“To Serve and Worship”

“To Serve and Worship”

Pentecost 10 (NL2) John B. Valentine
Exodus 20:1-19 August 9, 2020

“TO SERVE AND WORSHIP”

Congratulations! We made it!

No ... not to the Promised Land ... but at least to the end of the Book of Exodus!

Actually ... take heart!

The Israelites didn’t make it to the Promised Land at the end of the Book of Exodus either!

It takes them another three books ... Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy ... plus a couple of chapters ...

Not to mention forty years of wandering in the Wilderness ...

Before God’s people finally get to cross the River Jordan and claim the land which God had promised to Abraham and Sarah all those many years before.

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Now ... our journey through Exodus over the past couple of months has found us dealing with a whole bunch of fairly significant questions ... like:

• “Why did God call Moses ... and why does God call any of us for that matter ... to be God’s agents in this world?” ... and ...

• “Why was Pharaoh so hard-headed ... and why are we so hard-headed ... when it comes to putting God’s priorities above our own?” ... and ...

• “What is the point of miracles?” ... and ...

• “What is the point of faith?” ... and ...

• “Does God REALLY forgive us?” ... and stuff like that!

We looked at some of the specifics ... and some of the stories ... and I hope that Pastor Pam and I have been able to give you a sense of WHY this particular book is such a treasure ... and how it is that it helps us better understand the promises and the providence of God.

there’s one thing ... one theme ... that we’ve kind of been dancing around ... and skirting the edges of ... throughout our walk through Exodus ...

And I’d be remiss were we NOT to take one more look at it head on before we close out this particular study.

You see ... at the end of the day ... the Book of Exodus is about the establishment of what is called “the Covenant” ... this contract ... this commitment ... this agreement ... between God and God’s people ... to be in relationship with one another.

And the whole second half of the book of Exodus really has to do with fleshing out some of the details of that relationship.

So there are thus two BIG questions which the Book of Exodus tries to answer:

The first of them is “What can we ... who claim to be heirs of the Covenant which God carved in stone all these many years ago ... rightly expect of God in terms of that relationship which we share with the Creator of Heaven and Earth?” ...

And the second is like it ... “What can God rightly expect of us?”

And ... in order to really answer that question ... we need to go all the way back to the beginning of the Book ... back to chapter one ...

And take a look at a little snippet of the text which we read on the first Sunday of our sermonic journey.

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You see ... all the way back in Chapter One ... the Hebrews had become enslaved by the Egyptians ...

And the Egyptians had collectively made the Hebrews’ lives miserable.

Such that a more literal – and less poetic – description of that situation read:

"So they made the people serve with rigor ... and made their lives bitter with backbreaking service in mortar and brick ... and with every kind of service in the field; with every kind of service they made them serve with rigor."

It was all about SERVICE ... and who was serving and who was being served.

But over the course of the Book of Exodus ... that word “serve” ... ‘abad in Hebrew ... it shows up like ninety-seven times!

The funny thing about that word ‘abad ... is that it doesn’t always get translated the same.

• Sometimes it gets translated ‘serve’ or ‘service’ or ‘serving’ .... and

• Sometimes it gets translated ‘worship’ or ‘worshiping’ or something of the sort.

And whenever I read this text ... I kind of wonder what the translators have in mind when they choose to use the words related to ‘service’ ... and what they have in mind when they choose to translate it more as being about ‘worship’.

You see ... in our minds ... I think we make a pretty hard distinction between ‘worship’ and ‘service’ ... but originally ... biblically ... there’s no distinction at all.

• Worshiping is serving.
• Serving is worshiping.

• We worship God when we sing songs of prayer ... and
• We worship God when we do deeds of generosity to our neighbor.

• We serve God when we feed the hungry and the hurting ... and
• We serve God when we take time to study the Scriptures.

We’ve been making this false distinction between “worship” and “service” in the church for centuries ... millennia even! ...

Saying this like “worship is what happens in the sanctuary ... or maybe now online ... on Sunday mornings” ...

And that “service is what we do the other six days of the week”.

But in the mind of the author of Exodus ... worship and service are really the same thing.

It’s kind of like what it was that Jesus said when asked about the most important of the Commandments.

He replied, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

We love and serve and worship God by loving God ...

AND we love and serve and worship God by loving those whom God would call our neighbors!

But what does it mean to serve ... to worship ... God?

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Actually ... do any of you remember ... back in the day ... when you could go out to dinner in a restaurant?

Out to dinner ... in a restaurant ... with tablecloths and silverware and all the fixin’s.

You’d enter the restaurant ... and be greeted and seated ... and be introduced to your server.

Now ... I WISH like heck that we were all in the same space today ...

Because I’d LOVE to do a turn-and-talk about what makes for a good server ... and/or what makes for a bad one.

Because somehow ... I suspect ... most all of us can recall times in our lives when the service staff at this, that or the other restaurant really DIDN’T shine.

But since we can’t do a turn-and-talk right now ... let me just ask you:

• Have you ever been served by someone who seemed to think that they knew better than you did what it was that you wanted to have for dinner?

• Have you ever been served by someone whose focus was totally on the cute couple at a table on the other side of the restaurant ... such that you waited for hours to get your order taken or your food delivered?

• Have you ever been served by someone who seemed to think of you as an annoyance to be dealt with rather than a customer to be prioritized?

• Have you ever been served by someone for whom service was the furthest thing from their mind?

Any of you perchance remember going to a restaurant called Sam Wo in the City back in the day???

Sam Wo was a dingy noodle house in Chinatown ... maybe on Washington Street if memory serves ... with a waiter by the name of Edsel Ford Fong ... whom Herb Caen dubbed the ‘world’s rudest waiter’.

First time I recall going to Sam Wo ... after waiting on the street for a good half-an-hour ... we were directed to an unwiped counter ... directed to a menu written only in Chinese ... and ordered “You get house special chow fun! No fork, chopstick only! What you want, college boy?"

Then ... in short order ... when the food was delivered to the table ... the driections were made clear: “Eat, pay and get out!”

Now it could well be said that Edsel Ford Fong didn’t have a server’s heart ... but Edsel Ford Fong aside ... what is it that good servers do?

• They LISTEN ... don’t they?
• They OBSERVE.

• Good servers are PATIENT.
• Good servers are HELPFUL.
• Good servers are ATTENTIVE.
• Good servers are THOUGHTFUL.

But ... above all ... GOOD SERVERS PRIORITIZE YOUR WANTS AND NEEDS OVER THEIR OWN.

Now ... just a for a minute ... imagine what it would look like if those characteristics of a good server were to get translated into OUR service ... OUR worship ... of God!

Could it be said of us that WE prioritize God’s wants and need over our own???

Could it be said of us that WE are patient and helpful and attentive and thoughtful of God ... and of the one’s whom God calls our neighbors???

Could it be said of us that WE actively listen to what God is asking of us ... rather than just presuming that we know best want it is that God wants?

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You see ... the Book of Exodus seems pretty clear that you ... that I ... that all of us ... are going to serve someone.

Be it God ...
Be it the Pharaoh ...
Be it some political ideology or some boss ...

Be it a bank account or a dream or an ideal ...
Be it a parent or a child or a spouse ...
Be it the ubiquitous ‘me, myself and I’ ...

At the end of the day ... ALL of us are going to serve somebody.

It’s not a question of IF ....

It’s simply a question of WHICH.

And ... at the end of the day ... I hope and pray that your answer to that question will echo that of Joshua ... Moses’ successor as the leader of the people of God ...

Who ... at the end of his days ... is remembered to have said:

“Choose this day whom you will serve ... but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The weekly worship offering of Holy Shepherd Lutheran Church for the week of August 9, 2020.  “To Serve and Worship” represents the conclusion of an eight-week journey through the Book of Exodus.