2022 Year C Proper 14 - August 7, 2022
Our Relationship to Worship
To honor the Glorious Trinity: God, Savior, and Spirit.
Don’t panic, I won’t be talking about money this week. Our Stewardship Committee will help us align our treasure with our hearts during the pledge drive in October.
Let’s tackle our relationship to worship. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is fantastic at worship. We have the space, the staff, the accessories, and the best contribution of Anglicanism to human history – The Book of Common Prayer. This common prayer elevates our speech to holiness, whether we’re decked out in gold chasubles and dalmatics here or gathered in sandals on a boat.
Take the Collect for today. In prayer you could blurt out, “God, what am I to do!” Or you can pray, “Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will (Collect Proper 14 BCP 232).”
These syllables point us to Christ’s Way and teach us to walk His path. Well, the BCP can do that when our will yields to Christ. This codex of holy words can become an idol, as can music, or buildings and windows, or clergy, or worship traditions.
We must take care that our praise reaches for God rather than only easing our craving for the familiar. When our worship is designed to only be comfortable and pretty, but never challenge us to examine our lives, we may drift into insincerity like the leaders in Isaiah’s passage.
Here the prophet related God’s frustration with spiritually empty offerings. While sacrificing bulls as atonement for missteps, the leaders committed greater sins. While spending resources on incense and finery for the Temple, they let their neighbors go without proper clothing. As they fed richly on the sacrificed lamb of their festival, orphans, widows, and marginalized people languished in hunger.
God says, “Isa 1:14 your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.” The words aren’t mild. God is fed up – smiting-level fed up. This exasperation implies reconciliation is impossible. Over and over the covenant relationship between the Chosen People and God is anchored in commandments.
Not actions prescribed simply to have something spiritual to do, they are guiding laws that link every moment of one’s day, every area of one’s life to the promise made with God, redeemer and creator. God’s image is projected in a heightened way by this Chosen People, violation erodes the core of their covenant with God.
These leaders felt entitled because they had the correct families, the correct lifestyle, and perfect worship, but the very commandments they used as armor are the ones Isaiah used to accuse them. Worship was corrupted by the leaders’ unfaithful hearts.
If our time in worship is performance, it does not shape us; if our public prayer is posturing, it does not heal us; if our Sunday sacrifice of money, time, skill, or leadership is given to balance out six days of sin, surely God will turn to us and declare “…Isa 1:15even though you make many prayers, I will not listen!”
…and in the next verse, the next utterance from the Prophet’s lips, God invited those same leaders into reconciliation, all things are possible with God: “Isa 1:16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow…”
This is the fruit of true worship. Our worship is transformative, not because of our space or song or even the Book of Common Prayer, but by the good fruit it bears.
Let us pray in unison a Collect for Purity found on the front of your bulletin: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
+The Very Rev. Vanessa E. B. Clark