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Larry R. Hayward
February 8, 2004
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah's Church and Ours
Isaiah 6:1-13
The first time I went to Compaq Center in Houston it was called the Summit. This state-of-the-art basketball arena, built for the NBA's Houston Rockets in 1975, holds nearly 20,000 people. But my first visit there, in the mid 1980's, was not to see the Rockets but to hear in concert Julio Iglesias, a popular Mexican-American musician, father of today's Enrique Iglesias.
Members of the church I was serving at the time had invited me to join them in their skybox, owned by American General Corporation. It was Saturday night. I had a wedding, so I joined them late.
A few minutes before the concert began, I steered my beige, Volkswagen Diesel Rabbit, with squeaky belts, onto the valet parking ramp, into the middle of black Mercedes, white Cadillacs, and ruby-red Lincoln Town Cars. If this concert had been held in recent years, my small but noisy car would have been surrounded by Hummers and Lexuses - or is it "Lexi"? I emerged from my Rabbit into a sea of diamonds and mink stoles, worn by beautiful Mexican-American women escorted by dark, Mexican-American men in tuxes. For next three hours, I imbibed the food, the drink, the music, and the ambiance of a mellow concert at this great arena.
Several years later, I returned to the Summit to see twin towers Ralph Sampson and Akeem Olajuwon lead the Houston Rockets against the Boston Celtics in a playoff game. On a visit to Houston last year, I sat once again in this great arena and saw Houston's Yao Ming do battle with the Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal in the first of what will prove to be many encounters between these premiere "big men" of the NBA.
Some of my fondest memories of sports and entertainment have occurred at the Compaq Center.
I.
A few weeks ago, when I was on vacation in New Mexico, I opened the local paper and found — to my surprise — a lengthy article on the center.
Its primary occupant, the Houston Rockets, are building a new arena, and the city of Houston, which owns the center, has been looking for a new occupant. To my surprise, the new occupant the city has found is a church.
The church moving into Compaq Center is not just any church. It is Lakewood Church, the largest Protestant congregation in the country. Lakewood is an interracial, nondenominational, multicultural congregation and television ministry that attracts over 25,000 worshippers each weekend. The church will spend $75,000,000 to renovate the center with state-of-the art sound, lighting, and high-tech equipment and move in 2005.
Lakewood Church is part of a trend in American Protestantism that began in the early 1970s. This trend is the growth of what are called "mega churches," defined as churches that attract at least 2000 people every weekend. In 1970 there were ten such churches in America. Today there are over 740. While many small and medium churches in our nation are losing members, mega churches continue to grow at a rate of about 4% a year. Willow Creek Church in the Chicago suburbs is a mega church. In our city, both First Assembly of God and even St. Mark's Lutheran have some characteristics of mega churches.
The reporter for The Christian Science Monitor who wrote the article describes and assesses mega churches:
Gone are traditional religious dogma, rituals and symbols, which have been replaced by uplifting songs and sermons.
The [sermons, called] messages[,] are encouraging and easy to swallow.The idea is to be inclusive and inoffensive [the writer says]. There's no talk of controversial subjects, such as abortion or homosexuality.
Many [mega churches] have more of a rock-concert feel to them and use plenty of multimedia tools…. Organs have been replaced by electric guitars, hymns with rock n' roll tunes.
[The writer concludes:] Nowhere is there a cross or a candle, and the language is contemporary, with not a 'thee' or 'thou' to be heard. [1]
II.
Many of us have visited such congregations, when we travel to the Sunbelt for the winter, when we visit children or grandchildren, when we stay with friends in another city.
- Some of us admire the ability of "mega churches" to draw large crowds, to offer practical advice for day-to-day living, to draw hordes of youth and young adults, often to attract racial and ethnic minorities.
- Some of us, on the other hand, are put off by expressions of faith and styles of worship we experience in mega churches. We may feel they are more flash than substance, and because they get significant press attention today, we may be embarrassed by the way they represent the faith that is dear to us.
- Still some of us wonder — privately or aloud — why our church does not attract people in the way mega-churches do.
Depending on what day of the week it is, I share each of these reactions.
III.
So if we are not a mega church, what are we?
Among other things, we are a church seeking to worship God according to what we find in Isaiah 6. This passage, which may be familiar to us as a narrative of Isaiah's call to be a prophet, contains, in addition to Isaiah's call, all the elements that define the worship service at First Presbyterian Church and at many other mainline congregations. While our church belongs to God, we worship in ways Isaiah worshipped.
a.
Isaiah's worship begins with a specific location in history: "In the year that King Uzziah died…." [2]
When we gather for worship at First Presbyterian Church, while in some ways we "leave the world behind" and seek "solace" and "sanctuary," for the most part, we seek to be keenly aware of our location in history.
Just as Isaiah worshipped "in the year King Uzziah died," we bring into our services sermons, prayers, and concerns for events in the world:
The war against terror
Famines and plagues
The rights of persecuted people across the globe
Referendums on gambling in Cedar Rapids
Issues before the state legislature in Des Moines
Riverfront development and brownfield cleanup in our own downtown.
Like Isaiah, we worship amidst the personal, social, and political events that define our lives, that mark our day and time. "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord."
b.
Secondly, Isaiah's worship has a sense of drama about it, and the drama within his worship enhances a sense of the mystery of God.
When Isaiah worships, all five of his senses are engaged - sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.
- Isaiah sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and he sees seraphim — six-winged angels — attending the Lord high above his own head.[3]
- Isaiah hears the seraphim call out in adoration and praise:
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts;
The whole earth is full of God's glory.[4] - Isaiah feels the thresholds shake at the joints of the temple.[5]
- Isaiah smells the smoke that fills the temple.[6]
- Isaiah touches and tastes a burning coal a seraph places on his lips.[7]
Unlike Isaiah's church, at First Presbyterian Church, we have historically valued — above nearly everything else in worship — a highly rational mind. We have sought sermons that lead us to faith through understanding. But as we have put energy into thinking about worship in recent years, we have clearly come to the point of seeking to "engage" not only the mind, but also "the heart…and will of everyone worshipping."[8] As in Isaiah's worship, we seek to provide "a greater sense of drama in worship" than we have historically provided.[9]
Where do we experience this sense of drama in our worship?
- We experience drama in the movement of the choir: sometimes processing down the center aisle, sometimes singing from the side aisles, in either case adding the sense of sight to the sense of sound.
- We experienced drama in the Scripture reading two weeks ago, when we all stood and participated in the reading of scripture just as the people of Israel stood and responded to Ezra's reading 2400 years ago.[10]
- We experience drama in poetry readings in our service.
- We experienced drama in the contemporary conversation between Peter and Jesus — played by Jon Brown and Barney O'Donnell — during last week's youth service.
- And we experience drama in the tactile objects we encourage children to touch during children's sermons and in the touch of adult fingers to water and stones as we process forward and renew our baptismal vows each January.
The thresholds of our foundation don't yet shake, and that is just as well, since we are about to renovate them.
Seraphim don't yet fly from the apex of our sanctuary, though in recent months our facilities manager, Eric Stark, has removed a few bats.
But as we worship God in this place, we seek to supplement the lifelong engagement of our minds with the engagement of our hearts and wills through senses of taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. We seek a sense of drama and mystery to our worship.
c.
Third, in Isaiah's worship, people experience a range of human emotions.
- Isaiah's worship begins in praise and adoration: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."[11]
- Isaiah moves from glory to humility: "Woe is me! I am cut off, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live in a tacky-Super-Bowl-halftime-show-culture of a people with unclean lips; yet despite barrages of glitz and hype, my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."[12]
- In the midst of such humility, Isaiah hears words of grace/forgiveness/pardon, as a seraph swoops down, touches his lips with a burning coal, and says: "Your guilt has departed; your sin is blotted out."[13]
- Isaiah then hears the voice of God calling: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And Isaiah responds: "Here am I. Send me!"[14]
Isaiah's worship moves from praise and adoration, to confession and assurance, to proclamation and commission.
It is the order of service, printed in the bulletin of First Presbyterian Church:
- Gathering
- Hearing
- Responding
- Sending.
We follow it Advent and Christmas, Youth Sunday and Children's Sabbath, Jazz Service and Christmas Eve Communion.
IV.
In the grand scheme of things, we are not Lakewood Church, we are Isaiah's church.
- We are not superior as Christians to those who worship at Lakewood, nor they to us.
- They will draw many more people then we do. They will reach people we cannot reach. Yet we will reach people they cannot reach.
- They will provide breadth. We will provide depth.
Each of us — Isaiah's church, Lakewood, First Presbyterian —
- Sees God
- Hears the call of Jesus Christ
- Tastes body and blood
- Touches and is touched by Holy Spirit
- Smells the natural odor emanating from our respective temples.
May the God of mystery and drama
Bless the worship of all God's people;
And may God bless the houses in which they worship —
Be those houses
The temple in which Isaiah saw the hem of God's garment,
A renovated arena best known for entertainment and sports,
Or the stone sanctuary in which we gather.
Amen.
1The above information and assessments come are an article copyrighted by The Christian Science Monitor appearing in The New Mexican 12/30/03. go back
2 Isaiah 6:1. go back
3 Isaiah 6:1-2. go back
4 Isaiah 6:3. go back
5 Isaiah 6:4. go back
6 Isaiah 6:4. go back
7 Isaiah 6:7. go back
8 Worship at First Presbyterian Church, adopted by the Session, September 2000. go back
9 Ibid. go back
10 Nehemiah 7:73b-8:12. go back
11 Isaiah 6:3. go back
12 Isaiah 6:5. go back
13 Isaiah 6:7. go back
14 Isaiah 6:8-9.go back
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Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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