Pentecost 8

 Sermon Aug 7, Pent 9 I always wonder how congregations understand a reading like that of Isaiah today.   When a reading focus’ on the seeming futility of institutionalized worship. Isaiah hears God saying “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beast…trample my courts no more…bringing offerings is futile…your appointed festivals my soul hates.”   Not cool!  I love the appointed festivals….Christmas, Easter, Pentecost.  I find joy in the trampling of God’s courts; aka a good long procession…with candles and banners and incense and the organ shaking the rafters and the choir filling the air. And when Isaiah writes of God saying: “…who asked this from your hand?”  I want to cry out… you did!  Has God not read Deuteronomy? Numbers? Leviticus?  God lays out in detail how to do the proper sacrifices, what priests should wear, the order in which worshipers should walk and the instruments played. I can hear those around questioning as good Anglicans would; what’s wrong with good solid liturgy? With robes? Organ? What’s wrong, heaven forfend! with the BCP?   Or with worship… I thought God wanted to be worshiped!  And as a parish priest and previous leader who has leads these worship services for the past 25 years and hope to continue for another…oh 40 or so.  I should be quite concerned if what I’ve spent my life offering is not to God’s taste. Yet, it is clear that the liturgies being offered by the people of God in the time of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah were elaborately and solemnly performed by the people, but viewed as burdensome, hateful and full of iniquity by God.     That being the key word I believe …iniquity; coming from the Latin meaning not equal.  At some point the worship of these children of God had become hollow, meaningless show.  Worse still the sacrifices demanded and offerings required were unjustly exacted and unequally distributed. Things had gotten so bad that God refers to the leaders of Judah as rulers of Sodom and the faithful of Jerusalem as people of Gomorrah. A hugely telling parallel, and a very threatening one, because Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the famous five cities of the Plains that were utterly wiped off the ancient map. So, comparing ancient Jerusalem to even more ancient Sodom tells us a lot about the problems God had with Jerusalem. We hear early in Genesis that Sodom had a reputation for wickedness, and that few if any good people lived there.  Ezekiel describes the cities as prideful, rich and greedy, lazy and having little care for the poor and needy.  These cities were known to flout God’s command to help the widow and orphan, and to care for the stranger and foreigner; thus it was said travellers kept well away. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were given an opportunity for repentance and the saving of their cities in the oft quoted passage in Genesis, wherein God tells Abraham of the two cities injustices and vows to obliterate them.  Abraham argues with God asking God to spare the cities if just 50 righteous men are found…then how about 45…how about 10? So, God sent two angels to Sodom and Gomorrah to ascertain if 10 righteous men could indeed be found.   They encounter the only righteous family in the entire city, that of Lot, who follows God’s law and thus invites the strangers into his own house and shares with them all he has. The next part of the story is what often receives the focus, the men of the town gather around Lot’s home and demand that he turn over the strangers for their amusement.  Lot tried, to the extreme, to guard his guests and follow God commandments regarding caring for strangers in a strange land, but the crowd will have none of it.  Preferring their own pleasures, their own power, their own lust over God’s law.   We know how that ended. Sodom and Gomorrah, became in biblical times a byword…not for homosexuality but for Godlessness and anarchy. So, if Jerusalem, the city of the temple of God…the temple where God very presence was said to dwell, where the ark of the covenant and the tablets of Moses resided, was to be compared to Godless and lawless Sodom and Gomorrah problems were serious indeed! We read Isaiah tell us that the hands of the worshipers in Judah and Jerusalem were full of blood.  Not simply the blood of the animals sacrificed, but the blood of those who suffered injustices because God’s own people had forgotten to practice what they preached. They were at risk of moving as far from God’s teachings as Sodom and Gomorrah, but there was still time. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;    remove the evil of your doings    from before my eyes; cease to do evil,    learn to do good; seek justice,    rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,    plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out,    says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet,    they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson,    they shall become like wool. “ v 16-18 The evils they were doing; actively or through passive neglect emptied their sacrifices and liturgies of integrity, rendering them hollow and meaningless.  Pure show.  In our context we could say a people worshiped a homeless Christ on Sunday and ignored a homeless mother on Monday.  In order to determine how to worship with integrity perhaps we need to consider why we worship.  Does God need our worship to survive? No, not any more then God required the blood of bulls and goats.  It is us, we the people, who need the liturgy.  A visual reminder that we are given grace, be it via a literal scapegoat whose blood poured over the corners of the altar cleansing the people from their sins.  Or via a scapegoat Christ whose blood poured over the cross is represented in bread and wine.  We need these symbols, these sacraments, not God.  And we need worship to be strengthened in faith and in community. As Luke tells us at length God’s good pleasure is to give us the kingdom.  But we need to be dressed for action, or as the King James puts it…to gird our loins.  Hike up the lounge wear and roll up your sleeve and get ready to plunge into God’s law knee and elbow deep. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;    remove the evil of your doings    from before my eyes; Repent and return to the Lord!  As Luke has Jesus telling us; Sell your possessions …all those things which possess you.  Give alms…that is give those in need on Monday what you promised and prayed they’d receive on Sunday. When we pray that … We have erred and strayed from thy wayes like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices, and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undon those things which we ought to have don, And we have don those things which we ought not to have don, Let us look intentionally for the ways in which we can remedy the errors of our thoughts, words and deed. When we worship, I pray that our actions and prayers are not empty words, but that we worship to give thanks to God for the blessings that God showers on us and for the strength and desire to not only gird our loins in readiness, but to light our lamps to better see the opportunities that God set before us to: cease to do evil,    learn to do good; seek justice,    rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,    plead for the widow. In our scripture today we are urged, in all seriousness not to be like Sodom and Gomorrah, who ignored and flouted even the most basic of God’s laws: "For the Eternal your God is God supreme and Lord supreme, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, providing food and clothing — you too must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).                                                             -Or as we might be apt to say- 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12 When we gather together in prayer, in scripture, in sacrament and in community, let us worship with intent and integrity.  Ready each day, just like the servants in Luke’s parable to meet Christ when he comes, whether at the last day or each day, in the face of our neighbour.   Blessed are they who Christ finds awake and alert, lamp lit and door open treating each stranger as Christ himself.  So that, through God’s grace and abundant blessings, we may bring about the kingdom God has promised; ensuring that no one faces injustice or oppression, that no orphan or stranger goes without having their needs met, and that neither widow or any other are ignore or brushed aside. I pray that our worship this day, strengthens and empowers us like Lot, like Abraham to follow God’s commands and do God’s work, so that God’s kingdom my come and God’s will be done. Amen.