Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI  53029

October 3, 2004:  WEEK 2 of THE FORTY DAYS OF PURPOSE

We began our 40 days of purpose last Sunday with the question: “What on earth am I here for?” as Pastor Wayne challenged us with remembering that it’s not about us, it’s about God (and what a relief THAT is!)  You know the technical theological word we Lutherans give to that fact that it’s not about us, it’s about God?  We call that = GRACE

Some of you have had that nightmare … maybe when you were taking your sophomore high school speech class, where you come into the classroom, and everybody is there, your parents, your principal,  even your kid brother, and ALL your classmates to hear your speech, only thing is they forgot to tell YOU that it was your day to give the speech… so the lights and the camera all focus on you, and your are paralyzed with fear because you haven’t prepared a word, not one word to say!!!

And then you wake up &  good news is, it was just a dream!   It’s not about you to give the speech after all!  And in the same way, it’s not about you to find the purpose of your life, it’s about God, who has fashioned you for a purpose.  It’s not about us, it’s about God and what a relief that is. 

Pastor Wayne then retold the Bible story of Simon Peter, who had been fishing all night & caught NOTHING (and Wayne called that what?  “the empty Net syndrome) but then Simon Peter said what?  He said NEVERTHELESS, Lord and he threw out those nets one more time, just because Jesus his Lord had asked him to do it.  And the nets were filled, as Simon Peter became aware that the Lord Jesus, the Son of God himself, was with him in his boat.  This same Lord is with us in the “boats” of our lives.

This second week, of our Purpose Driven Life series, we’re looking at what Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life’ calls the first Purpose of our lives:  You and I were planned for God’s pleasure:  and what pleases God is exactly the experience that Peter had on that fishing boat- God encountered Simon Peter and Simon Peter responded with all his heart, soul, mind and strength: that is, emotionally, spiritually mentally physically,  he realized that  God was there, and Simon Peter was awed by God’s presence in boat of his life.     That’s worship.  That’s the heart of worship.  It’s not about us, And here’s where I do have an theological issue with Rick Warren, the Baptist author and pastor of “The 40 Days of Purpose”.  Wonderful guy, he’s absolutely right about worship being the foundational purpose of our lives, but it doesn’t begin, as Rick says on Day 10 of our 40 Days of purpose, with our submission to God. .. it’s about God encountering us, and we respond sometimes totally without planning to at all, we respond with  all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.   And when it happens, it’s the coolest thing in the world.  You KNOW God is.  And He’s greater than you ever dreamed of.  And your knees begin to shake.    But it’s not about us, Rick, and whether we’re submitting ourselves to God enough or not.    It’s about God.  First God loves us.  Then, by the gift of the Holy Spirit,  we respond.

I John 4:10  “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

For me, one such worship encounter happened in Taize, France.  I was 24 years old.  A young bride, who had abandoned my husband on our first wedding anniversary, can you believe I did this?  We were on internship, in Germany, I had this offer I couldn’t refuse to go with the wild & wooly German youth group and a couple of senior pastors to this monastery in France where thousands of Catholic, Protestant, and questioning agnostic teenagers and young adults get together every weekend for Christian worship.  And yes, Wayne and I had a fight the morning we left.  (Would you believe, he thought I shouldn’t go away on our first anniversary).  And then it turned out the  teenagers and senior pastors I went with were a tight knit group that didn’t … even back then… have a real high regard for Americans, And I got like no sleep at the youth hostels we stayed in, with rock hard beds, and raucious punk music late into the night, and Europeans tended to have different standards of hygiene than we Americans do…

And then we got to France, set up tents at the Taize campsites, and I found out our meals were literally slop: gray slop plopped into bowls, army camp style, and the toilets, well some of you know about what is called a Turkish toilet, and hey I was a girl from just south of the Wisconsin boarder used to nice Kohler toilets.

And we had worship, I kid you not, 3 times a day, you  would have to take off your shoes and walk into this huge tent, and kneel on hard prayer benches, and chant.  And I missed my young husband so bad.  And the only word of French I knew was “croissant” and we didn’t get any of those…   And I counted the days until I could go back home to Wayne…   and it was the days before cell phones so I couldn’t call him… I wondered if he still wanted to stay married to this nincompoop wife of his… and I was not what you would think of as in a spiritual frame of mind…  and on the last day there, we had a service of Adoration of the cross.   Now some of you who grew up Catholic know exactly what that is.  It’s done in many catholic churches around the world on Good Friday, and a huge cross is laid out on the ground, and at a certain point in the service you make your way forward and you touch that cross… and you lay all your burdens, all your prayers, your shame, your confusion, all your loneliness, all your hate of gray gruel & Turkish toilets , & arrogant Europeans, and there are thousands of people around you, as you laid all that on that big wooden cross, and a there were a thousand voices, Catholic, Protestant, and not sure of anything agnostics, but voices  lifted up in chant, and it was like an electric current, a physical electric current that went throughout, that whole unwashed crowd, and throughout my very being, and God made himself present to me, and THEN and only then, I adored him.  With my heart, soul, mind and body strength, I worshipped him.  And then, only then, did I go home to Wayne & he & I worked out the human forgiveness we then were empowered to give one another.

Purpose #1 for our lives:  What worship is really all about

Worship is  an encounter with the Living Lord.  It’s what happened in the Gospel beginning on the road to Emmaus, as the two disciples heard Jesus explain the Bible, then – not even recognizing him – they  invited Him to stay with them, they invited him to their table, & He made himself known to them in the breaking of the bread. 

The Lutheran emphasis on worship is this: you do it - gathering  with other Christians, even if you don’t feel like it,  even if you don’t really know who Jesus is.  You do it, even if you’re not sure you’re “getting something out of it.”   You do it, even if, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, even like me in Taize, we are feeling confused, stressed, and frankly not all that religious.  Even if we’re deep into that EMPTY NET SYNDROME…

We do it NEVERTHELESS  Nevertheless…  

Because its not about us.  It’s about God who has promised to encounter us, in what we Lutherans call Word and Sacrament, …  “For where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  Matthew 18:20

God makes His presence known, in the Word:  like the disciples said afterwards:  Didn’t our hearts burn with in us  as he… was opening the scriptures to us?”  Luke 24:32

God makes His presence known in the Sacrament of the Altar:  “he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…”  Luke 24:30-31

And this is not our own doing.

It is a gift of grace, from the Lord, who planned us for his pleasure, that we would know what it means to be loved and encountered by God through Jesus Christ, and then, and only then can we respond in full worship by loving him with all our heart soul mind strength.  Amen.

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