"Make many prayers"-Sermon for Proper 14, Isaiah 1:1, 10-20:
I have noted before that growing up in my household there was one standing rule. My parents were not what I would describe as permissive or without boundaries, but they did give us space to make mistakes and learn from them. The rules were few. They were slow to anger and quick to forgive…second chances abounded. I would say they held on to the leash of parenthood loosely, demonstrated trust, and said yes, many more times, than no, even if, the yes involved some level of risk…considering they were dealing with pre-teen and then teenage boys with far from fully developed pre-frontal cortexes…who did not always make the best choices. But, again, there was always one standing and unbreakable rule while we lived under my parents’ roof, which was that on Sunday mornings we would be sitting with our family on the second to back row, we were good Episcopalians after all, so on the second to back row…of St. John the Divine Episcopal Church at 9 AM for worship…period…full stop. It did not matter whose house we spent Saturday night at, how late we had stayed up, what formal or dance was the night before…there were no exceptions made…and God knows I tried…really, really hard. Begging to sleep in just one Sunday…noting that my brothers and I went to Episcopal Schools that included chapel during the week…so I had already been to church that week! But, it never worked…not even minor illness was an exception. Just, FYI, I actually encourage you to remain home if feeling unwell. Though I generally encourage us to share in all things, I think it best to keep our bugs to ourselves, and worship is now also fully available online!
Now, I speak only for myself and mean it when I say I intend no judgment or even parenting advice in sharing this story. The world today is different than it was 4 decades or so ago, and there are many ways to raise thoughtful, healthy, curious, kind, productive, and faithful children. But, as I look back on my childhood, there is nothing, or almost nothing, for which I am more grateful than my parents dogged insistence on church. Again, speaking only for myself, it did something for me or, maybe better said, to me. And, I speak of not only how that might have shaped my future vocation as a priest…but, even more fundamentally, how it shaped who I am as a human. What I believe to be true about the world at my core…how I live, move and have my being…how I see, treat and live with other people…those both like me and those very different from me. I believe at church and, not only in worship, but Sunday School, youth group, mission trips, service projects, VBS, etc…at church I was being formed in ways that were imperceptible to me. In the deeper places of my soul…beyond neat logic and persuasive words…something was being written on my bones and inscribed upon my heart…something hard to articulate. But, if I were to try my best to use words…I would say it was and continues to be, for my shaping, indeed, continues even now in this church, in our worship, in the ministry we share…for like all of us I remain a beautiful and broken work in progress…what I began as a child surely continues as an adult…I have not arrived…and faith formation is a life-long journey…but, if I were to try to describe what has been written on my heart and bones, as a person who has spent 51 years regular in worship…well there was college…but I digress…I would use words like a desire and intention to be more and more…wholehearted, kind, patient, other-directed, and hopeful…in the life I live…and for the very life of the world…God’s beloved world.
Now, inspired by Demery’s sermon last Sunday on another Old Testament prophet Hosea, this morning I want to also consider the lesson assigned to us from the Hebrew Scriptures…today from the prophet Isaiah. And, like Hosea, Isaiah was deeply concerned about God’s people’s lack of faithfulness, their distance and disconnection from the God of their mothers and fathers…the God who lovingly created them, who saved them from slavery in Egypt, who loved them intimately and personally like a mother or father loves their own child, as, again, Demery described so beautifully last week. And, that distance and disconnection from that loving parent, that papa, who wanted nothing more than to hold his beloved children cheek to cheek…to hold, heal and save them, that distance and disconnection was bearing fruit…but not a sweet fruit that brings pleasure and joy and health and vitality…but a rotten and diseased fruit…that was fraying the fabric of their society…creating haves and have nots…corrupting and weakening their leaders making their survival as a nation uncertain. The poor were ignored…the marginalized pushed further to the margins…and they seemed, or at least those who experienced some modicum of comfort and privilege, seemed utterly blind to the suffering that surrounded them on all sides…blind to the precipice of destruction on which they were perilously propped.
And, it seems, further, that perhaps what was contributing to their blindness…their blindness to the crumbling of their connections to their loving, saving God and to each other…what was contributing to all the distance and disconnection that was disintegrating the love-filled, healthy, hopeful life that God desired for them…was, of all things…church…or, perhaps better said, worship, which sits at the center of church. For, through Isaiah’s ministry of prophecy, God says to his beloved ones, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices…I have had enough of burnt offerings…. Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination…. I cannot endure solemn assemblies…your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.” Friends, that’s tough language to absorb. There is a real problem here or, at least, disconnect that demands our attention.
However, it doesn’t seem the problem is rooted in Israel’s attention to offering worship. In fact, this passage suggests to me that there was whole lot of church going on among the people of Israel in Isaiah’s day…a lot of religious assemblies and sacrifices and praise and prayer. And, though we worship very differently than our spiritual ancestors some 2700 years ago, I don’t think the core problem was those differences. In those days, the animals offered in religious sacrifices were almost always then used to actually feed people…just like we sacrifice animals to feed people. Churches still use incense in many worship services, including, our own…from time to time…a powerful symbol of our prayers lifting up to God. At the center of their worship, I truly believe was praise and prayer…just like our own. Even the fact that some of the worship noted by Isaiah was to other near-eastern god’s, a form of idolatry, I don’t even think that was what sat at the center of God’s strong rebuke. Though not exactly analogous, I think it is still good when we pray alongside our siblings of other faiths…just as we did here with our Muslim friends at the Iftar dinner we hosted last spring. So, what might be so problematic about their robust, and I am sure enthusiastic and very well-intentioned worship?
So, as I have pondered that question, what I have come to believe is not at the core of God’s profound critique of the worship life of our ancient spiritual ancestors…is their rites and rituals, their regularity, devotion, or even enthusiasm. In our own context, it’s not whether worship is contemporary or traditional…Rite I or Rite II…liturgical or reformed…high or low…attended weekly or only occasionally…or more intellectual versus say more emotive. The problem seems, instead, rooted in whether or not the worship they did offer and participate in actually changed them in any way…whether or not they had an actual encounter with the living God in worship, standing cheek to cheek with their loving parent, that then shaped them in any significant way more and more into the people, community and nation God called them to be...a people who were to be a love-filled light to the all the nations of the earth…a family who cared for their most vulnerable…a people deeply in love with God and one another…a people whose life outside of church was ignited by their worship, their prayer and praises, with a love of neighbor and deep devotion and care for the hurting. For, if not, then worship, theirs and ours, devolves into a checked box…just pomp and circumstance. It may even be beautiful beyond measure…but devoid of all divinity and heartbreaking to the Holy One.
And, I believe a faithful response to this passage, this prophecy, as it sits before us today, is not to look back into history and point fingers…but instead to ask the hard and holy question of what our own experience of worship is accomplishing in the lives we live right now. So, what does worship, and all the things that surround it that make up the life and ministry we share, do to us? How does it shape us, change us, transform us? Who does it make us to be…as we live, move and have our being in this world?
And, here is what I hope…what I sincerely hope with every fiber of my being…I hope that the life we live together…centered in the worship offered in this very moment each week…would be more than a checked box, more than just pomp and circumstance. Instead, I hope that in its beauty…for our worship is beautiful, in the rich and ancient tradition given to us by our spiritual ancestors that we carry forward in time, in the proclamation of the Word of God, in our songs and prayers and praise and thanksgiving, in the sacred meal we share, at which God in Christ is both host and spiritual food, I hope…I hope that we…that I….that you…will have a life-giving encounter with the living God, standing cheek to cheek with our beloved parent, that forms and shapes within us…that inscribes, over time, on our hearts and bones…a character of life within us, corporately and individually, that I might describe, just as I did at the beginning of this sermon, as wholehearted, kind, patient, other-directed and hopeful. That we, just like Isaiah prophesied, might be more and more willing…might more and more desire…actively want…feel called and empowered…like we have no other choice…because it is just who we are…to cease to do evil…to learn to do good…to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
I believe this is God’s dream placed in the hearts of the prophets…this is what I believe God was writing on my heart and bones as a child at church and in worship…and what God is still writing on each of our hearts as we continue to worship and be the church in this place…that what we do together in here, will entirely shape who we are out there. For, such worship, that shapes such love in us, is good and pleasing in the sight of God. Amen.