Adoration and Praise of God?

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837

office@stjohns.presbychurch.net    http://www.stjohns.presbychurch.net

Scripture Readings:  Psalm 8; Rev 5:1-14; Mt. 21:12-16

Adoration and praise of God, I believe originates in wonder and hope. We experience wonder in many ways. There is something about certain experiences in life that seem to transport us beyond the immediate moment. Or in the immediate moment we catch a glimpse of the eternal. From this perspective our previous worldview seems inadequate. Think back for a moment to an experience of wonder.

    Many people take great joy in gardening, with nurturing and watering plants. You may come to adore the place and the moments you spend there. Dew on the petals, fresh budding roses, moss and fern hugging the majestic Cedar base. Maybe there is a bench where you share a cup of coffee. Every once in a while you feel like it may be Eden. It makes you want to write poetry, or sing like a bird, or make love.

    See! The winter is past and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.” (Song of Songs 2:11-13)

    Perhaps you remember your first glimpse of Yosemite. You come through the tunnel on the Eastern rim. Wow! One look and your whole world must be reconfigured. You know you know something of the Divine.

     I remember reading Steven Hawking's Brief History of Time and then laying on the rooftop on a summer night, my mind flying to the farthest reaches of the universe. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is humanity that you care for us?

    And then there is product of love, from body fluid and blood comes a baby's first light. Soft and warm, needing your touch; sweeter than honeycomb is the sleeping baby on your chest.

Perhaps you have been in the high desert at sunset, Sedona rock your altar, the changing colors so beautiful it hurts.

Wonder! Adoration of God comes from wonder. Easter morning choir sings, and the stone rolls away. Adoration also comes from hope.

A glimpse of the Divine, the wonder of Creation, the beauty of relationship give us hope in the midst of the difficult, the tragic, the painful, and evil moments of life and History. We imagine a place and time when everything will flow in balance, when the rough places are made smooth, when the lion will lie down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them.

It is hope for something grander and greater than this current mess - something more just; some standard toward which to lift our sights; something that will not let us settle for a poor approximation of the good or the true.

Hope does not merely point into the future, it points into us now. Above and below our selfishness and greed, our petty disputes, beyond our ignorance and prejudice, our addiction and idolatry of small gods, nations, kings and violent and pretty heroes, there is One who is truly great, truly just, truly loving. We sense, “being rooted and grounded in love, (we) have the power, with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” And we feel a love that surpasses understanding, and we are filled to the brim with all the fullness of God.

I love the story of the reporter who went up to the little girl walking in the civil rights march. “Little girl, what are you doing in a place like this? What to you want?” To which the little girl replied, “I want ‘feedom; I want feedom!” We want freedom from it all, all our sin, all our hatred and prejudice. Like children we sing out.

Who can open this scroll that will bring forth this new day? This new history? We look at New Orleans, Sudan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine and have reason to despair: not our parents, not our lover, not our technology, not our corporate and national leaders, not our teachers or doctors, nor our priests or soldiers can seem to open this scroll that will usher in the new day. Yet even our tears are a sign of hope. All is not lost. There is hope, even for these.

In modern pop renditions of the apocalypse, the lamb who is Christ becomes a lion and returns to usher in a violent redemption, to grind the bones of the non-believers. But our image today from Revelation shows us that the lion becomes the lamb. The historical image of the messiah was the lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah. Genesis 49:9 “You are a lion’s cub, O Judah, you return from the prey, my son.” Yet the messiah comes and is not a powerful warrior king, not a lion, but a lamb.

“With your blood you purchase men for God, from every tribe and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve your God.”

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a Drum Major Instinct, an instinct to be out front, to be noticed, to lead the parade, a desire to be first. This is what the psychologist Adler called the “Will to Power.” We may express this desire by investing in how we look, by comparing the car we drive, the house and education we have against that of our neighbor. We may seek the best seats in the temple or the market place. We seek power. Nevertheless, says Niebuhr, “Power once attained, places the individual or the group in a position of perilous eminence so that security is possible only by the extension of power.” We drink from the well of social, economic and political praise and a moment later find ourselves thirsty again. Reason can help us sympathize with our neighbor, but it can just as easily help us justify our selfish claims. “The very forces which lift man above nature give natural impulses a new and a more awful potency in the human world,” continues Niebuhr “The beast of prey ceases from its conquests when its maw is crammed; but man’s lusts are fed by his imagination, and he will not be satisfied until the universal objectives which the imagination envisages are attained. His protest against finiteness makes the universal character of his imperial dreams inevitable.”

But Christ triumphs over our finiteness by ceasing to protest. He protests not death but the injustice and violence we commit to avoid our death. King Jr. continues,

“I know a man…He just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman…For three years he just got on his feet, and …he went about doing some things. He didn’t have much. He never wrote a book. He never held and office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city…He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credential but himself.

“He was thirty three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a troublemaker…an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies…And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead, he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through pity of a friend.

“Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today, he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, ‘He is king of kings.” And again I can hear somebody saying ‘He is Lord of Lords.” Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, “In Christ there is no East or West…In Him there is no North or South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide world.” He didn’t have anything; he just went around serving, and doing good.

The Lion becomes the lamb, but the lamb has the power of the lion. The power to bring living water, to liberate the oppressed, to bring hope out of despair, to bring triumph from tragedy, to bring life from death.

Wonder and hope, hope and wonder call our hearts toward a God who is both immanent and intimate, a God who Created the world and called it good, a God who cares and protects, a God who love and forgives. In wonder and hope we lift our voices in adoration. We adore and worship this God. With the voices of angels, thousands upon thousands, ten thousand times ten thousand, with all living creatures and the elders we proclaim, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! Praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever!