2/6/22 “A Rehearsal for Life Part 1” by Larry E. Schultz and “A Rehearsal for Life Part 2” by Nancy E. Petty

Sermon: “A Rehearsal for Life” (Part 1) Larry E. Schultz, Minister of Music

As you prepared for worship today, did you anticipate your active role in our experience? In this Prologue, my part of today’s sermon, I want to encourage a more mindful realization that our collective, communal participation in worship is important. In fact, the worship experience we have together depends on it.

But what is “worship,” and what is the “participation” I’m referring to?  

The word “worship” literally means “worth-ship” – defining worship as the upholding of what we find “worthy.”  

Regarding “participation,” it has been well-said that “worship is a verb” – something we do.  This idea is supported by an ancient word for worship: “liturgy,” which means the “work of the people.” We often name one or more of our worship leaders “liturgists” – but we are all liturgists, and there are many ways a congregation participates in this work of worship. 

Would you believe that the organist for the Billy Graham Crusades was one of our country’s leading liturgical worship scholars? Dr. Donald Hustad was a beloved seminary professor to some of us, and he was the first to give me an in-depth understanding of worship as the work or action of the people. Even further, he taught that a service of worship in which all participate is “a rehearsal for life”- that what we do in a sanctuary space prepares us to fully live and act in the other spaces of our lives. Many of us grew up in evangelical congregations that, except for the action of congregational singing, could give the impression that we were in worship to observe something take place. And often, these congregations didn’t realize their songs were more than singing – that they were expressions of praise or gratitude, contemplation or prayer, and also sermons! The worship work of the congregation involves all of these and more.

Worship scholars and the Christian Church have looked to the Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, to provide an understanding of active congregational worship. In chapter 6 of Isaiah, we find his worship vision.

In your mind’s eye, imagine and picture what Isaiah dreamed as he expressed: 

I saw God, seated on a throne, high and exalted, 

and the train of God’s robe filled the temple.

Above God were seraphs – each with six wings:  

with two they covered their faces,

with two they covered their feet ,

and with two they were flying.

And they were calling back and forth to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy

Holy is God Almighty

Heaven and Earth are full of God’s Glory.”

At their sound, the thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

Then, aware of God’s presence, Isaiah made a confession noting he was a man of unclean lips.

But to lift him out of this feeling, one of the seraphs flew to him touching his lips with a burning coal.

And then God speaks, saying, whom will I send?  

And Isaiah says the familiar response: “Here am I, send me.” 

Then God and Isaiah continued to have conversation.

Think about the action involved in Isaiah’s worship vision:

Isaiah becomes aware of the sacred and responds.

And God acts next by sending a seraph to bless Isaiah.

Isaiah is then able to hear God speak, and Isaiah responds.

God and Isaiah continue a back-and-forth conversation. 

It’s apparent why Isaiah 6 has had such an historical influence on worship and its action. It presents a model of worship referred to as a “dialogue,” a “holy drama,” or “call and response” or, as I like to say, “experiencing and expressing.” We gather to experience and express that which we find worthy.

The Christian Church calls this dialogical worship a “Service of the Word” and connects it with a “Service of the Table” – we celebrate both today, and everyone has a part in the action. 

By now perhaps the picture on the front of the worship guide has meaning (a photo of Pullen’s congregational pews). It is from this place that you participate. It’s a reminder of your role to praise and pray and preach – to take part in the dialogue. 

If we do say so ourselves, from this chancel you hear meaningful anthems from choirs, moving music from orchestra and organ and magnificent sermons. But even these call for your active participation. Gratefully, our sermons, anthems and other proclamations from the chancel are always offered with you and on your behalf, never to you as mere spectators. They call for our active listening and contemplation. And you’ve got to be on your toes – in a sermon, Nancy Petty may call your name, or find other ways to draw you in. Or I might turn around from a choral anthem to engage your voices. After all, you are part of our largest church choir. These examples point to the active, congregational approach we value in worship.

And this value has history in our church. I sometimes tell the Pullen 101 class a story from Posey Belcher, the pastor with whom I served in my first full-time church in South Carolina.  When hearing I was coming to Pullen, Posey was excited, and told me that when he was a student at Southeastern Seminary, that classes were required to visit various churches and one of those was Pullen. He told me the reason was that worship here was so different from other Baptist churches in the area – because worship at Pullen involved the congregation throughout the entire experience (just like Isaiah’s vision).

We have celebrated and built upon our heritage of worship, but what happens when a pandemic strikes? What happens to the worship dialogue? What happens to active worshipers when they find themselves with masks on their faces – even masks that are needed for compassionate safety?  For a minister of music, who has spent much time helping congregations be a part of the dialogue of worship – it is a nightmare – like a bad dream – as persons are suddenly silenced, seemingly transformed into spectators! 

But with my understandings and our commitments toward worship, I couldn’t just stand by and let you be silenced from the worship dialogue – yet the aerosols from our singing voices and from our instruments could bring harm to those around us!  There was a time we had to sing or play instruments remotely and combine them through recordings.  Though it wasn’t the same as being together, it allowed our voices to be joined.  Not only did our choirs and orchestra remotely record for worship, but it was of utmost importance to me (because of the reasons I’ve already described) that congregational voices take part.  When the pandemic lifted enough for those comfortable and of appropriate health to gather in person, there was, and remains, an understandable sense of caution. So, we creatively incorporated a variety of safer congregational responses: from silence and sign-language to drumming, clapping, and humming and now singing with masks. All of these involved us in worship, and we will make use of all these in worship today, along with a new expression. 

On Friday night, I discovered a website, pandemicreligion.org.  It’s a digital archive from this period to inform future generations how American churches, synagogues and mosques responded to the pandemic. I was thrilled to discover that Pullen’s first music-led worship service from the height of the pandemic was included in this archive. I hope future generations will see it and be encouraged by our creativity, and because we did not allow the pandemic to silence our worship dialogue.  My hopeful prayer is that we will come out of the pandemic more actively involved in worship than ever; for it is, indeed, “a rehearsal for life!”

 Donald P. Hustad, Jubilate II: Church Music in Worship and Renewal, (Carol Stream, IL, Hope Publishing Co.), P. 124.

Sermon “A Rehearsal for Life” (Part 2) Nancy E. Petty, Pastor

The Rehearsal

Isaiah 58:6-8a

When I left home over 30 years ago, my beloved grandmother gave me a quilt she had hand stitched and quilted, and a set of kitchen hand towels that she had embroidered. One for each day of the week. You see them here on the communion table. For over 30 years they have been neatly folded and packed away in a plastic container – both the quilt and hand towels. I dared not use them for fear I would mess them up. My desire to keep them safe and protected meant that, year after year, I would forgo the pleasure and joy of using them. Every so often, I take them out of their plastic box and admire them. But ultimately, after each time I visit them, I neatly fold them and pack them away again in the plastic container. The quilt and hand towels hold special memories of my grandmother that I want to preserve and protect. To expose them or share them I run the risk of messing them up.

Sometimes, I feel about worship the way I feel about the quilt and hand towels my grandmother made me. Worship holds special moments and memories that I want to preserve and protect. To try and share those experiences outside this place can often feel risky. How do I share the memories of my first baptism in the old Finlator Hall and every baptism worship experience after that with the risk of others not understanding the significance? Or all those Maundy Thursday worship experiences when together we risked vulnerability in the act of washing one another’s feet? Or the Ash Wednesday worship services when we mark one another with ashes as we prepare for the Lenten journey? Or all those worship times when we knelt on these chancel steps to share communion with one another? Think about all the precious memories we hold of our communal worship in this place – Rite-13 rituals, baby dedications, litanies of blessing and farewell, vigils after tragedies, sharing communion, and the mysterious movement of God’s spirit that flows between us Sunday-after-Sunday in song and prayer and spoken word. These are moments that I want to protect and preserve and hold close in my heart. To expose them or share them runs the risk of messing them up – of realizing that they may not be understood or valued by others. So, like my grandmother’s quilt and hand towels, I often pack away in a safe place what I experience in worship and forgo the pleasure and joy of sharing it with others.

I imagine that when my grandmother was stitching my quilt and embroidering those hand towels, she imagined that quilt keeping me warm on a cold night and those hand towels hanging on a hook in my kitchen that I would reach for when taking a pot off the stove. I can’t imagine that she ever thought that I would pack them away in a plastic box in an effort to preserve them or keep them safe or to keep from getting messed up.

And while I often find myself doing the same thing with my worship experiences, I can’t imagine that is how God longs for me to respond to worship. Is it not true that what happens here in this place of worship is simply the rehearsal for a life beyond these walls? What does it mean to stand in this sanctuary and sing, “light dawns on a weary world when eyes begin to see all people’s dignity” if I’m not showing up at my work place singing that song in my heart and sharing its message with others. What does it mean to walk to this table and share the bread of love and cup of grace if I’m not sharing my bread with those who are hungry and extending grace to my fellow beings? What does it mean if only in this place I speak the words “you are God’s beloved” and withhold those words when disagreeing with a friend of family member?

You get my point. What happens in worship is a rehearsal for when we step out of this building and the curtain goes up out in the world. And just in case you are wondering, the rehearsal is just as important as when the curtain goes up. Maybe even more so in some ways. The rehearsal prepares us. The rehearsal strengthens us. The rehearsal teaches us. The rehearsal builds togetherness. We need the rehearsal. When we rehearse together love, when we rehearse together forgiveness and grace, when we rehearse together our differences, when we rehearse together our silence, when we rehearse together our unity, when we rehearse together justice and peacemaking and vulnerability we worship. And when we worship in this way, our worship then has the possibility and promise to transform our lives and relationships beyond these walls, and indeed our world. Our worship is diminished if it stays within these walls.

Think of it this way – we rehearse on Sunday here in this sanctuary and we worship Monday through Saturday wherever life takes us beyond these walls. So unpack the quilt and take out the hand towels, for they are meant to be enjoyed and used every single day. Translated: set the table of love every day, share your bread, wash a loved ones feet, tell someone they are God’s beloved, forgive another, right an injustice no matter how small, sit in silence with a friend who is hurting. Do out there what we do in here in this place when we gather for worship! 

• Welcome the stranger who walks in the door of your work or school or coffee shop

• As your soul is fed in this place, fed the stomach of a hungry child

• As you make a new friend here, make a new friend out there

• As you sit in the warmth of this community, take that warmth with you and wrap your arms around another who is cold in their soul

• As you sing of your faith in this place, lift your voice in the public square to sing of God’s justice-love for all

Do out there what we do in here in this place. And don’t wait 30 years to do so.