It was the first Sunday in June in 1994, at Grace Church in Dayton.  I was not in the chancel leading worship, as I might usually have been, because I’d been away from work all week.  The previous Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I had picked up the telephone late in the afternoon at home to hear the words, “this is the Emergency Department at the hospital, and your husband, Gary is here.” It was an out of town hospital, about an hour away.  Gary had been in an accident.  The nurse on the phone had the presence of mind to say very quickly, “he is alert and conscious, but in pain.  We are assessing his injuries.”

What happened in the intervening week is what always happens in such a situation; tests and X-rays and hospital things, and the encounter with your new reality.   But by the first Sunday of June, on significant doses of painkiller and walking ever so slowly with a cane, Gary had made it into the sanctuary, and was beside me as we stood to sing, as we always did on communion Sunday, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I was overcome with emotion by the second verse, as the depth of feeling that was present in my life met the order of worship in a sanctuary.

I did not always bring passion to worship.  I brought myself to worship a good many years out of duty, or some understanding that I could bargain with God by giving an hour of my time, or because it was where me and my friends met.   It has taken me some time to fall in love with God, and to trust both God and the gathered congregation enough to let the order of worship and the depth of feeling that is present in life meet one another.

But when life left me without my bearings, it was the order of worship for communion Sunday – predictable, familiar, and frequently boring – that grounded me in the real presence and grace of God.

Passion is defined in the dictionary as a powerful emotion; boundless enthusiasm; an abandoned display of emotion; a deep overwhelming emotion.

Worship is defined as reverent love, devotion, adoration; the religious form by which this love, devotion and adoration is expressed.

Passionate worship therefore is about expressing devotion to God with boundless enthusiasm and an abandoned display of emotions.

One child who often comes to 8:30 service likes to clap her hands in time with the lively music, and while lots of adults have told her how much they admire what she is doing, few have been able to join her.  She just doesn’t understand why not.   I don’t really know what to tell her.  She is trying to teach us boundless enthusiasm and the kind of abandon that contributes to passion in worship.  We are not quick studies, we grown-ups!

Worship is both a noun and a verb.  It is what we do and how we do it.

Worship is a central practice of the Christian faith.  It is where we step aside from every other loyalty.  We take some amount of time, an hour or so, each week to declare that our ultimate allegiance is to God.   Here is where we remember that there is no other source of security, protection or comfort other than God.  Paul said it this way to the Thessalonians: “you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.”

Will Willimon writes this about worship:

“One of the things that we do when we come to church is to ‘see things in a different light.’ That’s why we have stained glass windows.  We come with our rather colorless, none-too-inspiring drab little lives and we see them in God’s light.  And they are thereby transformed.

“…Church is also where we look at our lives from a different perspective – God’s way of seeing things.  In church, when we’re at our best, things come into focus, and we see what things are worth, and how much certain things cost.  “

Worship is also what we call the content of the hour that we are in the middle of here.  It is structured.  It is dedicated to a specific time and space.  It is both intensely personal and unavoidably communal.

Attending a planned service of worship forces us to acknowledge that we live in this world not as isolated individuals, but as members of the community that is the human family.  In attending worship, there is an element of submission – we acknowledge when we submit ourselves to an order of worship that God has ordered the world in certain ways.

Quoting Calvin’s assertion that “the human mind is a permanent factory of idols, Willimon reminds us that we must take care that we do not bring our idols into the sacred time that is God’s time.  God’s time is called in the Greek New Testament, kairos.  That’s the word used whenever the “fullness of time” is spoken of.  Chronos is clock and calendar time.

The church appoints a chronos time for the purpose of gathering in kairos time.   It’s a gathering up of the ordinary times of our lives into the fullness of God’s time that puts our ordinary days into sacred perspective.

To attend to the work of worship is an act of stewardship.  It is giving one’s time, one’s attention in such a way that at an appointed time in the week, in a dedicated space, in a community constituted by God for this purpose, we render unto God what is God’s.

Carol Ann and I do what we do in order to give kairos structure to this chronos time.   Look at your worship bulletin.  Notice first that at the top, we have located ourselves in chronological time by giving the date.  We have located ourselves in liturgical time.

There is a basic four part structure to worship that is designed to move us between the space of ordinary life and the space of worship as an intentional time of devotion.

We gather, and time is allowed in the order of the service for this gathering.  We move into the sacred space together.  We begin to devote our thoughts and attention to God – the space invites us to that as we can contemplate the beauty of the sanctuary, the stained glass, the table upon which rests the light, and the sacred text that opens God’s word to us.  The opening music evokes feeling and emotion.

As we gather, and we are called to the time and the work of worship, we read collectively a few words, and then become community as our many voices are gathered for the work of singing.

Once gathered by the movement into community, we gather ourselves into prayer, bringing our lives before God.  And then, we are ready to hear the word that comes to us through the witness of scripture.  We follow a prescribed set of readings from the texts, called the “Revised Common Lectionary.” Because many other Christians across the globe are also reading Thessalonians today, our reading of this text gathers us into community with them.

In Protestant worship, the reading of the word and the sermon which seeks to speak a sacred word into our lives from the text stand at the center of the worship service.  We come to have God’s word break into our lives.   When Carol Ann and I meet to plan worship, we attend to the texts for the week, to the liturgical calendar, and put content into the structure that invites us to focus in a particular way on a theme or topic suggested by the text and the time.

God’s sacred presence in the word calls for a response.  The response begins in worship, and then we are sent to fulfill it in our daily living.  The offering is a response.  It declares that all that we have and all that we are is first God’s.  Sometimes prayer, or an affirmation of faith, or a time of personal commitment serve as responses.

Having gathered, heard, and responded to the word, we are then sent into the world to live the transformed lives that God is working in us through this relationship that is fulfilled in worship.

We bring a lot of baggage to worship that stands in the way of passion.

There is a perception among many people that you are only doing the work of worship if you are one of the worship leaders.  Fundamentally, however, the work of worship is the work of the laos, the laity.  It is the people who do the work of worship.  What happens up here is meant to create a framework for your worship.  You sing.  You pray.  You respond to the sermon.  Without you, what occurs up here is empty – it’s just noise.

There is a perception that worship should entertain us.  Dare I say it this way.  Our addiction to entertainment is an idol that we might seek to overcome by practicing worship.

There is a perception that worship should be culturally hip.  Dare I say that popular culture is an idol that we might seek to overcome by doing counter cultural things.

There is a perception that professionalism has no place in worship.  But God deserves our best.  Musicians and preachers and liturgical artists who are devoted to their craft are a blessing that allows us to offer God the best that human effort can produce.

Do we fall short, we who are supposedly devoted to our craft?   Of course we do.  Does God accept worship that is not led by professionals?   Of course God does.

What God seeks with us is authentic, passionate engagement.

We hear from Paul that in the midst of persecution, the Thessalonians nevertheless “received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit.” And then, the word of the Lord sounded forth from them.  They turned from idols to serve a living and true God.

Finally, it is our willingness to open ourselves to the sacred that allows the Holy Spirit to have her way with us.  And when that happens, there is fruitful stewardship of our lives.  Paul can say to us, as he said to the Thessalonians: “We are constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope.”

Thank you for being here today to offer your worship.  Thank you for the privilege of standing before you as the preacher for the day.

Thanks be to God – the Spirit speaks to the church.  Amen.