Saving our Souls Through Worship

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church

Sabbath, January 10, 2015

Luke 4:5-8

The devil took Jesus up on a mountain top up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. “Look,” the devil said, “I'll give it all to you. The whole thing. Complete power and authority. You can run the world just the way you please. You want to abolish slavery? Done. You want to put all the bad guys in prison? Done. You want to eliminate armies? You can do it. You can have absolute total control. All I require is that you pay obeisance to me. Acknowledge that you got from me and it's all yours.”

Imagine the devil made a similar offer to you. If you lean to the right politically, you could eliminate the income tax, get rid of food stamps, rein in the EPA and privatize Social Security. If you lean to the left you could reverse Citizens United, eliminate corporate tax loopholes, create a single-payer health care system, permanently block the Keystone pipeline.

You would be free to unilaterally edit every law, streamline, reorganize or eliminate any government agency. You could fix everything. There would be no dissent allowed. If you were offered unlimited power over every human being in the world, would you take it?

When you read commentary on this passage in the Gospel, frequently you'll encounter discussions about whether the devil could actually deliver on his offer. Did the devil have the capability to give Jesus the kind of power he was offering? Another question is the matter of trustworthiness. If the devil had the power to had over power over all the kingdoms of the world, if Jesus had bowed, would the devil have delivered. I suppose these are legitimate questions, but they don't appear in the Gospel story.

In the story as it's told in the Gospels, Jesus did not question the capability or honesty of the devil. Jesus went straight to the cost and refused to pay.

“You ask me to worship you? Are you kidding? I worship God and God alone. No deal.”

It was clean, simple, profound.

Jesus' practice of worship protected him against seduction. Similarly, we, too, can avoid investing our souls in foolishness through the practice of worship God.

In February, 1968, I was a tenth grader at Memphis Junior Academy, an Adventist parochial school. The city was electric with tension. The first day of February two garbage collectors, Echole Cole and Robert Walker were crushed in the compactor of their truck.

It was an accident. No one intended their death, but it was an accident waiting to happen. Cole and Walker were Black men. The Black garbage men in Memphis worked in miserable conditions, for miserable pay with no benefits. It was late in the afternoon, their shift was over and the truck was headed back to the terminal. It was pouring rain. There was no room in the cab for Cole and Walker so they climbed into the compactor area at the back of the truck. Some where along the drive, a short activated the compactor. The driver stopped the truck and hit the kill switch, but it was too late. The men were crushed.

Ten days later, the garbage collectors went on strike.

The Mayor, Mr. Loeb, refused to recognize the union. When they marched on city hall, he shouted at them to go back to work. He announced defiantly that he would never kowtow to an illegal rabble of whining employees.

February turned into March. The garbage was piling up. I remember the pile in our backyard by the alley gate.

The strike drew national attention. Daily, strikers marched demanding the city respect their dignity as human beings.

Finally, Martin Luther King, Jr. came to town. Good white folk muttered among themselves about how wrong it was for some outsider to get involved in our business. At school we talked about the strike and about race relations in general. As you would expect in a whites-only school, most of the students shared their parents' scorn for the Black sanitation workers—we called them garbage men. We insisted to ourselves that these garbage men should be grateful for the more than ample wages we gave them. What, did they think they should be paid like White people?

The hostility of white people in Memphis against Dr. King was even more rabid than right-wing hatred of President Obama today.

The beginning of April, Dr. King came back to Memphis for a major march at the beginning of April. At school we traded rumors about plans to assassinate Dr. King. The haters recited these rumors with great glee. Someone was going to “take care” of that troublesome outsider! Only they used other words than outsider.

What made Dr. King do it? What prompted him to expose himself to the hatred and violence of the White population of Memphis?

The answer is found in the concluding paragraph of his speech the night of April 3.

He gave a long, stirring speech talking about the challenges facing the strikers and the call on all people to come to their aid. He referenced the story of the Good Samaritan and asked, What would happen to these people beat up and left by the side of the road by those in power in Memphis? Finally, Dr. King addressed the risk he faced in coming to Memphis.

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I have been to the mountaintop…

Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Mason Temple. Martin Luther King, Jr. April 3, 1968

All big decisions carry a cost. There are no free passes. The question is when you have paid the cost, when the transaction is history, will you be glad you paid?

Jesus refused the devil's offer of an easy path and ended up paying with his life. Jesus was satisfied with the deal he got.

Dr. Martin Luther King knew he was putting his life on the line. He knew that coming to Memphis and standing with the sanitation workers was putting his life at risk. He did it any way. He paid. Without regret.

The day after that speech, Dr. King was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Where did he find the courage to stare death in the face? The key to his courage, to his wisdom, is in those few sentences at the end of his speech there in Memphis.

I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. . . . Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

This is what we do in worship. We go up on the mountaintop. We survey the promised land. We fill our eyes with visions of the glory of the coming of the Lord.

And the glory of that vision steals us against the allures of ignoble offers and opportunities.

Dr. King did not arrive in Memphis because of moment of adrenaline-pumped courage. This was not a mother or dad racing into a burning house to save a child. This was not a soldier making an instantaneous decision to jump on a hand grenade to save his buddies. This was the culmination of a long march toward glory. In 1955, Dr. King was a pastor in a comfortable parish in Montgomery. He could have lived out his days as the respected, appreciated pastor of nice congregations. Instead, he fed his soul with the grand visions of the Bible prophets. He allowed his inner vision to be captivated by the pictures of justice and equity painted by Isaiah and Amos and Micah.

He could have settled for a comfortable life, a respectable career. Instead, through worship, he was drawn to greatness because over and over and over again he turned his attention and admiration to the glorious vision described by the prophets of a world of justice and equity.

May that be true of us as well.

The devil would tempt us to settle for a comfortable respectable life as a congregation.

In worship we are called higher. Jesus could not be seduced by the devil because Jesus resolutely devoted himself to the worship of God—and nothing less. It can be tempting to worship power, money, comfort, respectability. These are good things. There is nothing wrong with them . . . unless we turn them into idols. Unless we worship them. Unless we give them the attention and admiration that belong to God alone.

God is good. Beauty, harmony, strength, intelligence, integrity—all these point toward God. Gentleness, compassion, tact, winsomeness, sweetness—these, too, are attributes of God. God is the sum of virtues and beauties.

Every week, in worship we celebrate this conviction. In worship we declare with joy God is good.

We also kindle again and again our desires to embody the glory of God in our own lives. We are made in the image of God. It is our natural destiny to live out the divine character. In worship, we feed this hunger to live worthy of our divine Creator.

The more clearly we see the divine glory, the more resolute and skillful we will be in living it out.

So in worship we rehearse the goodness of God. We declare the goodness of God. We discuss and ponder. We sing. God is good. We intend to be good.

I would encourage you to be intentional in worship more often than once a week here at church. The ideal would be to make time in your life every day—some special time when you contemplate the goodness and glory of God.

Friday night, at the end of your week, begin the Sabbath by celebrating the goodness of God.

Saturday night as you end the Sabbath, begin your week by celebrating, giving attention and admiration to the goodness of God.

Worship is deliberately focusing our attention and admiration on the goodness of God. When we practice worship that goodness will come to suffuse our lives and shape our minds. We will become immune to the seductions of the devil. We will become devotees of righteousness. We will live lives worthy of our Maker.