Sermons
4th November 2007 - 4th Before Advent
‘Incense is an abomination to me’.
As you know I am a priest of a very moderate catholic persuasion. But even to me this little line of denunciation in Isaiah is somewhat unsettling...‘Incense is an abomination to me.’
These warnings recorded by Isaiah against false worship and the incense associated with the sacrifices of the empty ritual of the temple cult of the 8th century before Christ; these warnings should indeed serve as a guide for our own attitude to worship and as we begin to look towards the season of Advent, the season in which we prepare ourselves to receive Christ afresh into our lives, they can be set alongside Our Lord’s teaching to wait on him in a state of readiness and eagerness. Worship and waiting for the Lord are to arise from the earnest desire for God’s loving judgement and counsel. In both Isaiah and the gospels we are called to decision, to turn our attention from ourselves to God.
The prophecies of Isaiah have such an enduring quality, such a direct relevance to worshippers of the one true God throughout the ages because they focus on the enduring sin of pride. For Isaiah all sin has its root in pride, the assertion of one’s own wisdom over that of God. The worship which is denounced by the prophet has become an empty offering of senseless ritual and, as in the prophets Amos, Hosea, and Micah, we hear God’s fierce denunciation. Religious observances have become powerless to wash away the impurities of the people. It is not, of course, incense or sacrifices that are condemned by the prophet or by God; there are many other texts where the odour arising from the sacrifice is a sweet smelling gift in which God delights. It is the sin of pride that is condemned, for it is pride that has fooled these worshippers into thinking that ‘going through the motions’ with empty hearts will be pleasing to God. It is pride that has fooled them into thinking their worship will pacify the God who calls us to decision. Their worship, instead of being an encounter with the living God has become therapy; their endless sacrifices are not offered as a tribute to the Almighty but as a means of keeping themselves happy, their worship has become the liturgical equivalent of not stepping on the cracks in the pavement, it is a superstition in which one suspects not even the practitioners believe. And we have to remember that sacrifices in ancient Israel were associated with feasting not with fasting. In our own society sacrifice has become very strongly linked with the idea of depriving oneself of some potential luxury but when we hear about these Old Testament sacrifices you want to be thinking more along the lines of the office Christmas party rather than giving up chocolate for Advent. Perhaps the people might even have begun to think of their worship as therapy for God; a God who somehow needs a bit of praise from time to time.
All who would worship God should heed this warning and should guard against the structure of worship becoming decadent, and both catholic and evangelical worship are ever in danger of becoming ends in themselves, pantomimes carried out for the benefit of the participants.
How would God be worshipped then? Isaiah hears the word and the word is ‘wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’. We are to turn our gaze away from the mirror and towards those in need all around us. Isaiah says we need to gain inner sanctity by performing the actions of mercy, then come, offer the worship of your heart, offer your sacrifice and your incense to the God who will turn to you and make the scarlet of your sins to be like snow.
But the necessary pretext for that worship is our own decision, our turning to God and through showing love to others honouring the love that he has shown us in bringing us into being, which is no light thing.
With Isaiah we are called to decision and if we leave God’s call unanswered our lives become the empty accumulation of goods and an anxiety that seeks security everywhere but will find none. And it might be that the time is coming when you have to take that turning decisively towards God. It might not mean the utter overthrowing of everything you have been, in fact that’s very unlikely, but it might consist of an inner decision to re-orientate your life, it might be that the time is coming when you have to acknowledge that God has a prior claim on you, a claim he will never force you into accepting but which he will ever hold out as an invitation, an invitation which says, why not turn this way, this way you will flourish, this way you will find life in great abundance, life in all its fullness.
God calls us to decision. God will not accept false worship, but would have us cleanse our hearts by seeking the outcast and the weak and offering them mercy. When we offer our incense with clean hearts, when our worship is the natural and true offering of the people carried through with conviction and not mummery, God will turn to us. When we live our lives in joyful expectation of the kingdom that our Father would give to us then we store up treasure for ourselves in heaven. Then our lives and our worship will be a pattern of that sanctified obedience that God desires; our attention is turned to him who desires our salvation, and we are caught up in the actions and intentions of God to his world, we are caught up in actions and intentions of love. It really hisn’t the sort of invitation you want to miss out on.