Roger Ray, pastor
February 19, 2012
Isaiah 28:1-3, 7-13
I did not know the story line of Les Miserable when I first went to see it in a theater in Louisville. When the main character, Jean Valjean, was taken into the home of a Catholic Bishop, Myriel, I felt myself tense up. When, in the play, Jean Valjean steals the bishop's silverware and is almost immediately caught by police and brought back to the Bishop's home, I felt a knot in my stomach. I was prepared for the worst. I expected Bishop Myriel to demand that Jean Valjean be returned to prison or perhaps executed because every time a minister, priest or religious official shows up in a TV show, a movie or a play, they are portrayed in one of two ways: Either they are complete idiots or, worse, they are morally bankrupt frauds.
I was the most surprised patron in the theater when the Bishop quickly insists to the police that the silverware had been a gift and he scolds Jean Valjean for forgetting the two silver candelabras, which were the most valuable part of the gift. There was no punch line, no joke, no manipulation. In fact, the Bishop insisted that Valjean keep the candelabras and use the proceeds to turn himself into an honest man.
People often seem to be thrilled to have the opportunity to think ill of the clergy. And, I can tell you that with 32 years of experience as a pastor, you can never be right enough to satisfy everyone.... Something about you will appear to by hypocritical to someone who is determined to either point out the speck in your eye or put one there if they can.
So, let me be quick to acknowledge, with everything that I am about to say, that I recognize that it is not accident that I'm standing up here behind the pulpit. I am a pastor. I think that I am pretty different from most pastors but, for whatever I am going to say, that band of priests and preachers, of pastors and religion professors..... I am one them and I share in their faults.
Which puts me in a rather uncomfortable spot when we turn to this passage from Isaiah that is printed in your bulletin today. This passage does not show up in the common lectionary. Unless you have a minister who is willing to go off the rails a bit, this text is never read in a Sunday morning worship service in a Catholic Church, or a Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciple, UCC, Lutheran, Episcopal or Orthodox church.... And, since it doesn't show up in the preaching cycle, my suspicion is that most pastors will have never read it, and it is just as well, I suppose, became it would make them madder than.... Well, we're talking about ministers so I guess we can say, "Madder than hell."
But, the prophet Isaiah is clearly in no mood to try to play nice and just try to get along with all of the religious leaders.... You know, how you often want me to be when I go to clergy meetings.... We want everyone to be sweet and even when we disagree we respect one another's right to be.... A jerk.... Isaiah starts off by telling them that they are just a bunch of drunks, verse 7:
7These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are confused with wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in giving judgment. 8All tables are covered with filthy vomit; no place is clean.Of course, he's not being literal. It isn't that they are just drinking all of the time, it is that they are acting stupid, stupid as if their brains were pickled.... Their sermons, their teaching, their guidance, Isaiah says, is like vomit.
And then Isaiah leaves the drunken fraternity party and turns to another image, he says, in verse 9 and following:
9"Whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from milk, those taken from the breast? 10For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little."Isaiah is, on the surface of it, chiding them for having reduced religious life to a bunch of rules, beliefs, rituals that are useless and childish. But Hebrew scholars say that there is a bit more to his use of language. Where he says that their religion is just "precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little" in Hebrew, that sounds like a baby's prattle.... "cov la cov, cov la cov, sav la sav, sav la sav, sier shom, sier shom."
Do you baptize by immersion or by sprinkling? Do you take communion every week or just once a quarter? Does your pastor wear a clerical collar or a t-shirt? Do you believe that you have to invite Jesus into your heart to be saved or do you believe that you have to speak in tongues too? Do you confess the Apostle's Creed or is it just believing that Jesus died for your sins?
Is it necessary to believe in the trinity, incarnation, sacraments and clergy?
Isaiah would look at the church of our day, at the gathering of priests and pastors, .....oh, can't you see the scene? Can't you hear him saying, "Your religion is childish, insulting, it reeks like vomit.... You have taken the world changing message of peace and justice.... Of radical compassion, of fighting against the violence of poverty, prejudice and racism and you have turned it into baby prattle.... Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line.....And so the prophet says to us just as he said to the priests in the Jerusalem temple 2500 years ago:
11Truly, with stammering lip and with alien tongue he will speak to this people, 12to whom he has said, "This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose"; yet they would not hear.This is what you were told.... Give relief to the weary... and we have turned it into a religion of beliefs. And so the prophet concludes, about them and about us:
13Therefore the word of the Lord will be to them, "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little;" in order that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.In an article published in the Huffington Post this week, Diana Butler Bass summarized her new book that is entitled, "The End of Church." She notes that a mere generation ago, half of all Americans were in church on a Sunday morning. Now that number is down by half. One out of ten Americans now describe themselves as being a "former Catholic" and even as mega churches arise within the conservative wing of religion, their total numbers are plummeting. The majority of churches in America have fewer than 40 people in their Sunday morning service each week.
And, if we could ask Isaiah about that, he would probably say, "Good!" It may be that the institutional church, particularly the main stream denominational churches will have to die in order for real faith to be reborn.
I say that with some fear and trepidation as we are having all of these meetings to talk about expanding, about trying to grow and add classrooms because, even though we have had a very successful start, we should be aware that all churches in America today are being built over an open grave and it would take very little to fall into the tomb..... if we abandon the message of liberation and compassion and just go all religious.... Teaching precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, then we too will deserve to be buried and I would gladly sing at the funeral.
We either have the courage and faith to keep kicking at the darkness or we should turn off the lights. You have heard me say it before and you will likely hear me quote Leon Bloy again, "Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig."
We need to quit trying to get people to be believers and we all need to start being followers.... Disciples of that famous liberator whom we sometimes call Buddha, or Confucius or Moses but whom we mostly call Jesus.
