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Monday, May 24, 2010
The Final Reason
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Scripture: Isaiah 1: 13 – 14, 17
13bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. 14Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
Amos 5: 21-24
21I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
Today I am wrapping up a three part series on outreach. In the first part, I talked about how important the world needs us to reach out. The second time we talked (I make that sound like we were just sitting around chatting…really, you just let me just go on and on and on.), I talked about the benefits to each of us when we go out and serve the world. Today I want to give the final reason. I saved the best for last. If the first reason is, it pleases the world, and the second reason is that it pleases us, the third trumps them both.
It pleases God.
It actually is more than just pleasing God. On some occasions, God commands it.
There is a challenge when you do these kinds of sermons or sermon series. By the third one, you can start to be tuned out. “Yea, yea, yea we get it…go out and serve.” I can start to sound like a broken record. There is also the risk of sounding holier than thou. Bill Barnes, my pastor in Florida, use to say, and I am blatantly stealing from him now: Don’t you know? I preach to myself and let you all listen in.
This is my stuff to work on, too. So many people have said to me that I give so much to the homeless. I am down in Civic Center Park two hours a week. Two hours. There are people who give their LIFE to helping the poor and oppressed. If I spent on the homeless what I spend on clothes and wine and fast food…well let’s just say, the homeless would be in a much better place. Please know this message is for all of you but there is a healthy dose of, “Physician heal thy self,” thrown in.
There is a famous saying in clergy circles. You didn’t even know we had clergy circles did you? The saying is that a preacher’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Now no one in this room knows what category anyone else falls in. It is safe to say, though, that a good many of us are comfortable. I read recently in a book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan that if you make $52,000 a year, you make one hundred times more money than the average person on this planet? Only you know what category you fall in. Appearances can be deceiving.
Appearances are what our scripture passages are talking about today. They are taking it beyond a person’s individual appearances and moving into people’s group appearances. Both of these passages come from the Old Testament and are directed at those who participated in and lead worship that, to the naked eye, looked wonderful.
All the right things are said and done. Every rule is followed and every area covered. God is telling us in this passage that how things appear on the outside is not what concerns God. God is more concerned with what happens on the inside. God is telling them and us, I don’t care what the outside of the church looks like; I care what the inside looks like.
In both of these passages we are not just looking at what God doesn’t like. It is clear in both Amos and in Isaiah that God doesn’t want us to just go through the motions. In Isaiah God says, I cannot endure solemn assemblies. And again in Amos God says, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. In both passages God states that God won’t take their offering and to take away the noise of their songs. None of that is pleasing to God when it is offered in a shallow way.
But God doesn’t leave them there. God tells them and us, in both passages, what IS important to God. Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. Those are what count to God in Isaiah. In Amos we get the same feeling but different words. … let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. These are powerful words. So powerful, that Dr. Martin Luther King used them in one of his more famous speeches.
This week is the celebration of Pentecost. It is considered the birth of the church. Pentecost is not about a solemn assembly. It's a time for excitement, energy, movement, birth. It is about fresh air and fresh commitment.
We are going to be living these ideas in the coming months here. Not just with our new building, which will help us reach out to people in our neighborhood, but in how we go into the world as well. As many of you know, AfterHours is going to be homeless in two weeks. We are in the final stages of dialogue with a location that will allow us to be in ministry even closer to the city. It will be a location where the homeless are blocks away, not miles. Local demographics indicate that this is a location that has a very low receptivity to traditional denominational religion. Sounds like just the place for AfterHours! This move is about new life and new commitment and new birth. This move may be a modern day Pentecost. But it will take more commitment, both from the leaders of the church, and from those who attend. It’s about 15-20 minutes from here. It is not as convenient as going to church in this building. It will be a reminder that part of our relationship to God and church are not about convenience but about commitment.
It is a time to get fired up about God and the church. Pentecost is the exact opposite of going through the motions. Pentecost is feeling the fresh breath of God. It is feeling the spirit move among us and around us and in us. It is about taking this power and making great things happen for the mission of the church. And what is the mission of the church? God tells us. Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow. How does this translate to today? In a phrase: Help those who can’t help themselves.
Amos and Isaiah are not isolated cases. It has been said that you can find a Bible verse to support just about any thought or action you want to support. Remember the bible isn’t a book, it’s a library written by many different authors from many different places in time. They are going to have different points of view making the next thing I say even more amazing.
Do you know the scriptures mention poverty more than 2,100 times? It’s mentioned throughout the Bible in the Old Testament and New and in the gospels as well as the epistles. It is everywhere, 2,100 times. That is not just passing commentary.
Early Bibles were rare things. Remember, the printing press was not created until the 1400’s. Prior to that very few people had their own Bible. The earliest materials where costly to reproduce and every word mattered. And yet over and over and over we see this mention of the poor. It is clear to many people, myself included, that this is a central piece of the scriptures. Make no mistake: the poor matter to God. And when we help the poor, we are making God smile. Who doesn’t want that?
When we talk about Pentecost being the birth of the church, we don’t mean structures or committees or potlucks or long hymns and even longer sermons. We are talking about the birth of Christ in and among the people as a group, to go out and change the world. The 3000 people that agreed to follow Christ on the day of Pentecost were mobilized to go out and do the work that Jesus did. And what did Jesus do? He fed the hungry, healed the sick and ate with sinners. He made people feel whole again. Is there a more important mission in the life of the church than to emulate Jesus?
Let us never lose sight that for God church is not solemn assemblies, shallow offerings and token praise. Does anyone enjoy token praise? This is a time for us to get recharged. It is a time to feel God’s love and life fill us up so that we can go and do the work in the world that pleases our God.
We know that going into the world helps the world. We know that we feel better when we do it. And we have over 2,100 reminders that when we go out and help those that need our help, it makes God happy. What are we waiting for? What more do we need? Feel the spirit of Pentecost. We have the opportunity to go out and show the world what a church on fire looks like.
We do it for them. We do it for us. We do it for God. Sometimes the old words are the best: Go out to love and serve the world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.