Sermon: To Glorify God

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 (Luke 12:32-40)

To Glorify God

James Sledge                                                                                       August 11, 2013

Being a pastor, it should come as no big surprise that I have lots of books on worship. One of them opens with this little anecdote.

One Sunday morning, a mother went upstairs to her son’s room to wake him for church.  Slowly opening the door, as it softly squealed in protest, she said, “Dear, it’s time to get up.  It’s time to go to church.”  The son grumbled and rolled over.  Ten minutes later his mother again went up, opened the door, and said, “Dear, get up.  It’s time to go to church.”  He moaned and curled up tighter under the blankets, warding off the morning chill.  Five minutes later she yelled, “Son! Get up!”  His voice muffled by the blankets, he yelled back, “I don’t want to go to church!”  “You have to go to church!” she replied.  “Why?  Why do I have to go to church?” he protested.

The mother stepped back, paused, and said, “Three reasons.  First, it’s Sunday morning, and on Sunday mornings we go to church.  Second, you’re forty years old, and you’re too old be having this conversation with your mother.  Third, you’re the pastor of the church.”[1]

The author, a Presbyterian pastor, shared the story to speak of the ambivalence many pastors feel about worship. I’ve noticed over the years that even those pastors who love preaching can still have very mixed feelings about worship. And I read somewhere that many pastors derive a kind of perverse pleasure from reading today’s scripture in worship. That’s rather odd when you think about it, what with pastors leading worship and all. But I suppose that most pastors worry at times about being complicit in worship that God doesn’t particularly appreciate; or worse,  complicit in worship that God hates.

Those of you who’ve been around the Presbyterian Church for long enough may recall the catechism that used to be taught to children and youth. The Shorter Catechism, which I received in a little pink booklet as a fourth grader, begins with a question about “the chief end of man.”  Written in the mid-1600s, the language is a bit dated, so I’ll paraphrase. Q. 1. What is the primary purpose of human beings? A. Humanity’s primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.

From a Presbyterian perspective, I think it’s kind of hard to argue with that. It makes perfect sense that Christians who have experienced God’s love in Jesus would want to live in ways that glorified God. But just what does it mean for us to glorify God? What does that entail?

No doubt worship is a part of this. The very term “worship service” speaks of our worship as serving God in some way. Which is not to say that God necessarily appreciates such attempts, not if today’s scripture is any guide.

Now granted, our worship looks very little like what the prophet Isaiah blasts in our reading this morning. We don’t have any or smoke or incense or squealing animals, and so Isaiah might seem to be critiquing a primitive sort of worship that we would never do. But Isaiah does not primarily seem to be critiquing how Israel worships.

Israel was worshiping as they had been instructed to do in Scripture. There was nothing technically wrong with what they were doing. They had not gotten the liturgy messed up or picked bad hymns. There was nothing wrong with the choir’s anthem and the preacher’s sermon was theologically sound. And so Isaiah’s words must have slapped against the faces of those who first heard them.

One commentator I read recommended updating today’s scripture so we would feel that slap as well. His suggestion, “I hate your worship. Your prayers make me sick. I loathe your music. Your sermons are a sacrilege. Who asked for your offerings? Your Holy Communion stinks. I want none of it.”[2]  …That should do the trick.

But what would possess God to feel that way about Israel’s worship, much less ours? Doesn’t God want to be glorified? Doesn’t God enjoy our praise, our very best efforts at worship done carefully and well?

One thing the Bible makes clear from the lips of numerous prophets and Jesus is that good worship is not simply a matter of doing it right and well. Good worship is also a matter of context, the context of our lives. But there is a perpetual temptation to make worship what we give to God instead of our lives. Even worse, worship can become all about us, something we do to make us feel better about ourselves, where we come from lives that look little like the ones Jesus calls us to in order to be spiritually fed and uplifted, to be assured that God loves and blesses us, and that we’re okay.

And when worship careens too far off the tracks, it can take on the look of a philandering husband who gives really nice presents to his wife when he cheats. They may be wonderful, exquisite presents, carefully chosen, but over time such presents become more a source of pain than joy. And that seems to be how God feels about Israel’s worship in today’s scripture. It is a beautiful offering that people imagine somehow makes up for their constructing a society completely at odds with the priorities of God, a society that ignores the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.

But given the emotion and pain God feels over this, given how Israel’s worship sickens Yahweh, the divine plea to Israel is remarkable. “Come now;”  I’m not sure our translation picks up the full force of this, and I prefer, “Come, I pray, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Despite all the pain and anguish Yahweh feels, God’s response is to plead for Israel to come back into faithful relationship, to change their ways and live as the people of God they were called to be.

In much the same way, Jesus pleads for his followers to become faithful partners in the work of the kingdom, the new day that Jesus both announces and brings. The thing God most longs for us is to discover the life we were meant to live, to become co-workers with Jesus in bringing that new day and showing it to the world. As the Apostle Paul puts it,  “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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by  the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what  is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The good news of the gospel is more than God loves us and forgives us no matter what. The truly good news is that God’s grace, the gift of God’s Spirit, frees us and empowers us to live as new creations, to discover our truest and most authentic selves, so that together we become the body of Christ, living in ways that honor and glorify God not just with our offering of Sunday worship, but also with the living offerings of our very lives.

All glory and honor and praise and thanks be to God!

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[1] N. Graham Standish, In God’s Presence: Encountering, Experiencing, and Embracing the Holy in Worship (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2010), 9.

[2] Paul Simpson Duke in Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Taylor (2011-06-10). Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3, Pentecost and Season after Pentecost (Propers 3-16) (Kindle Locations 11681-11682). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.