On Worship
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
4/22/07
Revelation 5:11-14
I
once read the story of Fritz Kreisler, the master violinist, who discovered that
a certain Englishman had acquired a rare Stradivarius violin.
After a long search for the man, Kreisler traveled to his home and
offered to buy the instrument. However,
the Englishman told Kreisler that the instrument was not for sale and sent him
away. But Kreisler was not to be
discouraged, and decided to go back one more time and ask the man if he could at
least see the magnificent instrument.
The
Englishman respected Kreisler’s talent enough to allow him to come into his
home and hold the violin. Kreisler
picked up the rare instrument and, with the Englishman’s permission, placed it
carefully under his chin and masterfully drew the bow across the strings.
As Kreisler played, the Englishman felt as though he heard wind blowing
through the trees, the laughter of little children, birds singing, and angels
lifting their voices in a chorus of praise.
After 20 minutes, Kreisler saw that the Englishman was weeping.
He stopped playing and said, “I’m sorry, if I have upset you, but
this is such a beautiful instrument. I
only wish I could buy it.” The
Englishman said, “It’s not for sale, but it is yours.
You may have it! It belongs
to you. You are the master.
You alone are worthy of it.”
Today,
as we talk about worship, the story of Fritz Kreisler can help us understand
what worship is all about. God steps
up to this world, which we are used to thinking of as our own, and begins to
play upon it. We are stunned by what
God is able to do. All of life
becomes beautiful as he plays his music and brings out the beauty of the world.
At last we say, “This world belongs to you!
You are the Master! You alone
are worthy of it!” And then we
place our lives in his hands as well, and ask that God bring out the music in
our lives. We want our lives to
vibrate with the Spirit of God within us.
Our
lives vibrating with the God’s music. This
is the essence of worship. The word
“worship” comes from the Old English meaning “worthy.”
To worship God means to recognize his “worthship.”
We worship when we recognize that God is worthy of our praise.
There are several things we could say about worship, but the first which
I will mention today is this: We learn to worship by having a vision of who
God is. When I say vision, I
don’t mean an ecstatic vision in an out-of-body experience.
All you need is the understanding of who God is and God’s unsurpassed
greatness.
And this is what the Book of Revelation attempts to offer:
Revelation 5:11-14
Then
I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the
living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands
of thousands, singing with full voice,
‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!’
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in
the sea, and all that is in them, singing,
‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might
for ever and ever!’
And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen!’ And the elders fell down and
worshipped.
Perhaps there are some of us who are
troubled by the language of this portion of Scripture.
Perhaps some of you are troubled by the idea that we are saved through
"the blood of the Lamb"; through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,
are troubled by the idea that the love of God can use an act of violence to
redeem a violence soaked world.
But the love of God was poured out into
a fallen and violent and broken history, and that at the core of the gospel is
that we were not saved by wise teachings of a great and holy teacher.
We are not saved by OUR coming to
enlightenment regarding our attachment to desires which give rise to violence.
And we are not saved by our ability to overcome evil within ourselves through
acts of compassion and goodness.
Instead, say the Scriptures, we are
saved because God suffers. God
suffers not in some abstract mythical way, but through the horribile death of an
innocent man dying a very public death at the hands of both the religious and
secular powers. By this, WE WERE AND
ARE SAVED!.
According to Revelation, it is this
realization of the way that God has redeemed the world that causes men and women
to fall down upon their knees and worship.
And so the author of Revelation, using
the poetic lyrics of his day, puts a song in print, and thus, we have the words
of today’s Scripture.
Never underestimate the power of a
song.
In The Shawshank Redemption Andy
Dufresne is sentenced to two back-to-back life terms for crimes he did not
commit. That tough world of Shawshank Prison conspires to destroy humanity. Andy
writes every week to the state legislature requesting books for the prison
library.
From out of nowhere, a huge shipment of
used books and records, accompanied by a check, gets dumped in the warden’s
office. Andy puts one of the records on the prison record player. Intoxicated by
the beauty of an aria, Andy locks out the warden and plays this portion of The
Marriage of Figaro over the prison loudspeaker. Everyone in Shawshank Prison
stands transfixed by the music, this moment of intrusive beauty in a horrible
place.
Torture follows, but Andy explains to
his inmate friends how he endured. “I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company. It is
in here (pointing to his head and heart). That’s the beauty of music…so you
don’t forget that there are places in the world not made out of stone, that
there’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. It
is yours.”
Well, the Book of Revelation is mostly
music, mostly songs. Revelation is the most quoted book of the Bible, its
imagery set to music impossible to forget
(ex.
Holy, Holy, Holy “upon the glassy sea” )
Today’s scripture is just a song.
Well, it’s just a song in the same way that the Choir’s rendition of The
Hallelujah Chorus this Easter was “just a song.” I wait for that song every
year. Easter is not complete for me
without it. With it I feel as if I
have nothing to fear. No fear.
Because of a “song.”
Too often we think of Easter as the
raising of Jesus, the means by which each of us is able to have a personal
relationship with a living Lord. Yes. But there is more. Easter is larger even
than this.
Easter is about more than you and me
and Jesus. Easter is about the recreation of the world, a whole new world. The
church claims that, beginning with Easter, the world is recreated, as if God the
Creator starts over, begins again, picks up the pieces and recreates the world
in that way that was first intended at Creation.
How shall we speak of this new world?
If it is new, then we will have difficulty describing it. How shall we speak of
something fresh and new? We live in a prose world of facts, figures, government
press releases. We lack the poetry to speak of a new world. Let John help us:
Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing!
The new world is a vision of thousands
and thousands, the whole world surrounding the throne of God, singing, “Worthy
is the Lamb that was slain!” This “Lamb,” the one who was crucified,
stripped, stabbed, and nailed to the cross to die the most horrible death, this
Lamb now stands in the center of heaven. To this once slaughtered Lamb has been
given “power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing!” That is, everything that God has, the Lamb has. The Lamb, who knows
what it’s like to suffer, to bleed, and to die, now rules with God, as God, at
the center of a great shout of acclamation.
The vision is of a great victory
celebration. The battle is over, the battle with death, and defeat, and
dishonor. The battle is over, and guess who won? The Lamb! A Lamb is small,
frail, vulnerable, no match for the powers of death and destruction. Those
powers thought they had ended the life of the Lamb on the cross. But no, here in
the center of heaven, enthroned, is the Lamb in a great victory celebration.
On Easter, victorious Jesus sallied
forth from the tomb, Jesus was raised. Yet Easter is even more than that. Easter
is the great, decisive battle in the long war between God and death. The war
still rages, yes, in your life and mine. There is still death. Yet the decisive
battle has been fought. We know how the war ends. Revelation 5 is a vision of
the great, final victory celebration. Knowing that final vision gives us hope
today. In our present skirmishes with sin, death, and defeat, there is pain. But
we are not lost for we know the final chapter.
Revelation is the song that can give
listeners in despair strength. Sometimes
we all need such a song.
A man in a Presbyterian Church in
One of the prisoners, a wonderfully
defiant chap from
Soon, the whole camp was humming the
tune each day on the way out to work, with the guards oblivious to the
revolutionary significance of this defiant gesture.
In a way, that’s what the songs and
symbols of Revelation do for us. They remind us, as we go about our daily lives,
of the victory of Easter, the way that God defeated death, and continues to
defeat death. In heaven, there is much singing, shouting, parading and
processing, according to Revelation 5. Having a song to sing, a victory song,
enables us to go on, even to triumph because we know the Lamb who sits on the
throne.
And it’s just a song!
Well not really.
It’s THE song. The one on
which we have placed our faith. O
Come let us adore him.
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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