I am one of those who does not consider a meal complete unless it includes dessert. No matter how sumptuous the meal may be, until I have had my bowl of ice cream or my slice of pie, it just isn’t complete.
And my wife is saying, under her breath, what you mean is a bowl of ice cream AND a slice of pie. And what about the cookies you sneak after that?!
I admit it. I may as well. Standing in front of you without my usual pulpit robe, the horrible truth is revealed anyway. I am one of those who can consume a wonderful meal: salad, bread, meat, potatoes, vegetables. But before I can settle down for my nap, I want to satisfy another urge, I want some chocolate, I want, nay, I NEED to taste that sweet soothing syrup of a strawberry sherbet. Mmm.
Even when we go to a restaurant, they almost always serve too much food. We end up asking for a doggy bag. I think I could not eat another bite, nor do I want to shell out four dollars for a little sliver of pie. So we go home. Ten minutes later, I am in that freezer, deciding between Dutch Chocolate and Pecan Praline! I’ve got to have my dessert in order to finish my meal!
But on the other hand, I remember as a youngster being left alone in the house one day, supposedly to do my homework. Well, as any student knows, homework cannot be done without food. The very instant you open a math book, you get the hungries. Just looking at a chemistry text will drive you to nibble. And so that afternoon I went to raid my mother’s refrigerator. I had several choices: cold chicken, some sliced cheese; warmed up last night’s broccoli, but no: I went for the sweet stuff. I scooped out a nice bowl of ice cream. I ate that while I began to study, but, you know, a couple of minutes later I still felt hungry, so I went and rooted around in the cookie jar. Some of those went down the hatch while I worked a math problem, and when the problem had been solved, the hungries came back, and I hit the refrigerator again. This time I did it right: there was one piece of apple pie left; and a can of Hershey’s best. Need I say more? There is nothing quite so wonderful at four o’clock in the afternoon as apple pie, a la mode, with chocolate syrup, and, yes, a maraschino cherry! I gobbled down this creation with great gusto ... only to discover that after I had done so, I was still not satisfied! A little sick maybe, but not satisfied. I still wanted to eat, never mind the thousands of sugar grams that had been injected into my system!
I found out that it’s nice to have the dessert, but I had also better make sure I get the meat and the potatoes, the bread and the green things too. Both the solid food and the dessert, not one or the other, but both.
Worship is like that. When we take time to be holy and speak with the Lord, we need two ingredients. And both are necessary. Both are vital. Jesus had names for them. He told the woman at the well, “... the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” In spirit and truth. In truth and in spirit. With content and with passion. With substance and with feeling. With head and with heart. Meat, potatoes, bread; apple pie, chocolate syrup.
In fact, Jesus insisted, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Both have to be there.
Anything less is idolatry. Let’s look at both sides of this.
I
Worship what? Worship truth made flesh. Truth made flesh. Christ reveals who God is and what God is about. Christ stands in judgment over every human wisdom, every human system, every philosophical idea. Christ stands taller than every political platform, every science, every idea. And so worship Christ, the truth made flesh. In other words, bring your brains to church!
You know, our problem is that the woods are full of rank amateurs who are trying their best to make things work without having the slightest idea what they are doing. Isn’t that interesting? Even though we don’t really know how to do something, we will try to do it anyway? I heard this week about a fellow who was trying to cut down a big tree, and his old saw just wasn’t up to it, so he went to the hardware store and described his problem. They said, “We have just the thing for you”, and they sold him a chain-saw. A couple of hours later he came back to the store and said, “This thing does not work. This chain-saw is even worse than my old saw. This barely makes a dent in the wood. It will not work.” The clerk was surprised, and said, “Let’s test it. Let me try it.” He pulled the cord and started up the saw; it ran perfectly. But the customer look startled and said, “What’s that noise?”
Some of us are trying to live our lives without the first idea what we are doing. When some of us worship, if we have no focus on truth, we are trying to operate something we don’t even know has power. And if we worship without the truth made flesh, we are going to be in trouble. If we attempt to worship without any real substance, if we park our brains at the front door, no matter how much energy we put out, we will not get anywhere. This is where the cults get their power: they prey on people whose worship is all whoop and holler, but they’ve left out the hard core of truth.
The woman at the well had tried to engage Jesus in a little discussion about where to worship, and part of Jesus’ response pointed to her lack of knowledge. Jesus showed her her short supply of truth. He said, “You [Samaritans] worship what you do not know; we [Jews] worship what we do know”. No doubt he was touching on the fact that the Samaritans used only the first five books as their Bible. They did not recognize the prophets, the wisdom writings, the Psalms, anything except the Law. They had cut themselves off from a whole lot of the truth.
The ancient Samaritans are sad because they didn’t have access to much of the truth. But how much sadder the case of modern Christians, who have the full revelation of God available, but take it so lightly! How sad and how shameful that too many of us do not get involved in the systematic study of the Bible, offered every Sunday morning! Where are you each Sunday morning at 9:00? Where were you a week ago when we ran substantial classes during Vacation Bible School? I will not even get down to where you are for our midweek services. I will not even mention how hundreds resist the opportunity for our discipleship groups. How can we continue to worship and serve the Christ of truth if we do not access that truth? “The father seeks true worshipers to worship in spirit and truth.”
I’ve been reading a new book called Renaissance or Ruin? The author speaks about the future of our churches. He says that one critical issue today is that church people have walked away from the Bible, and have therefore become open to every other kind of idea which may walk in. We peddle pop psychology and call it that the good news. We fall for feel-good plans and call them inclusive Christianity. We gather nice, middle-class people around us, and pretend that they are converted. We jazz up our choirs, we juice up our oratory, we beautify our worship centers, we put on a mighty good show; but if it is not focused on truth, then, I tell you, it will never, never satisfy. And we will look for more, anything more. Always more. Like that teenage boy with nothing but dessert, quite pleased with himself, but a little sick, yet still hungry.
Worship what? Worship the Christ who is truth made flesh. “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”
II
But still, don’t forget, I am one of those who does not feel his meal is complete unless there is dessert, something sweet, something to cleanses the palate. I am one of those who, no matter how substantial the meal, I want that finishing touch.
And when I worship I want not only truth, I want spirit. When I worship, I need not only head stuff, but I need heart stuff too. We need spirit, passion, feeling, energy. We must not be afraid to feel and to express feeling. We are in the very presence of the almighty, we are in touch with mystery. Here there is awe and wonder, here we reach out and touch the very face of God.
And that too is what Jesus told the woman at the well. That too is a part of His hope for her and His desire for us. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” God is spirit, God is personal; and the whole person needs to be brought before Him. The whole self connects with Him. Heart and soul and mind and strength. Our whole selves before God, whose wholeness comes for us.
Look at what Jesus did for the woman at the well. Look at how He brought her to see worship that was spirit, before the God who is spirit.
He brought her insight about herself and her needs. You remember how she had tried to fudge her reality and told Jesus she had no husband, but of course she had already worn out five husbands and was living with somebody else. She got a head-on confrontation with reality. Worship will do that for us. Passion, feeling.
But the woman also picked up a profound promise. She heard about refreshment, she heard a word of hope, she discovered that not even her mangled life was beyond the redemptive power of the spirit of God. She came to the well for a simple bucket of water, but she got in touch with cleansing. That’s because heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, she was in touch with Jesus. It was not an academic lecture. This was not professor Jesus, laying out His program of philosophical underpinnings. This was the whole Jesus, meeting the whole woman, and she blossomed. She felt refreshment, freedom, power. Spirit. Those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth. The whole person.
What else did Jesus do for this woman? What else did He give her? Why, He gave her vision beyond the narrow confines of her little tribe. He showed her something larger than her little world. Lady, your people worship on Mt. Gerizim. All right. My people worship in Jerusalem. Sure. But I want you to know that the God who is spirit is greater than either of these places, greater than our traditions, greater than our limitations, greater than our ideas about Him. When you worship in spirit, and you open up to the greatness of God, when you bring your passions and your heart, you’ll just let go of your inhibitions. Something will happen and you will not worry about your middleclassness and your nicepeopleness. Worship God in spirit, and Christ will be more than American, more than Baptist, more than just us. Worship God in spirit, and Christ will be more than whiteness and more than blackness, more than conservative and more than liberal. Your God is whole and complete, and if you let His fullness to reach you ... then I tell you, nothing is more satisfying. Nothing is more fulfilling. Nothing more completing. Icing on the cake! With a cherry on top!
The tragedy is that some of us are like dieters, dutifully slugging along, taking nourishment, but never enjoying a bit. Some of us are afraid to receive all that God has to give us.
Several years ago I met with the pulpit committee of a church to explore whether I might be God’s person for their needs. Someone asked me if I made any distinction between teaching and preaching. I assure them that I did. They wanted to know more. I told them that teaching was the communication of information, deliberate, careful, and precise; but that preaching was the communication of truth with passion, excitement, energy, urgency, and with a clarion call to commitment. Someone said, in response to that, “We are a very private people here. Does that mean you would actually urge people to make commitments, right there in the worship service?” I knew I was in the wrong place. They knew it too!
Oh, men and women, do not be afraid to bring into this house all that you are, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, hopeful and desperate, joyous and sorrowing. Do not be afraid. That’s what it is to worship in spirit. Present yourself to the God of all hope and comfort. “Here bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish. Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot bear.”
Conclusion
Worship what then? Worship in spirit and truth, in truth and in spirit.
Worship the Christ who is truth. The Christ who is substance. The Christ who is above and through and beyond every idea, every system. The Christ who is the bread of life. The Christ whose flesh, though broken and bruised, is meat indeed. For when we worship that Christ, we will be satisfied, filled, with baskets running over and plenty.
But worship also the Christ who is spirit. The Christ who is heart and passion, wholeness and healing. The Christ whose blood was poured out for us from the foundation of the world. For when we worship that Christ, we will be refreshed from the fountain that never shall run dry.
We need our meat and potatoes kind of everdayness; and when we worship Him, He is the bread of life.
And we need a flowing sweetness, and beyond the insipid dryness of our daily life, He is the rich wine of sweetness and delight.
Come to this table, here to worship Him in spirit and truth, truth and spirit.
