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How to Worship God, Part 1: "Worship Jesus Like Mary Magdalene"

John 20:10-18 Deuteronomy 6:4-9

by The Rev. Clancy Nixon

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.holyspiritanglican.org.

We are here to worship God today. We know that we are supposed to worship

God, but many of us have a hazy notion about what Christian worship is. The word

worship is a compound word in derivation, worth + ship. It means to ascribe great worth

or ultimate worth to someone or something. When we worship our God, we give

ourselves to God to be used for his purposes. Whatever we do that brings pleasure to God

is an act of worship. Worship is far more than what we do on Sunday morning it's

more than praising, more than singing, more than praying, more than the Lord's Supper.

People talk like that they say "At my church, we have worship first, then teaching."

That is a misunderstanding. Everything we do together on Sunday, including listening to

my teaching, listening silently to God, processing behind the cross, greeting one another,

giving an offering all of that is worship.

In John chapter 5, Jesus said that we are to worship God in spirit and in truth

that those are the worshipers the Father seeks. [Raise hand] How many of you want to be

the kind of worshiper that the Father seeks? Me, too. What does it mean to worship in

spirit and in truth? We are going to explore that question over the next several weeks in a

sermon series I've titled, "How to Worship God."

We begin today by saying that one thing that it means is that we are to worship

God wholeheartedly, with our whole being. We are to withhold nothing from God. We

worship God with our bodies, with our minds, with our emotions, with our time, with our

money, with our desires, with our lives and with our deaths. Nothing else, no one else

should even come close to God when it comes to how we experience our affections, our

ambitions, our lives.

Every orthodox Jew has memorized "the Schema," the great prayer from

Deuteronomy 6:4, and recites it at least twice daily. The single word Schema means

Hear, and it stands for the first word in that prayer, which begins like this: "Hear oh

Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). The original Hebrew

reads "SCHEMA YISREAL ADONI ELUHENU ADONI ESCHAD." Note that the word

for one, "Eschad," is a word that typically means a compound unity as in Genesis 2, "the

man and woman became one flesh." If Moses had meant to say, the Lord is only one, he

could have used the word yachid rather than echad. Once again, you can see the Trinity

in the Old Testament. The Schema goes on to say in more familiar terms to New

Testament believers this: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your

soul and with all your strength." You recognize that from the New Testament? Jesus

called the schema the first and greatest commandment. When Jesus said we are to love

God, the word he uses is to agapeo God. Agape is the kind of love that seeks the highest

good of the other. To love God is to worship him. Jesus tells us how we are to worship

God we love him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. We worship him

with everything we have, every part of our being.

Let's look at worship with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength.

The Hebrews believed that the heart and the bowels were the seat of our emotions, so to

worship God with our heart is to worship him with our emotions and our bodies. Our soul

is our psyche, our personality, or our cognitive mind. To worship God with your soul is

to worship him with your mind. To worship God with your strength is to worship with

effort, with your will. So wholehearted worship is worship with your whole being,

including at the very least, your body, emotions, mind and will.

We're going to look today at Mary Magdalene as an example of how to worship

God wholeheartedly. Mary was a disciple of Jesus who followed him. Christian Worship

means following Jesus. She left everything she had to follow him, just like Peter, James

and John. She went where He went she was a part of his traveling company, his

entourage - she was a Jesus groupie. She was not a fickle follower she was bolder than

the rest! She wanted to be where He was. Whatever agenda she may have had in her

hometown of Magdala, she left it behind to follow Jesus' agenda. Why did she follow?

She was thankful! Jesus had driven seven demons out of her. She'd been set free. When

the Son Sets you free, you will be free indeed! I know what it is like to be set free from

the evil one: Jesus delivered me from many demons as well. He changed my life, and I

am forever grateful! Mary was set free from fear of what others thought. She was free

from fear for her own safety. When Jesus was crucified, Mary was there. When he had

died, Mary was there to anoint his body. All the men who followed him, the Apostles,

were frightened for their own safety they did not want to end up like Jesus, torn apart

on a cross. Mary followed Jesus no matter what.

How about you? Are you willing to be identified with Jesus when he is

unpopular? When you are at work or at school or on the street, and people mock Jesus,

and slander his name, do you speak up? I know a lawyer named Dave who had had

enough of the cursing he heard at his law firm, taking the Lord's name in vain. One day

he spoke up, and said this. "Excuse me: when you trash the name of the Lord my God,

that offends me deeply. Do not speak that way around here again." The climate in that

office changed, praise God. Are you there when they crucify your Lord? Are you willing

to be identified with him wearing a cross, or keeping a Bible in your office?

Deuteronomy 6:8 says we are to wear the symbolic reminders of our God so we can see,

and others can see, who we worship. For the Jew, that might mean wearing phylacteries

in their hair, so that they are reminded of the law every time the capsule containing the

law bumps their foreheads. What might it mean for you?

Worship God with your mind. Jesus says we are to worship God in truth, to

worship him with our minds. In order to do that, we need to know the truth about God,

don't we? If we worship something or someone that is not God because we do not know

who God is, or what God is really like, we cannot worship God in truth. When she

arrived at the tomb, Mary Magdalene did not yet know the truth about Jesus that he was

God. She was ignorant of the truth. Look at page 1074 of your blue pew Bibles. Verse 9

tells us that they did not yet understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the

dead. She needed someone to tell her. She had a misconception based on what appeared

to be the facts on the ground. It looked like someone had stolen Jesus' body. Look at

verse 13: She said, "They have taken my Lord away, and I don't know where they have

put him."

Have you ever felt that way? You thought that you knew who Jesus was, who

God is, and then you read something or heard something or saw something that calls into

question what you have believed about God? Mary did. Circumstances went bad, and

Jesus was crucified. What does that say about God's love, his justice? It was hard to

fathom at that time. Mary was diverted by ignorance into mistaken theology. She feared

losing Jesus. The truth is that no one can take Jesus away from you. You can lose your

car in an accident, lose your house to your mortgage company, your life to a heart attack,

but no one can take Jesus or the word of God from you when he and it is in your heart.

That is why Moses told the Jews to impress the Torah on the hearts of their children, so

that they memorize it, it gets inside them. No matter where you are, Jesus can be with

you. When Jesus said you must worship God in spirit and truth, he was talking to the

Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus said a time was coming when it did not matter

whether you worship God on Mt. Zion or Mt. Gezarim, the place of worship did not

matter, what matters is worship in spirit and truth. The truth about God is that he is

omnipresent, present at all times and all places. When Mary first saw Jesus at the tomb,

verse 15, she thought he was the gardener. Jesus was with her, but she did not recognize

him. For Mary, like for us, it makes all the difference in the world when we believe that

Jesus is here with us.

In verse 16, Jesus spoke to her, saying "Mary," and everything changed for her.

He called her by name. The truth about God is that God knows your name. He cares

about you as an individual. God is crazy about you. If God has a refrigerator, your picture

is on it. God calls each of us by name. I was talking to Ron, a new convert last week,

who is struggling with reading the book of Numbers with all the lists of strange names,

who begat whom, the descendants of Naphtali by their clans, Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer,

Shillem. Yadda yadda yah.... Do we really need to read that stuff? I told him, yes, it is

important that you understand that God thinks names are important. Because God knows

each of them by name, it means that He knows you by name as well. What I did not tell

him is this: Reading those lists is like enduring a graduation ceremony with all the names

spoken out. You wait and wait while the unfamiliar names are spoken. But when your

own child's name is called, who then walks across the stage, then you are at full

attention, and so proud. God loves each of his children like you love yours. He has more

kids than you do, and he is proud of every one! These names are our fathers and mothers

in the faith. Jesus called Mary by name.

Mary responds by crying, "Rabboni!" Literally, it means teacher, a strong form

of the word Rabbi, but Rabboni was used as a name for God, to address God. Mary gets it

right she is calling Jesus God here. This is a part of worshiping God in truth,

worshiping with our minds. Our God has a name several names, really. Names define,

and they delimit. When we say we worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it

defines who we are worshiping, it defines who the promise of the land is reckoned

through. We are not worshiping the God of Ishmael, or the God of Esau. When we say

"Almighty God," or "God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," we are speaking of

YHWH and no other god. We are speaking of a particular God with particular

characteristics and a particular history who has made particular promises to a particular

people! When God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, Moses asked God, who shall I

say you are? God told him his name was YHWH, I am that I am. Do not be taken in by

the references you hear sometimes to a bland God in political speeches. We do not

worship a mush-god; we worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,

and no other. Anything else is idolatry.

Worship God with your heart. Let's look at how Mary did that in John 20, verse

10. "Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb

crying." Stop there. Mary was crying. The Greek word means she was wailing, making

a loud expression of grief that Middle Eastern women still do today at funerals. I believe

that Mary is an example of worship with all her heart. Mary did not hold back her

emotions, but she cried out to God. Evangelicals have always extolled the emotional

experience of God. The second birth is an experience of personal encounter with God. In

revival meetings with Wesley, Whitfield and Edwards during the first Great Awakening,

people were not what we would call reserved! Some wailed and wept like Mary over

their sins, some shook like they finally got plugged into the power of God, some danced

with joy. The point is that they were honest to God. They loved God with all their hearts.

Of course, it is possible to get carried away by your emotions and by your flesh and to be

out of the spirit. Let's be real here. Nicky Gumbel has said that the chief problem in

Anglican worship services is not delirious emotionalism. We don't want to interfere with

anyone else's worship, but we all need to give space for people to be honest to God. So

for example, if the Lord leads you to dance with joy during worship, I encourage you to

do that. And I ask that you do it at the back of the gym, where you won't be a visual

distraction for people as they worship. Otherwise, they might well think your dance is

about you, rather than about God.

Mary clings to him, we don't know for how long. Overcome with gratitude and

elation that he is alive, she hugs Jesus. Some time later, Jesus says to her, don't cling to

me. Mary is worshiping with her heart. It's important to understand that Jesus is not

objecting to being touched here. He encourages Thomas to touch him later that day. He is

saying that she does not have to cling to him, because he is not yet ascended there is

time for that later, since he will be with her for a while. Everything has changed for Mary

because she has had a personal encounter with Jesus. There is a time to cling to Jesus

that is worship from the heart. He says to Abide in him, every moment as a branch in the

vine.

The reason Jesus tells Mary not to cling at that moment is not to tell her to stop

worshiping him. Nor was it because Jesus did not want to be touched later that same

day, he asked Thomas to touch his hands and side. No, it's to tell her to worship him in a

different way to worship him with her will, not just her heart. Some of us love being in

our heart, worshiping God with our heart, but God wants us to worship him with our will,

too! Worship is not for our benefit; it's for God's benefit. We do benefit from worship,

but that is not its purpose. Jesus told Mary not to cling to him because he had something

for her to do. That clinging could have gone on for some time before Jesus spoke to her.

He wanted her to go tell the disciples that he had risen. She went right away and told

them. Obedience is worship. Evangelism is worship. John 15:14 says, "You are my

friend if you do what I command." To obey is better than sacrifice. God treasures your

simple acts of obedience more than your prayers. Hudson Taylor: A little thing is a little

thing, but faithfulnesses a little thing is a great thing."