Sunday Message: Worship Styles and Christian Love..."Don't Yuck Someone's Yum"

Join Bishop Becca Middeke-Conlin as she unpacks the true meaning of worship, challenging traditional notions and exploring what really matters in Christian community. Bishop Becca breaks down some complex liturgical concepts and terms like "Liturgy" and "Lectionary" and "Adiaphora!" and she argues that love, not ritual, is the ultimate expression of faith.

Key Takeaways:

• Love is the true mark of discipleship, not worship style
• 'Adiaphora' - understanding what truly matters in worship
• The importance of accepting diverse worship practices
• Liturgy is about creating meaningful community connections
• Worship should be intentional, caring, and purpose-driven

Discover why 'don't yuck someone else's yum' might be the most important theological lesson you'll hear today, and learn how worship styles are ultimately less important than the love we share. This message is perfect for anyone who's ever felt confused by church traditions or wants to understand worship beyond surface-level practices.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: Greetings and Gospel Reading
• 4:44 The Problem with "Traditional" Worship
• 10:00 Liturgy Explained What is a lectionary?
• 14:17 The Concept of Adiaphora Introducing "liturgical police"
• 18:30 Worship Wars: Styles and Acceptance
• 22:45 Love as the Ultimate Expression of Faith

Transcript

Bishop Becca Middeke-Conlin: 0:00

Oh, our holy gospel this morning is according to John the 13th chapter. We do have a response, but I guess you aren't going

Pastor Joe Liles: 0:08

to do it. Your response is, glory to you, oh Lord. Glory

Bishop Becca Middeke-Conlin: 0:12

to you. Oh Lord. GOSPEL this morning is according to John the 13th Chapter, glory to you. Oh Lord, good. You got it, alright? Cuz that is level one. After washing the disciples feet, predicting his betrayal and then revealing his betrayer, Jesus speaks of His glorification on the cross. This is not the gospel. When he has when he had gone out, Jesus said, Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify Him in himself, and will glorify him at once, little children, I am with you only a little longer, you will look for me. And as I said to the Jews, I now say to you where I am going. You cannot come. I give you a new commandment that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you must, you should also love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another, the gospel of the Lord, praise to You, O Christ may be seated. How good choir may be seated too. How good Lord it is to be here. I bring you greetings from the entire Arkansas, Oklahoma Senate. I especially bring you greetings from the shared Ministry of north central Oklahoma, where I was at last week, which is Saint Paul's UCC and Marshall Oklahoma, Perry uh, Zion Lutheran in Perry, Oklahoma, and Prince of Peace in Ponca, City, Oklahoma. And they send their greetings, their boo Hoos, their Alleluias there. It's good to do ministry with you as part of the Senate. Can I send your greetings, your boo hoo your Alleluias to where I'll be at next week, which is University in Norman. I like it when you all start with enthusiasm for this, and I don't have to ask for the second version of it. So thank you all. So as pastor, Pastor, Joe said, I am Becca Mitch Conlan. I'm the Bishop of the Arkansas, Oklahoma Senate. There are 41 congregations between our two states that are part of the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And I am not Joe's boss. I don't want to be Joe's boss. I just kind of help oversee those 41 congregations and how they work. And so when Pastor Joe invited me to come and preach today and we're going to have this traditional service, I realized I'm probably not the best person to have a conversation about traditional worship. Part of it was, I think I might have gotten a little annoying to Joe trying to figure out what he meant by traditional worship. Because I'm like, are we going to do all the pomp and circumstance of all the smells and bells that happens in like high church liturgy? And I realized being here today, he it's like, oh no, he wants the church that he grew up in. That's what he meant. And I think that's a problem, because every church does things a little bit differently, such as, you know, level three, five, you know, sacred Sunday. And one of my least favorite answers when I go to a church and I ask, and I'm leading worship, and I haven't been there in a while, and I'm asking them something like, Hey, how do you do communion? My least favorite response is, oh, the normal way. Normal for you. What does that look like? Please. Are you doing bread or wafers? Are you doing wine or grape juice? Are you doing that? You dip into the cup or you drink out of the cup, or do you have little cups? And if the little cups are they pre filled, are you going to pour them? There's a bunch of different ways to do worship. And one of my problems with traditional worship is that once we get into the habit of sayings, then things are set for us. And many worship leaders actually don't start stop planning worship, because we have a liturgy that is already picked out. I'll get to what liturgy means in a bit. Don't worry, there's going to be some big words here. I'll define them. We also have a lectionary, so the readings are already picked out. The prayers have been written often by our church publishing houses, like two years ago. And then we have just we do things by rote, by memory, and we don't actually take time to plan worship. And it's so easy to move into this process where worship then becomes stale and dry. Another problem that I have with traditional worship compared to whatever the neighborhood's Normal style of worship is. I don't know what you want

Unknown: 4:44

to call that modern worship with traditional elements. Okay, the

Bishop Becca Middeke-Conlin: 4:48

modern worship with the traditional elements is that many people who do traditional worship, especially higher church worship, and by that I mean all the smells and bells, the procession. I. All the garments, all the things, is that those people often feel like there's a right way and a lot wrong way to do worship, and they're doing it the right way. And I'll give and I so I often call these people liturgical police. And I'll give you one of my favorite stories about interacting with all liturgical places. Years ago, I was at a pastor's conference, and this was like a late night. We already had closed the bar conversation. We were at the hotel lobby at this point, and I got stuck talking to one of these liturgical police people, and I really did not want to be in the conversation like I would rather have talked to the person managing the hotel desk than this guy. I was just done talking to him, and he starts going on this rant about Pascal candles and Christ candles and Advent wreaths. And I am not following Him again, Pascal candles, I'll define later. Don't worry. And I thought I asked what was like, an appropriate question. Like, so, are you mad that people put the Paschal candle in the Advent wreath? Are you mad that they call it a Christ candle to begin with? And he looked at me, and he said, haven't you ever read a book? There was a word in between there and that pause, yeah, you figured it out. And I was just dumbfounded, like, who cares? And so I said, adiaphora. Adiaphora, another big word I'll get to it. Don't worry. So let's define these big words that I've talked about. One of the words that I said was lectionary. Lectionary is the set of readings that many congregations follow week to week. A lot of mainline Protestant congregations follow it. The Catholic Church follows it, and not just here in the United States, but across the world. We currently are using a lectionary called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is came out when I was two years old. So it's old, but not that old, but it also follows what was the Common Lectionary and other lectionaries that have been around for hundreds of years, which church bodies have gotten together and said this is our pattern of worship and reading so that we can get to a lot of Scripture over the time. And so the Revised Common Lectionary has a three year cycle. Year a normally follows the Gospel of Matthew. Year B normally follows the gospel of Mark. Year C follows the Gospel of Luke. And you all are going, but what about John? Right? Well, what was our gospel reading from today? John? That's we're in year C. And what happens is John just kind of gets smooshed in between all these places. There's also those three other readings that happen. The first one is almost always from the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures. And today you're going wait we did acts, right? Well, that's because we're in the Easter season. And during during the Easter season, we always read that first lesson from the early church in Acts, and then the second is a psalm that normally responds to the first reading, and then we have an epistle reading, normally, something from one of Paul's letters, though, again, in the Easter season, we read from Revelation. Instead, Easter just messes everything up. Doesn't it like the world with Jesus's resurrection? And so these readings normally all tie together as well. There's some theme to it. So today's theme for our reading has been, how you know that somebody belongs to God. Our reading from Acts today is we hear of Peter saying that you don't have to be kosher or circumcised in order to worship God, and then, therefore order to worship Jesus. So therefore everyone can worship God. Our Psalm today was about all of creation. Worshiping God. Praise the Lord from the highest heavens. Praise the Lord from the earth. His glory is above the earth and the heavens, aka, everyone should be worshiping God. Our reading from Revelation says that God is making a new thing, that God He will dwell within them as God, and they will be his people, and God himself will be in them, and they will be their God. Again. All of creation should be the ones worshiping God. All belong to God. And then our Gospel lesson today, from John talks about how people will know that we are Jesus's followers because of love, that all who love therefore and every time we share love, is a way that we share God with one another. Now, one of the pastors that I met when I was in seminary loved the fact that there was the lectionary because it kept him from preaching on the prodigal son 25 Sundays a year. So if you ever think that Pastor Joe is preaching on the same text over and over again, maybe it's time you say, Hey, Joe, we need the lectionary. Yeah, um, however, I will also say that there's times that I don't understand the. Dictionary, there's times that I'm like, I don't understand why this reading got paired with the other readings, or why we are reading this reading during this part of the liturgical year. So the liturgical year, again, definitions is this church year and the seasons of the church. So we have Christmas and we have Easter, the two high points of the church here. And then there's the season before and the season of because Christmas and Easter are not days, they are seasons. How many days is Christmas? There's a song about it 12, yes. So there's 12 Days of Christmas, the entire season of Christmas, and the season before is Advent, and the last day after Christmas, just today, is epiphany. And then we have Easter. And the season before Easter is lent for 40 days. How long is Easter? Not one day 50. And the last day of the Easter season is Pentecost. And then we have on the rest of the calendar year what we call ordinary time. Isn't it the best name ordinary time. And ordinary time sometimes is also referred to as the long green season. And it's called that because each of those seasons have a color to represent them, so that when people come into church based on the vestments that pastors are wearing, such as the stole, or my coat that I'm wearing, or the pyramids, which is what's on the altar. People know what season that we're in. So right now we're in the Easter season, because Easter was, this is only the fifth Sunday of Easter. We are not yet at at 50 days of Easter, um, and so we have the white for Easter and white for Christmas. We have purple or blue for Advent. We have purple for Lent. We have green for the long ordinary time, and we also have red for Pentecost Reformation Day and other celebrations of the church. So if you come back here on Wednesday, when we have soon to be pastor Tom's ordination, instead of white, we'll be wearing red, because it's a festival of the church. So the other one of the other words that I talked about earlier was the word liturgy. Now we use liturgy a whole lot in traditional serve worship. We use the term liturgy a whole lot in traditional worship, but every church has a liturgy because liturgy just means a pattern of worship. So the typical pattern of worship here at the neighborhood looks something like gathering, hymns, prayers, scriptures. At some point, the kids leave, the kids there's a sermon. The kids come back. You have communion. There's more sending out with announcements and more music, right? The liturgy that we are using today this morning comes from the Evangelical Lutheran worship, the cranberry hymnal, and it actually is often referred to as the lovely, uncreative name of elw setting four. It comes from LBW setting two, for those of you who grew up Lutheran and used the green hymnal growing up, and it was written in the 70s, but a lot of the parts, the sung parts that we will and the spoken parts come from scripture, and they are ancient. So we will hear a Holy, holy, holy that comes from Isaiah, six, three, right before communion, or like the words of institution that are said, not just in the spoken liturgy and traditional service, but also each week here at the neighborhood, comes from first, Corinthians, 1123, through 26 where Paul actually quotes what happens in most of the Gospels. And the purpose of the written liturgy is to create patterns and repetitions so that people can easily learn what is happening, even non readers. When I was a kid, my brother and I used to whisper compete the entire communion liturgy to each other to see who could get it most correct, because it kept us entertained during worship. And just so, you know, I am two years younger than my brother, and I always won, and guess who's now a bishop. There's also the sung liturgy, and just this weekend, I heard a pastor tell me that his five year old, four year old child knows the canticle of praise that we sang earlier, and will sing that while serving tea to her dolls. So the part of this, the purpose of it, is so that even young kids can participate in worship, because they know what is happening, and these patterns help people understand and participate in worship. And it can also feel like a little bit like comfort food. How many of you grew up with traditional worship? How many of you are having a little bit of like, it's like eating a big bowl of macaroni and cheese right now? Yeah, a little bit of comfort. Comfort to it. There is something about when you hear the Lord be with you, that it's hard you can do it, and it's hard not for your hearts to lift up a little bit, even if you haven't been to worship for decades. People know that because it's ingrained in them. And there's also the times that sometimes you just aren't feeling like worshiping. And you come to worship and those words that are so ingrained in your soul, you're able to say and participate in, and then you leave worship feeling a little bit more uplifted, because your soul needed to hear what was deep down within it. There are some times that this spoken liturgy that comes week after week can be so inviting. But there's one more big word that I said today, and that is the word adiapra. It's one of my favorite words. It's Greek for it technically means in different things or things not necessary for worship. And I say sometimes that adiaphora is Greek for who gives a fudge, because it does not matter if you wear robes and candles and process that's all adiaphora guitars or organ music. Adiaphora pre written prayers or extemporaneous ones, if you do something that's been around for 2000 years, or something that you've only been doing for two weeks, all adiaphora. But the things that are necessary for worship is what Pastor Joe's been talking about in this series, about that ancient gathering, word meal, sending what matters in worship is that we eat together, and that we hear God's word, and that we gather in community, and we feed one another, and remember Christ's death on the cross and His love for us, and then we're sent out into the world to proclaim God to love All. And this is why I get annoyed at liturgical police, like that one pastor got mad at me about Pascal candles, because you don't need to know that a Paschal candle is a giant white candle that is in the church service, and that it's only written. It's only lit during certain seasons of the year. You don't need to know that Pascal comes from the term for a sacrificial lamb at Passover, or that some people feel like you have to bow when you light it, and other people don't. It does not matter that's all adiaphora, just as you don't need to only have organ music or only guitar music, because in Matthew 1820 Jesus says that whenever two or three are gathered in my name, I'll be there. So what do you need for worship? To be in community, to gather together, to hear the Word of God, to feed one another, and then be sent back out into the world. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells the disciples that people will know that they are His disciples because they worship in the correct not because they worship in the correct way. And Jesus doesn't say that. People will know that they are His disciples because they wear robes and bow and preside and parade a Bible around. Instead, people will know that they are His disciples because of love, and part of loving another person is loving them for and accepting them for all of their habits and all of their hobbies. My husband has his PhD in Ancient Near Eastern mathematics and the history of science. He is currently in Germany, working on an academic project that involves something to do about transferring of mathematical knowledge from one community to next, and also involves canals. For some reason, I don't tell him, I'm sorry, love, I can't I'm sorry, husband, I can't love you unless you study something that I can easily understand and explain to others. Instead, I say, No, you do you? You love this, you go for it, and I love you because you love this, and as long as somebody is willing to pay you to do it, that's even better. Yet, churches, for years, have been playing this like worship wars about traditional versus contemporary or modern worship and which one is better. And Christians judge one another, and they judge congregations that they've never worshiped at because of their worship style. And while that's not very loving. Have you ever heard of the phrase, don't yuck someone's yum? That poo pooing someone else's preferred worship style is yucking someone else's Yum, telling them that what they love, yey can't aren't allowed to love, and it's not very loving. And the gospel lesson today, Jesus tells His disciples that he is not with them much longer than he is God and where he he is going they cannot come. Worship brings us closer to God. God, and yet it does not bring us to heaven. And regardless of what style of worship you prefer, you will never earn your way to heaven faster than someone else who worships in a different style, because worship will not take us to Heaven. Love Will people will know we are Christians when they come to church, not because there's a band or a pulpit upfront, but people will come, will know that we are Christians, and they'll experience Christ when they are loved, when they are loved for who they are. People experience Christ, and people experience love. They then experience God, and that includes a love of worship. And that's what I enjoy about traditional worship, or even high church liturgy, is that when it's crafted and planned with love, when worship leaders take time to think about the liturgy and which one makes sense for this liturgical season. Or they look at the lectionary readings and they adjust them because of the needs of the congregations when prayers are adapted to include the people who are sick in the congregation, but also natural and disasters and political events that are happening throughout the their community and the world, when communion practices are adapted for the needs of the congregation, whether that's bringing communion to somebody with most mobility issues, or making sure that there's alcohol free and gluten free options for people who need it. I love it when it when people take time to plan worship, and when we also take time not just to do the traditions, but to explain the traditions. Like the reason why a lot of traditional worship services wear white robes is not so that people can look fancier than others. It's a reminder of our baptism because in the ancient church, people who were newly baptized were given white robes, white garments, as a sign that they were cleansed from their sin. And still today, often people are given either a white garment or a white cloth when they are baptized to remind them that they are set free from their sin, that they are cleansed from their sin. I love worship when it is done with intention, when it is done with care, when it is done with purpose, because it is then that it shows that love was put into crafting the experience for others. And through that love, I hope you are able to experience Christ. I hope that you can sense the love that is put into worship each week here at the neighborhood, be that this traditional service but or the more typical style of worship that is here, may you feel that love. May you experience Christ through that love. May you know that Christ is here because of that love, and then may you go out and share that love with others, not yucking someone else's yum because their style of worship preference is different than your own. Amen, I invite.