Matthew 6:1-6
January 13, 2013
Beware of practicing your piety before
others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your
Father in heaven.
So whenever you give alms, do not
sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the
streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have
received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know
what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and
your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And
whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and
pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by
others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you
pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in
secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Why are you here?
Seriously,… what do you expect to get by coming to worship? Are you here
out of guilt, thinking that something bad will happen to you if you don’t come
to church? Are you hoping that your sins will be forgiven? Are you hoping to
find God? You could be home, sitting in
your jammies, enjoying another cup of coffee. Why get up early one more morning
of the week? Don’t you get up early enough five other days of the week? Why are
you here?
Actually, you’re here to get healthier, and you’re doing
it in more ways than just spiritually. Did you know that coming to church on
Sunday actually makes you healthier? It does, and that’s not just my opinion.
There has been a lot of research done over the past 25 years showing that going
to church on a regular basis makes you a healthier person. David Larson, M.D.,
Ph.D., who died a few years ago, discovered this through his research. He was a
medical doctor and psychiatrist who was trained by, and worked at, the Duke
University Medical School before he eventually became the director of the
National Institute of Healthcare Research. As a young psychiatrist, he had
often heard his colleagues say that religious pursuits were a sign of mental
weakness and disorder, and that people who were truly mentally healthy didn’t
need religion.
Like a good scientist he decided to see if research
supported that conclusion. He did a survey of hundreds of scientific studies
testing the impact of religion on health, and he found the exact opposite to be
true. Religion didn’t make us weaker. It made us healthier. He found hundreds of studies
showing that when extraneous factors were controlled for (a fancy way of saying
that they made sure there couldn’t be some other reason for the result), the
research overwhelmingly showed that people who attended church were healthier
than those who didn’t. He found that obese churchgoers lived longer than obese
non-churchgoers. He found that smoking churchgoers were healthier than
non-smoking non-churchgoers. In every survey the health differences were
significant. So just by being here in worship you are healthier than those who
aren’t here.
It’s not just adults who get health
benefits from being in church. So do kids. When you are willing to brave the
morning arguments to get your kids up and out to church, you make a difference
in every part of their lives. A few years ago I was interested in seeing what
the connection between going to church and childrens’ lives was, and what I
found was pretty interesting. Google “church attendance and health,” and see
what you find. One website I found cited the benefits found that church
attendance:
§ increases the average life
expectancy of your children by 8 years;
§ significantly reduces their
use and risk from Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs;
§ dramatically lowers their
risk of suicide;
§ helps them rebound from
depression 70% faster;
§ dramatically reduces their
risk for committing a crime;
§ improves their attitude at
school and increase their school participation;
§ reduces their risk for
rebelliousness;
§ reduces the likelihood that
they would binge drink in college;
§ improves their odds for a
"very happy" life;
§ provides them with a
life-long moral compass;
§ and even gets them to wear
their seatbelts more often.
As the website says, “These findings
are supported by research from Duke University, Indiana University, The University
of Michigan, The Center for Disease Control, Barna Research Group, and the
National Institute for Healthcare Research”
(http://www.sundaysoftware.com/stats.htm).
Going to church makes you healthier,
it makes your kids healthier, but can’t you get the same benefits just by being
spiritual but not religious? You would think doing your own thing spiritually,
by virtue of being spiritual, would offer you the same health benefits, but it
doesn’t. According to a recent article in the British Journal of Psychiatry being
spiritual but not religious is not the same as being religious, whether you are
or aren’t spiritual at the same time. In fact, the “spiritual but not
religious” struggle significantly more with drug abuse and addictions, as well
as with mental issues (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/09/the-spiritual-but-not-religious-likely-to-face-mental-health-issues-drug-use-study-says/?iref=allsearch).
But I know you’re not here to get
healthier. You’re here to get God, and the health benefits of church are a side
effect. Why do we bother with worship? We bother with worship because it is the
best way of finding God. I don’t say this because I’m a church guy, I say this
because I’ve experienced it. You’ve heard me talk about this before. I walked
away from the church at 15 and decided to do spirituality on my own. For nine
years I described myself as spiritual but not religious. But then I went
through a crisis. And it was in the midst of that crisis that I realized
something significant about why religion has such a powerfully positive
influence on people’s lives.
It’s not just that religious worship
helps us find God, but it helps us find God TOGETHER. This is a really
significant point. One of the problems facing those who call themselves spiritual
but not religious is that they pick and choose beliefs and practices from
different religions, but in the process they generally ignore one of the most
important attributes. Every religion, whether you are talking about
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American, or any other,
emphasizes community. They emphasize the communal nature of seeking and finding
the Holy, the Divine,… God. Every single one of them emphasizes that you cannot
be truly spiritual if you do it alone. There may be times when adherents are
sent out by themselves, but that’s an episode in which they leave the community
to eventually return to the community. Whether it is Buddhists worshiping in a
temple, Muslims in a mosque, Jews in a synagogue, Native Americans in a sweat
lodge, or Christians in a church, it is essential that we seek and worship God
TOGETHER.
This insight was so significant to
me, and my experience of finally deciding to relent on my solo journey in order
to join a church, so profound, that I used the experience as the basis of my
Ph.D. dissertation. This is a 400-page dissertation exploring the movement from
an individualistic to a communal spirituality.
What I learned at 24 is the age-old
message of church. This is that we can try to find God on our own, but we can’t
truly find achieve it on our own because finding God is communal. That is why
worship is so important to spiritual growth.
Worship is unlike any other event in
life because it’s sole focus is the connection between God and us. What other
activity in your week do you take part in where connecting with God is the
focus? There is no other event in the week that emphasizes that as a group.
Worship offers practices that are designed to hit us at the conscious,
subconscious, and soul levels. Think about the whole worship experience.
Our church’s worship begins even
before you walk into the sanctuary. We have meditative music playing throughout
the church. It is intended to put you in the right spirit. As you walk through
Fellowship Hall, we place tablecloths on the tables that reflect the church
season, and you see a large, lighted stained glass window of Jesus praying in
the Garden of Gethsemane. Walking into the sanctuary you enter a space filled
with religious symbols and artwork, from banners, to Celtic crosses, to stained
glass, to special lighting. The whole idea is to get you centered and ready to
encounter Christ before we start worshiping.
After we do the announcements, we
sing a chant together and do a silent prayer. The point is to help us become
quiet and centered so that we are in the right place to open up to God. We read
passages from the Bible to get us thinking about God. We then sing a hymn meant
to get us praising God. We confess sins so that we can put aside our pride and
selfishness. Then we do a children’s sermon so that we can speak to kids about
God. We do an anthem, which is designed to inspire us and prepare us to reflect
on God’s Word. The Sermon is designed to hit our cognitive brains, and to get
us thinking about God, our lives, what the purpose of life is, how we can
connect with God, and so much more. The offering is designed to give us a
chance to practice generosity—to give back to God. The prayers and sacraments
are meant to get us to go deeper in God. And then the final prayer is to
prepare us to take this hour into our hearts and manifest it throughout our
lives. What other practices do you engage in throughout your life that has this
kind of God intention and intensity? Worship isn’t just a tradition or a
ritual. It is essential to connecting with God because it hits every part of
our being: our conscious minds, our subconscious minds, our emotions, our
thinking, our bodies, and our very core.
Like exercise, eating right, and getting
enough sleep, worship is a discipline that leads to spiritual growth. And like
exercise, it requires a willingness to do it regularly. It’s something offered
to you to help you get healthier in every way. The key is that it’s something
we offer, but don’t force on anyone. We don’t take attendance in order to
determine whether you have or haven’t been her. And if you stop coming, we
don’t run out to find you or find out why. It’s not because we don’t care about
you. It’s not because we’re ignorant. It’s because we understand that what we
offer is an opportunity to grow closer to God, but that you bear the
responsibility to take up that offer. You have to develop the maturity to come
to God with passion, and if you can’t, you’re responsible for asking us to help
you, which is a big part of what we do. Rev. Frierson and I are here to
primarily help people connect with God. If you need us to run after you to get
you to go to church, you aren’t ready to meet God. Worship is about being
mature and seeking to grow more spiritually mature. If your maturity requires
us to coax you to church, you won’t grow, and our efforts are wasted.
The fact is that taking up the
discipline of worship is hard. There are a lot of forces that keep us from
wanting to worship. Many are internal, but others are external. Even if we do
attend worship, there are forces within and without that keep us from wanting
to worship with openness, passion, and a deep desire to connect with God. Let
me show you what I mean.
A number of years ago there was an
older woman who decided to clean out her basement freezer. At the bottom of it
she found a Butterball turkey she had put there 23 years earlier and had
forgotten about. She didn’t want to throw it out and waste it, but she wasn’t
sure if it was still edible. So she decided to call Butterball’s helpline.
The man on the line asked how he
could help, and she told him about her 23-year-old turkey, asking, “Can I still
eat it?” He said, “Did you keep it below zero all that time, or were there any
significant power outages that might have allowed the turkey to thaw?” “Nope,
it’s been in deep freeze all these years,” she replied. He paused and said,
“Well, then it’s probably good to eat, but it’s not going to taste very good. I
mean,… it has been sitting in a freezer for a really long time. “ She replied,
“That’s okay. I’ll just give it to my church.”
This is how many people are with
worship. They don’t come giving their best. They give their frozen, stale parts
to God in worship. They see worship and church as secondary activities that
don’t really matter that much as long as they do what’s necessary. Their focus
isn’t on connecting with God. Their focus is on slogging through.
As flawed as it is, worship is here
to keep us in connection with God. In a funny way, some of the people who
attend the least understand this the most. It’s not a huge number, but we have
some people in the church who show up mainly when their life is going wrong.
They go through a crisis, and then they start coming to church. After a bit
their lives improve. Unfortunately, they then disappear until the next crisis.
But they still have a very clear understanding that church helps them connect
with God when in need. It’s just that they walk away from that connection when
they no longer feel that need. For that short while, though, they understand
the need to come to God with passion.
As we ending to all this, I have a
question I want you to reflect on. Think about how you are when you come to
church. When you worship, do you come to really worship?
Amen.
