August 8, 2004
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
There’s a little girl whose father was busy working on a report due to his Board of Directors. The father was preoccupied at his computer that he failed to notice the shadow of his little daughter standing beside him. Startled by the girl’s presence, the father asked in an irritated tone, “What do you want? Can’t you see that Daddy is busy?”
The girl replied softly, “Well Daddy, it’s my bedtime. Mommy said that if I came to your desk, you would give me a hug and kiss and say goodnight.”
The father begrudgingly leaned over to the little girl (still irritated at the interruption) and gave her a polite peck on the cheek and a half of a hug. “Go on; go on, Daddy’s busy now!”
Resuming his work, the father became so consumed by his writing that he failed to notice that his daughter was still standing there! The father barked, “I gave you a hug and kiss, now what more do you want?”
The little girl replied timidly, “Well, Daddy, you did give me a hug and kiss…but you weren’t in it.”
What a wise little girl! Isn’t it true that we can give a hug and a kiss and not be “in it?” We can put offerings in an offering plate or sing a hymn and not be “in it.” We can pray the Lord’s Prayer or sing the doxology and not be “in it.” We can send a birthday card or give a gift and not be “in it.” An outward display of love is meaningless if it is not accompanied by one’s heart. This is the essence of Isaiah’s message for us this morning.
Isaiah’s Message
Isaiah, by the way is Jesus’ favorite prophet, begins his prophesy by addressing Judah as people who live in “Sodom” and “Gomorrah.” These are symbolic names for the places where we live today.
The Lord says the countless sacrifices offer nothing to him. Isaiah lists all the things that we do for God in worship: sacrifices, offerings, prayers. All the things we do when we enter into the presence of God, Isaiah is saying that they are not necessary. In fact, God is sick and tired of the multitude of services we do for him.
God rejects the burnt offerings and blood of animals that people smeared in the sanctuary, sprinkled on people and poured on the altar to cleanse people of sins with the hope that by doing these things, they would protect themselves from God’s wrathful judgment in the form of invading enemies.
God is weary and burdened when people gather for festivals and services that don’t serve their intended purposes. Rather than satisfying God’s favor, they disgusted God and prompted his rejection. God was fed up with their sacrifices because they were liturgical extravagances to serve their own purposes instead of God’s. God rejects the people’s worship to the point that he won’t listen to it anymore! Ouch!
FCBC Worship
A couple of Sundays ago, I mentioned that I miss worshipping with you in this sanctuary. I think we do worship pretty good here. If you haven’t been here for Easter Sunday morning or on Christmas Eve, you really haven’t known Christian worship in all of its grandest glory —the candles, the flowers, the organ, the choirs, and your singing. Some of you go out of your way to invite friends and family to be here on those special Sundays. And even on some of these normal Sunday mornings, you have said, “This was a glorious day. The prayer, our praise to God, was done right. We ought to put that on the display cases outside: “Here we do worship right!”
I suspect that in our 124 years of history with 52 Sundays each year and counting all those mid-week services that we have at least done over 7000 worship services. Surely God has smiled on some of these worship and prayer times.
But according to Isaiah, God says, “Your countless services, what are they to me? I am fed up, sick to my stomach of all your praise! I have no desire for your liturgical extravagances. Who told you I wanted a prayer service? Your gifts are useless to me. Who told you that you can trample into my courts. The smell of your burnt offerings makes me sick. Your prayers have become a burden to me, your countless prayers, I will not listen.” Ouch!
So then what does God require from us? What does God expect from us if our prayer is to be right?
In verses 16-17, Isaiah says, “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.”
The test of prayer is ethics—it’s what we do in our lives that pursue justice and champion the oppressed. The test for what we do here from 10:00 to 11:15 every Sunday morning is what we do out there Monday through Saturday 24 hours a day.
God goes so far as to say, Go ahead and pray yourselves until you drop dead but I won’t listen to you as you pervert justice and champion the cause of the rich and powerful who take advantage of the vulnerable and powerless. Go ahead and have your worship services but I won’t be there.
God is saying, “Sorry, I don’t listen to the prayers of those who pile up goodies for themselves while widows and orphans go hungry.” The only test of prayer and worship that makes a difference to God is to seek justice.
God doesn’t only say that we are to believe in the idea of justice for the poor, but rather we are to do justice, make their cause our own. If not, our worship and prayers are just pretty words that God won’t bother to listen. Ouch again!
Religious Hypocrisy
Isaiah was not prophesizing against our worship services or our prayers per se, but rather against the belief that when we believe that keeping these ritual practices was all we need to live a life pleasing to God and secure God’s favor. God is against that. We in the church today know something about religious hypocrisy too.
Sometimes we think that religious practices have some magical powers. Some people see regular attendance at service, partaking of the Lord’s Supper, even prayer itself, is something of a guarantee for salvation, or at least a preventive measure against life’s misfortunes.
We all have heard of people diagnosed with terminal cancer. They railed against God. How could God do this to him? “He has been a regular church attendee since his youth. He even served as a deacon.” We think that our bodies should remain healthy just because we come to church.
Then there are baby dedications. I’m not talking about the baby dedication I officiated recently for Gary and Pearl Eng’s granddaughter because I know Christine and John take their children to church but there are people who have not attended church ever since their wedding, but, having a newborn child, seek to have the child dedicated without any intention of returning to the church until the next child is born and needs to be dedicated. It seems that they feel that they need to have the baby “done,” in case “something happens” or perhaps to protect in advance against “something happening” in the future.
The message from Isaiah for us today is that when we come to worship and say our prayers with the intention that these rituals will protect us in life and guarantee salvation in the age to come is religious hypocrisy.
Isaiah says to us to cease evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. It’s an ethical teaching to move beyond thinking about ourselves to be concern for others. And for our relationship with God to be right, we need to have a right relationship with the powerless, vulnerable, and oppressed.
When I was growing up as a high school student in Boston in the 1960s, civil rights marches were taking place in the Deep South. My home church was active in registering Black voters and praying for integration. Our assistant pastor, Eugene Dawson marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery and was arrested with many others. We were concerned for him because the news reported that there was violence and marchers were hurt. This incident has left long-lasting impressions on me ever since it happened 40 years ago. What our assistant pastor did and what our church stood for is that true and rightful worship to God requires us to seek justice by rescuing the oppressed, by defending the orphan; and by pleading for the widows.
Why Worship?
The reason why we worship in the first place is to worship God. When we come to worship, we come to love God for God himself. And the measure of love due to him is immeasurable love.
But what has happened is that in our attempts to worship God, to love God in our hearts, we have created religious rituals such as those referred to in Isaiah and even those performed in our own churches to become objects of worship themselves. Surely then, what is condemned in Isaiah is not our attempt through religious rituals to experience deep, authentic relationship with God, but rather the understanding that any religious practice in and of itself could guarantee either ease or prosperity in this life or salvation in the next life.
There is an old Chinese tale about a woman whose only son died. In her grief, she went to the holy man and said, “What prayers, what magical incantations do you have to bring my son back to life?”
Instead of sending her away or reasoning with her, he said to her, “Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to drive the sorrow out of your life.” The woman went off at once in search of that magical mustard seed.
She came first to a splendid mansion, knocked at the door, and said, “I am looking for a home that has never known sorrow. Is this, such a place? It is very important to me.”
They told her, “You’ve certainly come to the wrong place,” and began to describe all the tragic things that recently had befallen them.
The woman said to herself, “Who is better able to help these poor, unfortunate people than I, who have had misfortune of my own?” She stayed to comfort them and then went on in search of a home that had never known sorrow. But wherever she turned, she found one after another of sadness and misfortune. She became so involved in ministering to other people’s grief that ultimately she forgot about her quest for the magical mustard seed, never realizing that it had, in fact, driven the sorrow out of her life.
By not making the magical mustard seed become itself our life’s goals but instead to care for others: the oppressed, the orphans, the widows, all the vulnerable people in the world, we too will realize how God can heal our sorrows. In our ministry of seeking justice for others, we come to a right relationship with God.
God’s Mercy
We know that to find our way into the life that God requires takes effort. We can “cease” to do evil, but we still have to “learn” how to do good. Even with good intentions we will not always succeed in the quest for justice. We don’t know how best to help the oppressed. The complexities of international relations and domestic problems that plague all nations today are clear enough examples of how maddeningly complicated societal problems can be. This is also the case with the personal relationships that we have—in knowing what to do and how to help our relatives and family members or our neighbors across the street. We will still do evil at times; hypocrisy will never be fully absent from our lives.
But the reality of God that we see in Isaiah’s message, assures us of the compassion in the heart of God. God’s promise is for mercy to those who “are willing and obedient” (1:19), who want to “wash themselves” and make themselves “clean.” Mercy is for those who can and try to do what is right in God’s sight, who seeks justice and pursue it, who seek to save those in trouble, and act on behalf of women and children.
Listen to what Isaiah said God will do for us when we seek justice, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (1:18). This is God’s mercy! God does not intend to leave us in sin, in our religious hypocrisy but wants us to return to his favor. God will blot out all remembrance of our sins and will not demand an account of them.
God wants us to be “in it” when we come to worship, saying our prayers, receiving the Lord’s Supper, singing the songs. The realization that we are not “in it,” not living out our faith as God desires, leads us to repentance. The word, repentance is the Greek word, “matanoia” means “to take a U-turn.” The Isaiah passage requires us to admit that we are going in the wrong direction. We need a U-turn to recognize our hypocrisy and admit that we often engage in religious actions without being “in it.” We must turn to God who alone can offer us forgiveness of sins and a new direction.
God’s nature is mercy and love. It is only our ingratitude and rebellion against God and God’s will that separates us from God. As Christians, we now know that our sins are forgiven through Jesus Christ who himself embodied God’s mercy and love. As we turn to Christ for cleansing and following him as our model in life, we will do what Isaiah has said; we “shall eat the good of the land and refuse to rebel against God.”
Let us pray.
Loving God, we pray for you to help us see how we have made our worship activities become the objects of our attention. Show us a better way to worship by seeking justice on behalf of those who are oppressed and disadvantaged. We thank you for your mercy and grace as we repent for our sins and turn our lives around to model the life of Jesus, our Lord. Amen.