Sermon 08/08/10
Isaiah 1:11-17
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by Rev Rick Yramategui
“While we chatter or listen all our lives in a din of craving - jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days - we are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true: History is the will of a just God who knows us.” - Reynolds Price Throughout human history people have sought to connect with the Divine, however they understood that mystery, and to invoke God’s blessing on themselves, their families and their communities. We developed rituals to express this relationship and remind ourselves of the nature of this relationship. And since very ancient times some have noticed how ritual can become empty and meaningless when disconnected from moral behavior that is good, just and fair for all. From the end of the third millenium BCE in Egypt we find the following : Enrich your house of the West, embellish your place in the necropolis as an upright person and as one who executes the justice upon which people’s hearts can rely. More acceptable is the character of one upright of heart than the ox of the evildoer. From the ‘Teaching for Merikare’ as cited in
This is echoed in the wisdom tradition found in the book of Proverbs: To do righteousness and justice
Prov. 21:3 It would seem that throughout our history within the context of varying religious and philosophical systems, there is both the call to perform ritual action and the critique of ritual action that is not accompanied by right living. In the history of the Jewish and the Christian religious communities this critique is carried in the prophetic tradition and in the wisdom tradition. In our text from Isaiah this morning we are reminded that ritual that seeks to express a sense of reconciliation with God requires of us the work of being reconciled with one another. Particularly, this means seeking justice, rescuing the oppressed, defending orphans and pleading for widows. Note how justice is nothing if not specific! Orphans and widows were classes of people who were most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves. This is a call to care for those who are most at risk in our society. Both the prophetic and the wisdom traditions teach us that what really separates us from God is injustice. And what bridges that separation is the new creation that comes into being when we live in solidarity with those who are oppressed; when we do justice. Frederick Herzog wrote, God changes the world in justice. It began for Christians in Messiah Jesus. In him the change was not primarily a matter of command, but of new creation - new human experience - structures in which we are invited to share. If anyone is in Messiah Jesus, this person is a new creation (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). The struggle is over the shape of God’s history. Herzog, JUSTICE CHURCH, p. 88 Justice is how God changes the world. Solidarity with the oppressed is how God is present in the world. In the civil rights movement of the 1960’s when white church members and African Americans joined together in taking a stand for freedom, equality and justice, they were going where God was, where God had always been. The histories all of the various civil rights movements is the history of God with us. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” May we be a community of justice.
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