Hear, you heavens! Listen, you earth! God has said this: "I raised children but they rebel against me. The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." You sinful nation, a people burdened with guilt, children given to corruption! You have forsaken God, and turned your backs on the Holy One. Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole being is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there are only wounds, and open sores, none of them cleansed or bandaged or soothed with ointment.
"All your sacrifices - what are they to me?" says God. "I have had more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the grease which comes from the fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of sacrifices. When you come before me, who asked this of you, this trampling of my house? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! I cannot stand the smell of your incense. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations - I cannot bear your evil assemblies. They have become a burden, and I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will not look; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
"So come let’s reason it out together," says God. "Though your sins are red as crimson, they shall be white as snow, like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be eaten by the sword." God has spoken.
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Well, God is surely angry. Nothing can be more clear than the incredible anger God lets loose - at the wilful and destructive ways of the people. You can almost see the smoke and flames, hear the thunder. All of the promises and the covenant have been disregarded. Yet when the people come to worship they offer sacrifice of animals, incense, and as God says - insincere prayer. God says clearly, I’ve had enough! Not only that, God says “who asked you to do this? I didn’t!” God says clearly that the worship practices of this people are a travesty - charades, smoke and mirrors, incessant talk of religion and faith even while the sins and evil continue.
And what is it about worship that’s got God’s dander up? What makes God’s nostrils flare so?
Note, that it isn’t particularly the ‘order’ of worship that is the problem. If that were all, we could make a few editorial changes in the bulletin. God isn’t particularly upset by the content - the call to worship and prayers of the people are fine. I don’t think God even gets too upset about the chaos of Passing of the Peace. Nor do I think God is really worried about whether we use new or old hymns, Taize or Iona - we do those things out of choice to allow a wide variety of worship experience.
What has God incensed is that worship lasted but an hour on the Sabbath, and that there were people consulting their portable sundials if worship went overtime. People didn’t want to spend any more time than they had to in the temple - there were other things to do. Worship was fine, but don’t take any more time than necessary to get through the rituals. Fire up the altar, light the incense, pray hard - and get it all into an hour.
God’s intent was that worship would be a 24/7 expression of faith. For too many Israelites in Isaiah’s day, worship was a performance - an intentional, carefully enacted-performance. The rest of the week they went back to live the way they wanted with no reference to God, and certainly no interference.
Hypocrisy is the sin here - singing one thing and doing another. Offering prayers but never being part of an answer to prayer. Preaching against the enemy on Sunday and making deals with the enemy on Monday. God says to these worshipers, "cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow."
The great Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, says that worship minus direct impact on our neighborhoods = silly geese.
Here is a paraphrase of Kierkegaard’s story. There was a barnyard full of a gaggle of geese. Each Sunday they gathered to hear wonderful words about creation, God’s plan, and extol the glorious destiny of geese. "We were meant to become air-borne on the winds and to soar in the heavens," the leader of the flock would tell them. At the mere mention of heaven the ganders would cackle and the rest would curtsey. After the meeting they would waddle home. But that’s as far as they ever got. They grew fat and plump and at Christmas they became Christmas dinner - that’s as far as they ever got.
Behind the story of tubular necks and webbed feet, Kierkegaard saw weak worship that had its “performance” of religion once a week, but failed to impact the neighborhoods in practical ways.
Yesterday, while putting this sermon together, I was watching a drama called Hitler: The Rise of Evil. One of Hitler’s arguments in the early years was that people were indifferent, didn’t care about their country. He was able to play on emotions and fan the flames of racism and hatred, yet few in Germany stood up to him. The church was conspicuously absent in opposing him, with the sole exception of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Indifference, and fear, prevented those who might have stopped him.
I decided to look a little at what happened with Denmark during the war, keeping Kierkegaard’s words in mind. Denmark had an uneasy kind of agreement with Hitler, and yet were able to refuse to allow his excesses. By far the greatest success in Danish policy toward Germany was the protection of the Jewish minority. Throughout the years of its hold on power, the government consistently refused to accept German demands regarding the Jews. They would not enact special laws concerning Jews, and their civil rights remained equal with those of the rest of the population. German authorities became increasingly exasperated with this position but concluded that any attempt to remove or mistreat Jews would be "politically unacceptable."
Then I looked at the Norwegian resistance to Hitler following Hitler’s ultimatum. King Haakon reported the ultimatum to his cabinet, mindful that although he could not make the decision himself, he could use his moral authority to influence it. He told the Cabinet:
“ I am deeply affected by the responsibility laid on me if the German demand is rejected. The responsibility for the calamities that will befall people and country is indeed so grave that I dread to take it. It rests with the government to decide, but my position is clear.
For my part I cannot accept the German demands. It would conflict with all that I have considered to be my duty as King of Norway since I came to this country nearly thirty-five years ago.[4]”
Nor, he said, could he appoint any government headed by Quisling because he knew neither the people nor the government had confidence in him. However, if the Cabinet felt otherwise, he himself would abdicate so as not to stand in the way of the Government's decision.
Nils Hjelmtveit, Minister of Church and Education, later wrote: "This made a great impression on us all. More clearly than ever before we could see the man behind the words; the king who had drawn a line for himself and his task, a line from which he could not deviate. We had through the five years [in government] learned to respect and appreciate our king and now, through his words, he came to us as a great man, just and forceful; a leader in these fatal times to our country".[5]
Inspired, the Government unanimously advised the King not to appoint any government headed by Quisling, and telephoned its refusal to Bräuer. That night the government's refusal was also broadcast to the Norwegian people. The government announced that they would resist the German attack as long as possible, and expressed their confidence that Norwegians would lend their support to the cause.
Well some of this rings a bell in the New Testament too, doesn’t it? Jesus coming into the temple in Jerusalem, all those hundreds of years later, and seeing that nothing has changed since Isaiah’s words? Throwing animals out, turning over tables, money on the ground, claiming that worship has become an excuse to take advantage of people. It’s not accidental, this story about Jesus. There is a clear parallel.
Look at the end of today’s passage - God says stop doing wrong, learn to do right, defend the oppressed. Worship is meant to strengthen and prepare us so that who and what we are has a positive impact in our neighbourhoods. It means that when someone speaks hatred against Moslems, we are willing to speak back. It means when someone is treated poorly because of their colour, faith, economic status, we speak back. Worship - true worship - doesn’t begin when we walk *in* the door of the church, and it doesn’t end when we walk *out*. True worship *begins* when we walk out the door, and come into contact with the world, with all of its failings. Particularly in these times, when phobias and fear of those who believe differently provokes legislated, and unlegislated injustices, we who are Christians must exercise our worship in a way which counteracts those injustices, and holds them up to the light.
Sources:
1. Telling the Truth about Worship a sermon based on Isaiah 1:1; 10-20 by Rev. Thomas Hall
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Denmark
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haakon_VII_of_Norway
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler:_The_Rise_of_Evil
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