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"Worship Without Sacrifice"
John 20:1-23
Easter Sunday
March 31, 2002
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
We have arrived here finally on Easter Sunday. We have made the transition from the barrenness and starkness of Lent, the gloom and doom of Holy Week and here we are on Easter morning. We welcome back the bright colors of joy. We welcome flowers remembering that Easter Sunday began in a garden. We welcome a new flag out on the lawn all saying something new has happened here and we are alive in a different way today. Why do you seek the living amongst the dead? Jesus is not dead, but alive. He has gone before you into Galilee, rejoice and be glad.
This Lent, we looked at the seven deadly social sins articulated by Mahatma Gandhi, wealth without work, science without humanity, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, politics without principles and today, worship without sacrifice. Amidst the hoopla of Easter Sunday, I would like us to look briefly at our worship and remember that Easter worship is a worship that comes after the ultimate sacrifice, God’s son Jesus being crucified and today rising from the dead.
I would like you to think in particular about three things this morning:
Worship without sacrifice is idolatry.
Sacrifice without worship leads to despair.
Only true worship and true sacrifice lead to resurrection. (2x)
I remember growing up we had no sense of sacrifice in our worship experiences. We ran from the pomp and circumstance of Palm Sunday to the joy and celebration of Easter. We readily and happily lived a worship without sacrifice existence. The most sacrifice most of us felt was the sacrifice of having to get up to get to church or put a few dollars in the collection plate, and occasionally sitting though a boring sermon.
But the ministry of Jesus was a ministry which demanded sacrifice upon the part of the disciple. If we are to truly be followers of Jesus, then we had better be ready to do some sacrificing of our comfort, our complacency, otherwise this Easter worship is meaningless.
I’m so glad we did not run from Palm Sunday to Easter without Stopping at Holy Week. On Thursday night thirtysomething of us gathered downstairs where we shared a traditional Seder meal commemorating the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. We reflected upon the meaning of this meal being Jesus’ Last Supper.
On Friday at noon sixty or so of us from a half dozen neighborhood churches gathered in the Cedar—Riverside neighborhood to carry a life-sized cross through the streets, stopping at places of hope and pain and reconnecting ourselves with the poor and marginalized on Good Friday. In the afternoon we had our normal fifth Friday serving of meals to the poor and hungry at Loaves and Fishes. But we did not serve our normal 250 meals. No, on Good Friday, we served over 430 people. This shows how much greater the need is at this point in our city’s history.
And then at 8pm we gathered here in the sanctuary for a service of Tenebrae where we prayed, chanted, sang and reflected on the horror of Good Friday and the crucifixion. The service ended in darkness with the Christ candle leaving the sanctuary. The Christ candle was the only thing here this morning when we all arrived, only to be joined later by flowers, banners, candles and the light of Easter morning. It was that much more dramatic because of what happened during Holy Week.
Gandhi was a very devout person. He embraced the highest values of many different faith traditions and once even said that he could be a Christian if it were not for the Christians. In other words, "I love the teachings of Jesus, especially the Sermon on the Mount, but I abhor the smug self-righteousness and the obsession with personal spirituality above social action." Jesus taught that his form of salvation took place only through the hard work of being a suffering servant.
Gandhi said that the ultimate word for God is Truth. This is the basis for all concepts of God in all faith traditions.
Gandhi sacrificed much in his life in order to live as a worshipper and follower of Truth. He sacrificed his potential wealth as a British-trained lawyer and instead spent most of his life in non-paying social service work.
He sacrificed his potential abundance and chose instead to live in an Ashram where people held things in common and worked together for the common good, kind of like the early church.
He sacrificed his privilege and chose to travel third class on trains in order to experience life from the under-side.
He sacrificed his freedom as he was imprisoned for standing up to unjust laws.
He sacrificed his health as he fasted and prayed in order to end violence.
He sacrificed his body as he was beaten for exposing the evil actions of his enemies.
Finally, he sacrificed his life as he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet.
Through all of this sacrifice, he gained freedom for the Indian people in South Africa and in India. That is a resurrection. It would not have happened if Gandhi and a whole lot of others were not willing to sacrifice.
A colleague recently went to a conference in Arizona where pastors were getting trained on how to grow their churches. This colleague just happened to be using the same seven sins articulated by Gandhi during Lent. During a question and answer period, she asked, "how would you preach on Commerce without Morality?" They answered that they would not preach on it because it accentuates the negative. The preaching which grows churches is a preaching that does not call us to answer big questions or focus on our own need for repentance. It has no trace of the prophetic. It has only worship, but no sacrifice.
Jesus taught that worship was all about sacrifice. In fact we worship one who paid the ultimate sacrifice by dying on that cross on so-called Good Friday.
Jesus said the greatest among us shall be the servant of all. When we worship without sacrifice, we can make believe that everything is all right in the world. We can delude ourselves into thinking that our Christianity is only between me and God and not also between me and my neighbor. We can easily think that we are superior. We can lapse into selfishness, caring more about maintaining our position or power rather than being willing to give it away for the sake of the Gospel.
Sacrifice is what it is about. If we forget this, then our worship is not Christian.
Worship without sacrifice is idolatry.
But it’s not only about sacrifice—because sacrifice without worship leads to despair. Worship is what gives us life. It is how we integrate our lives and find focus and challenge and joy. When we have sacrificed, then we need to worship. If we sacrifice without worship, then we end up bitter, depressed, cynical and hopeless. We need to worship once we sacrifice.
The "Eyes on the Prize" documentary series tells the in-depth story of the Civil rights movement, including the freedom march of 1965, where the police on a bridge in Selma Alabama beat people to a pulp as they marched to secure voting rights for all people regardless of race. People from across the nation had come to participate in this nonviolent march, including UBC’s then pastor Ken Huyke. But it became bloody and brutal. The leaders were thrown into the hospital. Another was killed. They paid the ultimate sacrifice.
The marchers went back to the church after the attack in horror and some started talking about revenge. They started talking about getting guns and getting back at the cops and the angry mobs. They vented and they fumed. But after they let out that steam, they started thinking about probable results of their violent retaliation. It would simply escalate the violence and probably not grant them their ultimate goal: a beloved community. So they remembered the message of Gandhi. They remembered the message of Jesus. They started singing hymns. They started praying. They did not back down, but neither did they resist possible future suffering. They instead went back and marched again, this time marching all the way to Montgomery Alabama. They were able to do this because they reconnected with God and with each other. They saw their small actions in the context of God’s ultimate plan where the long arc of history bends toward justice.
Had they simply sacrificed without worshipping, without gathering back again at the church and reconnecting with their faith and their roots, then they might not have experienced that resurrection.
Worship without sacrifice is idolatry.
Sacrifice without worship leads to despair and even violence.
True worship with true sacrifice leads to resurrection.
Many of us spend large parts of our lives sacrificing to this god or that. It can be sacrificing to a career, a family, an attitude. But what do we do to worship? What do we do to grant us hope? How do we get our engines charged up? Some people come to church. Others find that church has been too often a place of burden and oppression. So, they move away from church. But what happens when you don’t replace it with some other form of worship? You lose your connection with God if you are not intentional about it. And a life of sacrifice without a connection to a higher power, an ultimate God leads to depression and despair.
So many disaffected Baptists flock to the Baptist Peace Fellowship conferences each summer to experience worship for the first time in a long time. They feel like they have come home. There is such a hunger to worship God amongst a people who sacrifice. That’s why the conferences are part conference and part revival. We need to be filled up so we can do our sacrificial work.
This happens at UBC, too. When we truly worship, we are better able to deal with whatever the world throws at us, because we are connected with God and supported by a community of people.
In the civil rights movement, worship was central to the struggle. Gandhi’s community was vital. Our community is vital. This worship time is vital.
Worship without sacrifice is idolatry.
Sacrifice without worship leads to despair.
True worship with true sacrifice lead to resurrection.
A recent Gallup poll said that 96% of American people believe in God. But do all of those people worship? No. Do all of them sacrifice? No. Only true worship and true sacrifice lead to resurrection.
Resurrection is more than life after death. It’s more than the sweet by and by. It is living life in spite of the consequences. Being willing to sacrifice and not be defined by that sacrifice, but seeing it as a stepping stone to a new life, that’s resurrection, because you have risen above the ash heap of another’s expectations. You have surpassed those expectations. How liberating!
Mary and the other disciples came to the tomb and saw just the burial cloth. The person at the tomb said, "why do you seek the living amongst the dead? You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He has been raised from the dead. Go then into Galilee and you will see him."
Why do you suppose they were supposed to go into Galilee? Was it to relax and bask in the glow of the risen Christ? No, it was to carry on his work of sacrifice and worship with an ultimate sense of what it means to be Christian. If you follow the risen Jesus into Galilee, the place where his ministry started, then you will live a life of sacrifice and worship, but it will be by a different set of rules. A set of rules that give life and shows that there is possibility out there—that there is a new life dawning on the horizon. It is the evidence that true worship and true sacrifice lead to resurrection.
Resurrection happens when we are willing to sacrifice and worship. But we don’t sacrifice just out of piety. We sacrifice because it is Jesus’ kind of worship. But more than that, we sacrifice because we know that it gives life. When we sacrifice on behalf of something greater and worship that ultimate power, then resurrection happens: God’s power is unleashed in us.
The miracle of Easter is not that everything is okay. It is not that we have been let off the hook by the resurrection of Jesus. The miracle of Easter is that good things happen only after sacrifice and through worship.
We long for and we need evidence of resurrection. This is how we move from the abstract to the particular. On this Easter Sunday, how do we find examples of true worship and true sacrifice? How do we see the evidence of resurrection? The answer is really quite simple.
It is that YOU be the evidence of resurrection. Resurrection is not being defined by this world and confined by death, but liberated from the rules and the rulers of this world.
You be the one who understands that the ways of this world are
wealth without work,
science without humanity,
commerce without morality,
education without character,
pleasure without conscience,
politics without principles
and worship without sacrifice.
We realize that this is the way of the world. Easter’s miracle is that we need no longer be confined by those ways. In fact, if we believe in the resurrection, we will believe that we will be the evidence of a new creation—the evidence of a new opportunity. No longer defined by those who practice these social sins, but freed by the one who came to set us free from all sin.
That one is going before us to Galilee. And on this Easter Sunday, he asks us once again, "Why do you seek the living amongst the dead?" Go to Galilee. Go into all the world and preach my gospel to every creature. Go and be transformed. Death is not the final answer. The answer is resurrection. And you and I can be the resurrection as we sacrifice and worship our way to a new attitude, a new decision, a new opportunity, a new way of looking at the world, a new opportunity to put our beliefs in to action. Jesus is waiting for us in Galilee to join him in the joyful and difficult work of resurrection.
As we join him and the Christ that lives on in us, then we experience the resurrection. And we are changed. We can then say with conviction:
Jesus Christ is risen.
Christ is risen indeed! (3X)