Is God Listening? part 3
Jesus' words in Matthew echo Amos' harshness: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. In other words, your worship is a joke. You have refused to show mercy to your brothers, instead you have heaped guilt and condemnation on those who have not lived up to all the minutiae of hair-splitting legalism. You have insisted that obedience to Sabbath law is more important than the joy and peace borne of Sabbath rest. And now you come to me and presume to "offer" me a tithe of your earnings. But your failure to hear the heartbeat of the Law-- righteousness only by faith in Me-- proves to me where your motives truly lie! You have insisted that righteousness means meeting a performance standard rather than emptying your hands of religious duty so that you can receive the grace offered for your inability to meet that very standard. A grace that is the only path to my righteousness; your law of Moses only condemns you.
And again from the mouth of Jesus, the admonition comes that worship, church service, religious duty, obedience to the letter of the law are secondary. The Mosaic Law' heartbeat of Grace is not found in stricture and obligation, which render the Law arbitrary. There is a higher purpose to Leviticus. Jesus illustrates it perfectly: Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift(Matt 5:23-24). Philip Yancey explains it this way: "So urgent is the need for forgiveness that it takes precedence over 'religious' duties...by denying forgiveness to others, we are in effect determining them unworthy of God's forgiveness, and thus so are we." God does not desire our corporate worship, our liturgy, our emotional displays of devotion, our adherence to "orderly worship," our hymns and our WOW worship songs. He desires mercy. There is a current underneath worship, underneath Sunday's service, and underneath proper doctrine, orthodoxy, theology, and statements of faith. This undercurrent legitimizes anything the Church presumes to do, or declare, or preach. It's absence renders all of our doings and believings a spiritualized song and dance. This undercurrent is the ferocious Grace of God, received freely, and manifesting powerfully in the Church's mercy and compassion upon the weak, justice for the poor and downtrodden, forgiveness and welcome to the sinners. Anything less is the fakery and the worship-ish farce of a religious club.
I echo the question asked by David Ruis in The Worship God Is Seeking. What would it be like, if in the middle of our worship service someone shouted "Hold it...stop the music! Stop the hand-waving. Hold that offering plate. Put away the Nicene Creed and the tenets of orthodoxy. Cancel the sermon. The Church not yet attended to mercy and justice. We have not forgiven our brothers and sisters as we have been forgiven. Our righteousness is not rooted in God's grace alone, and therefore is no righteousness at all."
The Good News echoes loud and clear above such exaltation of externals. Jesus parades the message noisily throughout the New Testament:
I have seen your failure. I know that your worship is faulty. I know that your tithes are made in the wrong spirit. I know you have not forgiven as you have been forgiven. I see the emptiness of your liturgy.I know that your obedience to the law is ungrateful and rooted in obligation, not love. I know you can't put down the bottle. I see that you are as unfaithful as Gomer was to Hosea, both to me and to your spouses. Come to me and I will give you rest, because I do not demand perfection. I have not expected a cleaned-up prodigal. I forgive the emptiness of your worship. I forgive your obsession with externals in church and life. And I forgive your unforgiveness.
Only in the magnificent Grace of God does such saving power originate. And thus the Gospel, the power to save, shuts the mouth of Satan and all who would accuse us of failing to worship God correctly.
posted by Nate @ 12:03 PM
3 Comments:
Dear Nate,
I like these posts. Nice work.
I am wondering what Jesus means when He says, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. (Matt 5:23-24) For if what you suggest is accurate, namely that the undercurrent is all that matters (assuming that it is merciful and just) in our worship and that any sort of worship subsequently may be offered if the undercurrent is true and right, then what do we do with Jesus' directive that we are to return to the altar with our gift? Does that not seem to indicate that Jesus feels strongly about a particular form or rite? What altar? What gift? Why are they important? And how has this verse come to be quoted by some in preparation for the Lord's Supper?
And what does it mean to forgive our brothers as we've been forgiven? How has God forgiven me? Does He forgive me if I am unrepentant? If not, then am I only to forgive those who are repentant; if so, then does that suggest that God's forgiveness is directed at all, the unrepentant and defiant, and that I should be as prodigal with my forgiveness?
I guess what I am saying is that if God only forgives the repentant, and that I am to forgive like He forgives, namely, that I also only forgive the repentant, then the Church will have within itself, from brother to brother, some amount of unforgiveness one to another. Does that make sense?
It is too late. Perhaps I am drunk with fatigue. I am right now watching a report on Nightline showing that animistic voodoo "priests" in Benin who drink chicken blood straight from the bird's neck may spread the avian flu through their ritualistic practices.
Peace,
Gnade
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Gnade,
The first comment you make is very valid. I realize I may have suggested that the ritual of worship is irrelevant as long as the undercurrent is correct. But the external rite of worhsip does matter(as your recent posting has explained). I'm operating in the understanding that, if the heart of worship(internal) is True, the correct rite or practice(external) will manifest. Perhaps over time, as we are gradually "being saved" and the cup and dish are cleansed on the inside.
Whether it was clear or not, my statement that "God does not desire our corporate worship, our liturgy..." was more hyperbolic than literal. God does desire our worship, our devotion, our sacrifice. After all he is worthy of it. So it's not that the externals are unrelated. And it's not that you can't make a judgement about the Church's worship based on what you observe in the externals. The detail of Levitical mandates certainly suggests that there is right and wrong way to go about worship. And Jesus, as a Jew, most certainly adhered to liturgy in his temple worship and offering.
The modern charismatic worship movement, born of a reaction to older, more Catholic forms of worship, is of course just as capable of excess, spiritual fakery, and over-concern with form as they accused their Catholic brothers of being. I don't think that Jesus' words in Matthew 5 at all suggest abandonment of form, as some "free-form" churches might. Just a certain order. Dallas Willard speaks of the Christian's growing in "the character and power" of God. He teaches that both are essential and closely wedded, but that character always precedes power(not necessarily in a temporal way). I suspect that this is related to what I've written here.
As for the second thought, concerning forgiveness. Well, we know that God has told Christians they have the authority to dispense or withhold forgiveness. This is not the same thing as harboring personal ungrace and resentment towards those who have sinned against us.
St. Augustine said "God gives where he finds empty hands." C.S. Lewis said that "a man whose hands are full of parcels can't receive a gift." God had grace while we were "yet sinners" but while we were "yet sinners" we chose not to receive the gift. Thus those who have not repented are not forgiven, in some mysterious way, and are identified with their sin. I don't believe this is the same as saying we have the license to resent those who have sinned against us, because unforgiveness is a cancer to the soul.
Ok, I'm taking a breath now! Thanks for your comment.
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