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Hear! O peoples all of you! Hear! O synod, all of us!
(Reading: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20)
We declared 1990s a decade of Evangelism and spent it in academic debate about the meaning of evangelism and felt clever. We got into dialogue with our ecumenical partners and even claimed the promise that we would do nothing separate that could be done together - and evil fuelled the fires of good intention.
I pray that as we enter a year dedicated to evangelism we are spared clever debate and good intentions. I pray - and that is our key. This is the year of prayer - the time of preparation. For us, as we look forward to evangelism we need to know what is the good news we have to share. Are we listening to God? Are we hearing God?
We heard it at Spring Synod in the story of the fig Tree - a story that left us with anticipation. How did the gardener get on? Did he manage in that year of grace to save the tree - indeed did it grow, flower and fruit? So is God’s message to us a word of delayed execution or patient renewal?
I recently met Kevin, a South African minister serving in UK, someone who had walked with his people through the pain of Apartheid and the challenge of its dismantling. I asked him what struck him about the United Reformed Church in Britain. His reply was that he thinks we are
good Marthas,
not very good Marys
and awful Nathans.
We are good at being busy, and often in our busy-ness doing good things, that we are not so good in being “lost in wonder, love and praise” - and hopeless in hearing the prophetic voice of God and speaking it into our communities. If we are all about being busy, busy, busy, with little refreshment in worship, and no prophetic word from God, we are doomed, for all we are promoting at best are empty vessels.
I read this morning from Isaiah. In our Bible, Isaiah is the first of the books of the Prophets, and we are on the very first page of it. That’s exciting!
It is not fanciful that the coincidences are too coincidental. However, as the first prophetic book, the chapter lay-out assigned to it seems to set the model for the whole Bible story. There are 66 books in the bible, and 66 chapters in Isaiah. There are 39 books in the Old Testament, and there is a definite change of emphasis after 39 chapters in Isaiah - the first half, written in the decline and collapse of the country, like the Old Testament, it is full of doom and gloom, but again and again there is the promise of God’s intervention. But from Chapter 40, it is as though you are entering the New Testament, for it mirrors the exile and redemption of the people, it is all about the Kingdom of God, founded on the reign of the Suffering Servant. Here is its amazing relevance for our time. We are living through the decline of the Church and many would say, of Western society, but we also know the reality of hope that Jesus has brought as the suffering servant and servant king! This tension of promised deliverance and hope already realised in Jesus can be seen in the name “Isaiah” itself! It can mean - ‘The Lord may save’ but it also means ‘The Lord has saved’ Be assured by that Truth!
As we start our Synod we will go to the first item on our agenda. As we turn to the Prophetic Word of God - then here is God’s first item of business. What is it? - a scathing attack on religion. It seems so modern when men like Dawkins attack the Church - but here is God as the first and most furious critic of religion. And so the prophet is inviting us to meet with God - no friendly local deity, a little statue you can put on your sideboard - but the God whose glory fills the whole earth (6:3) History is in God's hands, and so are your lives - you’d better listen up! I think the people were probably quite relieved to hear that even the great empires of the world - Assyria and Babylon, are under God’s judgement, and shall be torn down. But at the time, the people of Judah were desperately allying with earthly empires for deliverance and God is saying, that they too will be dragged down. Instead, says the prophet, rely upon God in all things. Trust God and repent, return to God to offer God your life, and your worship. Otherwise you are heading for God’s judgement -
“You rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah.”
The prophet is attacking those who are in positions of power - rulers; and those who are affluent - people of Gomorrah.
Today that same Judgement is on our world whether the Empire be rampant capitalism of the west or the fanaticism of the Taliban - but judgement is also on the people of God themselves - you and I!
You the rulers of Sodom, you ministers and elders of our churches, and you people of Gomorrah, members of our churches, the voice of God attacks us - we, who are more comfortable than ever been and have far more than most in the world, and we who have positions of authority, spiritual leadership in the church, to take the Church where God wants it.
I realise I’ve already lost some of you just by mentioning Sodom and Gomorrah at all, never mind comparing you to them!!! - Forget all you think you know about those towns - their sin was not sexual - it was refusal to hear God, to listen to God, to obey God. Their sin was spelt out in Ezekiel: "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" (Ezek. 16:49. That’s what happened from not hearing God’s word.
As that was true, so we are all guilty!
It is worship not our lifestyles that is seen as a perversion when what we do in worship contradicts how we live, if that is sin and idolatry (v. 13). It may even be termed an "abomination" (v. 13)
On a personal note, I left GEAR in 1990s when I heard ministers abusing the word of God to call gay people ‘abominations’ - no human being should be called that, especially by others who profess grace. Yet it must have seemed clever to link the abomination of Sodom and Gomorrah with gay people - but the epithet is there because of their idolatry and greed. Again, I say, we are all guilty!
Some in the church attack gay people as having no right to be ministers or church leaders because they are living in unrepentant sin. That may or may not be true - all my years of grappling with God’s word and praying with God, I realise there is great debate as to what checklist of particular practices in bed and with whom, God considers sin or not. But what I do know is that there is no debate - all of us who claim divine affirmation as ministers and members of Christ’s body are living in unrepentant sin in a materialistic, unjust, self-centred and often God-denying state - and worse, feeding it with our greed, and relying on it by putting our trust in it for all our needs.
We see it in our Synod and Church and Assembly Agendas, and we see it in how we judge and worry about the Church in terms of money, and buildings and style. And God speaks into our situation.
When God speaks it is direct, and uncompromising.
When God is heard it is life -changing and kingdom building: "cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow" (vv. 16-17).
There was great condemnation of their sacrifices. It is cheap theology to shout our agreement that sacrifices are horrible things and heresy to think we can buy forgiveness by our sacrifices. But remember god ordained sacrifices, and would not organise a religion against what is God’s will. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that God requires sacrifice in order to forgive. The complex arrangements of sacrifices was developed to offer thanks to God whether that be for new babies, for harvests, for redemption from slavery. Peace offerings did not secure reconciliation with God, but signalled the peace God offered where there is repentance. And yes, there were sacrifices as sin offerings, but they were like the punishments ordered by a court. All this was good stuff, building blocks of God’s Kingdom, to bring a people close before God in worship and confession, to affirm a sense of righteous living, and build a just community. All good religious stuff - And yet God cries enough!
What does Isaiah want his listeners to hear? A terrible indictment against them!
I have had enough! That sounds like the last word from God, but there is more: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen?" God will not even listen to prayers, and we can see why,: "When you stretch out your hands.... your hands are full of blood." God cannot deal with hypocrisy - saying one thing but doing another, being righteous in church, and being unchristian in our lives - the disconnection between what happens inside the sanctuary and what happens outside of it.
Instead of a cult of sacrifices, we have our Presbyterian good order or our congregational fellowship, Iona liturgies or metrical psalms, our organs and praise bands, our readings and dramas, sermons and messy church - and God says enough!
A word such as this does not lose its relevance, because this is always a core problem for God's people-the gap between our practice and our praise.
Worship unconcerned with justice is obscene. It may even establish obstacles to justice. Going to church can bathe us in feelings that the appointment has been kept, a duty discharged, a commitment satisfied, even that we are approved of by God. That’s awful if nothing at the core of our being has changed and nothing outside the room will likely be challenged.
Last Sunday in the serviced I attended - the preacher’s words were powerful and direct - I believe those words touched the hearts of those visiting for a baptism. Then we ended with a hymn - it is was modern, easy to understand and words relevant - the visitors didn’t sing, indeed they started laughing at us. The challenge of the Spirit was lost.
That challenged me to recognise that we are selling a style of worship, a cultural thing, whether that be old or modern, high or low; it may attract - more than likely it won’t - even repel. As my daughter says, these days, you only get away with music in church, of whatever style, if it is really done well.
Recently I was leading worship at a church whose members are few and elderly, but they still have monthly parade services, and there were dozens of young people and their parents at the service. Afterwards three fathers came up to me and asked about following Jesus. How do we pick up those enquiries of faith?
People are not looking for churchgoing, or church belonging - to get sucked in to boring old fashioned committees and meetings and socials that are culturally 50 years past sell by date, and cut off from the real world in which we live. They are looking for relationship with God, and a right relationship with life. They are looking for a people in whom they can see their God is real and has made a difference to their life, and a people who so care about them, that they want to share that experience with them - that’s evangelism!
If we want to lift our blood-soaked hands to God, there is only one thing left to do: "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean" (v. 16).
What is required to come clean before God? "Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice" (vv. 16-17). In the broadest terms, it is the turning of a life and the turning of a community of lives. In specific terms, doing good and seeking justice look like this: "rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow" (v. 17). If the people of God want to lift their hands to God in prayer, they will extend their hands to the most vulnerable as well.
The message of Isaiah can be so hard and inevitable - Judah is doomed - and Jerusalem will fall, and it does fall. I hear today a strong sense that our churches are doomed to close.
That threat hangs over us. That judgement on our lives is real - but the text does not stop there. The final word is God's-just as the final action will be God’s -and a famous word it is: "Come now, let us argue it out... though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow" (v. 18). Ultimately, whatever washing there is will come from God's hands, not the people's. The only question is whether or not the people-we among them-are willing. Yes, Jesus, wash all of me!
For this Word of God is all about Hope. But is unexpected hope, a baby in Bethlehem; an undeserved hope, God crucified; a unending hope, risen Jesus with us forever - ‘when you turn back and trust me’, says the Lord God, ‘and commit your life to me’.
"In Christ, God was reconciling the world" (2 Cor. 5:19); the atonement is God's own gracious initiative. There is a significant resonance between this text from Isaiah and Christian understandings of true worship and prayer as being primarily about how we live our lives before God, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1 (NRSV)
Engagement with God and engagement with the world that God loves and died for! Without worship, prayer, the Holy Spirit, you would not hear God’s word. Without engaging with the world, that Word cannot live.
Are we listening to God? Are we hearing God?
It is a year not to debate what we mean by evangelism, nor to plan our plans but to listen to God’s Word and to live it. Isaiah rightly points us away from church, turns us from churchy things, draws us out of church - witnessing to Jesus and His kingdom.
Kevin
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