James 1:22-27Pastor Lori Broschat

Exodus 20:1-6July 8, 2018

NO EXPRESSION WHICH OFFENDS

In my early days of seminary, I took Old Testament History, in which we had to write a paper on Abraham. I made a rookie mistake by claiming that Abraham had not worshiped God prior to the mention of his building an altar in Genesis 12:8, “From there he went on towards the hills of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.” My professor kindly corrected me.

It seems to me that others probably share my lack of understanding when it comes to worship, for we have so many arguments over what constitutes worship, what elements are necessary and unchangeable. If you remember last week’s message our focus this month is on the Four Freedoms defined by FDR. Freedom of worship is the second of those. “Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.”

Sadly, as with the First Amendment, some have altered and revised the meaning and intention of this freedom by claiming it applies only to Christians and not to other religions or to those who choose not to worship at all. In the words of Jonathan Swift, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

As with speech, Americans have one freedom and responsibility related to religion, and Christians have another type of responsibility to use this freedom in the truest sense of the word. People of God have always been free to worship Him, but when they failed to do so properly, they often paid a price. Cain and Abel both came to worship, but only one’s gift was accepted. Perhaps Cain’s heart was not right before God.

Why then, if people had been worshiping God since the time of Adam and Eve, did God put it into a commandment? Were people doing it correctly all that time? In reality, idolatry turned up again and again in the history of God’s people.

It’s likely the Hebrew people continued in idolatry during their time in Egypt, making necessary commandments one and two, declarations against making images or worshiping them, but to worship God alone. We are commanded to worship nothing and no one other than God. We may think the Sabbath commandment is about church, but really it’s about rest. Worship is the subject of the first two commandments.

Moses declared God as a jealous and punishing God, but they couldn’t serve Him any other way. God was not present in any idol they might worship. Worship is giving God the best He has given you. Remember my error about Abraham building his altar between Bethel and Ai? Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abraham set up camp and worshiped right between the two. We must do the same.

Worship of God should be part of our DNA. The Westminster Confession reveals that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” That’s our place in the world, in relationship to God. Scripture provides several cautionary tales of what worship should not look like, what it cannot be.

Isaiah gives us this example of the foolishness of idolatry, which I will paraphrase. A carpenter chooses a piece of wood, maybe cedar or oak. He shapes it into a human form, but keeps some of it to burn for warmth or baking. He fashions the rest into a god and worships it, bows down to the hunk of wood. With the same piece of wood he creates warmth and something to call his god.

This commentary on idols was not an isolated incident. Many of the kings and leaders did not worship correctly and subsequently led God’s people into idolatry as well. Solomon practiced the idol worship of his foreign wives. Prophets repeatedly warned the people about God’s anger over their infidelity.

By the time of Christ’s birth the people of Israel had been adapting their worship of God to the ways of the Babylonians and Assyrians and Egyptians and all those nations God warned them against. After Jesus died people were still getting it wrong. They argued over whether to remain Jewish or become something else, and all the while God was waiting for them to consent to Him.

Paul wrote about the corruption of worship in Romans, “Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him. Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened. While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that look like mortal humans: birds, animals, and reptiles. They traded God’s truth for a lie, and they worshipped and served the creation instead of the creator, who is blessed forever.”

I sometimes wonder if we Christians have not continued in this violation of God’s simple command to worship Him alone. Surely there are those who have traded God’s truth for a lie, maybe even made it the equivalent of their worldview. God has a response to that.

Listen to Paul’s familiar words from Romans 12, “So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.”

We are the sacrifice in this new covenant, this exchange program where Christ gave His life for us, now we give ours back to God. What’s changed is that as living sacrifices we can offer ourselves up again and again. A living sacrifice is a bit of an oxymoron, however; when something is sacrificed generally it ceases to live.

As sacrifices we are called to be both living and holy. We have a bit of trouble with the holy part, but we can protect ourselves from the unholy by keeping ourselves uncorrupted by the world, separated not by distance but by belief and conduct and conviction.

What does this look like in the context of everyday life? Helping a friend, maybe praying for someone who is hurting, donating items to charity. What if our non-Christian neighbors do the same things? What if agnostics and Buddhists and Muslims are all good people who take seriously the challenge to be the change they want to see in the world?

I took the liberty of consulting a family member who has converted to Islam, asking what Muslims consider the biggest misunderstanding about their religion. Of the answers received there wasthe subject of Jesus, who is a prophet in their faith; the view of Islam as violent, and lack of freedom for women.

The answer that struck me the most was this, “I'm not even sure fear of terrorism is the top concern. I think it's that we simply want to be viewed as human beings with the same goals, aspirations, and desires as anyone else -- to raise our kids happy and healthy, earn a living, and help our neighbor.”

How do we determine if our expression of faith is valid, or if our neighbor’s expression of faith is just as valid? Are we really called to judge these things? We’re fighting an undeclared civil war in our nation where freedom of religion leans toward only really tolerating Christian faith, and suspicion of those who are not Christian breeds contempt.

In a video shown in Bible study years ago, an African-American woman spoke of how we subconsciously segregate people in daily life. The term she used was “otherizing;” that is, to lean toward discomfort among people who do not look like us, speak like us, vote like us.

Garth Brooks sang, “When the last child cries for a crust of bread, when the last man dies for just words that he said, when there's shelter over the poorest head, we shall be free. When this world’s big enough for all kinds of views, when we all can worship from our own kind of pew, then we shall be free.”

Now, I’m a Garth Brooks fan, but I’m willing to bet not many of his fans would agree with the statement of that song because it goes against their strongly held beliefs about freedom and equality. That’s a pity, because it’s exactly how James the brother of Jesus defined true religion.

“If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.”

What does religious freedom truly mean to us? Free to not be religious, free to claim religion without the practice? Free to worship without reservation or hesitation, so on fire with the Spirit of God that we go out the doors seeking to tell people the reason for our joy?

If that were the case we’d be at greater risk of contamination by “the world” which was Paul’s way of saying those who did not follow Christ. But if you look at who Christ chose to hang around with, you might begin to wonder if that’s a risk worth taking. Jesus ate with sinners, healed Samaritans, touched the dead, and took shortcuts through the burdensome laws of the Pharisees.

Maybe that’s what lies at the heart of the conflict between Americans in this current “uncivil war” played out on the news every day. When we try to create God in our own image, and by extension create our neighbor in our image, which is also the image of God, we get lost in the process and our faith goes right out the window.

We have freedom of religion, but still not everywhere in the world, even though it is considered a universal human right by the United Nations. If it’s a right defined by the government, but a privilege defined by God, where does that put us if not smack in the middle? Whose definition are we going to follow?

I’m inclined to say, and you might argue with me, that religion is a word we can do without. Even worship has gone through so many transformations we can’t even agree on what it should look like. It’s all too territorial for me, and I think it complicates matters way too much when we could be using our time doing those things Jesus and James said we should do.

You might be interested to know there are only six references to religion in the Bible, about 250 references to worship, and over 600 references to faith. I think faith is the clear winner. Your religion is probably the name you give to people when they ask what church you attend. Your faith shouldn’t need to be identified by name, because it’s designed to identify itself in action.