“I rejoiced with those who said to me “Let us go to the house of the Lord”.
I know what I’m supposed to say this morning.
But I’m not going to say it.
The Biblical commentaries are all bullying me into saying it. The authors I’ve read on Psalm 122 want me to say it. Even my own conscience is prodding me towards saying it.
But I’m not going to.
Here’s what I’m not going to say.
“Do you hear the Psalmist? He rejoiced at the prospect of going up to worship. Do you rejoice when you roll out of bed on a Sunday morning and think about going to church? Well you should do! That should be your first thought! Shame on you for not rejoicing!”
It’d be so easy to lay on the guilt this morning, because I’m not sure many of us are here out of sheer joy at the prospect of coming to church. And all a haranguing from the pulpit would achieve would be to send us all away making a mental note to schedule in some more joy. To work harder at being joyful. Which is, of course, a nonsense.
I know a few folk who try too hard to be joyful, and you know what? They’re pretty exhausting people to be around. And not the most genuine either.
There’s a U2 song which says – “Some things you shouldn’t get too good at – like smiling, crying and celebrity”. And the boys from Dublin have a point. The truth is, if you smile too much, people will stop believing that the smiles are real.
And what’s true of the individual is true of churches as well. Maybe you’ve been to the kind of church where there’s a definite agenda to whip up emotion, particularly through the style of music and the worship songs that are used.
Now there’s nothing wrong with emotion in our singing. Quite the opposite. The problem is when there’s only one flavour of emotion on offer. It’s all triumph, all victory, all glory; and yet who among us lives like that all the time?
The author Brian McLaren deals with that issue in an article called “An open letter to Worship Songwriters”. He writes:
Is it too much to ask that we be more honest? Since doubt is part of our lives, since pain and waiting and as-yet unresolved disappointment are part of our lives, can’t these things be reflected in the songs of our communities? Doesn’t endless singing about celebration lose its vitality (and even its credibility) if we don’t also sing about the struggle?
McLaren and others point us back to the Psalms for inspiration, because there you find the whole spectrum of human emotions on display. The writers of the Psalms know what it is to grieve and mourn and celebrate and rejoice and be angry. They know that the human song isn’t sung in one emotional key.
And that’s why I’m not going to get on anybody’s case this morning if you haven’t come to worship frothing over with joy. These things ebb and flow. We can’t live at fever pitch all the time. All that matters is that you’ve come, and that you keep coming in the good times and in the bad.
But what I do want us to do for a moment is pause and think about what the Psalmist says, and what we might learn from him.
“I rejoiced with those who said to me “Let us go to the house of the Lord”.
It’s that word rejoice that really caught my attention this week.
What makes you rejoice in life? What makes your heart lift?
That’s not a question you should rush to answer. You need to chew it over for a while.
But for what it’s worth, let me offer these as a starter –
Christmas; birthdays; holidays.
Meaningful work; hard-earned rest.
Simple pleasures like good food, music, conversation and taking exercise.
Agreement; seeing people learn and grow; loving someone; knowing you’re loved in return.
One of the delights of my life is when my 3-year-old comes home from somewhere with her mummy, pushes open the door of my study and runs into my arms with a smile that lights up her whole face, and probably a good proportion of the parish. There’s no better medicine in God’s good earth than unconditional love.
And no surer way to cultivate joy than resting in God’s unconditional love. Quiet time in company with God is one of the joys of my life.
That’s stuff we can relate to, isn’t it? We know that’s the stuff of joy,
And here’s the thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that for the Psalmist, this whole business of going up to Jerusalem to worship was more than just going up to a particular building to say a prayer and sing some songs.
We read: “Let us go to the house of the Lord” and we interpret that as “let us go to church”. We translate his words straight into our experience without really understanding his experience. We imagine him popping into the local C of S for his weekly hymn-prayer sandwich
But the experience of this ascent, this trip to Jerusalem, was so much richer than we understand.
These festivals lasted for a week or more. It was a spell of enforced rest. Nobody was allowed to work. Suddenly the whole community had leisure time. There were feasts to enjoy. Friends to catch up with. Stories to tell.
People had time to talk about things that really mattered. Problems were shared; hopes brought out into the light as friends talked into the wee small hours over food and wine. And God was at the centre of it all! God had commanded it!
This was the community gathering for worship. Not doing religious things, though there was a time for that; but doing ordinary things. Things that brought joy.
And when the time came for the temple rituals, that time they’d shared together made the religious rites more meaningful because each person participated not just as an individual, but as part of the worshipping community, Part of this Israel to which they belonged.
They would have had a profound sense, not just of belonging to God, but belonging to a people.
Is it too much to suggest that that goes some way to explaining why the Psalmist responded with joy when his friends said “Let’s go to the house of the Lord?” For him it wasn’t just a duty or a habit. It was a God-given chance to have a real encounter with other people and with God himself, as the community gathered for worship.
There’s a strange line in the Psalm in verse 3 that doesn’t seem to fit. “Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together”. But many of the commentators see in that a reference to this togetherness among the people. They huddled up. For one week at a time, three times a year, life in Jerusalem mirrored the architecture in Jerusalem as the people of God lived and worshipped close enough to one another to make a difference.
You know, I’m convicted by the richness of that experience this morning.
Maybe part of the reason we find it hard to identity with the ‘joy’ the Psalmist speaks of is because we’ve lost something of the kind of worship he knew, which was communal, social, meaningful and real.
We live in the age of the individual. The autonomous self is king or queen. And by and large, the church has bought into that culture.
Many come to the hour of worship like passengers stepping onto a train; trying to get to the destination they want with as little bother from the other passengers as possible. Our church architecture positively encourages that – we sit in serried ranks, facing forward which allows us to avoid the messy business of having to engage with anyone else; we get what we came for, and we take ourselves off home again.
Where’s the community in that? Where’s the joy in that?
Is it any wonder, if that’s all our churches are offering, that by and large the younger generation have voted with their feet?
Let me tell you what this next generation are looking for from church:
This is a short extract from a book called Velvet Elvis by a guy called Rob Bell who’s the pastor of Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
My wife and I and several others started this church called Mars Hill in February of 1999 with dreams of what a revolutionary new kind of community could be.
I was twenty eight.
What do you know about anything when you’re twenty eight?
But anyway – we did it. We started a church.
The dream actually began years before when Kristen and I were living in Los Angeles. We heard about a church called Christian Assembly, so we visited it. What I saw changed everything for me. It was like nothing I had experienced before. This community was exploding with creativity and life – it was like people woke up on Sunday and asked themselves, “What would I like to do today more than anything else? How about going to a church service?”
I could not get my mind around this at first.
This concept was so new and fresh – people who gathered because they wanted to.
There wasn’t a trace of empty ritual or obligation anywhere in the place.
Not “I have to” but “I want to”
Not obligation but celebration
Not duty, but desire.
Kristen and I started attending these services regularly, and then we’d go to the McDonalds on Colorado Boulevard and talk about what a church could be.
Desire
Longing
Come as you are
Connection
A group of people who can imagine nothing better than this.
and so, several years, two internships and a cross-country move later, we did it. We started a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Within 6 months, there were 4000 people gathering for worship. And within two years, there were 10,000 meeting in a renovated mall for three worship services on a Sunday.
It’s an amazing story, and to be honest, it could probably only happen in America.
But I tell it only to highlight that this generation might not be as switched off to God as we think. Maybe they’re just switched off to the way we’ve been doing church.
If the way we’ve been doing church doesn’t take us deeper into God, and deeper into relationship with one another – as this upcoming generation desires - then maybe it’s time to find better ways of doing church. Ways that bring us more joy.
Here in Belhelvie, I think we’re beginning to scratch the surface of that, though there’s a long way to go. So please remember to pray for our church and its leaders. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, says the Psalmist. Pray for the thriving and the prosperity of God’s church.
“I rejoiced with those who said to me “Let us go to the house of the Lord” said the Psalmist.
What do we need to do here to make people rejoice, I wonder? To make people see that God’s house is a good place to be?
Here are some voices to take with you as we end this time together:
I rejoiced when you invited me back to your home for a meal, even though I was a stranger to you.
I rejoiced when you left your friends to come and speak with me at coffee, even though you didn’t know me.
I rejoiced when you said ‘we haven’t seen you for a few weeks. You've been missed. Have you been keeping ok?’
I rejoiced when you said ‘You seem really tired. Do you want me to come and watch the children for a few hours’?
I rejoiced when you said ‘I’ve had a great idea for something our church could do for our community’
I rejoiced when you said ‘I’ll do it’ without being asked to.
I rejoiced when you didn’t just ask for me, but came to see me when I needed someone close by.
Lord, help us to become that kind of community, and recover that kind of worship, we pray
Not “I have to” but “I want to”
Not obligation but celebration
Not duty, but desire,
and throughout it all - joy.
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