Transfiguration Sunday

This Sunday is celebrated as Transfiguration Sunday on the Liturgical Calendar.  This is the Sunday we remember Jesus’ journey to a mountaintop with a few disciples and, there, He is transfigured in the presence of Moses and Elijah, and then God’s voice rings out declaring, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.  Listen to Him!”  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of Lent, but for this Sunday, just before Lent, we are called to stand in awe of Jesus, to be reminded of who He is.

There is a great temptation here, at least for me, to take this story and start picking it apart in order to better understand it, or, more honestly, to see what we can learn from it.  What does this story tell us that we can translate into our lives or how can this story inspire us to action?  When I started writing this morning I was looking for those exact things, those exact ideas, but that really isn’t always the point of a story, there doesn’t have to be a moral, we don’t always have to look deeper and deeper into a text to find meaning, and sometimes we just won’t be inspired to do something.

That isn’t to say that there is nothing more to the story of the Transfiguration, that there aren’t deeper layers or things we can learn.  We could talk about the desire of the disciples to do something for Jesus and Moses and Elijah and what that says about them and in turn what it says about us.  Or we could talk about what God says about Jesus, how we should respond to that proclamation.  We could even talk about the importance of Moses and Elijah’s presence at the transfiguration.  But not today.

Sometimes we just need to stand in awe.

 

Imperfect Worship, Worshiping the Perfect

I don’t like making mistakes, and I downright despise making mistakes when I am leading worship.  I want to read perfectly, pray perfectly, preach perfectly, speak perfectly, share perfectly and come as close as I can to singing perfectly.  That has been my goal as a Youth Minister, as an Associate Minister and has continued to be my goal as a Pastor.  I deeply desire that everything in worship go right, that the words are said correctly, that the songs match the service well and that everything should fit together; scripture, prayers, children’s moment, call to worship, music, communion, offering and sermon.  I think that this is a common desire, that the congregation and other worship leaders feel the same way.  But I am starting to question it.

There are plenty of reasons that I can come up with for wanting worship to be perfect and plenty for not wanting it to be perfect.  I want to focus on two reasons I don’t think worship should be perfect.  But first, I want to add the caveat that I am not saying that I am sure worship shouldn’t be perfect but we should at least question the assumption that it should be.  First, I think that perfect worship can be a barrier for imperfect people to experience God.  Second, I think that when we are focused on having a perfect worship then we become so critical of imperfection that we worship the service not God.

When we attempt to make worship perfect then we have a tendency to exclude that which is imperfect, both intentionally and unintentionally.  Intentionally, we try to make sure that we only have the best; the best readers, the best singers, the best preachers or whatever else.  And our definitions of the best tend to be narrow and exclude those who may be able to bring us a word from God or an experience with God in the midst of their imperfection.  Unintentionally, we may make those who are deeply scarred and badly broken feel like they aren’t good enough to be present in our worship.  If someone who is keenly aware of their imperfection finds themselves in a service that is geared around being perfect then they will not feel like they belong or are welcomed.

As for ourselves, if we are spending our timing worrying about the worship being perfect then we are focused on the perfection of the wrong thing.  We are called to worship God, who is perfect, but we are called to worship God as ourselves, imperfect and flawed.  Focusing on worship being perfect takes our focus off of God, and may prevent us from experiencing God, as our focus is on being critical of the service instead of on encountering God.  We should try to make worship good, but our focus should be on creating opportunities to experience God, not on making every element of the service perfect.

 

Empty and Full

Our Sanctuary sat empty for the last two Sundays as back to back winter storms shut down many places of worship throughout Richmond.  I didn’t consciously notice it, but my soul was slowly emptying during this time as well.  When we worship week after week it is easy to miss how much corporate worship services effect us.  Even when we miss a Sunday here and there because of our own schedule it is easy to not miss because we have filled up our lives with something else.  But missing worship over something I could not control, in this case the weather, made it more obvious what I was missing, and what I get out of worship.

What really brought this point home for me, though, was actually worshiping again.  We decided to have a Monday Night Worship Service to give the church the opportunity to worship if they could get out and felt the same needs I did.  At the worship I realized exactly how much I missed it as I nearly sung my voice out in the first hymn, as I prayed together with congregation the Lord’s Prayer, as we received the word of the Lord, and as we once again recognized the center of our lives at the Lord’s Table.

After the first snow had hit I had wondered how missing worship would effect people, and began wondering this even more when I saw more forecasted snow for this past weekend.  Monday night gave me a pretty good sampling of how we felt as a church as nearly everyone told me how much they felt like they needed the worship.  Many people even told me they felt the presence of God in ways that they don’t normally week in and week out.

We can certainly experience God’s presence outside of a corporate worship environment, and we can even worship God alone, but there is something about the fellowship of the Body of Christ that seems to enhance our worship.  Part of that is to be gathered together with others who bear the Imago Dei, or the image of God.  Another part of it is that God did not create us to go it alone.  We need each other, not only in our worship service, but also in every part of our lives.

I guess what this really helped me see more clearly as a follower of Christ is that we need each other and we need God.  We need to be able to worship God but we cannot simply do this on our own, we need the opportunity to do this together.  I am very thankful to be worshiping with this family of faith, and I am excited that it looks like we will get to have a normal service on Sunday.