"Listening as Worship"

So…

Have you ever heard that my wife hates to go with me to a worship service where I am not in leadership?

It turns out that in that setting I am a true pain in the neck, noticing everything and in my own way being something like a church secret shopper, seeing all the things that are correctable that perhaps the folks at that church don’t realize they are screwing up.

And that’s really a problem, because I fidget. I write things down, and I’m not sure there is a solution for this, I yawn a lot.

Not exactly a model church attender.

I think Sue’s hope is that I will sit quietly and at least act like I am paying attention, maybe even better that I am truly enjoying the opportunity to just worship!

When you go to worship, what is your experience?

What exactly are you hoping will happen? What do expect to get out of the experience?

Most of us I expect figure we will see friends. Maybe we will sing a familiar and perhaps favorite hymn.

Is it possible, and maybe it is, that your main reason for coming to worship is to listen?
What if we assumed that the reason God wants us to attend worship is that God wants to speak to us! Mind blown! Right?

That in the time we spend in this sacred place and time, that God intends to deliver to us a word or two that will transform our lives?

How would that change things?

What if in our attendance to worship we assumed the real purpose was to draw our ears close enough to God’s lips that God would whisper in our ears what we need to hear?

What if today, God was prepared to speak to us, but only if we came ready to hear what God wants to say?

How would your preparations for worship and your attitude toward worship change, if you knew that if you settled in to hear God speak, God would?

I don’t know what your Sunday morning is like. 

Mine is often filled with both concern and happy anticipation about what will happen in the few minutes we are together.

Of course, I am concerned about the details. 

Will I remember the baptism water? I know I wrote the sermon on Wednesday so is it really as amazing as I thought it was back then?

It is possible that today the internet will fail, or one of the worship leaders, Sue, Penny, Mike, Elizabeth, John, or one of the other leaders will be sick, or forget it is their week to put up communion?

Did I get the week wrong and today is a baptism not communion?

All too often my preparations are about which tie I am wearing, which Jerry Garcia production, and which suit, and not about what God is about to speak to - me.

If I am even listening.

My heart stuck on the details of my sacrifice as it were, and not on the opportunity I will have to listen to the God of the universe speak to me about what that amazing, loving Father, Son, and Spirit needs to say to me. 

About who I am.

About how I am to feel.

About what I am to do and be.

Failing to listen to the hymns words as I sing and play them. 

Failing to hear God’s answers to pray as I lead the people of God in prayer. 

Failing to understand that God’s voice was speaking to me in the anthem.

Or in that invitation to help a woman I don’t know in Kentucky stay safe in the tornado that is coming for her.

That the call to do something is my invitation from God to make a difference.

Because, perhaps, and maybe like you, I am not really listening.

Failing to hear the author of Ecclesiastes pointed advice that I/we “Be careful what <we> do when <we> enter the house of God. <Because> fools go there to offer sacrifices, <to atone for their> sin. <Instead> …it's best just to listen when you go to worship.

One might even go a step further and suggest that perhaps the reason to come to worship is to listen. 

To assume that God will in fact speak to you if you are listening, and perhaps not about what you want God to speak to you about, but rather about what God knows you need to hear.

So, when you go to worship, perhaps our single prayer should be:

Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.

Amen.