Luke 18:9-14

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Soren Kierkegaard tells a parable that has been illustrated in a children’s book, called Webster the Preacher Duck. This is the story.

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As I was preparing for this sermon, and came across this parable, I thought: never have wiser words been spoken. I hope and believe that I am ministering well among you all, but I, like many other ministers and worship leaders, sometimes feel like my congregation waddles away from worship as they waddled in – unchallenged and unchanged. Why is this? Is my preaching uninspiring? Is the perpetual rote-ness of our liturgy not meaningful? Or is it simply because we are creatures of habit? Week after week, we come in, sit in the same place, on the same place, following an order of service we know by heart, praying prayers that we feel other people need to pray for themselves more than we do, and listening to a sermon we assume is intended primarily for someone else.

In the parable today, two men go to the temple to worship God. One was insufferably arrogant, assuming himself to be superior to ordinary people. The other stood afar off, and humbly acknowledged his sinfulness. It seems pretty clear which of these two hyperbolic models Jesus calls us to adopt, yes? Thank God we are not like that Pharisee, right? Red light, red light… do you see the trap we so easily fall into? Any reading of this parable that identifies ourselves quite comfortingly with the tax collector who went home vindicated by God, is in fact falling into the exact same error being exposed in the Pharisee. The moment we thank God that we are not like person X, who might be a sinful scumbag like the tax collector, or an arrogant prat like the Pharisee, we put ourselves right in the shoes of the Pharisee, the hyperbolic bad example in the Parable.

The practise of a fruitful congregation we’re exploring today and this week is passionate worship. And I imagine each of you have experienced a moment or more of passionate worship, something extraordinary, a moment of serendipity. A moment when your eyes are opened to a deeper awareness of the grandeur of God through the majesty of a piece of music, and new commitments are born. A moment when you recognize your life-story in a Scripture passage, and you are re-born as a believer. A moment when you hear in a sermon, as if for the first time, the unrelenting, amazing love of Jesus, and new hope is born in you. We may wonder why or where these moments happen to some people more often than others. The problem is, these events can’t be explained, or directed, only described. This is why I find it so difficult to describe my experience of God calling me to ministry. It was an inexplicable warming of the heart – I really have no other words to describe it.

Worship, at its most pure, is a diverse group of people, varying in personality, age, background and attitudes – like Jesus’ ragged band of disciples – opening their eyes, ears and hearts to the coming of the Holy Spirit to refresh and renew them. So my role as a worship leader is to help create a space in which such serendipitous, mountaintop events might occur for people, regardless of whether the style is traditional, contemporary, intergenerational, or some sort of mix.

One of the traps we fall into, like the Pharisee, is thinking that our worship of God must fit within certain parameters: don’t talk (particularly children), don’t have other idols, don’t lie, don’t be too joyful in worship, don’t clap, don’t dance, don’t drink. For the Pharisees, rigorous compliance with the religious law was everything, and this Pharisee was as good as any and better than most on that score. We have no reason to think he was boasting idly.

But this trap unmasks a fundamental misunderstanding of what God requires of us. We can start to think that God is picky and choosey about the things we don’t do in worship – for example, if we sing at least two Wesleyan hymns, we’ll be ok in God’s eyes. Some think that God is measuring our Sabbath-keeping and our church attendance and our sexual modesty, and others think that God is measuring our parenting skills and our physical fitness and our patriotism, and others think that God is measuring our recycling and sustainable energy use and checking our shopping trolleys for organic fair-trade produce. And while most of us wouldn’t stand up in public like this Pharisee and congratulate ourselves for proving ourselves more worthy of God’s acceptance than everyone else, we nevertheless look around us on Sundays, and note to ourselves how poorly others are doing in living up to our standards. Thus, “the law”, whichever version of it we have subscribed to, has been turned into a tool of exclusion and oppression. It divides us up, and condemns some as victims while vindicating and rewarding a precious few.

So, passionate worship does NOT look like what the Pharisee does. What does it look like? For that, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which exhorts us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. Not just our heads, where we compare and judge and condemn and fear others. Our hearts; our souls; our whole beings. Passionate worship demands all of us; it is a holistic experience. A heart strangely warmed is perhaps the goal of worship. And a strangely warmed heart is not just for the charismatic Pentes among us, or for the more emotional among us, or the less intellectual among us. God created us all with the capacity for joy and wonder and delight and warmth.

I wonder when your heart is warmed. For me, I have serendipitous moments when I sing wonderful hymns and songs, or when I make harmonies with other people, or when I sit near the water, or when I meditate. But my biggest mountaintop moments, my moment of conversion at NCYC 2005, and my moment of call in 2007 – were moments in my life when I was my most vulnerable and ashamed and low – when all I could pray was “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And then it was like God healed my wounded soul.

What about you? Paul uses the example of singing hymns, psalms and spiritual songs to God. Is there a hymn that warms your heart? Is there a Psalm? Psalm 23 is such a psalm for many people. Is there a song, Christian or otherwise that takes you to a different place? What else might warm your heart? A liturgical practise? A reading? Communion? Journalling? Walking in amongst nature? Chatting over a cup of tea? Talking with God? Is there a visual that warms your heart? A sound? A smell? A touch? A movement? Whatever method of worship it is matters not, as long as it points in the same direction: recognising the presence of God in our midst, and a realignment to God’s will and purpose.

Why is it, I wonder, that visitors and the unchurched come to our doors and come back again? It absolutely begins with our hospitality, as we discussed last week. But their next impressions are often formed through their experience of worship. Is the worship authentic, alive, creative and comprehensible? Do these people strike me as worshipful people? Is God active in this community? Is there evidence of God’s grace in how these people look at each other? Is there a sense of delight and wonder and joy and humility?

Friends, if we are to be more of a fruitful congregation, we must, we must, we must make space for God’s spirit to change us through worship. Without passion, worship becomes dry, routine, predictable, keeping order and form, but lacking space for the Spirit. And this passion must come from EVERYONE, not just the leaders of worship. When we engage in passionate worship, it is alive, authentic, fresh, and engaging – whether we are a congregation of 15 or 1500. It sounds back-to-front, but God calls us to come together on Sundays to worship passionately, with a heartfelt desire to glorify God, to confess the ways we have not glorified God, to receive God’s forgiveness, to hear God through the Scriptures, to pray for God’s kingdom to come, and to be sent to be God’s messengers, so that when we exit and assimilate back into our daily existence, we carry the light of Christ with us in our hearts, strangely warmed, and sharing it with those who cross our paths.

In Greek, the word for church is ἐκκλησία – which means called out from the world to God. In every imaginable setting-whether it be in a hotel, a hundred-year-old sanctuary, an ancient gothic cathedral, a brand new state of the art building, a fellowship hall, a small church in the country, or in the living room of a home; no matter if music is sung a-capella, with a band, a piano, an organ, or simply instrumental – through worship, people seek to connect with God, to allow God’s Word to shape them, and to offer their response of faith. It is God’s Spirit of peace which changes us through passionate worship. No matter where our church, our ἐκκλησία resides, our call is to have worship which bends our hearts towards God as it stretches outward and toward others, so that when we leave the building where we have been to worship, we choose to go out into the world, not waddling as we came in, but out soaring.

All Glory be to the one who gave us wings to soar, who we worship and praise today. Amen.