2 Samuel 6:15, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
“The Church Lives to Praise God”
It’s probably not surprising for you to hear that I enjoy praising God in worship. I love singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God, and I love doing it with other people. In fact, it was the experience of leading congregational singing at camp, and in Christian clubs on campus, and in my home church that first gave me the idea that I might be called to ministry.
Occasionally I meet a minister who doesn’t enjoy singing or feel that they are very good at singing, and I’m always surprised by that. First of all, because I believe that everyone can sing if they are taught and nurtured to do so, and because singing praise to God feels like such a central part of what it means to be the people of God.
“Living Faith,” the statement of Christian belief of The Presbyterian Church in Canada tells us that praise and worship is central to who we are, but it’s not limited to singing or music alone. Section 7.3 about worship says this:
7.3.1 The church lives to praise God.
We have no higher calling
than to offer the worship that belongs to God
day by day, Sunday by Sunday.
7.3.2 Through the preaching of the Word
and the celebration of the Sacraments,
in praise, prayer, teaching and fellowship,
God sustains the life of the church.
We worship God as Lord
offering ourselves in the service of Christ,
rejoicing that we have been brought from darkness to light.
7.3.3 Worship draws us into the work of Christ.
Even now he intercedes for the world
to which he came and for which he died.
In union with him, the church prays
for the healing and the salvation of the world.
7.3.4 Blessing and honour and glory and power
be to our God for ever and ever!
“The church lives to praise God” is the first line of that section, and the title I gave to my sermon this morning. It may remind the older folks among us of the first question in the catechism: What is the chief end of humankind? To glorify God and enjoy God forever.
We live to praise. But it’s not only through music and singing, but through listening to and interpreting God’s Word, and through praise, prayer, teaching, and fellowship. And when we offer our lives in service to God, that is part of our praise as well. Our praise is not limited to an hour a week on Sundays when we have the chance to sing together with our community, but we are called to praise God day-by-day as we endeavour to live lives that honour God.
This may not be the first time you’ve heard this morning’s story about King David entering Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant and dancing before the Lord with all his might. The text comes up in the lectionary once every three years, and it’s matched up with a Psalm of Ascent (one of the psalms sung by the Jewish people as they went up to Jerusalem for pilgrimage festivals) and a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about why Christians should live to praise God.
The fun part of the text is David’s dancing for God. It makes him seem more like a charismatic Christian than a straight-laced Presbyterian as he gives in to the Spirit that moves him to praise God not only with a song, perhaps accompanied by a lyre… but with his whole body, moving to the music with great joy.
But the story is about much more than suggesting a lively method of praising God. In fact, if you read the sections that come before this passage, as well as the verses in the middle that the lectionary skips over, you’ll notice that it’s very much a story about politics and power, as well as praise for God that may be motivated more by greed than by God’s glory.
You see, the Ark of the Covenant represented God’s presence with David, and he considered that to be the reason that he had successfully conquered his enemies and was now going up to Jerusalem to establish one great kingdom that united Israel and Judah. Certainly, David was motivated to praise God because he believed that God had allowed him to be victorious over his enemies. But David was also motivated to praise God because he was afraid of God’s power.
In the verses that we skipped over this morning, the procession has begun, but the cart holding the Ark of Covenant gets shaken by the oxen, and one of the people carrying it reaches out to stop the Ark from sliding off. Puzzlingly, God strikes the man dead for daring to touch the holy object. David gets scared, and stores the Ark in someone else’s house for a few months while he decides what to do next.
I can’t explain why God would kill a guy for trying to stop the Ark from falling on the ground. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it makes me wonder if the guy just had a heart attack or passed out from the heat of the day, and David just interpreted the event as God’s action.
But regardless of the reason for that tragic death in the middle of the procession, King David praises God for some pretty selfish reasons – because he believes God has allowed him to conquer his enemies and become the king of a large region with a lot of people, and because he is afraid that God might strike him dead if he doesn’t honour God just right.
These are not the reasons why our Presbyterian statement of faith declares that “the church lives to praise God.” It’s not because God has made us powerful. Indeed, in a post-Christendom world, we’re not very big or powerful at all.
And it’s not because we’re afraid that God will curse us or kill us if we fail to bow down and offer sacrifices in the right way. No, we believe in a God of love and grace and mercy who does not demand our praise, but who made us and blessed us so that our natural response will be to give thanks and praise to God.
The New Testament letter to the Church at Ephesus elaborates the motivation for our Christian calling to praise God. And the main reason is that God is a loving, forgiving, caring, and faithful parent to us all.
This week at Camp Christopher, the staff were learning and studying the Bible stories that they’ll be sharing with the campers through the rest of the summer, and one of them was Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son. You remember the one? God is depicted as the parent who goes out to welcome his wayward child home after a series of bad decisions and the squandering of the child’s whole inheritance. Jesus teaches that our God is like a parent who welcomes us home with open arms and throws a party to celebrate that we have been found.
Ephesians uses the metaphor of adoption to emphasize that this parent-child relationship is not limited to people from a certain family, tribe, culture, or nation. God chose both Jews and Gentiles to belong in God’s family – not because of any good things we may have done or because we earned a place at God’s table – but just because God wanted to do it.
Like the parent in the parable who is filled with joy and gladness when the child returns, God is delighted when we participate in the family of God and use our lives to praise and honour God every day, just as the older son was doing in the story.
I learned from biblical commentator, Susan Hylen, that adoption was not uncommon in antiquity. “Among the elite it served the important function of allowing for an heir if one had no children, or if one’s children died. The adopted person (who could be a child or an adult) gained social status through association with the parent’s social status. In the same way a biological child would, the adopted child benefitted from the social and political connections of their parent. They also gained wealth through their inheritance. In return the adopted child honored the parent through taking the parent’s name and being loyal to them.
“Similarly, adoption by God is a blessing for which the author [of Ephesians] praises God. It is an action planned by God and pleasing to God. It results in the praise of God by the adopted ones, who have a share in an inheritance from God.”
I believe that the church does live to praise God. We have no higher calling than to offer the worship that belongs to God – day by day, Sunday by Sunday. We can sing our praise, dance our praise, offer our thanks in quiet prayer or attentive listening to God’s Word and will for our lives. I believe that God is delighted when we live out our praise by using our lives to serve others, by embodying God’s love for neighbour, stranger, and even enemy, and by working for justice and peace in the world.
We are called to praise, not because God has made us rich or powerful, or because God threatens to punish or kill us if we don’t praise. But we praise because of God’s unconditional love and mercy, because we belong to God like the adopted children of a faithful and caring parent, and because these are the greatest blessings of life in this world.