Today we begin a new sermon series. Its purpose is not only to help everyone gain new appreciation of the elements of worship and thus get more out of worship, but to invite everyone into a deeper spiritual experience - for each part of worship is not only an integral element in the drams of worship, but each element, in its own unique way helps us give voice to our deep longings for God and is a point where we can experience God's presence in our lives.

As we begin, I want to say a few words about worship; Worship, in its construction and movement is a drama. The parts of worship are arranged not only to make logical sense, but dramatic sense.

You can see the movement of this drama by the major headings that are in our bulletin every week. We gather and get ready - that's Act I. We hear God's word - that's Act II (And you see, we aren't ready to hear God's word until we have acknowledged God and our need for God). Act III is our response to God's action toward us. We affirm our faith, we pray for ourselves, one another and the world, we offer ourselves, on some Sundays we ordain disciples, we welcome disciples, we confirm disciples, we commission disciples, we share in the Lord's Supper, once we married a couple - and traditionally, this is the place where people are baptized. Now we have broken that dramatic flow with baptism because we want children to be present for baptism and there is something appropriate about having our primary welcoming ceremony placed in the "Gathering" part of our worship service. Our service ends with Act IV - the sending part of the service which really serves as Act I of our lives as we move away from worship.

It is my hope that across our worship this summer that we will not only gain more connection to the rhythms of this drama in worship while we are here on Sunday mornings, but we will discover the places in our lives where these elements of worship find resonance. For our worship of God is not contained in a brief time on Sunday morning, but we are called to worship God without ceasing.

So today we begin where our worship begins - with prelude. The prelude is a funny part of worship; indeed, we might even ask ourselves, Is the prelude actually a part of worship or is it that thing that happens immediately before our worship begins? The answers to that question are varied.

• Some people find the prelude an essential component of their worship - it is a time of essential preparation and draws people into an awareness of God - they could barely worship without it.
• Others find the music that is played during this time as a minor annoyance because it gets it the way of their pre-worship activity which is reconnecting with friends - and over the years I have noticed that when the prelude is louder, the volume of people's conversations rise as well - how else are you going to be heard over all that music?
• For some, the prelude is background music - what I call "ecclesiastical elevator music." You don't really listen to it, but it sets a mood, it helps us feel "church-y" or worshipful - it is part of the ambiance, along with stained glass, wooden pews, and other church furniture that helps us transition into a time of focused worship - sort of like a good restaurant will use visual and aural clues to help you enter into the world of the restaurant before you sit down to eat.
• For others, because the prelude is planned prior to the official start time of worship (and it always is - the organist or musician of the morning always figures out how long the prelude is and then counts back from 9:30 to figure out when to start, so "worship" can start precisely at 9:30), they arrange their morning to arrive as close to 9:30 as possible, rarely or never hear the prelude.

We find parallels with many of these approaches to our prelude in worship in other parts of our lives. Think about this list activities as preludes - and see how they mirror some of the approaches that we have to our prelude in worship:

• National Anthem at sporting events - in this case, the prelude is a tradition that signals the start of something unconnected to it. Also, the National Anthem at baseball games is sung before the official start of the game, which begins with the first pitch.
• Trailers (and more and more advertisements) at movies - these are short films that not only helps us physically to get ready for the main purpose of the evening (it gives our eyes and ears a time to adjust to unfamiliar surroundings), but it builds a sense of expectation - not only for the movie you are about to see, but for ones you might want to see in the future)
• Teasers at the beginning of TV news - don't you hate that? In this case the prelude is designed to entice you to do something you wouldn't otherwise stick around for - "will it rain tomorrow and ruin your Memorial Day activities - stay tuned and find out"
• Warm-ups before engaging in athletic events or stretching before running - in this case the prelude acts as a transition to something that our bodies aren't immediately ready to do
• Warm-up act at a concert or a warm-up comedian before the headliner - these whet the appetite for the real reason you have showed up - they get us in the mood so we can better engage with the main act, they lengthen the event so we feel like we are getting our money's worth

So which of these is the right way, or the best way to think about preludes? Especially a prelude in worship?

As a way into this question, let us spend some time with Jesus at a "prelude" moment in his life. In our passage from Mark, chapter 1, Jesus has just gotten his public ministry off the ground. In the first phase of his ministry, Jesus is preaching (his first sermon being just one sentence long: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news"); calling disciples, starting with the fishermen Peter and Andrew and James and John; casting out demons; and healing the sick. After this first round of activity, Mark tells us that Jesus' fame began to spread. And then we get to our passage of today: "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." Now this may sound more like an "interlude" rather than a prelude, but by placing this spiritual and physical retreat at the beginning of a day, Mark positions it as a prelude. Yes, Jesus is tired and needs a break, but his time in a deserted place was also a prelude to a new round of ministerial activity, it was a prelude to a new day.

If we were to provide a musical score to this prelude of Jesus, what would we choose? An organ choral prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach? Soft flutes? Minimalist strings? If it were up to me, I would choose silence - because that's what Jesus was after - after all the crowds, all the press, all the confrontations, all the doubt (on the part of the others and, I suspect, on the part of Jesus), he needed silence. And what did Jesus do in this prelude time? He prayed - he spent time with God. I am sure that he, like his ancestor Jacob, wrestled with God. He needed to tell God that this was too much. It was unfair that God expected so much of him; too many people expected too much of him - do you ever feel like that in your life? He asked for God's help - he knew that he couldn't do what he knew he needed to do without God's strength and power - the demons were too strong, the demands were too many, his own doubts were too great. So he implored God to give him strength. He prayed for others, for the thickheaded disciples that he had called, for the sick who reached out to him, for the dying who had so little hope.

But mostly...mostly, I believe, Jesus just sat with God. And this, I believe is where he had his prelude - just being with God - without words, without agenda, without self-consciousness. Perhaps Jesus meditated on Psalm 46. Now in my estimation, Psalm 46 is about as perfect as a psalm can be. In the Tom Cruise movie "The Last Samurai" the Samurai leader tells the Tom Cruise character, "A perfect blossom is a rare thing...You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life." Psalm 46 is a perfect psalm and a life spent meditating on it would not be a wasted life. There is a line in Psalm 46 that gets to the heart of prelude: "Be still, and know THAT I am God." This is what one of my mentors called the "that-ness" of God. Don't think meditate on God's power, don't meditate on God's goodness, don't meditate on God's love, just meditate THAT God is God. Know THAT God is God. And that is what I believe Jesus was doing in that deserted place. Like a friendship that doesn't need words only presence to be connected, that is the relationship that Jesus had with God. And he needed continually to be reconnected to that relationship because that was Jesus' strength in his ministry, that is what kept him going in the face of opposition, in the face of doubt, in the face of tiredness, in the face of death. He used these prelude times not only to get ready, but to reconnect, to be reminded that God is always present, so that he could go forth that day and every day secure in the knowledge that his entire life and being was surrounded by God's presence, power and love.

This is the essence of prelude. Prelude is preparation, but it is more than that. Prelude is a way to help us make a transition from the anxieties and press of life to being in God's presence, but it is more than that. Prelude is a redirection of our focus from ourselves to God, but it is more than that. Preludes in our spiritual lives can be so powerful because they serve as reminders that God is always present with us and because they are invitations to reconnect with God. They are times when we can experience God so closely that we can live with the awareness that God is with us at all times - even when we walk through the valley of shadow of death. Preludes, then, aren't just preparations for a time of worship; they are worshipful times that prepare us for our daily living.

There are many ways to experience that prelude - we reserve such a time every week at the beginning of worship. For some, seeing friends, connecting and reconnecting with friends is a powerful prelude, for it reminds us that we are God's people and are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Worship itself is a prelude for some - it serves as a weekly reminder that God is always present and it is a springboard to a new day, a new week, a new round of ministerial activity. Some people get up in the morning and sit quietly and are simply content to know THAT God is God. Have you ever been going to an important meeting - for your work, with a child's teacher, with a doctor, with a lawyer, with a friend who is in need and as you get closer, you say a prayer "God be with me". That is a kind of prelude - for it not only asks for God's presence, it serves as a reminder of God's presence - sort of like a little child who every couple of minutes reaches out and touches a parent's leg just to be reminded that the parent is still there. That's what preludes do for us - they remind, they connect, they comfort, they calm.

At the beginning of the sermon I talked about the drama of worship - gathering, hearing, responding, going. We sometimes think of worship as an escape, as a hiatus from life. But what if worship were a template for our lives? What if rather than viewing worship as exotic and different that we approached worship as normative for our living? In the gathering, we are known by God; in the hearing, we are led by God; in the responding, we serve God; in the sending, we share that love with others. When we live our lives as lives of worship, when the pattern of our lives is directed toward God and is lived in response to God, then prelude is that time that reconnects, that draws us in to the powerful and loving presence of God.

In prelude we discover and rediscover that God is - in prelude we discover and rediscover the that-ness of God. It is a time to be still, to be, so that we might hear, and live.