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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The House of Worship |
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Luke
19:46 Tenth
Sunday after Trinity August
16, 2009 Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. I don’t know who keeps track of that kind of thing, certainly not I, but I saw it on the internet and thought it providential that I would be preaching about worship 40 years after Woodstock. You may think Woodstock and worship are totally unrelated, and the reason you may think that is because Woodstock and worship are totally unrelated. And yet, the Woodstock generation has had a tremendous influence on the way most people worship God today. Woodstock was a radical rejection of western culture in general and Christianity in particular. Having concluded that western culture, founded upon Christianity, was oppressive and a political/moral failure, Woodstock was an attempt to find personal and international peace through the absence of any rule or authority except that within one’s own self, “as long as you don’t hurt anyone.” In this way, the Woodstock generation believed, real peace and justice would finally come to all people. So Woodstock was the twilight of the Christian world-view and the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius.” It was a return to European paganism, highly flavoured with certain strands of Buddhism and Hinduism. It was a cultural event and a theological, social, political, and political philosophical statement all in one. But mostly it was pure and simple hedonism as is well expressed in one of its many mottoes, “sex drugs, rock and roll.” So, how has Woodstock been one of the major influences of the way most people worship, or think they worship God today? I think most people will agree that the trend toward secularism in western culture is the direct result of the influence of the views of the Woodstock generation, and that the influence of their views has had an overwhelmingly negative impact on our nation. We have gone from a nation whose major problems in the schools were talking in class and chewing gum, to one in which police and security guards are assigned to schools to keep people from killing each other. The promised hope and peace of the Woodstock generation has been shown to be a lie; producing not peace and hope, but strife and despair. Woodstock values have led to epidemic drug abuse. Large sections of the population are economically and socially worse off than ever. Crime is spiraling out of control. The family is disintegrating rapidly, and human rights are being gobbled up by ever growing and ever menacing governments. And the peace among nations, which was the goal of the antiwar Woodstockers, has become more and more unreachable, for as our culture has lost the desire to make the sacrifices required to defend the cause of real freedom; our enemies have grown stronger and more aggressive. We now face the very real possibility of nuclear war in the Middle East and in Korea. All this is the result of policies and laws based upon the misguided, unrealistic, and naive ideas of the Woodtsock generation. I truly believe that what one writer called, “The Greatest Generation,” saved the world, politically. I just pray that the Woodstock generation doesn’t destroy it. The Woodstock generation has had a devastating effect in the Church as well. Their ideas have crept into the mainline denominations, and now are so entrenched in them that they are the controlling point of view. Through them the Bible has been rejected as the authority of doctrine and life, and has been relegated to the position of a guide to spiritual experience, equivalent to the way many Woodstockers think about marijuana and LSD, or whatever the current faddish drugs may be. Based on this view of the Bible a leader in the Episcopal Church said Jesus did not die for our sins and the Bible has caused damage beyond measure in the corporate life of our culture. A Baptist leader has said the Bible simply records what some people thought about God, having no more authority than what anyone else thinks. These views are not unique; they are the accepted understanding of the Bible in all of the mainline denominations of our time. This is why their denominational leadership champions every radical cause that comes down the pike. From abortion, to euthanasia, to unilateral American disarmament, to forced socialistic economic redistribution, the major denominations in Canada, the United States, and Europe unequivocally support and promote them all. Read their books, visit their seminaries, and go to their web sites, and you will see that what I say is true.
The current “worship wars” are the direct
result of the Woodstock generation’s presence in the Church.
Often called the “Me generation,” and believing everything is
about them, they have made the enhancement of their lives the chief goal
of “faith” and the primary job of God.
They have largely discarded traditional worship, and they have
replaced it with entertainment and experience oriented “worship
events” that are all about them instead of all about God.
For their sakes the sermons have been reduced to pep talks and
promises that God exists to give them everything they want in this world.
As one of their best known spokesmen
said, speaking of his preaching, “I am not called to explain every
minute facet of Scripture or to expound on deep theological doctrines ….
My gifting is to encourage, to challenge, and to inspire.”* We
might ask, if it is not the pastor’s job to explain the Scriptures and
expound on the deep theological doctrines, whose job is it?
Jesus cast the buyers and sellers out of the Temple.
These people were there to sell the sacrificial lambs and
other things the pilgrims would need to celebrate the Feast of
Passover in Jerusalem, and they had made the Temple into a place of noise
and commerce. This was in
complete contradiction to God’s will, which was that the Temple stand as
the house of prayer for all nations.
Now it strikes me that watering down the Bible to make Christianity
more appealing to people is selling in the Temple.
It strikes me that moving the emphasis from God to personal
fulfillment is selling in the Temple. It strikes me that changing the music and the forms of
worship to make the “audience" feel good is selling in the Temple.
Why? Because all of these are designed to attract people by giving
them what they want, knowing that if you give them what they want they
will come back, and they will bring their money.
Therefore, much of what goes on in church is “market driven”
churchianity rather than Bible driven Christianity, and it is no different
from what was happening in the Temple in Jesus’ day.
Those who do the watering down of the Gospel, who change the forms
of worship, who change the music to make people feel good are the sellers.
Those who demand these things be done in order to make church more
comfortable for them are the buyers.
I see no difference in them and the ones Jesus drove out of the
Temple more than 2,000 years ago. That should cause every one of us to
tremble, lest we be guilty of the same sin.
Jesus said the Temple, is to be the House of
Prayer. The “prayer”
Jesus spoke of encompasses all of worship.
The word in the Greek New Testament is a word often translated
“worship” in the Septuagint. It
is the word used in Zechariah 14:16, “all
nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to
worship the King, the Lord of hosts.”
It is also the word used in Rev. 22:9; “worship
God.” It is very important for us to see that real worship is a service that is about God; all about God. The Woodstock generation has turned it into a festival that is all about them. That is why most churches today have a stage, and on that stage the performers put on a show for the congregation, which is really seen as the audience. The point is that the show is for the audience. But this is completely backwards. In real worship, God is the audience and we are all the performers. We are a liturgical church, and the word, ‘liturgy” means “the work of the people.” In worship, we all work together to serve God. Everything we do is for Him. I remember seeing a performance of “The Sound of Music” done by a small, amateur theatre group in Charles Town, West Virginia. It was terrific. It was wonderful. No professional troupe could have done better. After the performance a friend of mine, who played several parts in the production, asked me how I liked it. Then he said something I had never thought of before. He said he never saw the play because he was busy performing. How profound. The performance was not for the actors. The play was for the audience. How totally appropriate to worship. We, the actors, do not perform for our benefit, but for the benefit of the audience, and the audience’s name is God. We do not come to be entertained, or to have spiritual experiences. We come to worship God. Anything less makes us buyers and sellers in the Temple. *Quoted in Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 90.
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