November 8, 2020 – Amos 5:18-24
Amos 5:18-24
Worship: A Conduit of Gracea
Lectionary 32A – November 8, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We went to a LOT of trouble to gather for worship last Sunday for the first time in 7 months.
We had to figure out a way of gathering safely.
We had to make sure we were following all the provincial health recommendations.
We had to make sure we were not in violation of any of those regulations.
Council struck a Covid Committee who oversaw our compliance with those regulations.
Then, Melinda and Carolyn and I were tasked with creating meaningful worship
despite the restrictions we needed to comply with –
not easy since all the fun stuff is seemingly not allowed these day!
No singing, no communion, no sharing of the peace, no Sunday School,
no gathering the children up front, and . . . no coffee after worship!!! Gaaahhhh!!!!
And of course, our whole community would not be able to gather.
For a congregation that prides itself on inclusiveness, that is a hard thing to accept.
Like: should we even gather if all of us are not able to gather?
Nevertheless, 16 of us gathered for worship and it was lovely and moving and meaningful.
Now here’s a question: why did we go to all that trouble?
It was a lot of work! For many people!
Why is it so important to us?
After reading the passage from Amos before us, we might wonder:
why even bother worshipping?
God doesn’t seem to care for it.
In fact: God appears to hate it!
Speaking through the prophet Amos about 750 years before Jesus,
God addresses the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and
this is what God says to them:
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
In Hebrew the sense is even more visceral; a paraphrase might be something like,
Your worship makes me want to plug my nose and close my eyes and cover my ears!
Now let’s be clear: the Israelites were worshipping exactly how they were supposed to.
They were following all the rules in the worship handbook!
And they were not being insincere or – as at certain points in Israel’s history –
making offerings to other gods.
In many ways, their worship was exemplary and beautiful.
Undoubtedly the people were proud of their worship and it made them feel good.
However, for God, there is a great big problem with their worship:
the people are treating it as an end in itself.
They are treating worship as if their faith was simply about their relationship with God.
As if worship is an end in itself.
They are – as Jesus said last week – neglecting the weightier matters of the Bible:
Justice and mercy.
Their worship is not issuing in acts of justice and mercy.
But in the biblical view their faith is just as much about a right relationship with God as it is
about right relationships with their neighbours, particularly the poor and vulnerable.
Worship and life should be of one piece, organically connected:
the worship of the God of justice and mercy and peace should result in lives
dedicated to justice and mercy and peace.
Otherwise, as we hear in the strongest possible language today, our worship is abhorrent to God.
What God wants – in language that is still clear almost 3000 years after Amos spoke it – is this:
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
The people Amos addressed lived in precarious times.
Life was okay for many of them but their way of life was threatened by political enemies.
They were hoping God would come and deliver them from their enemies:
they were hoping for the “day of the Lord” when God would come and
fight on their behalf.
They were hoping for a day of deliverance!
And perhaps they were hoping that if they worshipped correctly and sincerely God would
come all the sooner and fight on their behalf all the harder!
So: how jarring Amos’s words must have been for them to hear:
Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why do you want the day of the LORD?
He then goes on to say that that day will be like someone trying to escape a lion
only to be met by a bear!
And then when they reach the safety of home being bit by a poisonous snake!
There will be no escape from God’s judgment: God will be coming to judge them because
their worship did not result in acts of justice.
Their worship had become an end in itself.
And God hates that.
To return to the question I posed at the beginning:
why go to so much trouble to gather for worship?
At First Lutheran Church, we strongly believe that
we gather for worship to receive gifts we can then give away
throughout the rest of the week:
grace, forgiveness, compassion, mercy, peace, love.
We gather for worship to be formed into a very particular kind of people:
as we hear the Gospel story week after week we believe worship forms us into
the likeness of Jesus who had a passion for the vulnerable and the poor.
We gather for worship to be strengthened for the loving work God calls us to do
in our homes and workplaces and communities by
gathering with those committed to the same work.
We gather to become what we receive: bread for the hungry.
I think this passage is simply a reminder to us all – worshippers as well as worship leaders –
that worship is never an end in itself.
Worship is, rather, a conduit for grace.
If we hoard the gifts we receive and keep them in worship, they begin to stink to God,
like the manna in the desert should the Israelites have attempted to hoard it.
For nearly 20 years our focus at First Lutheran Church has been using the gifts we have
for the benefit of people in need, people both within our walls and outside of them.
We have built low-income housing.
We have cooked thousands of hot homemade meals for our friends in the neighbourhood.
We have sponsored countless refugees.
We have hosted weekly, innumerable food banks.
We have provided safe places for children to play in the summers.
We have handed out hundreds of beautiful Christmas hampers over the years as well as
hundreds of hats for the homeless.
We have partnered with the Excel Empowerment Centre in order to
help recent immigrants be successful in their lives in Winnipeg.
Moreover, we have widely distributed the gifts of welcome and dignity and grace to
every single person who has come through our doors.
The bottom line is: our worship on Sunday mornings has made a huge difference in
the lives of those who live in the neighbourhood of Sargent and Victor.
That is why we go to so much trouble to gather for worship:
to love God and to love our neighbour, two things which, in Jesus’ mind,
cannot be separated.
As we read elsewhere in the New Testament,
you cannot say you really love God while neglecting your neighbour in need.
As I said in the Devotion Moment on Amos this week, we can always do better at this
integration of worship and daily life, but we have done pretty well –
and it is okay to take a step back and acknowledge that and
be encouraged by the work we have done.
And be grateful for it.
I am grateful to be part of a worshipping community
that takes its God-given responsibilities seriously.
And I am grateful we are managing to figure out ways of discharging those responsibilities despite the pandemic we are in the middle of.
I am proud of you all for being partners together in this work and
I am proud to be a member of this community.
So let’s continue to flood our community with peace and grace and justice and love.
And let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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