The Maintenance of Divine Worship

1 Corinthians 14: 22-33a page 814

Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he or she will be convinced by all that he or she is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his or her heart will be laid bare.
So he or she will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”
What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, everyone has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two – or at the most three – should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to him or herself and God.
Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of the prophets. For God is not a God if disorder but of peace.
Sermon
Paul writes this letter to a pre-denominational Church; a church where slave and slave owner, Pentecostal and Presbyterian, young and old all worshiped together in one place. There was no bulletin, no set order for worship, and no hymnal as know it. There was singing, and people spoke, but with so many different kinds of people celebrating God all at once without much organization, Paul, out of obligation and in light of his reading of Genesis, calls this Church to order. With the words, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace,” he calls the Corinthian Church back to the Creation of the Heavens and the Earth when God called order out of chaos.
With creation on his mind, Paul offers rules for worship as though he was a 3rd grade teacher calling order to a classroom: “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two – or at the most three – should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to him or herself and God,” and so on. These words are challenging in that we know that Churches don’t like change, that we like to think that the way we have been doing is the way it has always been, just as God created it to be. We forget that worship, like creation, is not something God made and then left to its own devices, as God continues to work change all around us.
But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
I don’t know how the Corinthian congregation reacted, but I am thankful I was not the one who, after giving the benediction, had to wait at the door to hear from every disgruntled parishioner as they left the service.
As a seminary student, that time at the door became one of my favorite parts of the service. I was encouraged to think of myself as a good preacher so I had compliments to look forward to. In fact, the seminary thought I was good enough for them to send me to different churches around the South East to promote the seminary while I was still a student, and on a trip to Jacksonville FL I was given the opportunity to preach at a church I had never been to before. I preached a theologically sound sermon, one based on Jesus’ time in the wilderness, centering on the Liturgical Season of Lent. I did well in the sense that I was preaching a sermon any lifetime Presbyterian would have been proud to hear, inspiring a sense of pride and confidence in the kind of students being produced by Columbia Theological Seminary.
After giving the benediction I walked to the door as the congregation left and as folks left the sanctuary I got handshakes and encouraging words making my ego just a little bit bigger. Finally the last to exit approached me, a man in a suit that looked like it had been slept in who had walked into the sanctuary half way through the service. He walked up to me and asked me a question: “son, what year are you in seminary?”
“I’m in my third year sir.”
“Three years of school then.”“Yes sir.”
He took a long look at me in the eye and said, “Well, they should have taught you something better than that by now. Non-believers would have walked out this morning just the same as they walked in.”
He wasn’t the first person to question my homiletical greatness, but no one had ever been quite so blunt before. I was also taken off guard as this man wasn’t a member of the session, wasn’t a founding member of the church, in fact, I later learned that this man had never attended that church before, so it was hard to see what obligated him to let me know his dissatisfaction.
He walked in late, dressed wrong, and spoke bluntly.
I wasn’t speaking in tongues, but this man who walked in the church service reacted just as Paul expected the unbeliever who entered the church in Corinth to react. What I said didn’t make any sense to him. It was inaccessible, and so meaningless.
We are short sighted if we read this passage from 1st Corinthians and think that Paul calls for orderly worship for the sake of those men and women who had already seen and heard the good news. Paul calls for orderly worship for the sake of those who are just now walking in, as well as those who aren’t here yet, but who are on their way.
For the Corinthian Church and for all churches, Paul claims that we must not speak in tongues if they cannot be interpreted, prophecy all at once so that no one can be heard clearly, houghty-toughty seminary jargon if it can’t be understood, or in symbolic code words if they only make sense to us, but to use language that is accessible, to worship in a way that makes room for the people who aren’t here yet but who are on their way.
The Great End of the Church that we are concerned with in the sermon for this week is the Maintenance of Divine Worship – maintenance, and not an ownership of worship. There is importance in that choice of words. If we have been given the responsibility of maintaining worship today we are obligated to remember that we only hold this honorable responsibility for a brief time, until the maintenance of worship passes to those who aren’t here yet, but who are on their way.
In some ways it would have been easier to get acclimated to that Corinthian Church. There was no Apostle’s Creed to remember, no Lord’s Prayer to recite with your eyes closed, no foundation of faith you’d be embarrassed not to have. Not only was it a time before the words, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” but it would have been a time when we could have admitted we don’t know what those words really mean.
Like many Christians who have been in our shoes before, we have reached a challenging time in history, a time when the words we speak seem like another language to those just outside our door. It is a time when we must be bold to hold onto those tenants of belief that matter, but Paul reminds us that now we must be about teaching those tenants in a way that makes the truth they hold accessible.
Like the great Reformers Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli, three men who did for the 16th Century what Paul did for the 1st, we have reached a point in time where we are called to reexamine tradition; asking if our traditions are accessible, or are we like the Corinthian Church, a litany of voices all at once in tongues that aren’t understood.
Just as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli called the 16th Century Church’s Latin mass to question – demanding that the words spoke in worship be spoken not in an ancient language but in the language the congregation actually spoke, so we are called to examine what we believe and how we articulate that belief.
We fight about what kind of church we will become – a Purpose Driven Church a Discipleship Church; a church with a mission and a mission statement.
Our struggles seem worth fighting for, as we know what they are about and what is at stake. But what does a struggle within the session mean to those who do not know what a session is?
In a denomination that argues over homosexuality, abortion, or translating the Bible, it is time to ask if these issues really matter to a society of people who struggle with home foreclosure, diversity, gas prices, or putting food on the table.
We are called to the maintenance of this divine worship – a responsibility that we will have to pass on as worship in this church will last far beyond our short time on this earth. Worship will go on in this place without us, assuming that we make room for the people who aren’t here yet, but who are on their way. Making room for the questions that need to be asked. Making room by speaking words that matter in a way that can be understood. Making room by bringing order to what a nonbeliever would see as chaos. Making room by remembering that we are not the owners of this church and her worship, and that the church’s future does not rest solely on our shoulders. Making room for those who aren’t here yet but who are on their way, that they might look at us and exclaim: “God is really among you!”