|
||
|
Living as God’s Missional
People Text: Isaiah 61; Isaiah 1 To date, I have suggested… ► Without a commitment to righteousness (justice), our pursuit of glory becomes more about personal piety and self-improvement. (2) things happen: 1) it becomes easy to interpret faith as simply something you ‘believe’ (you know, deep down in your heart); something you can give assent to (like, “exercise is good for you”), but has no recognizable impact on the way you actually live your life, and 2) it breeds self-righteousness, which actually, simultaneously, disconnects you from God and others [grace has nothing to offer anyone who thinks they can do life without God]. ► Without a commitment to glory, our demands for justice prove to be little more than a ‘cause’ which makes us angry and looks more like ‘retaliation’ than ‘restoration’ [that’s how to tell the difference: if our goal is to satisfy our own demands for justice, or God’s dream for reconciliation]. We quickly discover that ‘anger’ is not the same as ‘passion’ and that the mission of the church cannot be sustained without an experience of Jesus which is transforming the individual. ►Worship is essentially… … a ‘response’: glory always evokes a response. That response could be wonder, curiosity, or boredom. … the ‘right response’: the grace we celebrate and rehearse is God’s initiative-- his movement toward us. The choices are not complicated: reach back or ignore it. ►A proper response always takes on some form of ‘offering’. Not in such a way that we simply grudgingly recognize God as our obligation, but the response of a heart that wants to say ‘thanks’ in so many ways. So, worship is the right response to life because it values what God values and re-orders its life accordingly. A word of caution… ►If worship is disconnected from glory, it becomes deceptive and meaningless. The biggest indictment concerning worship from Jesus: he was concerned about religious expressions of devotion which lacked meaning (glory). “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”. Matthew 15:8-9 ►Worship is our response to grace; and, the quality of our worship is characterized by how that grace is transforming our social interactions [our ‘being together’]. At the time, Israel was living under constant threat from Assyria; but, interestingly, Isaiah’s focus is not on the evil oppressor (so to speak), but on the nation of Israel and their distorted sense of ‘chosenness’ and lack of social action. “What do I care about your sacrifices?” (v.11) and “Who asked you for this?” (v.12 lit. “this from your hand”) ● I don’t’ know if this strikes any of you as ironic, but sacrifices were a central feature of their worship. And, they were God’s idea! You can almost hear their immediate objections (‘whooa, God.. back the Bible-truck up’): we’ve prayed, we’ve offered sacrifices, we’ve observed the feasts’. “What do you mean who asked for it; that’s what you wanted!?” (see Jeremiah 7:22; Amos 5:21-24; Hoses 6:6). ● Listen to the words he uses to describe their acts of worship: “meaningless, disgusting, sinful, false, burdensome”. What do you think the Israelites looked like as they are hearing this? ● And, notice how he God almost seems to ‘distance himself’ from such activity: ‘your offerings, your gifts, your festivals, your assemblies, etc.’ ● Sacrifice was never meant to be understood as the means by which Israel achieved forgiveness and status before God: they did not offer sacrifices in order to ‘be’ rescued- they offered them because they ‘had been’ rescued! Since they assumed a direct correlation between the sacrifices and God’s continued support, it seems apparent that some were treating the sacrifices as some form of ‘incantation’; a means of conjuring God’s support and ensuring a desired result [strangely parallels much of the theology I hear]. ● To this point, God has not addressed the reasons for his refusal of their worship. Now, in verse 15, Isaiah uses this common metaphor to address the issue: in Eastern cultures, prayers were customarily offered standing with the palms outstretched upward in a posture of appeal or request- as if receiving from God’s hand. In a chilling word picture, Isaiah portrays the people as raising hands to God, but those hands are ‘covered with blood’. It is an imagery of ‘guilt’; their actions are like a ‘stain’ on the people. ● In most of the prophetic writings, this expression refers generally to injustice- mistreatment of the vulnerable (Isaiah 59:3,7; Jeremiah 7:6; 22:3, Micah 3:9-10, 7:2-3); a failure to ensure that people’s most basic human needs were being met (for whom such condition was typically a matter of life and death). He was not saying that their sacrifice was insufficient, or their offering too small… (“Is that vanilla incense? Are you kidding me? I hate vanilla incense!”) ● The effect of the metaphor is to clarify what it means to worship God in light of the way that it affects a response toward others. ● Even with a cursory reading of the Bible, one thing becomes clear: God is on the side of the powerless; those who have been marginalized and denied ‘glory’ (dignity as image-bearers) by unrighteous systems. Why are we so insistent that talk of grace precludes talk of responsibility? Why are we so determined to isolate private, personal spirituality from social action? Personal spirituality demands very little of us—the token religious gesture or behavioral adjustment. ● Jeremiah reminds us that our faith requires a ‘singleness of heart and action’- devotion. That devotion broadens the scope of our responsibility as stewards and takes us out beyond ourselves to the needs of others. Hosea 6:6 “I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings”. Almost as if God were saying… “If you really knew me, you’d know what I wanted” ►Our acts of worship are not acceptable if they ascribe glory to God while ignoring the very ones/things he takes glory in. It’s why Jesus said in Matthew 5 if while you are worshipping, you remember that someone has something against you, go and be ‘reconciled’. At times, our worship proves to be a celebration of the very grace that we are withholding from someone else. Isaiah 1:16-20 (read)… they are not left without a restorative response ►Worship is not abstract ideas about God, but intentional exclusion/elimination of what is evil and the deliberate pursuit of what is good. ►Worship is expressed in acts of compassion which help to eliminate preventable suffering and highlight God’s grace. People who worship well are a people who are constantly seeking out ways in which they might be ‘enlarged’ (broadened)--- pursuing the profound mystery of a ‘limitless’ God and discovering ways to portray his limitless grace to others. [looking for ways in which we can directly give to meet basic human needs, partner with an organization that is doing justice, or work toward changing the systems to help eliminate needless and senseless deprivation]. - Without righteousness (rightly-ordered life), we develop a theology of worship which better resembles personal gratification than glory.
- Without glory (valuing God
and his values), our worship morphs into something calculated and ritualistic,
as if what God is really after is compliance. |
