Pastor Heather…
Good morning, everyone. I had it on my heart this morning to talk about my favorite topic: worship. For those of you that don’t come to morning prayer very often, we have a mixture of worshipers and pray-ers. And when I was asked to lead, I was like, “Okay, I tend to be more of a worshiper than a pray-er.” But I do think that sometimes there are these moments that we classify what we think prayer is, and really at the heart of it, prayer is just communion with God, fellowship with God. And so that could include worship. That can include meditation. That can include declaring and all those things.
Sometimes there’s a lot of listening in prayer…
And so one of the things that I like to think about is if I could pick two stories that I could be present when it happened in the Bible, the first one would be anytime Jesus was on the mountain with God and just talking to Him. Because I’d love to see what that conversation looked like. And in my mind, I feel that conversation looked a lot more like listening than talking. There was some talking, but I think there was a lot more listening and trying to hear the voice and the direction of His Father. Like, “What am I doing next? What’s my next step? What do I need to fulfill now? Where do I need to go?” And so I think there was a lot of listening. There was talking. I’m sure there was a lot of worship and adoration. So that, to me, is an example of what prayer is. It’s like He got away to be with His Father. And to me that’s what these times are—times for us to get away and to be with our Father.
Are you an “action” pray-er or are you a “contemplator” pray-er…
We have the pray-ers, the action people. And it’s like, “Okay, we got our list and we’re going to declare and we’re going to…” And that’s good too. There’s all that. And unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. So I’m more of the contemplator, the thinker, the meditator. It says Mary, when the angel came to her, she pondered all those things in her heart. I’m a ponderer. Okay, so you’re just going to have to put up with me for this morning. I’m sorry. We’re going to go to a fun place anyways.
When familiarity in prayer can be bad…
But all that to say, communion with God can look like so many different things. And so when you come, just open your heart and be ready to go wherever God wants to go that day. And I think with us being Christians for as long as we have a lot of us and being part of a church that speaks the Word in faith and that we have an understanding of the Word, it can be easy to think that we know everything about God. It can be easy to come into this place and have a sense of familiarity. And I don’t mean in a good way, like intimacy familiarity. I mean like, “Well, I already know what He’s going to say. I already know what this is all about. I already…” You know. But it’s good for us to remember that, yes, He wants to be familiar with us. He wants to be intimate with us. But also there’s a point of reverence and awe that we have to remember to bring into our relationship with Him. Because He is God. We don’t understand all His ways. His ways are not like our ways.
Prayer can be many things…
And so when we come into this place in the morning, to me, my heart is that we would listen to His heart and that we would let Him do what He wants to do, whatever that might be. Some days it might be declaring and praying: “we have our list and we’re going to speak over this and we’re going to do this today.” Other days, it might be waiting. Other days it might be worshiping. Other days it might be listening. You know, all of that is prayer. It’s communion with God. And so I just wanted to remind everybody of that today.
The Mary/Martha story…
So as I was thinking about what to talk about today, besides that, I was like, okay, we’re leading up to Easter. And so what happened on this day. And I don’t know that we know exactly what happened on this day, but I do know that tomorrow was the day that Mary worshiped at Jesus’ feet. The Mary-Martha story. That was tomorrow in the days leading up to the cross. And it says “six days before Passover.” So that would technically be tomorrow, I think. Well, according to Google, it’s tomorrow. So whatever. We’ll go with it. And since I’m not leading tomorrow, I just had this on my heart because that’s the other place that I would want to be. If the Lord came and asked, “Where in the history of Jesus would you want to be at that moment?” It would be this moment when Mary pours out the oil on Jesus’ feet. Because to me, just being a worshiper, there’s something that resonates in my heart so much about that story. And obviously that was a super important story to Jesus and to God because it’s in every single Gospel and not all stories were.
The Lazarus story…
And so there’s something about worship that makes the heart of God tender. I think it already is tender, but it makes our heart tender to hear His heart and to experience His heart. And something that’s interesting about that story… We have Mary and Martha, and however many days before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, their brother, right? When you read the story of Lazarus, when you know Jesus came to raise him from the dead… and I might be taking this a little out of context, but let’s just go on a fun little Heather-imagination story this morning. So you have Lazarus. He died, right? And we know that Jesus was purposeful to not go and to heal Lazarus while he was sick. We know He waited until he died because He said He’s going to show His glory. But imagine if you’re Mary and Martha, and you’re super close to Jesus. And your brother is about to die. And you’re sending word to Jesus like, “Please.” You know Jesus is healing people everywhere. And so now here you are, Mary and Martha, your brother is on the brink of death and you’re like, “Jesus, please come heal him. Come now. You need to hurry. He’s at the brink of death. The one you love is sick.” But He didn’t come. And there was a reason.
Mary didn’t go out to meet Jesus…
So Lazarus dies and we know the story. And if you read it, Mary and Martha are in the house. Lazarus dies and everybody’s mourning and wailing. That was like a big tradition then. And Jesus comes. Martha goes out to meet Jesus. But if you read the story, Mary stayed in the house. Now Mary was the worshiper. She was the one that wanted to be at Jesus’ feet, but she didn’t go out. And I just wonder if maybe she was a little mad at Jesus for not coming to heal her brother. I think she was!
And so Martha goes out and says something along the lines of, “If you were only here, he would’ve lived.” And then Jesus sends for Mary and asks her to come out to talk with Him before He goes in where all these people are crying and wailing and mourning. And Mary comes out and she falls at His feet and she’s crying. And she says the same thing. “If only you were here, he wouldn’t have died.” And so to me that says that there was something in her that broke a little bit. There was maybe a little faith that she felt was broken at that moment.
And I think that there’s moments in all of our lives where we expected God to move one way. And He didn’t move that way. He moved a different way. Or maybe we’re still waiting for Him to resurrect something in our lives that we lost or that was broken.
The moment Mary poured the oil on Jesus’ feet…
So obviously we know He raised Lazarus from the dead. And then at this moment, He comes to the house after He had done that. And we have this beautiful moment where Mary gets this expensive oil and she just cries at His feet and pours that oil. And I think in that moment it was like a moment of saying, “I give everything to you. I trust you. I’m not going to try to figure things out. I’m not going to try to tell you how you can move in my life. I’m going to give you the most expensive thing I have.”
I won’t question you again…
And back in those days that oil was either for like a burial of a person or like a wedding ceremony. So really she’s literally putting her future at His feet. And she’s saying, I trust you and I worship you. And she cries. And I think it was a moment of repentance of like, “I won’t question you again and thank you for what you did, even in my unbelief.” And how many times has God moved even in our unbelief?
“Leave her alone. She’s doing this for My burial…”
And so all that to say, you think like around this time of the week leading up to Jesus’ burial, she does that. And Jesus even says, “Leave her alone. She’s doing this for My burial.” And I’ve read some commentaries that talk about how when Jesus was on the cross, He probably still smelled the perfume of that oil that she poured on Him because it was so fragrant, it would stay in your skin. And it was for His burial. And so you think of how important our worship is. That was a worshipful moment where she poured out what was important to her.
Ponder these things in your heart…
And so this morning, as we go into worship, just think about some of those things. Maybe there’s some familiarity in your life. Maybe there’s some lethargy, apathy, discontentment. Maybe there’s even people watching online or in here that are angry at God because He didn’t do something that you thought He was supposed to do. Or in a way you think He’s supposed to do it. Or maybe you’re waiting on Him. You think you’re waiting on Him. Which is funny because we always think we’re waiting on Him, but He’s always waiting on us.
Ponder Mary’s act as worship…
So as we go into worship this morning, I just really want you to picture yourself in that moment, the beauty of that moment when Mary poured out that oil at Jesus’ feet. How beautiful and worshipful that moment is and how it meant something to Jesus. And in that day that was really scandalous what she did. She wasn’t even supposed to, I think, even be in the room because women weren’t allowed in while a rabbi was teaching. But she went in and she poured the oil on His feet. She touched Him. She wasn’t supposed to touch Him. She let her hair down. She wasn’t supposed to do that. And so all of that was really scandalous. But Jesus took that moment and He knew what it was about. He knew it was her pouring out her heart and He saw it for what it was. And He stopped people from rebuking or correcting her. He stopped it because He knew that, at that moment, her heart was connecting to His heart and it was very precious and important to Him.
Have the right mindset in worship…
And so as we go into worship, let’s just have that mindset. Let’s have that heart that we’re going into His presence. And you might have some things you need to lay down at His feet. You might have some things you need to pour on His feet. You might have some tears you need to cry on His feet today. And feel free to do that. I know it requires vulnerability. I know it requires intimacy. But I believe that’s where God moves best. And if we can’t do it in this setting, then where can we do it? And so let’s make this a worshipful atmosphere as we go into His presence.
