Cue the Rocks!
Isaiah 50:4-9
Luke 19:29-40
Worship is the response of creation to the presence and grace of God. Who among us has not beheld a stunning sunset, the majesty of a canyon or waterfall, the vast beauty of the ocean and didn’t sense in it our response of awe and gratitude? We sometimes think that worship occurs only in church buildings. There has to be organ music or a bulletin in our hands or scripture projected on a screen. Worship is simply our response to the presence and grace of God. Sometimes it is ecstatic. Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it is loud. Sometimes it takes our breath away.
Somewhere along the way we got the idea that we worship because God is so narcissistic that God constantly needs to hear how wonderful we think God is. That would be bizarre, if you think about it. Talk about endowing God with some of the most petty of human traits! Down through history, some have mistaken worship for this. We even find it in some of the musings of the writers of scripture. Several times in both the book of Exodus and Deuteronomy God is said to be a jealous God who will not tolerate the people pandering to idols or other deities. We see in these writings that the ancients struggled with what it means to worship. We now understand that God desires us to be faithful. That is a different theology than understanding God to be jealous. You can tell a great deal about someone’s theology by what meaning they give to worship. If we perceive God to be angry, then worship is the means to appease God’s wrath. When we perceive God as distant, then worship serves to draw God closer. When we perceive God to be other, then worship encourages transcendence. But what we have slowly learned through the experiences of faithful people throughout the centuries is that this response we find being evoked from within us is not about God’s need but our need – it is simply the way creation responds to grace. If we don’t do it, then the rocks will cry out. Actually, even if we do, the rocks may still cry out.
When Bill and I traveled to Las Vegas a few weeks back we visited the Valley of Fire. It made me think of this passage of scripture because you drive up over a ridge into this valley where suddenly in this stark muddy colored landscape there are these huge masses of bright orangish-red rocks seemingly sitting in the middle of nowhere. When the sun hits them, the rocks seemed to scream their presence. Cut by wind, water and weather, the rocks have beautiful shapes and hues. They were breath-taking. The native people of the area considered the Valley of Fire to be a holy place and it certainly appeared so to me as well.
Palm Sunday is one of the highlights of the Christian year and an opportunity for us to consider again why we put so much energy into worship. Besides the fact that all of us get to have props today, it is one of the Sundays that even the most reserved among us can get up the nerve to raise our hands above shoulder height and wave a palm branch around. For all the non-Pentecostals it might feel a bit showy – maybe even un-Minnesotan. There is really something liberating about doing it. I would suggest to you today that if we don’t find a way to let our joy and gratitude speak the wonder of God’s grace, then the very rocks will have to do it. So wave your palm branch, even if you feel a bit silly doing it. Consider it a symbolic way of showing your response to the presence and grace of God. Grace moves us into the realm of the extravagant. Show those you love how much they mean to you, even if it means you feel self-conscious. Do an act of justice that pushes the edges of your world a little further outward, even if you feel timid in doing so. Our response to the grace we have received is expressed in those kinds of experiences. In the very expression of our gratitude we create holy space – holy places – where others may find refuge, hope or peace. Use your life as an act of worship. Don’t make the rocks do it for you.
The idea that the rocks will cry out if humanity doesn’t offer its worship is an allusion to Habakkuk 2, where the same phrase appears. We don’t know a great deal about Habakkuk. He was a prophet in the latter days of the Jewish state before the fall of Jerusalem. In the grim times facing the people of his day he still understood the need for worship to be an expression of daily living. Worship was not about being sanctimonious or self-righteous. Worship is our response to the grace and presence of God. In the time of the prophet Habakkuk, in the time of Jesus’ last days on this earth and in our own time, if humanity doesn’t do so, justice demands that some part of creation gives voice to what needs to be said.
Today we begin Holy Week, reflecting upon the last days of Jesus’ life on earth and the costs he chose to bear to resist evil. Before us lies the cross of Good Friday. Before us lie the horrors that human beings can do to each other and the earth. Before us lies the uncertainty of not having all the answers. There is no way to get to Easter without going through Good Friday – figuratively and literally. There are two mistakes many of us make. If we allow the Good Friday experiences of life to be the end of our story, then what do we have to celebrate. Conversely, if we pretend Good Friday is not part of the path to Easter, then we deceive ourselves. Though life includes the trials, the uncertainty, the losses, the deaths, the fear and the defeats, those are not what determine how we respond to the grace and presence of God.
One of the themes that I have heard expressed in our Holy Conversation home groups again and again is the desire in our congregation to continue to push the edges. Every home group so far has mentioned the desire to be a church that straight people feel as comfortable and “a part of us” as GLBTQ folk. There is a passion among us to be more than we are, to make room for others and to continue to explore the adventures God lays before us. So today we wave our palm branches in defiance of the forces that would silence us. We wave them in solidarity with the poor who need access to medical care. We wave them with the immigrant who is struggling to provide a future for her children. We wave them in defiance of the powers that would deny all citizens the same access to freedom. We wave them for the stranger who is excluded, the different who are ridiculed, for the queer who resist being forced into conformity. We wave them to enhance our own courage to face the coming struggles faithfully. We wave them to mark ourselves as those willing to step outside our comfort zone if it helps free our world from the deadly forces that would try to break us.
We gather in worship… for what else is there to do when you bask in the presence and grace of God?
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Donkey One, March 2010.