Right and faithful worship. Isaiah 1

This morning’s reading from Isaiah is a bit rough. In fact it denounces Israel’s religious practices as utterly unacceptable to God, and he wants nothing more to do with them. Thus says the Lord, what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I’ve had enough of your burnt offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. Trample my courts no more. I cannot endure it. I will hide my eyes from you and I will not even listen to your prayers.

What’s gone wrong? Isn’t Israel supposed to be God’s chosen people? Aren’t they performing all the rites, rituals and ceremonies according to law? Why then is God so scathing of them?

In ancient Canaanite religion, the gods were invoked and presumed upon through the practice of the religious cult. If you wanted the gods’ approval and something done for you, you would perform the appropriate ceremony, sacrifice or ritual, and in return the gods would be obliged to grant your request. Very convenient because it put you in the hot seat with the gods at your bidding.

From human thinking it made sense. For example, you were dependant for a livelihood on the produce of a fertile earth, and if you wanted children a fertile wife too. So if you weren’t getting those, you had to call on the fertility gods, and off you went to visit the temple prostitute.

By Isaiah’s time in the 8^th century BCE, Israel’s worship didn’t look much different to Canaanite worship. The conquest of the land wasn’t as decisive and clear cut as it was supposed to be. Settlement of it by the tribes of Israel took a long time, and over the centuries, Israel’s religion, which was supposed to be exclusive to Yahweh, became infused with Canaanite religion. And so the covenant between Yahweh and Israel was in serious danger of becoming extinct, which was the situation in Elijah’s time. Remember the confrontation on Mt Carmel between Elijah for Yahweh and everyone else for Baal. Elijah of course was proved right, but at great cost to himself.

I suppose it was a bit like Christianity in the 4^th century when Emperor Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman empire. The church was allowed to take its place in the rites and passages of Rome, and over time it came to look like an empire church. If you look around a Christian church service today, you can still see remnants of that. Clergy and other sanctuary officials wear white to indicate they have an official office and role. That’s descendant from the white togas of Roman officials and senators. Why does the bishop have a posh special chair set aside just for him or her? That’s a throwback to the district Roman governor’s chair set aside just for him.

Fortunately, the Christian church remained mostly faithful to its Lord and God, unlike ancient Israel whose fidelity to Yahweh was all but gone. And that’s why the prophets were sent to call Israel back to right and faithful worship.

So, back to our question of why Israel’s worship was so unacceptable. It’s because God cannot be manipulated or presumed upon in a mechanical manner, such as performing a ritual in a certain way, or relying on objects to be sacred to which one’s god is obliged to respond. The real god doesn’t work like that. He’s not a credit card and all you need is the right PIN for him to dispense a solution to a problem.

It is all too easy for us in our day to attend religious service as a kind of insurance policy. I’ve done my Sunday morning hour and now I can claim God’s favour. It’s all about me. Then when God doesn’t pay out the claim, I lift my eyes to heaven and say it’s not fair after all I’ve done for you. It’s all about me. We can be very religious and yet be living lives of complete self-centeredness, never giving God a hearing let alone our due worthship of him (ie, our due worship of his worth).

So how does it work? How does a relationship with God work, and is it religious? Is Christianity a religion or a relationship? It certainly looks like a religion and is often treated like one. But is it? I don’t recall learning about Jesus setting up a religion in the image of Roman officialdom. But I do recall learning about him teaching in terms of relationships – love God, love others; being children of a heavenly Father; sharing in a wedding feast. All these things are in the language of relationship, not religion.

What Isaiah and all the Old Testament prophets kept hammering home was the point that access to God is not gained through sacred objects and rituals in themselves. Rather, access to God is found in response to acceptance and obedience to his Word, confession of faith, and adherence to the ethical demands of his Kingdom.

What does God require of us? The prophet Moses said Hear O Israel; and in our churches today after each reading, we are exhorted to Hear the Word of the Lord. Through the psalmist God says sacrifice I desire not, but mercy and a contrite heart. And through the prophets Isaiah and Micah we are told that God requires us to do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with our God, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow – the ethical demands of the Kingdom. These are all responses to what God has done for us. It’s all about the acts of God in human history, not the acts of mankind in history.

So where does that leave the rites, sacraments and ceremonies that happen in our church today, and how are we to approach them?

Well the first thing I want to say about this is that everything that happens in our services of worship in this parish is designed with one thing in mind, and that is the right and faithful worship of our God in spirit and in truth. The sacraments are not celebrated as points of religious duty to be performed as ends in themselves, and we should not think of them that way. They are marks of covenant relationship, tangible ways by which God ministers to us through the forgiveness of our sins and our penitent and contrite hearts.

There is music chosen as praise of God in song; there is opportunity for prayerful intercession for others; there is due honour and worthship of God offered in the prayers for Holy Communion; there is absolution pronounced for the forgiveness of sins; the scriptures are read aloud so we can hear the word of the Lord. It’s all about our response to what God has done for us. It’s not about what God is obliged to do.

Now I know we have things like votive candles, a couple of icons, and occasionally the bells and incense. There was a time no so long ago when I would have stayed away from them because I saw them as meaningless points of religiosity. And I wouldn’t have darkened the doors of Benedictine abbey to waste time droning through psalms multiple times every day.

Then I remembered what God has done for me, and I am happy to spend time in the psalms and in silence at the abbey. I am excited to be still in the presence of the Lord and know that he is God. The bells, incense, candles and icons have all become meaningful ways through which can I respond to God. They are certainly not mechanical means of doing self-justified duty, and then expecting God to do his. I do not come into God’s house asking what’s in it for me. But rather as the psalmist wrote, by your great mercy I come into your house. (Ps 5:7)

That, ladies and gentlemen, is right and faithful worship that the Old Testament prophets called Israel back to, and it’s also what our Lord and Saviour set before us in his parable of the penitent tax collector. God have mercy on me a sinner. I tell you this man went home justified before God.

It’s all about giving God the glory, and our response to what he’s done for us.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name;

bring an offering and come into his courts.

Worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness;

tremble before him, all the earth.

Philip Starks

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