Sermons
December 15, 2024 (3rd Sunday of Advent)
“What on earth is there to be happy about?”
Philippians 4:4-9
Years ago a group of pastors online were having a discussion that turned into just another skirmish in the “worship wars.” You know what I’m talking about: the seemingly endless argument between those who favor traditional worship and hymns and those who prefer contemporary worship and praise music.
There’s actually a Biblical foundation for both styles. On the one hand, traditional worship is oftentimes built on a framework based on Isaiah 6: coming into God’s presence, recognizing our need for forgiveness, hearing the Word of God, responding to it, and then being sent out to serve God and God’s people. On the other hand, contemporary worship looks more like what we find in the first few verses of Psalm 95: exuberant and joyful singing, moving toward a quieter, more prayerful attitude, all led by the musicians; then prayer, and then a chance to hear God’s Word.
These aren’t even the only two texts that appear to describe something like a Christian worship service; there are quite a few others, including the description of the church after Pentecost in the later verses of Acts 2: the community coming together to hear the apostles teach, to break bread, and to pray together; not to mention the descriptions of heavenly worship in the book of Revelation.
In this online discussion, people argued for their preferred worship style. One side proclaimed contemporary praise songs to be shallow, individualistic, and theologically questionable.[1] These songs and the worship style that goes with them are nothing but a caving-in to a market-driven mentality that has no place in church. On the other side, many younger people consider traditional worship to be boring and irrelevant to their lives, and hymns are all old-fashioned and outdated. And mainline churches that still cling to traditional worship styles and hymns are all I decline, and churches that sing praise songs are exploding with growth, so the choice should really be clear to all.
(This conversation happened before many of us were aware of the movements among GenX, Millennials, and younger folks toward updated versions of traditional hymns, not to mention art as an aid to worship and a renewed appreciation for such things as stained glass windows that tell the gospel story in pictures.)
We expended quite a lot of time and energy on this, which we probably should have been better off spending on our Sunday sermons. The discussion went on for the better part of the week, and then toward the end of the week, the group moderator, a pastor in the United Church of Canada who was himself rather predisposed to traditional worship styles, posted a message that cut right to the heart of the whole argument, at least for many of us in mainline churches.
He said, “I’ve discovered that there is a panic-driven search for a ‘magic bullet’ to try to reverse the perceived decline in mainline churches,” which he believed weren’t as much declining as changing. He said that a lot of the drive to move to contemporary worship forms and music is based not on a desire to be faithful to God’s leading, but on anxiety about the church’s future. And then he said this: “I have discovered that anxiety is counter-productive in ministry.”
Hear that again. “Anxiety is counter-productive in ministry.”
Yet how many of the discussions and decisions in churches are driven by anxiety—about survival, about money, about membership, about this, about that?
When I started at my last church, the congregation was renting space to Head Start. We knew even then that this relationship would be coming to an end, as the city had received a large grant to build a community daycare and early-childhood-education facility on the other side of town. We’d already been told that once Kids World was completed, Head Start would move there.
So every now and then in board meetings and other places, someone would express concern about what we would do without the rental income we received from Head Start. It wasn’t an insignificant amount of money.
The discussion continued off and on right up until Kids World was finished and we got the letter from Head Start telling us exactly when they would move out of our building. At that point the worry began in earnest. Maybe we would have to cut our budget—and like here, there wasn’t a whole lot of fat that could be trimmed away. Others argued against worry, saying that we had gotten by without that money before Head Start moved in with us, and we had never intended for it to be income we counted on to make ends meet.
And one of our elders spoke up with words we’d heard many times from her. She spoke with confidence and trust that comes from lots of experience: “We’ve been taken care of before, and we’ll be taken care of again.”
It turns out that’s exactly what happened. But there was no magic involved; it happened in a perfectly ordinary way. God spoke to us in the quiet of our prayers, and those of us who were able increased our giving and made up the difference. Most likely folks added a few dollars each to their offerings—I say “most likely” because I didn’t have and prefer not to have access to individuals’ giving records, so I can’t say for sure but I suspect this is what happened—and through that God worked a miracle in our midst. We were taken care of.
Our passage for today is a familiar one, one that a quick look over my archives shows I’ve preached no fewer than ten times before today—not counting a few funeral sermons. It comes from the joyful letter Paul wrote to the church in Philippi.
“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul tells them. He repeats himself—this is very important, he says: “again I will say, Rejoice…”
But remember this: Paul was writing from a prison cell. And he was writing to a church where persecution was always a distinct possibility. It’s hard to imagine that “rejoice” would be first on the to-do list of either Paul or the church in Philippi.
If I’d been Paul, I might have been inclined to give some specifics about living faithfully without being caught and executed—pretty serious business, not really the best time to throw a party. But that’s not what Paul did.
He describes himself as the servant—actually, in Greek he calls himself the slave—of the One who said things like “Blessed are you when you’re persecuted on my account,” and “Whoever tries to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will save it.” Paul knows, just like the moderator of our online discussion group said, that anxiety is counterproductive in church. So Paul tells the Philippians—and we’re given the chance to overhear his advice and take it to heart ourselves—to rejoice, and not to worry.
It’s awfully easy to dismiss these passages in the Bible—even when the words are spoken by our Lord himself—that tell us not to worry.
What do you mean, don’t worry about anything? You have no idea what modern life is like: mortgages, college tuition, unemployment, inflation, debt, a nasty virus that still hasn’t gone away, news of war and violence all over our world. And, Paul, those churches you wrote to weren’t like ours, with our big buildings and aging congregations. How can you tell us not to worry? There’s plenty of stuff to be anxious about! It’s worry that spurs us to do what we need to do to deal with these problems, to guard our homes and our health, to keep our finances in order so we are prepared if prices go up or there’s trouble.
Worry is an important part of life. We may not like it, but we don’t have a choice.
Or do we?
Maybe Paul’s got something, at that.
What happened to the church in Sac City when we worried about losing Head Start’s rent money? Did we by worrying increase our income by even a cent? Or did God take care of us, behind the scenes, maybe whispering in some of our ears as we wrote our offering checks?
Maybe my Canadian colleague was right when he said anxiety is counterproductive in ministry. I think, to be honest, that anxiety can be counterproductive in any part of life. And that’s not just a religious belief.
Twenty years ago Time magazine printed an excerpt from a book addressing the question of why, when so many things are better today than they were a few decades or a century ago, we’re so pessimistic, unhappy, angry, and anxious? One of the conclusions this author—I wish I had written down who it was and what the book was called—reached was that we have forgotten to be grateful. We’ve forgotten to give thanks for the blessings we have received. He said that stopping regularly to give thanks is essential to having a healthy outlook on life—not just today, but also tomorrow.
It’s not much different from what Paul says to us, here in the midst of Advent, in the midst of Christmas shopping and Christmas frenzy: Anxiety is counterproductive. But there is an antidote to anxiety, one that we remember on the third Sunday of Advent by lighting a rose-colored candle.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Remember that the Lord has come near. Give thanks, and rejoice, and pray for what you need.
And the result? The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
This isn’t the kind of peace the world around us understands and expects, a complete lack of conflict, lack of problems, lack of stress. No, this is the kind of peace that breaks into the midst of conflict, problems, stress, grief, Christmas shopping, bill-paying, illness, church board meetings, anywhere people choose to place their needs before God and then choose to trust and give thanks.
It’s a kind of peace that leads to joy, because we know the Lord is near—
the Lord is with us—
God is with us—
Immanuel.
[1] Folks who argue against this worship style don’t mention that the lyrics of a great many contemporary worship songs are taken right out of the Bible. One that is often criticized for being overly sentimental and shallow is “As the Deer,” based on Psalm 42.