Last year Helen and I made a pilgrimage to what millions of people consider to be one of the holiest sites in the world. And it was truly an amazing experience. We have visited a fair number of such sites, and this one was no different. To get to the place you have to park and then are transported by bus, and as you travel you are told about the huge significance of the place. You are escorted through the various rooms, all of them preserved carefully so they will forever stand as a memorial and testament to what happened there. The tone is somber and hushed. Surrounding the site itself are many auxiliary sites, where the history of the place and its occupant is described, celebrated, and memorialized through all sorts of impressive artifacts. There are the usual curio shops where you can buy everything from cheap trinkets costing a dollar to other items costing many thousands. There is a reverence about the place that only becomes more apparent when you see so many people there who are going to great lengths to emulate the person who lived there, and that is transcended only by the expressions you see on the faces and the tears flowing from the eyes of the devout who have traveled from all over the world to stand by the grave of Elvis Presley at Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. Lots of words come to mind when you visit the place where a man they call “The King” lived and died. One of those words is “worship.”

Since Easter and our first worship services here in this new sanctuary we have centered our collective attention on the fundamental things that people do with their lives because they believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. Taking our cue from a century-old proclamation of the church, we have remembered what makes a church a church and what makes a Christian a Christian. First, we are simply telling the story about Jesus—the good news of the resurrection. We are also taking care of each other and helping each other grow in faith and practice. We are working to bring God’s righteousness to bear in the everyday world. And we are preserving, protecting, and promoting the truth about God. All of these essential goals and activities are equal to each other and are really just facets of the one thing that we are after: trying to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Today we look at another. We look at worship.

Not surprisingly, the topic of whom and why and how you worship is one of the key concerns of the Bible. The passage from II Kings is a great example. Let me give you the historic overview of the situation discussed here. Around the year 722 before Christ, the kingdom of Assyria had conquered the northern ten tribes of the Jewish people who were called by the name of Israel. As was customary in that day, many of the Jews were deported into other countries, and citizens from those other countries were moved into Israel. These new residents mixed with the remaining Jews, and part of that blending included the religious life of the people. From the perspective of the writers of the sacred texts, the primary reason that the nation of Israel had been destroyed is because the people had given up their worship and their following of the one true God and instead they had started to follow other gods. That disastrous tradition continued, then, after the nation was occupied and dispersed. The Jewish people left in the old homeland began to worship and follow the gods of the people who had become their new neighbors. For the next several hundred years, the people of this region of Palestine were known for their many different and blended worship and religious practices and beliefs. Along with the worship of the God who had rescued the Jews from Egyptian slavery, they worshiped many false gods and practiced many rituals and moral codes that were not of the true God’s making. From the theological perspective, the primary reason things were not going well with the Jews there was because of their worship of the wrong god.

In Jesus’ time this part of Palestine was known as the land of the Samaritans. The Samaritans were the descendants of the people spoken of in the book of Kings, the Jews and the Gentiles who had intermarried in many different ways, mixing their bloodlines as well as their religions. The Jews of the southern part of the old Davidic Kingdom, the part called Judah, were more racially pure, and religiously pure as well. These Jews lived in the region of Jerusalem and also in the region of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus was from. And that brings us to the story that John tells in the fourth chapter of his gospel, the story of Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman.

There is a lot going on this story that we must ignore for today. The key issue for us is what Jesus has to say about worship. The scene sets up as a conversation between a representative of a confused religious tradition on the one hand and the Messiah of the true God on the other hand. The Samaritan woman expresses the common belief of her people that God must be worshiped on Mount Gerizim in order for it to be true worship, and Jesus counters with the more traditional belief that God must be worshiped on Mount Zion, which is Jerusalem. But then Jesus takes the conversation to a whole new level and he begins to talk about what true worship really is. True worship is about knowing the one true God and worshiping this God not according to a place or a custom, but according to the Spirit and to the truth. With this one statement, Jesus lets the woman and lets us know that the act of worship is a hugely important thing. And he lets us know what real worship is all about.

To me there are four key questions about worship that every person in one way or another must answer in their lives, and they are all highlighted within the framework of these two pivotal passages from scripture. The four questions are these. Who? Why? How? And So What?

Who (or what) do you worship? It seems to me that human beings do not have the choice about whether or not we worship. The choice is who or what we worship. Even the choice to worship no one or nothing is a choice about worship. Most people of the world will say they worship God, though of course what we mean by God is not always the same thing. Some people will honestly admit they worship themselves, perhaps, or they worship certain ideals like freedom or love. No one worships purely because there are many options out there. In the ancient world there were many gods to worship, and many people believed that depending on where you lived you needed to worship the local god. The II Kings passage refers to many peoples who brought their own gods with them, and it also speaks of their concern to also worship the god who presided over their new homeland in Palestine. In today’s world we tend to make gods out of things like money, or power, or pleasure. Or we make gods out of our science, our technical capability, or our political theories. Worship is about who or what you make the center and ground of everything else. It is about who or what you make the goal of your existence. It is about who or what you recognize as superior above all else and therefore worthy of your attention, your devotion, and your emulation. Who or what you worship determines to a large extent what the rest of your life and existence will be all about.

Here is the challenge for you and me: do we worship the one and the true God, exclusively, honestly, completely? Or do we worship many things, many gods, in the same confused and ultimately destructive way as did the many peoples of Samaria in Jesus’ day?

Who or what you worship has a lot to do with the question of why. Why do you worship who or what you worship? The ancient peoples worshiped gods that resembled powerful animals or mysterious forces in the universe because they believed that such worship would confer upon them those same powers and abilities. Modern peoples worship that which we think will bring us some measure of success or comfort or peace. Science will better our lives. Technology will save us. Or we worship something whose qualities we hope to absorb and enjoy somehow. If you can’t sing like Elvis you can dress like him.

In II Kings the confused children of Israel are commanded to worship the God who had made a covenant with them, who had rescued them, and who had shared with them the secrets of successful living in the form of his law. The Samaritan woman had some clue about who Jesus was because he knew about her sordid history and so she called him a prophet. You and I know him as God and worship him as God because of what he said and did in his life and supremely because of the singular event of the resurrection. Why do we believe in Jesus and why do we believe Jesus? Why do we worship Jesus and the God whom he called Father? Because of Easter.

The who and the why of our worship are intimately tied to each other. Here is the challenge for you and me. Why do you worship who or what you worship? Does it not make sense to worship the one who conquered evil and death, the one who offers you a fresh and new start every time you lose your way, the one who teaches you how to lose your way less and less and instead walk in the ways of the blessed life?

The next big issue of worship is the how of worship. How you and I worship depends a lot on the first two issues, the who and the why. Many ancient people worshiped by sacrificing something from their crops or their flocks or even from their own children. Many worshiped the act of procreation itself and their gods reflected the male and female aspects of life. Much of ancient Jewish worship centered on the places where they had significant interactions with God. The Samaritan woman focused on a particular place as well. But Jesus took the whole question of how we worship and moved it beyond places or times and took it into a realm beyond the possession of any single group of people. God is spirit and God is truth. Worship is a spiritual exercise that should always take us to the truth about God. Many of the things that have vexed the Christian community about worship are the incidental things, not the vital things. We worry about time, place, style. And they are important. But they are not crucial.

Here is the challenge for you and me. Do we allow ourselves to be distracted by the non-essential things of worship, or do we focus on what is most important? What is crucial about any worship is whether or not it places us before the living God, who is present with us in the power of the Spirit, and who wants our worship to be focused on him and the truth that he brings into our lives.

The last big issue of worship for me is one that many people today think is actually meaningless. It is the issue of so what? What difference does it make who or what you worship? What difference does it make how you worship? One of the great lies of today’s thinking out in the world is that worship is merely a matter of private preference that has little bearing on real life, of no more consequence than your favorite flavor of ice cream or on which side of your head you part your hair (if you have any hair). The ancients would have agreed on this point, at least, that who and why and how you worship is crucial. The II Kings account mentions that because the imported population in Palestine didn’t know the local god they were subject to attack by lions. The judgment of scripture as a whole is that when you do not worship the one true God and therefore follow his commandments you are disconnected from reality, you are allied with evil, and you will find your life accordingly dysfunctional and disastrous.

The so what of worship takes us to the heart of why we worship at all. We worship because we need to know what is true and real and influential in our lives. We worship so that we can stay grounded, centered, aligned, connected to the source of our lives and the purpose toward which they are headed. If we worship the wrong thing we go the wrong way. II Kings challenged the people with this simple truth: “but you shall worship the Lord your God, he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.” Here is the challenge for you and me. Worship that does not change us is not worship. But worship that opens our spirits to God’s Spirit and that aligns our truth according to God’s truth in Jesus will deliver us from all that would rob us of the lives God wants us to have.

You can argue that the question of who we worship is the most important question of life. Because that is so, we Christians make worship the central element of our discipleship to Jesus. It is the grounding of all else, the place, the event, the driving engine of everything else. Because that is so, your pastor chose a particular scripture passage with which to inscribe the very center point on the ground of this place of worship. The medallion directly beneath the cross on the dome of this sanctuary repeats the words of Jesus, words that you and I should take to heart every day: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”

From here on in, brothers and sisters, we will keep sight of the one whom we adore. We will worship the Father. Amen.

Amen.