Praise and Worship: For Love

Text - Psalm 100

I've been thinking a lot about praise and worship and prayer. I have conversations about these words with people and it rarely fails that we define these words differently. For some people worship includes prayer and for others it doesn't. Sometimes worship and praise are interchangeable words and sometimes they are not.

No matter what the specific definition of the words for a person, we do tend to agree that generally speaking all these words are talking about reaching toward the Sacred.

There was a time when I was very very sad and scared. I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know how to be who I was. I didn't know who to be. Everything was all mixed up.

The church I attended at the time had two components. The first was a praise and worship time. Basically we sang for an hour. There was a song leader who had chosen the songs. We also had lots of band members. The song leader would direct the whole thing. I could be very powerful ... very moving.

Sometimes, though, the music just didn't match up to how you were feeling. One morning I was feeling quite desperate and I was hoping for some music that would help me work through my struggles. I wanted to sing a song like, this one from the book of Hosea:

Sow to yourself in righteousness
Reap in mercy, reap in mercy
Break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord
Till God comes and reigns righteousness upon you

Or this one from Psalm 42:

As the deer thirsts for the water so my soul thirsts after you
You oh Lord are my hearts desire and I long to worship you
You oh Lord are my strength and shield
To you oh Lord does my spirit yield
You alone are my hearts desire and I long to worship you

But what I got was a song that was happy. It was upbeat. Then I got another upbeat song that was less lively but still a hopeful wonderful song. I was not feeling hopeful or wonderful. I was not feeling the songs in the service. But at one point I decided that I was going to sing with all my heart. I was going to break through my own hopelessness and despair and praise God in what I called faith. I had never sung a happy song with grief in my heart and tears flowing out of my eyes before, but I did that morning.

One of the songs that I remember singing was this one. Some of you may know it with a different melody line.

I love you Lord and I lift my voice
To worship you, oh my soul rejoice
Take joy my king in what you hear
Let me be a sweet sweet sound in your ear
We exalt you
We exalt you
We exalt you
Oh God

This song helped me to break through. I realized that I could sing a song about my soul rejoicing even though it felt like I was dying because I could truthfully sing the words, "I love you, Lord." I love you. I decided that if I still knew that I loved God that that meant my soul still had something to rejoice about. All I wanted to do was to reach out to the Sacred. I wanted to take the hand of my Divine Beloved and I wanted to be wrapped in my Beloved's arms. I needed shelter and I needed acceptance. I wanted to be loved back.

Music has been a good way for me to reach out. Sometimes it isn't with words. Often I reach out with my drums. I used to reach through playing my clarinet. That was a long time ago. Some people use art or poetry. Some use dance or theatre.

It seems to me that whatever someone uses to reach past the struggle, if it isn't motivated by love it won't have the strength or stamina to fully tap in. This whole Christian journey; the reason we build and continue to be a part of a faith community; the desire to reach out and share with others; all of this has to be motivated by love.

I wanted to talk before we sing today to name a few things. First I want to name the motivation of love as being primary. Sometimes we don't feel love, but we may have a loyalty or devotion that is attached to our love that can make love more tangible. Next, I want to name that sometimes we have to push through a struggle to praise God. Struggling is important. I think being in an honest struggle is healthy. It gives us a depth to our soul and our living. I would rather struggle and push to get to another side than to pretend that there is no struggle and be silently miserable or to have the pain masked even to myself. Struggle for the sake of struggle, I think, is counter productive. But I do not want to silence my pain or anyone else's pain. I also do not want to stop praising The Holy, The Presence who loves me and wants me to be consciously close.

That morning of praise for me was powerful because I figured out I could be in that moment of contradiction and the result was that I did not die. Rather I ended up being more fully present to my Divine Beloved and to myself. I couldn't do it as just a ritual. I had to do it for love. I had to do it to be consciously close to God.

Today I want us to sing a few songs. They are the songs in the insert to the bulletin. I don't know if any of you know them. And again, I might know a different melody line, so we'll figure it out. The how of singing is not as important as the singing itself and the being together.

Our text today has one of my favourite verses - Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Love is not always pretty. It is not always harmonious. Sometimes there is dissonance or passing tones that help us figure out the direction the song needs to take. I invite you to find your voice - find a harmony part if you wish. Or let your body do whatever it wants to do ... sway or stand or sit ...

We will do each song several times through, kind of in a Lectio Divina style. My hope is that as we sing these songs repeatedly we have the opportunity to go deeper. Two of the three songs are scripturally based. The third song is a love song to God.

We are all struggling with something - some of us with many things. As we use this meditative style, praising and worshiping through song, I invite you to be present to yourself and to look for and encounter your Love. This love that I am talking about is the love that you hold in you and Love which is calling to you through the Holy Spirit or The Sacred or however you name it.