“Acceptable Worship” - August 7, 2016

Psalm 50

The heading on Psalm 50 ascribes it to Asaph.  More than one Asaph shows up in the Bible, but I Chronicles 15 mentions one who would be the logical source.  He was a Levite, one of the professionals who, though not a priest, led worship.  We hear of him being one of the people who carried the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem before the Temple was even built and the other thing we’re told is that he was a musician who specialized in playing the cymbals.

As such, he would have had a first-hand view of much that went on in worship and would have been exposed to the details of ritual and liturgy in the most extended way, year after year.  The priests were responsible for performing the sacrifices (which meant slaughtering animals and burning the appropriate cuts of meat on the altar with the proper prayers and gestures).  They had to know their job.  The Levites were responsible for set-up, for providing music while the sacrifices were being offered, and for cleaning up the mess when it was all over, so they had their own awareness of the detail work involved.  They had to care about the little things, because those are what will trip you up.

Here’s a modern example.  It’s one thing to write a sermon.  It could be the best sermon since Paul preached in Corinth.  If nobody had turned on the sound system early this morning, however, chances are that only the first few pews of people would hear clearly and – if you haven’t noticed – the bulk of people are not sitting in front.  Levites had to make sure there was enough wood to keep the altar fire burning, that the basins to catch blood from the sacrifices were in place, that there was water to clean the priests’ hands, and that the songs being sung fit the occasion. 

Trust me – you don’t want details to slip past you.  There’s a story about an old-time temperance preacher who gave a fiery sermon about the evils of alcohol who finished with a call to take every barrel of whiskey that he knew to be hidden away in cellars all over town and to smash them open until the streets ran with a river of the unholy brew.  He mopped his brow as he started to pray, and the pianist began to play softly underneath his words, “Shall We Gather at the River”.

A Levite like Asaph would be tuned in to the importance of liturgy and the performance aspects of worship – and I say “performance” in a good way, because we are called to present our best for the Lord and the awareness of God’s creativity awakens the highest creativity in those who are made in God’s image.  There are good reasons that our most beautiful buildings are those we design to lift our eyes and our hearts and to make us think of eternity.  Our most accomplished composers, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Duke Ellington to Andrew Lloyd Weber, wrote music for worship.

A Levite like Asaph would also be in a position to know that attention to detail can go wrong when the act of worship becomes an end in itself.  Watching the worshipers, day by day and week by week and year by year, he must have seen a lot that was good but also observed a lot that troubled him as an expert in the field. 

There is always the danger that instead of being a way of acknowledging God, worship itself can be turned into an idol, and “performance” becomes something bad, where if you perform the right actions and speak the right words, you think that things will magically (and I use that word “magically” as a conscious choice) go your way, that you will somehow impress or influence the Lord of heaven and earth, Maker of all things, Judge of all people, to give you good weather for your picnic on Friday evening or to defeat your enemy in battle.  Pushing it even further, it wouldn’t matter how you live beyond the place of worship and long as you use the act of worship to pacify or placate the Almighty.

It doesn’t work like that.  Psalm 50 puts it back into perspective.  Worship matters, but your life should live up to your prayers.  God is not contained by the place we address him nor the time we set aside for prayer.  God’s claim is over all of life and faith is far more than religiosity.

The mighty one, God the Lord,
   speaks and summons the earth
   from the rising of the sun to its setting. 
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
   God shines forth. 

Our God comes and does not keep silence,
   before him is a devouring fire,
   and a mighty tempest all around him. 
He calls to the heavens above
   and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 
‘Gather to me my faithful ones,
   who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!’ 
The heavens declare his righteousness,
   for God himself is judge.
          Selah 

‘Hear, O my people, and I will speak,
   O Israel, I will testify against you.
   I am God, your God. 
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
   your burnt-offerings are continually before me. 
I will not accept a bull from your house,
   or goats from your folds. 
For every wild animal of the forest is mine,
   the cattle on a thousand hills. 
I know all the birds of the air,
   and all that moves in the field is mine. 

‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
   for the world and all that is in it is mine. 
Do I eat the flesh of bulls,
   or drink the blood of goats? 
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
   and pay your vows to the Most High. 
Call on me in the day of trouble;
   I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.’ 

But to the wicked God says:
   ‘What right have you to recite my statutes,
   or take my covenant on your lips? 
For you hate discipline,
   and you cast my words behind you. 
You make friends with a thief when you see one,
   and you keep company with adulterers. 

‘You give your mouth free rein for evil,
   and your tongue frames deceit. 
You sit and speak against your kin;
   you slander your own mother’s child. 
These things you have done and I have been silent;
   you thought that I was one just like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you. 

‘Mark this, then, you who forget God,
   or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver. 
Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;
   to those who go the right way
   I will show the salvation of God.’

            Thank you, Asaph, for the reminder.