{"id":937,"date":"2016-08-01T11:16:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T23:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radiescent.wordpress.com\/?p=937"},"modified":"2016-08-01T11:16:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T23:16:55","slug":"reflection-in-ptc-chapel-1-august-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/2016\/08\/01\/reflection-in-ptc-chapel-1-august-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection in PTC Chapel \u2013 1 August 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading – Isaiah 1:1, 10\u201320<\/h2>\n

1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.<\/p>\n

10 Hear the word of the Lord,
\nyou rulers of Sodom!
\nListen to the teaching of our God,
\nyou people of Gomorrah!
\n11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
\nsays the Lord;
\nI have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams
\nand the fat of fed beasts;
\nI do not delight in the blood of\u00a0bulls,
\nor of lambs, or of goats.
\n12 When you come to appear before\u00a0me,
\nwho asked this from your hand?
\nTrample my courts no more;
\n13 bringing offerings is futile;
\nincense is an abomination to me.
\nNew moon and sabbath and calling of convocation\u2014
\nI cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
\n14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals
\nmy soul hates;
\nthey have become a burden to me,
\nI am weary of bearing them.
\n15 When you stretch out your hands,
\nI will hide my eyes from you;
\neven though you make many prayers,
\nI will not listen;
\nyour hands are full of blood.
\n16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
\nremove the evil of your doings
\nfrom before my eyes;
\ncease to do evil,
\n17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0learn to do good;
\nseek justice,
\nrescue the oppressed,
\ndefend the orphan,
\nplead for the widow.<\/p>\n

18 Come now, let us argue it out,
\nsays the Lord:
\nthough your sins are like scarlet,
\nthey shall be like snow;
\nthough they are red like crimson,
\nthey shall become like wool.
\n19 If you are willing and obedient,
\nyou shall eat the good of the land;
\n20 but if you refuse and rebel,
\nyou shall be devoured by the sword;
\nfor the mouth of the Lord has spoken.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reflection<\/h2>\n

I was not scheduled to be doing chapel today and this is not the scheduled reading either. The original reading assigned for today was one on which I have already preached, so I swapped it for this one from Isaiah.<\/p>\n

I imagine that this is not a popular reading in the church, but I assure you that it\u2019s on the lectionary. The reasons why I think this reading is not popular should be self-evident. Why should we gather to worship and praise God and then read that God hates our \u201csolemn assemblies\u201d?<\/p>\n

Another reason this text might not be popular is that it might be described as self-preaching \u2013 in other words it is a text that preaches itself. The message appears so obvious that, once read, the preacher is left with little to do. But is that really the case?<\/p>\n

The prophet does not begin with niceties; he starts by addressing the people as the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah. These are terms of abuse. Yet this form of address sums up the message; these are people for whom condemnation is coming. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt up for their sins. It is worth remembering what sins they were guilty of. To jog our memories, we turn to Ezekiel 16:49, which reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sets the tone and outlines the message to come, that combining pride and vanity with disregard for the poor and needy is sure to gain God\u2019s condemnation.
\nGod rejects the sacrifices of such people. Their feasts are worthless. Their worship meaningless.<\/p>\n

The temptation we all face, reading this in our own solemn assembly, is to read this as God addressing bad people who have turned away and who yet strive to be justified by God through worship, rituals and sacrifices and nice words about God. Such harsh judgments are not for us; they are for other so-called \u201cChristians\u201d who have blood on their hands and do not worship with a good clean conscience. We are better than them surely? Aren\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s read further. In verse 12 God speaks \u201cWhen you come to appear before\u00a0me\u201d. This is indicative of the attitude of the hypocrites. They come to appear before God as though God is somewhere where we can go to present ourselves to God. But God does not live in some temple or church. God is everywhere, and sees our corruption day by day. God sees both the bad we do and good we left undone.<\/p>\n

God also sees how we try to present ourselves in church on Sunday, wearing our best clothes and carrying our Bibles as though God will be pleased that we have ironed our shirt or dress, placed some money in the collection plate, and sung in the choir.<\/p>\n

No! God is not impressed by our staged appearances. We are before God all the time. What, then, is the point of all these pretensions and posturing before God?<\/p>\n

Is it self-justification? Are we trying to cover up our sins? If so, we take the Lord\u2019s name in vain \u2013 we utter the right words, but have instrumentalized worship and in doing so we reduce God to be something less than God. If we do this, we are trusting in our works and deeds more than God. And we have created a reason for worshiping God.<\/p>\n

This is should be a great caution in our nations today. There are false prophets and pastors offering reasons to come to their church. \u201cCome to my church and be blessed\u201d, they might say. Or, \u201cCome to my church and be healed\u201d, or \u201cCome and gain a new purpose in life\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the truth is that we cannot make true worship serve us and our needs; true worship serves only God, it cannot be made by humans into something that benefits us. To make ourselves into the end or point of worship, inevitably means turning God into a mere means.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that we cannot enjoy worship or that we get nothing out of it. But anything we get from worship must not be sought intentionally, even with a good will. Anything we gain from worship must come as the free gift we receive from God when we serve and worship him alone. It cannot be promised, anticipated, or manufactured in advance.<\/p>\n

Further on, we read that \u201cbringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.\u201d Here we see God making a double criticism of our worship.<\/p>\n

Bringing our offerings to God is important. It helps the church and the needy, and puts money in its rightful place as something we can freely part with. But if we are giving to bribe God to turn a blind eye to our sins, we are fools. We cannot bribe God. God sees through such shallowness. God doesn\u2019t want or need our money. God wants our lives. As Jesus said, we should love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind (Matthew 22:37). In other words God wants our whole being to be be focused on God.<\/p>\n

Incense, as used in worship, is sometimes thought of as carrying our prayers up to God. But the real use of incense was to mask the stench of a sinful humanity. But incense cannot disguise our sin from God. God sees our sinful hearts directly and cannot be deceived in this way. Incense cannot shield the stench of our hypocrisy or be a smoke screen to hide our iniquities. To think we can hide our sins from God is to only fool ourselves.<\/p>\n

When we persist in our hypocrisy God even indicates that God will turn away from our us, even if we reach out to God and say our pious prayers. God will fall silent in face of our hypocritical piety.<\/p>\n

But we should not despair, God\u2019s silence can be broken when we return to God in due humility. We can and must try to break God\u2019s silence toward us through repentance and true worship.<\/p>\n

How can we do that? In verse 16 we see God demand that we clean ourselves up before he will turn to us. We must repent. The verse reads \u201cWash yourselves; make yourselves clean\u201d.<\/p>\n

This poses a theological problem. Can we really cleanse ourselves in such a way as to be acceptable to God? Christians usually say that we are washed clean in our baptism, or by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Isn\u2019t it Christ alone who can wash us clean and make us whole?<\/p>\n

Christianity rejects the idea that we can reach up to God through any human means. This is what seems to be denied by the first half of our reading which condemns our human efforts at self-justification. Rather God reaches down to us to bring us to him.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther, no fan of salvation through works, simply states that this verse says that we should follow the advice of the Psalmist in 37:27: \u201cDepart from evil, and do good\u201d.<\/p>\n

That is what is required. We clean ourselves up by turning from evil and doing good. And we can always make a fresh start in doing so. We must turn from evil. That is the first step \u2013 do no harm and refrain from evil. But this is not enough. We must pursue the good and justice. This is obedience to God.<\/p>\n

Well I could end here and my message would have been simply that we ought to worship with right intention, avoid evil and do good. We might add at this point that the ancient Israelites were foolish to try to justify themselves and deceive God. We might be tempted to think that we are better than them. But before we pat ourselves on the back, we should make sure that we don\u2019t commit a worse sin.<\/p>\n

In their attempts to be justified, the Israelites were addressing God, and in doing so were at least recognizing God\u2019s importance. A potentially worse sin is when we try to justify ourselves in the eyes of other people. It is one thing to try to justify oneself before God. It is worse to ignore God and try to justify oneself before one\u2019s peers, leaving God out of the picture altogether. This happens when we try to keep up appearances and live in line with human values and rules. But adherence to cultural and social norms which place us right in the eyes of our neighbor does not put us right with God.<\/p>\n

God is not deceived by this posture. It creates another god to which we give all of our selves. This god could be culture, money, technology, or work. But neither God nor society are deceived by this stance either.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s focus on the one true God with our whole being, avoid evil and do as much good as we can under the continual guidance on God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading – Isaiah 1:1, 10\u201320 1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}