What does God really
want? Justice, mercy, and pilgrims who
live by faith.
Justice
and Mercy – The eighth-century prophets declared these more important to
God than sacrifice and religious ceremonies.
Especially in three famous passages in Amos, Micah, and this Sunday’s
reading in Isaiah.
·
Amos voiced God’s outburst, “I
hate, I despise your festivals… But let justice roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21 -24, NRSV).
·
Micah of Moresheth gave
instruction concerning proper service of God:
“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of
rivers of oil? … He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the
Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God?” (Micah 6:7-8).
In our Isaiah
passage, the prophet proclaims the “teaching [torah] of our God” to
the notorious sinners of Jerusalem
and Judah
(verse 10).
A “torah”
is an instruction by priests about what God requires of those seeking
access to the holy place. We hear the
original life-situation of such a torah in the Micah passage referred to
above.
With
what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I
come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? (Micah 6:6)
People need
instruction about how to approach a God who is holy and powerful enough to
bring better crops, to provide healthy offspring, and to keep away – or bring
in judgment – the armies of a mighty Assyria . “What must I do …?” The business of the priest’s torah was
to tell you what to do to be saved at this place at this time.
The answer
in this Isaiah passage, as in the Amos and Micah passages, is that God
does not require abundant sacrifices and awesome religious ceremonials – God
even hates such things. At least, God
hates them when they are the doings of a deceitful people.
“I cannot
endure solemn assemblies with iniquity” (verse 13).
The finest
religious action, even personal prayer before God, becomes intolerable when the
hands spread out in prayer have blood on them (verse 15)! Whether visible to everyone or not, God sees
the blood, and the presence of such a person is a desecration.
However,
there is more to God’s word: God also
says, it is not too late. No
matter how scarlet or crimson your hands are (verse 18), a complete renewal is
possible.
It is
possible on the condition that you radically change.
What must I
do?
Wash
yourselves; make yourselves clean;
… cease to
do evil,
learn to do good;
seek
justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the
orphan,
plead for the widow (verses 16-17).
With such a
conversion of your habitual ways, you may still be able to “eat the good of the
land” (verse 19).
Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23.
The Psalm
reading presents the coming of God to assemble the covenant partners for
judgment.
An awesome
and glorious power out of Zion is
this Lord with devouring fire and tempest (verses 1-2). The “faithful ones” who made covenant with
God by sacrifices are gathered to hear the righteous judgment of God witnessed
by the heavens – that is, by infallible witnesses to all human deeds (verses
4-6).
The divine
declaration to those under judgment is that their sacrifices have been duly
noted; these things “are continually before” God (verse 8). Our reading skips over one declaration of God
that prepares for the psalm’s conclusion.
Instead of the flesh of bulls and blood of goats, what God wants is “a
sacrifice of thanksgiving” (verse 14).
Then, the conclusion.
Those who
bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;
to those who go the right way
I will show the salvation of God (verse
23).
The psalm,
too, delivers the torah concerning true religious service to God.
One of the
most famous passages about faith in all of scripture is from the Letter to the
Hebrews, the opening of our reading.
“Faith is
the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (verse 1,
NRSV ).
The rest of
this chapter identifies and celebrates certain heroines and heroes of faith in
the Hebrew scriptures, though our reading is confined to Abraham and his
immediate family – after a brief comment on faith in the creation of the world
by the word of God (verse 3).
In our
reading, the showcase example of faith is Abraham. Abraham is the archetype of those who live in
the world as pilgrims. They live
“in tents,” trusting in the promise that ultimately they will reach “the city
that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (verse 10).
There is a
recognition that fulfillment of hope may be distant. “All of these died in faith without having
received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them…. If they
had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had
opportunity to return. But as it is,
they desire a better country…” (verses 13-16).
This model
of Christian life as a pilgrimage from a past degenerate world toward a future
of God’s making in God’s time is steadily reinforced in the rest of this
Letter. This model also played a long
role in later Christian life, particularly famous in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678).
The
requirement of justice and mercy was what led ultimately to the pronouncement
of God’s coming judgment. Jesus,
following the older prophets and his mentor John the Baptist, repeated that
announcement.
All Jesus’
preaching assumed that his hearers stand immediately before that judgment. For some – the poor, the oppressed, the meek
– the coming of God’s judgment was good news:
Relief at last! For others (the many?),
it was threatening news. Their whole
past was about to catch up with them.
Our
Gospel reading is about how people are supposed to live as they wait for the
imminent judgment of God.
First, they
are told to give their goods to charity.
“Sell your possessions, and give alms” (verse 33, NRSV). This instruction is straightforward and
unqualified. It is addressed, of course,
to people who have just been told that theirs is the Kingdom
of God
“Do not be
afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the
kingdom” (verse 32).
Where one’s
treasure is (verse 34) is the acid test for the faith of a disciple. Put in the cruder language of later times,
“Follow the money,” and you will know the secrets of the hearts, not only of
the pilgrims following their Lord but of the land-owners and merchants of the
settled land (see the parable in 12:16 -21).
The rest of
the passage is not directly about possessions but about watchfulness for the
Son of Man’s coming. The transition
is not strange, “for detachment from possessions and worries is an important
part of preparation for the Lord’s coming” (Robert Tannehill, Luke,
Abingdon, 1996, p. 210).
The one who
lives by faith is called (verses 35-40) not only to give up personal possessions,
but also to live on the edge, with no long-range planning, no
commitments that involve a long future.
(No life insurance payments for the disciple.) Your Lord may return tonight. That is the stance of the Jesus
follower. Live today as if it is your
last day on earth. No homeowner knows
when the burglar has scheduled a break-in (verse 39); no disciple knows when
the Lord’s return will be sounded by a knock on the door.
On Jesus’
journey to Jerusalem , these
instructions seem to be for the committed band that has known for a while that
Jesus is the Anointed One – and perhaps also known that the journey leads to
death. However, as part of the Gospel
known to the churches of the second generation, they are also instructions for
the band of witnesses who will eventually infiltrate lands far beyond Judea .
Those churches had gradually evolved a new way of life, a life lived day by day in expectation of being visited by their heavenly Lord. As more time passed, they realized that that Way of Life was, in fact, the “kingdom” which was being given to God’s “little flock”!
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