A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on Jan. 13, 2008, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            One of my favorite stories about parish ministry comes from a colleague in Virginia .  Steve was bitten hard by the theology bug in seminary.  His passion took him to the University of Edinburgh to work on a graduate degree.  By the time he returned to Virginia to start work as a parish priest, he had been in academia for years—a long way from the people of his rural parish.  When he prepared his first sermon for that congregation, he thought long and hard about how to translate the precepts he’d learned into language and ideas that might move his flock.  He was still uncertain that he’d been clear enough as he got up to preach the sermon, and the largely stony faces on his listeners left him even more uncertain.  So he was gratified as he shook hands at the church door when one of the elderly ladies of the church effused, “Reverend that was the finest sermon I’ve ever heard!” She went on for several minutes about how she felt about his “comforting and inspiring words,” and added that she was especially moved by his reference to the Girl Scouts, an organization dear to her heart.  It was at this point that Steve realized that she was talking not about his sermon, but about the announcements which had included notice that the Scouts were to meet in the parish hall that afternoon.

            I carry that story close to my heart every time I get up to preach.  Even the prayer I use before each sermon refers to it: “May God’s Word alone be spoken, God’s Word alone be heard.” That prayer reminds me that each sermon, each worship service is an event.  Sermons, hymns and prayers are not lessons or essays as much as they are experiences.  As experiences they aim not so much at producing warm feelings, as they aim at allowing an encounter to happen.  The notion is that as you experience church you might just meet God.  As Steve’s conversation at the church door reminds me, the experience through which you meet God in church might not be the eloquence of a sermon or the beauty of a hymn: you might meet God in the announcements or through seeing the face of the child in the pew ahead as she tries to make you laugh.  You might meet God in the gratitude with which your neighbor receives the Eucharist or in some guilty thought that crosses your mind as you read the General Confession.

            We read this morning about Jesus’ encounter with God in the midst of a religious ceremony.  As Jesus came up from the water after being baptized, he saw, felt and heard God saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  We don’t know what was going on in Jesus’ mind when the voice spoke.  Perhaps he was remembering that Moses interpreted the Torah to the Israelites at the Jordan .  Perhaps he remembered the people of Israel entering the Promised Land.  Perhaps he remembered that it was here at the Jordan that Elisha received the spirit of Elijah.  We don’t know what was going through his mind, but we do know this: the experience worried and disturbed him.  He went out into the wilderness for a long time, fasted, prayed, and came back impelled into a life of service .  It is his baptism that catapults Jesus into a life of preaching good news to the poor, healing the broken, and loving the outcast.

            If you are like me, you may approach worship with a kind of consumerist mentality.  We want to “get something out of” our worship experience.  If we want more joy in our life, we come hoping we can get it out of worship.  If we want a happier family life, we come hoping we can find it by praying together.  But what if the Bible and our prayers and our music and our sermons are not really means of getting something out of worship? What if our worship is not primarily a way of getting something else, but rather primarily an encounter with someONE else?  What if we are all here primarily to be met by God?

            I have gotten a lot of joy out of worship.  I have gotten a sense of deep peace in hymns and prayers.  From time to time I have been convinced by sermons that God loves me just as I am and have gotten a great sense of gratitude from the experience.  But I also know that worship often produces for me a profound sense of uneasiness.  Sometimes it dislocates me: I wonder what I’m doing in this warm building filled with so much beauty when there is so much suffering and ugliness in the world.  Sometimes when I worship I mostly feel pain: a sense of loss for those who are not here or an intense empathy for something a parishioner is struggling with.  I think perhaps uneasiness, dislocation and pain are holy, too. Sometimes they are what drives us to do something for God’s people.

As comforting as it must have been for Jesus to hear that he was God’s beloved, it seems also to have been profoundly disturbing—seems to have sent him out to do God’s work.

May it be this way for us, too.  At its best, our worship is probably less about getting what we want out of God, and more about letting God get what God wants out of us.

                                                                                                            AMEN