“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”
Isaiah
1:17
NLT
http://bible.com/116/isa.1.17.nlt
In Isaiah 1 God rants about how bad the spiritual life of Israel had become. He slams the sacrifices, the festivals, and the incense. He had big issues with things He had mandated. He then gave a fix for the problems. Interestingly the fixes were not related to the ceremonies and rituals themselves. The cure was to good for others.
I think that we can make an analogy between our modern church and the Hebrew rituals. We talk a lot about fixing church and making it better. Well we should. But if we listen to Isaiah here, he might help us some. God did not ask for better buildings or worship bands or even better sermons. God's direction here to improve church was to improve what happens outside of church.
God wanted them, and us, to work more for justice for others to make our church better.
By extension, I think God is also implying that church should not be the pinnacle spiritual experience of the week. Church should be the place where a bunch of bedraggled Christians get together after BEING the church for six days. We get to decompress and encourage one another. We show love to each other after a week of doing hard loving.
Interestingly the creation story is similar. After six days on mission creating stuff God took a rest, his sabbath. So should our sabbath be, a finale for a week of living on mission. Maybe we need to think about church as the last day of the week instead of the first, a well deserved rest rather than a show to start things off.
So let's take the focus off our weekly church service and focus on the big six and see if our church service becomes much better too.
Lord help me to live six days doing good and bringing justice to the weak so that on the seventh day, church can be great.
Love
Tom
