One of my most trusted resources, The New Interpreter’s Bible, calls today’s scripture reading one of “the most important theological texts [found] in the books of Samuel” (NIB, Vol II, Abingdon Press, 1998, 1254).
We find David this morning, sitting on the deck of his brand new home.  No, that’s not quite right.  I should say, we find the king of Israelthis morning sitting on the balcony of his new palace.  Yeah, that’s much better because you see, he is no longer just David.  No longer is he Davidthe young shepherd boy who took care of the sheep…the one who killed Goliath.  No longer is he David, the writer and singer of songs.  No longer is he David the warrior. Today, he is David,the king of Israel.
Today, as he sits out on his balcony, he looks one way and sees all the people.  People who admire him for who he is today and for all he has done in the past.  They are all his people, the entire nation of Israel, people who look up to him for leadership and for guidance.  It gives him strength but it terrifies him at the same time as he wonders how he can be everything the people expect him to be.
    As King David sits out on his balcony and looks the other way, he sees what looks like an encampment area for homeless people.  Over there is a tattered canvas lean-to, a candle with a flickering flame, and all sorts of tributes and prayers written on parchment paper left lying around it.  But as run down and cluttered as all this appears to be…this is where David gets his strength.
As he sits on the balcony of his palace, he feels bad.  The whole area looks terrible and he knows he needs to do something about it.  So, he calls Nathan, a scruffy looking prophet, and tells Nathan that he wants to do something for the God of Israel, the God of his people who is camped out in this rundown corner of David’s backyard.  He tells Nathan of his plans to build a huge temple to honor and to house theGod of Israel, the God that chose him and claimed him and named him king of Israel.
    “Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Nathan.  “I’d say, ‘Go for it.’”  So off Nathan went to pray to God and to tell God the good news about the new Temple that would soon become God’s new home.
As Nathan bowed down to pray to God, he began his prayer by saying, “Ever present God.”  “Ever present.”  “Ever present.”The thought came to him: Ever present means…always there.  Ever present means that no matter where I go God is there.  If I go 200 miles to the north…he’s there.  If I go 200 miles to the south…he’s there.  He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere.  Ever present means that God cannot be contained…because God doesn’t want to be contained.Suddenly, the king’s idea of building a permanent home for God to stay in, didn’t sound so good.  
And suddenly, God broke in to Nathan’s prayer– “I didn’t ask for a new house.  From the time I brought my people out of slavery in Egypt to this very moment in time, I have never had a house.”  The issue here you see, is that from God’s standpoint, he represents divine freedom, a freedom which has always been represented by the movable tent –a sanctuary that has been used to house God…the same tent that is in David’s back yard.
To build a permanent home is to try to capture or confine an ever
present God, a God who is accustomed to moving among the people of Israel, a God who never has been and never will be confined or domesticated.
“You tell David he’s not running the show here.  I’m the one who brought him from the fieldsas a lowly shepherdand made him a king so that he could lead the people.  He might think he did it on his own, but it was me who did it all.  In fact, you tell David that he won’t build a house for me but that I’ll make a house out of him.”
So Nathan reluctantly went back to David to tell him the bad news…or was it good news.  Regardless of whether it was bad news or good news, Nathan thought that David, the one time shepherd boy who God turned into a king, needed to know what God had said.  
And since it was the Word of God that needed to be heard and since Nathan the prophet had a way of delivering God’s word, Nathan would invite David to worship Godwith him and their worship would begin with a call to worship.
A prophet who represented the word of God and the King of Israel sitting down or kneeling or whatever, to worship the God of Israel.  But before they could get into the nitty gritty of worship and hearing what God wanted David to hear, they had to start their worship service the same way we do…with a call to worship.  
    Let’s face it…out of all the elements of worship, and the United Methodist Book of Worship has a specific order of worship for us to follow…who really pays attention to the call to worshipor who really even needs the call toworship…especially if you are a prophet or a king.  As a pastor who is responsible for coming up with a call to worship every week, it can sometimes become a pain in the …….
The call to worship is kind of like ringing the bell a few minutes before class starts or blowing the train whistle just before the train goes through the crossing?  The call to worship is like the referee’s whistle usedto signal the beginning of a game or a teacher rapping her ruler on the desk to get our attention.  Some say that the call to worship is nothing but a bunch of noise; just a bunch of words that say, “Hey, be quiet; it’s time to start.
It’s true…the call to worship was designed to get our attention …but at the same time there is so much more going on below the surface in those words that we say each week.
Many of us look forward to Sunday morning.  We come to church as individuals but as a group we look forward to seeing each other, to sing the music and yes, to even hear the sermon.But it’s the music that makes or breaks our worship service.  We love the music…the music that Les plays on the organ and the music that Becky plays on the piano.It’s the highlight of our service.  
But if we focus just on the music,then we fail to fully understand just how strange or how odd it is that every week, people from various neighborhoods, people who don’t like the same sports teams or the same political parties, people who have no family connection, people who come fromdifferent social and economic interests, gather together in this sanctuary for an hour or so.
It could be that the call to worship is one of those things that we’ve just let slide by or never really paid too much attention to because we tend to think that our service officially begins with the first song that we all stand to sing.
    But it doesn’t…our service to worship God begins with the call to worship to bring us together as a community of faith.  Songwriter and author Bob Kauflin writes, “A call to worship reminds us that our coming together isn’t based on our initiative.  We didn’t think this up ourselves.  God is the one who has called us out of the world in which we live to [come together as a community of faith] to rehearse the gospel in his presence for his glory and for our good through the power of his spirit” (soteriadsm.com, Why we Begin WithA Call To Worship).
The call to worship is meant to echoor reflect God’s call to usto combine us as individuals into a group to begin our worship service.
    We aren’t called to come here on a Sunday morning for a concert, or a pep talk, or for a ZOOM meeting.  Nor are we called by God to worship in one specific place.  Sure, we gather together…but the location or the building isn’t that important.  We could come together to worship God out in the side yard or at Willowdale Park or wherever we choose.
    But when we do come together, all of our resumes, all of our family status, and even our bank accounts fade into the background because they don’t really matter.  All of these things no longer matter because our individual lives come together not as a family of the secular world, but as children of God coming together as a community of faith as we work together to not only strengthen our relationship with God but to strengthen and solidify our individualities into a community of faith.
When we come together for worship, we gather with our multitude of stories, and with our multitude of experiences, along with our particularities…and our peculiarities.  We gather with our certainties…and we gather with our doubts.  We gather with our faith…and we gather with our questions.  We gather with our hopes…and we gather with our fears.  This is the wholeness, this is the inclusiveness,as messy as it sometimes is, in which we gather as individuals to form our community of faith.
    When we are called into worship, we are invited into a new perspective.  We are invited into a new way of seeing and a new way of being in the world.  When we come here, it’s not that we leave our doubts and our questions and our fears outside the door before we come in and then pick them up when we leave and take them back home with us.
We don’t leave anything outside when we answer God’s call to come inside to worship.  We bring it all inside with us, the good, the bad and the ugly, knowing that we will be called into a new way (or at least a renewed way) of seeing ourselves and our connections with God as we answer God’s call to worship him.
    Through God’s call, we are invited into a new or at least a renewed relationship with him, a relationship that is defined by support and acceptance.  A relationship that all begins…by answering the call to worship.
    Maybe The New Interpreter’s Bible, is right.  Maybe today’s scripture reading is one of “the most important theological texts in the books of Samuel” (Ibid).  God is omnipotent.  God is all knowing.  God is everywhere.  God can’t be fenced in by mankind.  And God is always in control.  Always.
And it is God’s vision, God’s way of seeing the world, that is meant to guide us in living out our lives the way he wants us to live them.  
To hear the call to worship is not just a reminder that you had better get in herebefore the singing starts.  When we hear the call to worship, when we gather together to worship our God, we are called into a new way of being.  To hear the call to worship is about worshiping God and striving to live the Godly life.  The call to worship is the best description we have of what it means to live not as individuals, but in community of faith as God’s people.  
    May you hear the call to worship…and may you live a life of continual worship.