As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, let us pray. Shelter in our Storms, Nurturing Lord, open our ears to what you would have us hear, open our eyes to the new things you are doing in our midst, so that we might see you at work in and through us. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught, but if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, thou who art our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

Today we look at the second and third great ends of the church, as found in our Book of Order. #2 is The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, and #3 is the maintenance of divine worship. I have combined these two because next week the Music and Worship conference attendees will lead us in worship, so it meant some moving around. So, with no further ado, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Colossians. Listen for God’s Word for you today.

The grass withers, the flower falls, but The Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

And hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Exodus. Listen.

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

We are currently in the midst of this series about the great ends of the Church. #1, last week, was the Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind. #2, first half of this week, is the Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship for the children of God. #3, also this week, is the Maintainance of Divine Worship. #4, The Preservation of the Truth. #5, The Promotion of Social Righteousness, and #6, The Exhibition of the Kingdom to the World. These are what we as the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America have tradition believed the purposes of the church are. Purpose, there’s an interesting word.

We began this year with a study of the Rick Warren book, 40 days of Purpose. Warren’s stated goal of that book was to show what God’s purposes for human life are. And we met in small groups, studied the book, agreed with it in some spots, and disagreed in others. To go along with that, this series is about the stated purposes of the church, what we as a community attain to be about. Hopefully we can find the good in both. One is individual, and one is more corporate based. And, one, the Warren stuff, is a little bit more conservative, while this Presbyterian stuff from the Book of Order is a little more moderate. Good theology, and I was saying this just about 2 weeks ago in the covenant room, Good theology can take things from this side of the theological spectrum, and take things from the other side of the theological spectrum, and find the goodness that is in both.

What does great end #2 mean for you and me. What does it mean to Shelter, Nurture and have Spiritual fellowship for the children of God. First, you must realize, that children of God does not mean a specific age. We are all God’s adopted children, through our baptism, no matter if we are but a couple of months old, or 34, or 99, or well, we won’t mention just how old, will we! The church exists throughout our lives, for our shelter, our nurture, and our spiritual fellowship no matter how old we are. This great end is not just for our kids, it is for all of us.

Here is the thing about Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship. You certainly can’t get it covered by coming only twice a year, or once a quarter. Heck, you can’t get all of that covered once a week. Your relationship with God, and this is speaking from my personal experience, relationship with God cannot be sheltered, nurtured, and reach spiritual fellowship if you only do it for 1 hour a week. You are going to have to put effort into your Christianity other days of the week. There is no one right way to do that. You can try quiet times of meditation in the mornings. You can try Bible study over the dinner table with family. You can try finding a few people to take walks with and have discussions about philosophy and religion. You can come to the church and pray, in the mornings around 6.00. You can come other times too. To find shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship, you must do more than come here once a week. So the church, by the charge of the second great end, is to provide opportunity for shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship. So, we have dinners, we meet on Wednesday nights during the school year, we have casserole crews, we have youth group that you can help with. We have Sunday School classes to take, or to teach. We also take care of each other. When one of us knows that another one of us is going through a personal emergency, this church is great about sending a card, stopping by for a visit, or picking up the phone. The church is not just those who work here, and it is not the building. The church is each and every one of us. And we shelter each other. We nurture each other. We have spiritual fellowship together. That is what it means to be a church, I think. You know that poem “Footprints in the sand,” right, about the person who looks back on a life lived and how in the tough times there was only one set of prints, and Jesus says, “That is when I carried you.” You know that one right? How do you think Jesus carries us? By sending other people to care for us, to pick us up, and to carry us through the tough times. That is what a church is. Allentown NJ. We provide for each other, as we each work on our relationship with God. I am absolutely certain of this, we need each other, and that is the way God intended it.

Which leads right into Great End #3, the maintenance of divine worship. I suppose you could do much of the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship on your own. I mean, you could find people to fellowship with on your own, and you could find shelter and nurture on your own, if that is your thing. You’d still miss out on the community of the whole, but you could convince yourself that you are getting enough by doing it all yourself. But worship means coming into community to experience the presence of God together. And, last I understood, you can’t do together alone, or at least, you can’t do it as well.

Let me spend a moment on one of my pet peeves, I only have a few, such as loud music, Jimmy Buffett, and when people slow down on the road to gawk at a wreck, therefore creating a traffic jam. But another one is when people have this misconception about worship. Some people think of a worship experience like they do about a movie, or symphony, or play; the people sitting in the pews, they think, are the audience, and the people up front, the pastor, the liturgist, the choir, the organists, are the players playing for their enjoyment. That gives me the shivers. Nothing could be further from the truth. What goes on up front is not for your entertainment, so you can get something out of this. Instead of being the players, the folks up front are more like the directors, and all of us are the players, and God is the audience. In worship, we essentially say, “See how much we love you God, enough to sing about you, enough to learn about you, enough to listen to beautiful music about you, enough to clap because something beautiful has reminded us of how great You are.” That is worship, not what you get out of it, but what you give into it. Worship is not just my responsibility; it is the task of all of us. Every Sunday I start off with the phrase, “It is good to come together and worship God.” Because it is good to gather together and watch the miracle of how all of us can somehow create this experience of worship that is more than the sum of the parts, that is more than the sum of the parts. What we do together as a worshipping community is more than just the sum total of what each of us brings, something is miraculously added by the fact that we are together, and by the fact that we move each other to give more in worship. Sure, you can worship at home, but you can’t witness the miracle of coming together alone.

There is a lot of talk about Soccer now. But if people understood that worship was a divine miracle, and the people who were up front took that responsibility serious, and more importantly, the people in the pews took the responsibility to worship seriously, you couldn’t keep people away. No one would want to play soccer, or leave for a Falcons game early, or even go to a Family picnic. If people were experiencing the Divine Maintenance of Worship, then people would leave saying, “I can’t believe that I’ve got to wait another 167 hours (or 7 days minus one hour) for that to come around again.” But they don’t, normally. Normally, people leave church thinking, “This is the best time of the week, the time where there is the most time before the next time we have got to go to church.” And I say to them what my folks said to me as we drove to drop me off in College. “You get out of it what you put into it.” Worship is a time to give, and then you will experience the divine miracle of worship, and you too will be addicted.

How do these relate, besides the necessity of having two on one day? They both underscore the idea that church is the people of it. Certainly the church has programs that help with the shelter, nurture, spiritual fellowship, and worship life of each of us. As much as you plug into those you will get out of them. And the same is true of worship, as much as you give to it, that’s how much you’ll get out of it. And then we are the church of Jesus Christ. So be it. Amen.