The very next day,
in front of his whole class, the boy presented his project. Explaining well how he created the miniature
volcano and what he was going to do to make the pretend lava flow, he wowed his
classmates. With gasps of amazement and
aw they excitedly watched as the boy mixed the chemicals to the best of his
ability and volcano bubbled over and washed over the tiny Lego town. Suddenly the teacher stood and the class was
instantly silent, waiting anxiously for the grading verdict. Without even hesitating the teacher said,
“I’m sorry, its good, but this is not good enough.”
The boy, somewhat
taken aback by the teacher’s sweeping indictment, asked the teacher, “Excuse me
sir, but I tried my best. What more can
I do? What would make this good enough?”
“This is not a
real volcano son,” the teacher replied.
“You’ll need to build a real volcano for it to be good enough. Dismissed.”
While this is not
a true story, some of the themes held within it tend to ring true for us in our
lives, and especially in our worship. We
tend to think that, on any given Sunday morning, we've decide to get up, we've dragged ourselves out of bed, we've gotten the family ready, and we've driven ourselves to church
so that we can try really hard to worship and give God our best hoping that it
is good enough for God. All of it was our decision and it is therefore up to us to make it all happen. We tend to do
this in our lives as well. Whether at
work, school, home, or away, we think that we just need to try a little harder
to do our best and perhaps that will be good enough for God. Maybe
then, we reason, God will bless me
and my family.
Sadly, this
reality often gets mixed with a level of confusion about what goes on in a
worship service on Sunday. We look at
the bulletin as see phrases like “Call to Worship” and “sending” and think, what does this mean, a call to worship? I decided to come here to worship.
When we think like
this, we often end up like the young boy in this story, doing everything we can
do ourselves, or even with the help of others, trying to just be “good enough”
for God. It isn’t long before we are
confronted with the reality that we simply aren’t good enough. Whether by the realization of our sinfulness
or the greatness of God’s holiness, we find out quick that we can never be
“good enough.”
These questions of
Liturgy, the call to worship and the sending as well as many of the other parts
of Christian worship are not simply old traditions that we just use because
they have always been there. Rather,
they point us to a greater reality about worship that is so much broader than
what we often think. The Biblical view
of worship is not one in which we try our best and hope that it is good enough
for God, but rather that in worship, the God of Grace is the primary mover.
Friends, we have a
call to worship because we believe that it is indeed God who has called us to
worship Him. We believe that God the
Father, the God of all Grace and Mercy, has, through His Son Jesus, by the
power of the Holy Spirit reached down into our lives and called us and has even
drawn us into worship and communion with Him.
God has initiated this calling and it is in God that we respond as well! Through the prompting, leading, and guiding
of the Holy Spirit, through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, we are able to
bring our worship before God the Father, in full communion with Him because we
have been washed clean and our worship has been perfected! God
knows that our best could never be good enough for Him, but through His mercy
and grace we are able to come before Him, offering our best, knowing God has
shown us a way to Him in Christ.
