Sermon delivered Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013 (12th Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, Proper 14) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Isaiah 1:10-20)
For the past month or so, our readings from the Hebrew Bible have come from the prophets: Amos, Hosea, and this week, Isaiah. This prophetic tradition will continue through the rest of the season after Pentecost, with readings from Jeremiah, Joel, Habbakuk, and Haggai.
Although the details of their historical contexts differ, all the prophets speak to a people who in one way or another have fallen away from God. They point out the ways the people have not lived up to what God has called them to do and to be, and call the people back to right relationship with God.
Oftentimes the “issue” at hand for the prophets is that the people are worshipping other gods or have adopted ritual practices other than those prescribed by the God of Israel. Our passage from Isaiah often gets read in that way. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” God says to the people. “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. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?”
At face value, it sounds like God is mad about the Israelites doing something he didn’t tell them to do, like worshipping Baal or other gods. And since both Judaism and Christianity ultimately came to believe that animal sacrifice is not necessary to please God, it is easy to read that understanding back into the text and judge the ancient people for their “primitive” understanding of God.
“Those silly people back then,” we think. “They actually thought God wanted them to kill animals for him? This passage clearly shows that God didn’t want sacrifices, but they kept on doing it anyway! Apparently they really were hard-headed and rebellious.”
Latent in this assessment is the assumption that we, the modern reader, are not so hard-headed, that we understand what true worship is, whereas the ancients did not.
One of the problems with this interpretation is that this passage is not about the people adopting unacceptable religious practices. In fact, all the religious rituals described in this passage – offering sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem, observing the Sabbath, celebrating the appointed festivals on the religious calendar – had been commanded by God in the Mosaic law. By all outward appearances, the people were actually doing everything right. They were performing the ritual actions God had said God wanted. So why does God suddenly say he doesn’t want them to do the very things he had commanded them to do?
Well, because they were really only fulfilling one part of the instructions God had given to them. God had not only given commands about ritual practice, but also about ethical behavior – and the people weren’t doing so great with the second half of that equation. Their ritual observances, however correctly they were performed, were not acceptable to God because outside of worship, the people continued to behave unethically.
This is not an unfamiliar theme in our own day -- that outside of worship, people continue to behave unethically. Christian author and speaker Brennan Manning observed this about the modern-day church: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, but walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” However much we may be tempted to assume we in the modern world have “matured” and made “progress” from the “primitive” times of the ancient world, human nature has not actually changed very much. It may be dressed up with technological advancements and an “evolved” understanding of God and what kind of rituals God requires, but the fact remains that it is still easier to say the words of faith than it is to live them.
We read the Scriptures not so that we can pat ourselves on the back by how much “progress” we have made since ancient times, but so that we can hear how God is still speaking to us today. In order to do that, sometimes we need to undertake a little modern translation. To hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people through this passage from Isaiah, we might consider what it would sound like if we translated all those references to ancient Israelite worship to references to our worship in the Episcopal Church today. It might sound something like this:
What are the multitude of your liturgies to me?
says the LORD;
I have had enough of your Eucharists and baptisms;
I do not delight in red wine,
or these flimsy wafers you call bread.
When you come to appear before me,
who asked you to pour water over things and call them holy?
Don’t come to church any more;
giving your tithe is futile;
lighting candles and processing down the aisle is an abomination to me.
Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter… the calling of vestry meetings and diocesan conventions --
I cannot endure these sacred gatherings while you go on sinning.
Your liturgical calendar and your church gatherings
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you say the Prayers of the People just as they are written in the Book of Common Prayer,
I will not listen;
Because your hands are full of blood.
Hopefully this “modern translation” makes clear that the meaning of this passage is not that God hated the sacrifices of the Israelites, any more than God hates us celebrating the Eucharist. Those things were and are the core elements of our ritual lives. This passage must be read with a tone of thick sarcasm, spoken like an angry lover in a quarrel: “You expect me to accept those roses after what you’ve done??” God speaks in this passage like a hurt lover refusing to accept an otherwise desirable gift because the giver has been unfaithful.
If we want to consider what the Spirit is saying to us through this Scripture today, we must consider how our hands are “full of blood” in the Episcopal Church today. How are we complicit in the world’s ways of violence, degradation and exploitation of our fellow human beings? Are we nurturing scorn and contempt for our brothers and sisters who have left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with Anglican churches in other parts of the world? Are we gaining revenue for our ministries by investing funds in companies whose business practices may not be in line with the ethical teachings of Jesus and the prophets? Do we provide food or financial assistance to those in need but ignore the systemic inequalities that keep them trapped in a cycle of poverty?
The “blood on our hands” may not be literal blood from going out and slaughtering anyone, but in subtle and often unintentional ways, even we, who think of ourselves as a “social justice-minded church,” can participate in and benefit from the unjust structures of this world. That is why we have the prophets to call us back, to sit us down for a “come to Jesus” meeting and point out where we have fallen short. And the good news is that like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, we can make a choice to change our ways once we have been made aware of our sins, and God has promised forgiveness if we do. Even at the end of that angry speech about how much he hates our rituals because of our unethical behavior, God still ends with a promise of forgiveness: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.”
God’s promise is that he will wash away the blood on our hands, offering us new life, another chance – over and over and over again. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to repent and return to the Lord whenever we fall into sin. Not if we fall into sin, but when – because, human nature not having changed much in 2,500 years, we know that we will. And we also know that God’s grace and mercy will be there for us every time, because God’s nature hasn’t changed much in 2,500 years either. Like the lover who ultimately forgives her partner because her love is stronger than her anger, so God’s love for us is stronger than God’s anger over the ways we are unfaithful. And that, my friends, is good news.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
