O Lord, help us to worship you in Spirit and Truth ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ritual without justice is heresy. This is the message of the prophet Isaiah and one that the Church must always bear in mind. So often we think that religion is about what we think of God. But we have little evidence in Scripture or Tradition to suggest that God is concerned more about what we say in the Creed than how we treat our neighbors. When the people of God get into trouble it is by neglecting to do justice. To be clear, worship is always the foundation. There’s a reason why the Ten Commandments begin with prohibitions against serving false gods or using God’s name inappropriately. Worship is at the very heart of what it means to be God’s people. But what good is a heart without the rest of the body? This is what Isaiah and the prophets of God challenge us to see – faith isn’t simply about rituals, it is about justice. And if we practice some perversion of the faith without justice, well, that’s heresy.
Isaiah is writing
at a difficult time in Jewish history. Isaiah begins somewhere around 740 BC
and spans several generations. He is a prophet of the southern kingdom of
Judah, where Jerusalem is located, a city that is under constant threat of invasion
and which will eventually fall in 587 to the Babylonians. Today, when calamities
befall us, we tend not to think of them as acts of God. When there is a
hurricane, pandemic, recession, or war, we don’t say “Well, this is because we
have turned away from God.” In Isaiah’s time, that was exactly the conclusion
to be drawn – and, truth be told, I’m with Isaiah on this.
To be clear, this is
not cause-and-effect. God is not punishing us with inflation, a war in Ukraine,
or global warming because we’ve stopped going to church and trampled the poor.
It’s not an if-then proposition. But the witness of Scripture and Reason both
point towards a because-therefore dynamic. Because we have abandoned the
life-giving ways of God, because we have neglected the call to serve only the
Lord, because we have forgotten our duty to care for the earth as stewards,
because we have trampled the poor, we, therefore, are living in a hell of our
own making. We are being punished for our actions, but the punisher is not God,
it is us. God is, always has been, and always will be, the savior who pulls us
from the muck of our own messes.
You all have seen
in the news and in the pews the overall decline of church attendance over the
last two decades. If you want to dive into the data, I can show you the charts –
but every denomination, even non-denominational and Evangelicals, is dealing
with this decline. Is it a coincidence that over the same period that church
attendance has been declining that the wealth gap has grown, that partisanship
is on the rise, that lying is now a regular part of political discourse, that suicide
rates are up 30%, that hate crimes are on the rise, that heat waves and
droughts are more intense? The prophets of Scripture would say this is no coincidence
at all.
A lot of cultural
analysts and people in general celebrate that we have more so-called freedom
these days to not go to church if we don’t want to. And, no, I’m not in favor
of forcing religion on anyone. The problem is that we are religious people – it’s
in our bones. Faith in God has simply been replaced with faith in things that
overpromise and underdeliver, things like finding your own truth, which is a
crushing weight to put on anyone. As we’ve seen in this pandemic, science doesn’t
make all of our problems go away. As we’re seeing with climate change and a
possible recession, capitalism doesn’t lead to prosperity for all. As we’ve seen
in Ukraine, the strongest military in history doesn’t mean that bullies won’t
still be bullies. So when we put other things like power, wealth, or knowledge
at the center of things, making them our religion, things break because only
the God who created all things can sustain all things.
We are seeing the
real costs of religious disaffiliation and that is because, worship, when done
as intended, leads to justice. And the secular versions of justice that are out
there have no undergirding, which is why what was bad last week is now accepted
as normative, and vice versa. We were told that technology, democracy, and
capitalism would be non-sectarian replacements for religion – and all are
failing us miserably. This is why secular calls for justice are so inconsistent
and often as stubbornly exclusivist as those they purport to stand against. Versions
of justice that are not grounded in a truth bigger than the people trying to
enact it eventually lead to injustice. Worship and justice are two sides of the
same coin, and it’s the only currency that matters. It is as one early church theologian put it: "If you cannot find Christ in the bigger of the church door, you will not find him in the chalice."
The message of Isaiah
is just this. Because the people have neglected to authentically and
intentionally worship God, injustice has filled the land, and they will reap
the crops they planted. In the verses leading into the reading this morning,
the people are described as rebellious children who have turned away from God. Isaiah
says they are “people who have forsaken the Lord,
who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged.” The
result of this is, “Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with
fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land.” When the reading picks
up, we heard Isaiah refer to the people as Sodom and Gomorrah. This is not a
compliment. It would be as if the President stood up at the State of the Union
and said “We are no better than Nazi Germany.” It’s intended to provoke and
offend, to shock the people into realizing just how bad things are.
An important point
– culturally, the sin of Sodom is not what we think it is. Scripture itself
tells us what the sin of Sodom was; in Ezekiel, we find “This was the guilt of
your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and
prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Sodomy isn’t what we
often say it is, it’s neglect of the poor.
So, the people’s
attention having been grabbed, God then says “What to me is the multitude of
your sacrifices? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of
fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats…Your
new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden
to me, I am weary of bearing them.” Israel, like us in a tradition as grand and
elegant as the Episcopal Church, was very good at ritual. It’s not about being
competitive, but if ritual were a competitive sport, well, we’d take home the
gold. And there’s nothing wrong with this. Ritual forms us, teaches us, comforts
us, confronts us, and unites us. The problem comes when we turn ritual into
ritualism, tradition into traditionalism. It was a trap that Israel struggled
with and it is one that we have to be on guard against.
The things we do
in worship, we can never fool ourselves into thinking that God needs them. God,
obviously, does not need bulls or lambs to eat. God does not need hymns to be sung,
money to be collected, or vestments to be worn. If we are doing things for the
sake of doing them, if we are following ritual notes blindly, if we are
bringing little in terms of passion, thought, or intentionality to worship then
what we are doing is what the prophets would call an abomination.
This is why
intentional worship is a part of our identity at St. Luke’s. Intentional means
two things. For one, we strive to worship with intentionality. Though it is a
trap to be on guard against, we strive to avoid empty gestures, rote praying, or
less than enthusiastic singing. Of course, we are humans and are not perfect. Sometimes
the best we can do is to show up, at which point having strong rituals to carry
us is a great gift. Our intention is that everything we see, hear, say, touch,
smell, and taste points us to the love, mercy, peace, and grace of God. There
is intentionality in all that we do. Sometimes it might seem like fussiness,
but it is because we know the power of ritual to shape us, and we want to be
intentional about what our worship is shaping us into being.
And this is the
other meaning of intentional worship – we worship with intentionality because
we intend for worship to do something, namely assure us of God’s abundant grace
and help us to become the beloved community of God. And this is where worship
is connected to justice. It’s why worship isn’t done for the sake of God, it is
done for us. We come to worship not because God needs it, but because we do,
and so do our neighbors. We need worship to remind us that we are not the
center of the universe, that no one is the worst thing that they have done,
that because of the love of God, all shall be well.
These truths that worship
forms us in are what enable us to do the work of justice. Isaiah describes this
as when we “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the
oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” This verse, Isaiah 1:17,
was Elizabeth Duncan Koontz’s guiding and favorite verse of Scripture and is right
there in the icon as a reminder of this connection of worship to justice. Libby
worshiped at St. Philip’s and St. Luke’s hearing God’s Word, receiving the
bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, and dedicated her life to pursuing
justice. She is a great model for us of how intentional worship leads directly
to the justice of striving for God’s beloved community.
Because worship is
not something we do for God, but rather it is something that God gives us to feed
and form us in grace, it means that worship is not a test or something for us
to get right. The bad things that happen in life aren’t because we said the
wrong words in worship, but are often because we are not intentional in our
worship, because we resist being transformed by God’s truth, because we neglect
the matters of justice. In this indictment, we are reminded that the words of
grace are never far off, as God says “Though your sins are like scarlet, they
shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like
wool.” Though we can be idolatrous and perpetuate injustice, God forgives us
and encourages us to repent and pursue intentional worship and justice anew.
There is an
important word that links worship to justice, and it is what I want to leave
you with this morning: sacrifice. Intentional worship and justice both take
sacrifice; and without sacrifice both can do more harm than good. Isaiah hints
at this when he says that our willingness and obedience lead to flourishing. In
the language of Isaiah, sacrifice was about drawing nearer to God by offering
to God the gifts of God. Such sacrifices make clear that we trust in God to continue
to provide for us because we know that it is from God whom all blessings flow.
Sacrificing is what we are created to do. In the beginning, humanity is placed
in a garden and given a job that is described as priestly – and the function of
a priest is to make sacrifices and help people draw near to God. And it’s not
just ordained priests who are to make sacrifices, but the priesthood of all
believers. It is the role of the Church and all of its members to live
sacrificially following the way of Jesus.
In sacrificing, there
is a cost as we relinquish control and something up. But, by God’s grace, in a
sacrifice, nothing is lost. Sacrifice is participating in God’s economy, which
is not a zero-sum game as our economy is. This is why Jesus says that “it is
more blessed to given than to receive,” for
in sacrificing we receive an even greater gift of living in the way of love.
However, if our worship
costs us nothing, we have to question whether or not we might be worshiping an
idol of our own making. If our work in the world requires no courage, no risk,
no sacrifice, then it might not be justice.
What sacrifices
might we, as people of faith, make? One sacrifice is to lament and tell the truth,
where we give up empty platitudes and the cultural pressure to pretend that everything
is okay. Fasting is a sacrifice that can remind us of our bodily needs and our
dependence on God and others for survival. Giving money to church and charities
is a form of sacrifice that helps us to give thanks to God and reminds us that
we do not serve our money. Loving and forgiving our neighbors and enemies costs
us our ego and pride. We sacrifice time and energy in coming to church, praying,
reading Scripture, and serving those in need. The Eucharist is the culminating
sacrifice, when we remember Christ’s sacrifice for us and offer our praise and
our lives in joyful service in response.
St. Augustine once preached
that “God seeks us, not what is ours.” We don’t sacrifice things that we can
easily replace or mean little to us, but rather in response to the supremely
costly sacrifice of Jesus’ own life, we respond with sacrifices of our own. Both
true worship and genuine justice require sacrifice as we empty ourselves of the
idols of control, comfort, and wealth and are filled with abundant grace and
peace of God. I began this sermon with the formula that ritual without justice
is heresy. When the formula is corrected to ritual with justice we end up with the
Great Commandment: sacrificial love of God and neighbor.
