“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.”

John 4:23

One of you asked me after worship a few Sundays ago when our attendance had been pretty slim: “Why don’t church members come to church?”  My answer was that I didn’t really understand why church members don’t come to church more regularly.  Obviously there are many different reasons, varying from one person to another.  But I told my questioner that I did know what had produced on some occasions amazing results, increasing church attendance astronomically.

I’ll never forget how startled I was to walk into the Idlewild sanctuary one Sunday and find it over-flowing with people.  It wasn’t Easter, yet the ushers were bringing in chairs.  No special services had been announced.  Dr. Ralph Sockman was not preaching.  Yet, there was no place to seat all the people.  Why had they come?

The next day I was in Atlanta for the meeting of a General Assembly Committee, and I heard from other ministers, from churches in Norfolk, Houston, and Chattanooga, that unprecedented numbers of people had crowded into their churches for worship on Sunday.  Why this sudden trek to the houses of worship in all the villages and cities of America?

Why, the President of the United States had been assassinated in Dallas on Friday.  The nation had been knocked to its knees.  The incredible had happened.  In sorrow and confusion and fear the American people had turned instinctively to the churches.

Whatever else the outpouring of the American people to their places of worship on that particular Sunday may have signified, it certainly revealed this, that when men and women of faith are perplexed or in trouble they turn to their God.

Isaiah tells that it was in the year that good King Uzziah died from leprosy that he, stunned and appalled by the national tragedy, had stumbled into the Temple, experienced there his rich vision of the majesty and holiness of God, and received his divine commission to serve the King of Kings.

Some of you here this morning will remember that day when the solemn word was brought to the American people that the long awaited D-Day had arrived — that American men — our sons and brothers and husbands and fathers — were crossing the English Channel and hurling themselves on the bastion of Hitlerian tyranny — then the sober citizenry of our land arose — arose in unison, men, women, and children, and crowded into the churches to pray.

It seems that people, whenever they realize they are over their heads or beyond their strength in any situation — perplexed, despairing, or sorrowing — if they have even a fragment of faith, as big as the tiniest seed — will turn to worship their God.

But what is worship?  The word the Greeks used for worship literally meant, “to bow the knee.”  “To reverence,”  “to acknowledge the superior worth of,”  “to admit one’s dependence upon,” this is to worship.

Thomas Carlyle remembered from earliest childhood that breathless moment when he first saw his mother kneeling silently in prayer.  “There I saw,” said Carlyle, “the highest I knew on earth bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in heaven.  At that moment, reverence, the divinest (thing) in man, was born in my childish heart.”  (Sartor Resartus — Thomas  Carlyle) That is the beginning of worship — to feel reverence toward God.

Once when the aging Carl Sandburg celebrated another of his many birthdays he told the inquiring reporter that he intended to spend the day quietly, with no public appearances or speeches — “But, said Sandburg, “I expect to make a little address to God, to thank Him for all the years He has given me.”

That’s worship — to acknowledge that there exists One higher than one’s self — that there is a creator and preserver of all creation — and to acknowledge dependence upon the Eternal mercy and to give thanks for the blessings of life.

Human beings are worshipping animals, as someone has observed, who will never be able to bear the burden of their own lives unless they learn to bow down to something higher than themselves.

But what is correct or proper worship?  Should one go to the Catholic or the Baptist church?  Should the service be said in Latin or Hindustani?  Should it be spoken or sung?  Are gorgeous robes and the smell of incense necessary to the worship in the sanctuary?  Or does one worship God as well at home alone, or in God’s out-of-doors with family and congenial friends?

These are just some of the questions people are forever raising in the endless debate over the manner and shape and place of worship.  In our Gospel lesson this morning St. John records the argument the Samaritan woman wanted to start with Jesus when she said to Him: “We Samaritans say the proper place to worship God is on Mt. Gerizim where Abraham offered to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and God spoke to him.  But you Jews say the proper place to worship is your Temple at Jerusalem.  Now, which is right?”

But Jesus refused to debate this vital issue of proper worship on a geographical, denominational, or racial level.  Rather, He lifted it out of that small context and said: “God is spirit.  They that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.  For the hour cometh and now is when men shall no longer worship at Jerusalem or on this mountain, but in spirit and truth.  The true worshippers are those who worship in spirit and truth.  For such the Father seeketh to worship him.”

What is Jesus saying?  He begins with God, whose true nature is Spirit.  God therefore cannot be limited spacially or racially or nationally.  So, spacial, national, and racial considerations about proper places and rituals for worshipping Him are beside the point.  Man in his worship of God must begin at the point of God’s nature, and God is spirit who hath not a body like man.

Acceptable worship of God by all human beings, says Jesus, must have two characteristics:  It must be in Spirit and in Truth.

What do these two rubrics for correct worship mean – in spirit and in truth?  Spirit is that highest and best part of us, that area of our being capable of communing with the Eternal God.  It is our spirit, our conscious, emotional, volitional life which must be brought into God’s presence and presented with fitting contrition and adoration, or no genuine worship takes place.

Therefore, it is not the correctness of the words spoken in worship — true worship is unutterable, beyond language; it is not the posture of the body, whether sitting or standing — (some people can strut sitting down or kneeling); it is not the denominational label, nor the ethnic orientation, that makes worship worthy or unworthy — but rather whether the worshipper is worshiping in form or in spirit.

The second rubric for worthy worship Jesus gives is that it be “in truth.”  This means that on our part our worship must be sincere, without deception or hypocrisy.  “To tell God the truth” is fundamental.  No posturing or pretending is true worship.

But worshipping God in truth goes farther still than sincerity; our worship of Him, to be worthy, must be according to His true nature.  To worship God according to false mental images of Him is to blaspheme His name and nature and to degrade both our personalities and our common life.   If one thinks God is a sleepy old owl in a hollow tree, no matter how sincerely he kneels daily and says his prayers, he is barking up the wrong tree.

Human beings have an incurable habit of making God in their own image, and then prostrating themselves before that which their selfish hearts adore.  Therefore, our worship stands in need of constant reform, that it may be worthy, in spirit and in truth, both pleasing to God and ennobling to man.

The rubric for the reformation of Christian worship in the days of John Calvin and John Knox was: “Make it Biblical.”  The Reformers threw the painted images of the saints out of the churches.  They substituted a plain communion table for the High Altar.  They stripped the liturgy of what they judged to be superstitious practices.  They swept out the elaborate music of the mass and sang the Psalms of David set to simple and chaste tunes.

Charles W. Baird, writing on the Swiss Reformation, says that the worship services in the Reformed churches became plain with “bald Biblical simplicity. Preaching was almost the only function performed in the churches.  Sermons were delivered in abundance; on weekdays, at six in the morning; on Sundays at four in the afternoon.

The rubric for the reforming of Christian worship in the time of Calvin and Knox was: “Make it Biblical.”

The rubric for the reforming of Christian worship in our time is: “Make it relevant.” The criticism we hear so often about church services is that they are so disconnected from the lives of contemporary people.  One of the most valuable contributions of the existentialist philosophers, both those who are Christian and those who are not, has been their heated insistence that human beings act from “good faith” and not “bad faith” — that in their thinking, emotion, acting, they be authentic and genuine, geared into real life, both within one’s own being and in the world without.

This cry for relevance in worship was heard back in the day of the 7^th century prophets of Israel, when Amos said God could no longer stomach the keeping of holy days and the making of generous sacrifices in the Temple by a people who were dishonest in their business dealings and cruelly oppressive to the poor and defenseless.  Rather than sacrifices and sonorous musical services in the Temple, what God wanted, Amos said, was justice and righteousness in their everyday life.

And James, our Lord’s brother, in his general epistle to the first Christian communities, raised the cry for the reformation of congregational worship when he saw the ugly sight of class discriminations made in the place of worship.  The poor man was snubbed there and the rich were shown special favors.  So James warned the young church:  “Don’t ever attempt, my brothers, to combine snobbery with faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

But there is a third rubric for Christian worship in this time of appalling neglect of the Sunday services of the sanctuary.  It is this: “Make it regular.”

Consider Harry Emerson Fosdick’s parable of a father and his two sons.  “One son looked upon his father as a last resort in critical need.  He never came to him for friendly conference, never sought his advice, in little difficulties never was comforted by his help.  He did not make his father his confidant.  He went to college and wrote home only when he wanted money.  He fell into disgrace, and called on his father only when he needed legal aid.  He ran his life with utter disregard of his father’s character or purpose, and turned to him only when in desperate straits.  The other son saw in his father’s love the supreme motive of his life.  He was moved by daily gratitude so that to be well pleasing to his father was his joy and his ideal.  His father was his friend.  He confided in him, was advised by him, kept close to him, and in his crises came to his father with a naturalness born of long habit. . .  Is there any doubt as to which is the nobler sonship?”  (Harry Emerson Fosdick — The Meaning of Prayer)

These are the rubrics for the reformation of Christian worship in our Reformed tradition and in our time.  Make it Biblical, make it relevant, and make it regular.

Then will our worship be what God intends and what we most need – the presenting of ourselves to God for His changing us into what He wants us to be.  “True worship,” said William Temple, “is the submission of all our nature to God.  It is the quickening of our conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of our minds by His truth; the purifying of our imaginations by His beauty; the opening of our hearts to His love; the surrender of our wills to His purpose — and all this gathered up in adoration — the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.” (William Temple — Readings in St. John’s Gospel, on text)