Beauty, Nobility, and the Cross

Our passages today bear out a question that warrants our attention today. You might ask yourself this question from time to time in other areas of your life. The question is, “What is really important?” There’s a unified answer I think in all our passages. What is really important in approaching God?

One thing that I enjoy about Anglicanism, something I think we do really well, is that Anglicanism has preserved and developed a sense of beauty and nobility. Ours is a church where the event of the death of the Son of God is remembered with music, beautiful language, symmetry. We bow when the name of Jesus is spoken because of the promise in Scripture that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; we participate in future realities now. We honor the words of Scripture in a very literal way, and in doing so we end up communicating through symbol. The search to apply scripture in our immediate context becomes symbolic when used in worship! And so there are moments where we honor God in a whole range of ways at the same time, with the literal and the symbolic, a wide range of meaningfully applying his word to how we engage with him. And especially in a church setting, in the focal point we set aside to gather together to worship God with his people, it’s appropriate to remember the event of the death of the Son of God with all of ourselves, heart, soul, mind, and strength. We lift up our hands when we lift up our hearts. We bow when the cross passes by us. We make the sign of the cross and we hold out our hands together making a cross shape to help us to “Do this in remembrance of me.” These are beautiful ways to worship God, noble ways, acknowledging God’s greatness and therefore the extent of his sacrifice. Our worship of God acknowledges our own nobility that comes from being associated with him. But that nobility, that beauty is only truly there when it is connected to God.

In Isaiah’s time, there was no lack of worship of God. Priests in linen robes offered sacrifices from the wealth of the people. Each important day had its sacrifice. Each new moon had its sacrifice. The music, the pageantry, the grandeur, service after service, the sights, sounds, and smell of worship was ubiquitous, everywhere. But when the fragrance of those burnt offerings arose to God, instead of smiling, he began to roll his eyes, and then he shook his head; he became in patient and eventually he got angry. In Isaiah’s time, they had wonderful services, beautiful services, but in the end, it was worthless. Beauty was in the eye of the great Beholder. And he didn’t behold anything beautiful. Through a lack of faith, human nobility, human beauty had disconnected itself from God, its source. God’s people were also Baal’s people, or Asherah’s people. God on Sunday, Baal on Saturday night, Asherah on Tuesday morning. Their life was not found in God. It was found in worship in general, in nobility in general, in beauty in general, in philosophy in general, in story in general, in song in general. But when they turned their heart, soul, mind, and strength away from the Lord and shared it with other gods, other ideals, it began to cheapen and contradict those beautiful words they spoke and sang to the Lord, often times those beautiful words they were misusing were God’s own words. They weren’t operating by faith—belief and allegiance—to God when they showed up to worship, and as a result the whole point of worship, to honor and love God, wasn’t happening, rather, the opposite. And God was offended.

I want to spend a second on that word allegiance, as a dimension of faith. Being connected to God, faith-ful-ness, is a part of faith. Faith can’t just be intellectual assent. Intellectual assent that doesn’t connect itself in allegiance to God will die, it becomes as useless as another key on a keyring that will not unlock your front door. It is just a lousy paperweight. Or worse, it unlocks only the door to judgment. That is what the Israelites were looking at in the time of Isaiah: intellectual assent—or even leaving the mind OUT of it—just allegiance to the gift of beauty, of nobility, of theological consistency and order, while ignoring the giver and his plan, his teaching, his care.

Their worship had become a whitewashed tomb, beautiful on the outside but rotten on the inside. But not everyone in Israel had forgotten God and turned aside from him. There was a remnant, a small group of people who hadn’t bowed their knee to Baal or worshipped other foreign gods. We see a glimpse of it in our psalm. The portion omitted in the lectionary is actually helpful here. After we read:

“Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” And “Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.” It says

9 I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. 10 For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. 13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High. 15 Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” 16 But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips? 17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. 18 You make friends with a thief when you see one, and you keep company with adulterers. 19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. 20 You sit and speak against your kin; you slander your own mother’s child. 21 These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

And then the lectionary picks it back up with:

“Mark this, then, you who forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver. Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me; to those who go the right way I will show the salvation of God.” Taking statutes on our lips is not enough if thanksgiving to God isn’t also in our hearts. Attending a service isn’t enough if you are taking a delight in evil for the other 6 days of the week. But that’s what the vast majority of Israel was doing, with Baal and other gods, they were doing whatever felt right in the moment. If the Baal priest had an altar call, they went forward. Listen, if you find yourself in a Baal service, and the priest asks you to come forward and receive Baal, don’t do it. Now that might seem funny. But you could replace Baal with any number of ways to participate in evil during the week. Don’t do it and then expect to show up at church and have everything be AOK between you and God. This is where describing God as slow to anger is helpful. If you are a baby Christian and just trying to get started following Jesus and you are in a life that is causing you to stumble, you need to do what you can to get out of those patterns. And God is there to help you. This church is here to help you. God is patient and he knows our struggles. Don’t wait to come to church until you are perfect. That’s not what this is about. God is SLOW to anger. But if you have been coming to church your whole life and you are curating a church persona and a worldly persona, if you are making your plans to sin all week this next week and then planning to come to church next Sunday to take care of it, that needs to stop. God is slow to ANGER. Isaiah’s message is for you. The psalmist’s message is for you. And it’s also a message to the remnant, the group of people who walked with God’s people as they worshipped God, but didn’t walk with them as they worshipped Baal. It’s a warning that this can happen. You can get to a place where you are doing evil all week and paying lip service to God. Avoid this temptation. Run from it. But how? Cultivate thanksgiving to God in your hearts. The psalmist says

“Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;

to those who go the right way

I will show the salvation of God.”

Jesus addresses this too. He calls the remnant, little flock.

32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Don’t be distracted by the things you own. Instead, give to those in need. Treasure God and he will give you the kingdom.

God calls us to integrity and authenticity in our worship. He calls us to himself. If we aren’t doing this for him, in remembrance of him, who are we doing this for? Maybe you or part of you has been using church for a place to look or feel holy or important. You would not be the first. And this is a whole-church problem, not just an Anglican one. If church is about looking or feeling holy or just being around holiness, Jesus has words for you, and they are kinder than you think. “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” But how could those words be for those who have forgotten God in their worship and get caught up in the secondary goods of beauty and nobility? C. S. Lewis answers well. He describes progress this way: “We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” We have a formal way of worshipping here and that is OK, more than OK. I believe that Anglican worship provides a faithful service for worshiping God. But each of us has a choice of what we are filling that form up with. If that thing is not the honor and love of God and joy in the forgiveness he’s extended to you on the Cross, you have a chance to be a part of that little flock, who is given the kingdom of God. You have a chance to realign your heart, mind, soul, and strength with his. It’s possible because of the Cross.

Because Jesus chose to give of himself until his flesh was torn and his blood spilled, we can have a new life, a new start, a new relationship with God, beginning even today. He wants you to be a part of that little flock whose treasure, whose heart is found in Him. To be like Abraham, who we read about, who listened to God, obeyed God, believed and trusted God. Waited when God said “Wait.” Moved when God said “Move.” Trusted when God said “Trust.” God wants you to be like Abraham’s children, strangers and foreigners on the earth, seeking a homeland, the kingdom of God. If you are seeking to be holy, seek Jesus and he will take care of the rest. He will not be ashamed to be called your God; indeed he has prepared a city, a kingdom, a place for you with Him.