"Bad People Don't Know They Are Bad"
Sermon Presented February 9, 2005
Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58:1-12
The words I chose for this Ash Wednesday message were written after the Jewish captives returned to Israel following their 70-year Babylonian captivity. Nothing is as they expect. Jerusalem is in ruins and poverty is the prevailing word.
Those returning to Jerusalem want to restore their religious practice. They have good intentions and try to do it right, but God appears to be absent. Then God speaks through the prophet to instruct them in what they need to do to connect with God.
Hear God's message found in Isaiah 58:1-12.
I'm thankful that journaling is one of my spiritual exercises because I would have forgotten these occurrences had I not written them down. The amazing thing is that they all occurred the same day! God knows how to get my attention!
One morning on my way to our ABC ministers' meeting in Horton, KS I was listening to NPR and heard an interview with Randy Newman. Newman is the author of satirical songs like "Short People" which has this line: "Short people ain't got no reason to live." Newman said that through sarcasm, he tries to make people see their prejudices. Then he added: "Bad people don't know they're bad. They can always find a way to justify their actions."
This sounds like God's message to the returning exiles, even though God phrases it differently. God tells the prophet: "Tell my people they are rebellious sinners! They fast and pray and cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes. They try hard, but they just don't get it! The problem is that they don't treat my people like they should be treated. They don't help those who are hungry or homeless or naked or in bondage. When they start attending to these things, then I will be present to them and answer them. I don't want sacrifices. I want them to help those in need."
God tells the prophet to speak this message loudly and clearly because the people don't recognize their sin. They are rebellious and don't know it! They don't know they are bad. They believe they are doing the right things - seeking God, fasting, attending church every time the doors are open, but they are serving their own interests. They believe they are okay, but they aren't! They need to change their ways before God will be present to them.
After listening to Newman's interview, I went to my meeting. One of the ministers present, who speaks a most spiritual language and gets on his knees during the group prayers, told us that spiritually, his church couldn't be better. However, this same minister is poised to take his church out of the ABC if the denomination doesn't take a firm stand against homosexuality. He doesn't believe that he is bad.
After I left that meeting I went to Kansas City to have my hair cut and colored. As Tim was cutting my hair, he asked for prayer. Tim is gay and has been in therapy for many years as a result of his struggle over his sexuality and his rejection by others, especially his older brother. Tim's brother is a pillar in his church and attends church meetings several times a week. Tim wanted prayer because he and his therapist were meeting with his brother in an attempt at reconciliation. He then added: "I don't know how he can be a Christian and treat me like he does." His brother didn't know he was bad.
Christians who are allowed to be complacent and self-satisfied don't change. Pastors are no longer prophets like Isaiah - calling a sin a sin! If people aren't challenged, they don't move past external signs of commitment to allow a relationship with Jesus to affect everything they do and say. We don't love all the people God calls us to love. God says: "Tell my people that they are rebellious sinners! They are out of touch with me because they don't do love! And they won't know what's right unless you tell them, because Bad people don't know they are bad."
God tells the people that they can't separate their religious beliefs from their actions. If we don't change our actions as a result of what God tells us, then we might as well not pretend we know God. And we can't hear God if we believe we have a perfect spirituality or that we know everything there is to know about the Christian walk. When we do loving acts, then "The Lord will guide us continually and satisfy our needs in the desert places and we will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail (v. 11)." We will move from the parched desert where we can't find God to a lush garden where God continually nourishes us.
God isn't saying here that worship is of no importance. God is saying that if worship isn't authentic and doesn't move from the sanctuary to the world around us, it is of no value. Worship and a life of justice and compassion are inseparable because it takes both to honor God.
We honor the dead by remembering them, giving memorials and visiting their graves. We honor our county by singing the Stars Spangled Banner, reciting the pledge to the flag, and being good citizens. We honor the Green Bay Packers by wearing green and gold and cheering for the team. We honor family and friends on their birthdays and anniversaries with cards, gifts, visits and calls. God says we are to honor God by treating other people in a loving manner. It is then that "our light will break forth as the dawn and our healing will spring forth quickly. It is then that God will go before us to guide us and behind us to protect us. It is then that God will be present to us."
This text raises issues that are appropriately dealt with on Ash Wednesday, because the season of Lent - a time of penitence, discipline and renewal. In an Ash Wednesday service we are reminded of our mortality, we confess our sins, and we experience forgiveness through Christ's death and resurrection. The ashes are both a symbol of mortality and a sign of mourning and repentance. Through the symbol of the ashes, we can visualize that even though we may be bad, God forgives us and cleanses us. The key is to seek God's revealing light in our lives so that we can recognize our sins, confess them and receive forgiveness.
This message spoken by the prophet is for all of us. It pierces our complacency and apathy and exposes our hypocrisy. It calls us to face God and take stock of the seriousness of our situation. It calls us to come into the presence of One who loves us unconditionally! Let those with ears to hear, hear the word of God.
I would like to close with a prayer written by Howard Thurman taken from his book Meditations of the Heart. Please pray with me:
Our Father, we turn to you in the quietness of this meditation period. It is but natural that we expose to you the things in us that seem most worthy and good that we may delight your Spirit and joy your Heart. The unworthy and the ugly things in us we almost instinctively seek to hide, to cover up, that we may seem pleasing in your Sight. But deep within us we know that this is not enough. We know that somehow we must be totally exposed to you, holding back nothing, seeking refuge behind no protecting screen or darkening shadows. We do not keep back the unsightly from you because we cannot trust you, dare not run the risk, but because we cannot deny the urge to offer in prayer the best that is in us.
Teach us to know that your love is so whole and so healing that nothing less than all of us can rise to meet your all-encompassing care. Teach us to share with you the good and the bad in us, the ugly and the beautiful, the clean and the sordid, the success and the failure--all, everything complete in every part. With penitence for fumblings, failures, ignorances and sins; with thanksgiving for directness, successes, knowledge and rightness, we lay bare all that we are to your love and your understanding, O God our Father. (#31, p. 56)
