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Singin' Like We Mean it

Fifth Sunday in Easter

The Waring Family Bluegrass Service

1 Peter 2:7-10

April 24, 2005

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

 

My remarks this morning are based on the Bible Focus which Courtney just read, where the chief of the apostles, Peter, says, "...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God..."  Four things there:  a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God and a holy nation.

To be a HOLY people these days is tough in this trendy, conformist culture.  Holy means that we are not to just blend in with this culture, but to be set apart to stand out as different because of our relationship to God.  This week Connie Jenkins passed along to me a little piece from Garrison Keillor who teased that what makes Lutherans stand out is our coffee, which he calls our third sacrament.  Only Lutherans have coffee and doughnuts as a line item in the church budget!  If it's a 100 degrees with 90% humidity, we will still have coffee after the service.  When it comes to worship, he says that Lutherans usually follow the official liturgy with the kind of passion that almost looks like it's our way of suffering for our sins, that we are such worshipers of habit that if we watch a Star Wars movie and they say 'May the Force be with you', we respond with 'And also with you'.  When it comes to music, we do like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn or one with more than four stanzas.

When Peter said that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people belonging to god, he then explained what all this is for.  He says that we are these four things, "that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light."  The REASON we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people belonging to God is SO THAT we may declare the praises of God.  But according to Garrison Keillor, when it comes to how we express ourselves in worship, well we Lutherans tend to be a little on the reserved side:  we believe in prayer but we would practically die if asked to pray out loud and if we hear something really funny in the sermon, we might even smile as loudly as we can.

Declaring the praises of God is not something that Lutherans are all that well known for.  We are so formal, so standardized, well behaved and quiet in our worship that our Baptist type friends often say that we "go" to church but don't really "praise" God.  Like how can we hear that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people belonging to God and then just sit stone-faced like we do?  If you shot a silent movie from where I stand, so that you could only watch people's faces, you would have no idea what's going on:  that they are singing about joy, or the hope of eternal life.  But I'll wager that all of that is going to change in a few minutes as you will have a new opportunity to declare the praises of God...in a new key, in a new way.

Let's start off with this next hymn and even sing it like we mean it!