Isaiah 58:1-10
1 Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to
the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet day after day they seek me and delight to
know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not
forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they
delight to draw near to God. 3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why
humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest
on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. 4 Look, you fast only to
quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do
today will not make your voice heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie
in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the
Lord? 6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to
undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every
yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless
poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide
yourself from your own kin? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the
Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you
remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of
evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the
afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like
the noonday.
I know this may sound like an odd
question to ask at this particular time on a Sunday morning, but what does your
ideal worship service look like? I mean, if it was totally, completely up to
you, when the people called the First Baptist Church of Williams gather
together in this room, how would you design the order of worship? What style of
music would you want to hear and sing? Some of you might say, “Well, I like
more contemporary music.” If that’s the case, you’d have to be a bit more
specific, especially since what most congregations refer to as “contemporary”
these days is generally twenty or more years old! So if you say, “contemporary”
you could mean anything from the praise choruses of the ‘70s (which a colleague
of mine refers to as “happy, clappy music”), to the three-chord praise-and-worship
songs of the late eighties and nineties, to the more current worship
compositions of people like David Crowder, Chris Thomlin, and others associated
with the Passion movement.
Of course, I have a sense many of
you here (if not most of you) would respond to such an inquiry about worship
music by saying something like, “I like traditional music.” There again,
though, you’d have to be a bit more specific. After all, when some of you say
“traditional” what you really mean are the hymns and songs written by folks
like Bill and Gloria Gaither in the latter half of the twentieth century, or
perhaps when you say “traditional” you’re referring to Southern Gospel songs,
the kind of songs you can clap along with, that have a bit of a twang to them,
and seem to always be about heaven (of course, there’s a lot of crossover with
the Gaither’s and Southern Gospel music). When some of you say “traditional”
you may have in mind songs from The
Sacred Harp Songbook, songs often sung in the round using shape-notes,
usually a cappella. Then, there are
folks like me who might say they prefer “traditional” worship music, but
instead of songs like those from the Heavenly
Highway Hymnal or the Sacred Harp
Songbook, we mean classical hymns
from the Middle Ages, hymns from the Reformation (like those written by Martin
Luther), or hymns from the Wesley brothers, John and Charles.
Music style, however, is only the
tip of the iceberg when it comes to a service of worship. Aside from what kind
of music one prefers, there’s the decisions about what kind of prayers will be
involved in the service: only a few prayers acting as points of punctuation in
the service, written prayers that perform specific functions throughout the
service (like prayers of confession, prayers for healing, prayers for the global
Church), or just one prayer to begin and one to end the whole shebang? Then
there’s Scripture reading. How much Scripture should we read: just the sermon
passage? All the lessons for the day listed in the Revised Common Lectionary? Perhaps just a Psalm at the beginning of
the service and then the sermon passage? Believe it or not, there are even some
people who question whether a sermon should be a part of a worship service!
Then there are other things like children’s sermons, responsive readings,
testimonies, when and how to collect the offering…you get the idea.
The thing is, over the past couple
of decades, well-meaning church folks have believed that the answer to
declining church attendance and shrinking budgets has been a change in the style of worship. They believed (and
many still do) that if you just add a guitar or two (or maybe take one or two
away) a church will instantly become new, relevant, and full of young people
with disposable incomes. Some have tried to boil all of their church issues and
problems down to what happens in the hour of worship on a Sunday morning. And
here’s the thing—I think I might agree with them.
Now, I want you to hear me out.
Don’t tune out because of what I’ve just said. I don’t want to hear from
somebody later this week that I was talking about changing our worship style or
making more changes that more people don’t like (those kinds of rumors often have
an easy enough time getting started on their own in the life of a church). No,
I want you to hear me out and give an ear to the prophet’s words we’ve read
together in the worship of God today.
The prophet we’ve heard is included in the book of Isaiah. I say that because many scholars believe that the book of the prophet Isaiah is actually the product of at least two or three different “Isaiah’s.” First Isaiah’s (the “real” Isaiah) words are included in chapters 1-39, where the prophet speaks about the coming judgment of God and the destruction of Judah. Second Isaiah was likely a prophet or prophets who were a part of a school of prophets that followed the teachings of the original Isaiah; Second Isaiah consists of chapters 40-54 and takes place during the end of the Babylonian captivity (some scholars include the rest of the book in Second Isaiah and make no mention of Third Isaiah). Third Isaiah follows in the tradition of the Isaiah school of prophets and takes place immediately after the return from the Babylonian captivity; Third Isaiah consists of chapters 55-66, and thus the passage before us this morning.[1]
The prophet we’ve heard is included in the book of Isaiah. I say that because many scholars believe that the book of the prophet Isaiah is actually the product of at least two or three different “Isaiah’s.” First Isaiah’s (the “real” Isaiah) words are included in chapters 1-39, where the prophet speaks about the coming judgment of God and the destruction of Judah. Second Isaiah was likely a prophet or prophets who were a part of a school of prophets that followed the teachings of the original Isaiah; Second Isaiah consists of chapters 40-54 and takes place during the end of the Babylonian captivity (some scholars include the rest of the book in Second Isaiah and make no mention of Third Isaiah). Third Isaiah follows in the tradition of the Isaiah school of prophets and takes place immediately after the return from the Babylonian captivity; Third Isaiah consists of chapters 55-66, and thus the passage before us this morning.[1]
This prophet is speaking to a people
who have returned to a Jerusalem that is much different than the one they left:
the city has been ransacked, the Temple destroyed. They’ve been in the habit of
trying to put their lives and their faith back together. As Andrew Foster
Connors (pastor of Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore,
Maryland) puts it: “They too have to rethink what it means to worship the God
of Israel in a ‘post’ world: posttemple, postexile, post-Davidic monarchy.”[2]
Those people were not too unlike those in the Church today who have to rethink
what it means to worship God in a “post” world: a post-modern, post-religious
world. In their “post” environment, these people were trying to figure out how
to put things back the way they were, the way that it was before they were
carted off by the Babylonians, and in doing so, they have begun using worship
as a way to try to manipulate their environment. They viewed worship as a means
to an end, not too unlike those today who view worship (or more precisely,
worship style) as a means to rejuvenate a dying church. In either case, worship
is being misused and misunderstood.
We hear God speaking through the
prophet about the people’s actions in verse
2: “…day after day they seek me and
delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous
judgments, they delight to draw near to God.” What pastor, what church,
wouldn’t want to have the sort of problem it seems God and the prophet are
having?! Folks are coming to worship “day after day,” and they appear to be
enjoying themselves when they come to worship: they aren’t nodding off in the
pews, playing games on their smartphones, or coloring in all the letters on the
worship bulletin. But something doesn’t seem to be right, because we hear from
the worshippers in verse 3: "Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" These worshippers
are showing up to worship day after day. They are fasting, which is going above
and beyond the call of the Torah, for there is only one mandatory fast
mentioned in the Law, and that is the fast prior to Yom Kippur (the Day of
Atonement)![3] I
mean, what more could God want from them?! These are the kinds of people who
are there at the church every time the doors are open; these are the kinds of
folks who sing in the choir, pray in the service, take up the collection, and
sing along to every, single stanza of every, single song. These are the kinds
of people who even go to every extra service: Sunday night Bible study,
Wednesday night prayer meeting. Yet it seems like none of this matter to God!
Why?! Because at the heart of their so-called worship, at the core of their
fasts, at the root of their attendance and participation lies the rotting,
sinful reality of their selfishness.
You can hear it in God’s reply to
the people in the words that follow their questions in verse 3: “Look, you serve your
own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast
only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as
you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I
choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and
to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to
the Lord?” These are all rhetorical questions, with expected answers in
the negative. Their worship was a smokescreen. They were after their own gain.
While they were at the meeting house for worship, they were forcing their
employees to work. Their fasting, their praying, their worship was all a show,
covering up the malice and selfishness right below the surface. And God saw all
of it: God saw their worship was what it truly was…empty. In the same way, God
sees through our feeble attempts to pacify some sense of self-enforced piety
right to into our hearts.
So, this begs the question: What is
true worship? If showing up and going through the motions, even with the
earnest of intent, is not enough, not genuine worship, then what is? What does
God desire from us when we gather together for worship? The very same thing God
desired from God’s people so long ago. We’re told in verse 6 and following: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to
loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the
oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with
the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the
naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your
light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up
quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be
your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry
for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the
hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in
the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”
And there it is. What is true
worship? It isn’t about the style. It isn’t about time or frequency. It isn’t
about being there every time the doors are open to say you were present. It
isn’t about praying the loudest, longest, or most eloquent prayers. It isn’t
about singing the right songs and hitting the right notes. It isn’t even about
putting the right amount of money in the plate when it passes by. No, worship
isn’t about any of those things. Worship isn’t about what you can get out of it
for yourself. Worship isn’t about being seen by others as righteous. Worship
isn’t about an opportunity to put a check mark by a box that makes you a more
faithful follower than the person in the pew next to you. No! Worship isn’t
about anything of those things. In fact, at the end of the day, whether you
want to hear it or not, worship isn’t even about you!
Worship—and I mean real, authentic,
true worship—is about God. True worship is a space where God continues to
transform you into the person God is calling you to be. True worship is about
hearing the call of Christ to “Come, follow me!” True worship is about letting
that call go out from your pew, out from this room, out from this hour and into
the lives of others. Worship is not defined by the hours posted on a church
website or the limits of brick, mortar, and wood. In fact, the kind of worship
God desires primarily takes place outside and away from reserved sanctuaries.
Far too often we are concerned with how we may want to change worship—a
new song here, a different prayer there. We get so caught up in trying to
change worship that we forget worship ought to change us! When you come into
this place or any other to worship, it is a time and place where the Spirit of
God molds you more into the image of God’s Son Jesus. It is a time and place
where you ought to let go of more of you and take hold of more of Christ. Worship
is the practice of offering all of yourself to God—not in the limited confines
of one hour on a Sunday morning—in the everyday actions of compassion, of
loving your neighbor. That is true worship.
So many churches have tried to boil
all of their issues down to what happens in the hour of worship on a Sunday
morning. I think they’re right, but not for the reasons you might think. I
think they’re right, because too often we convince ourselves that that hour of
worship is about us, for us, when it ought to be about God. It ought to be a
time when we are changed, empowered by the Spirit of God to show compassion and
love to those outside of this room in the kind of genuine acts of worship God
desires from us.
May we be people who gather together to be changed by the spirit of God
in worship. May you let go of more of you and take hold of more of Christ in
this space of worship. May you go forth from this place, this time of worship
changed in order to change the world around you as you offer yourself to God
and others in acts of true worship.
Let us pray…
[1]
John D. Watts, Word Biblical Commentary:
Vol. 24 (Isaiah 1-33) Revised. Thomas Nelson, Inc.: Nashville (2005)
pp.xlv-lxxxi.
[2]
Andrew Foster Connors, Feasting on the
Word: Year A, Volume 1, “Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany: Isaiah
58:1-9a(9b-12).” Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY (2010) p. 316.
[3] Carol
J. Dempsey, Feasting on the Word: Year A,
Volume 1, “Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany: Isaiah 58:1-9a(9b-12).”
Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY (2010) p. 318.
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