminds us once again that we are being called as a body to live like Jesus in this world, and then we go out into the world and are told to put ourselves first, to “you do you,” to do whatever it takes to get whatever we want. This week, may we create space to look for the light of Jesus, the true light that is guiding us the way we should go. May we open our ears and our hearts to the call of God, and may we find the courage to be obedient to God’s voice, even when God’s call raises our defenses at first. And may we remain focused in worship, devoted to the One who is so devoted to us that he spared nothing, not even his only Son. Let’s keep our eyes on the Light, this week and always. Amen.