“No Kind of Game”

• Scriptural Reference: Isaiah 1:10-20
• August 12, 2007

In seminary I took a preaching class. Dr. Tuck’s first lesson to all of us was: get your sermon into one or two sentences. Always know your sermon in a nutshell. Pretty soon I noticed that a lot of those sermons amounted to shells delivered by nuts, including especially me, but I never forgot that lesson. Here’s today’s sermon in a nutshell: the form of worship does not matter – the form of the worshiping heart matters. To employ a current cliché, God doesn’t care how good we are at talking the talk if we don’t bother to walk the walk.

The people Isaiah addressed went to worship on a regular basis. Remember, too, that Sodom and Gomorrah here refer to any city filled with people who go to worship under false motives. That line, “multitude of your sacrifices,” tells us that these people know how to put on a religious show. They know all the right phrases, knew how to say “Amen” in a pious way. They would know how to make the word “Jesus” into four syllables: “Jee-uh-suhss-uh.”

But what does Isaiah say God thinks about those pious shows? “I have more than enough burnt offerings.” This was the main way of functioning in the worship service of the day. What you spent most of your time doing when you went to worship at the temple was standing there waiting for your sacrifice to burn up and for the priest to say the right things about it. That activity would make the most ticks pass off your watch. In our worship services, what makes the most ticks click off our watches? The sermon. So, let’s rephrase this verse to hear it the way Isaiah might say it to us. “I have more than enough sermons, and I take no pleasure in them!”

Or, “Why do you think I’m impressed with you because you all come and line up in your Brooks Brothers facing in the same direction saying nothing and thinking all kinds of different things, most of which isn’t much related to the substance of faith? Why do you think I’d be impressed with people sitting in pews for an hour each week? What is this other than well-dressed boredom?”

Yes, there’s some searing sarcasm here. “When you spread your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes.” I think of that when I see the kinds of worship services in which it becomes obligatory to raise hands and wave them, when such response is expected or programmed rather than spontaneous joy.

Then Isaiah makes his transition. He says, instead of devoting so much energy solely to the ritual, listen and apply what you’ve learned. The whole point to having any religion at all is so that my people would SEEK JUSTICE.

Then the great words of comfort come: “Come, let us reason together.” Here is the gracious invitation to continued relationship on the highest kind of level; reasoning together is what peers do. Here is an invitation from the Creator of the universe to some of his creatures to a conversation in which he intends not to coerce, but to persuade with insight and wisdom, to appeal to the integrity of our minds and souls. Even though we are pitifully small, miniscule in proportion to the grandness of the Creator, he will still NEVER violate the sanctity of our individuality. Our souls remain unique and sacred. Even God will not violate that. Instead of overwhelming us with force, he prefers to present the evidence to our minds, respecting our intellectual capacities and trusting the depth of our integrity, our ethical integrity, and our religious integrity. And if we learn the wisdom of the Creator, we will know the full blessing of the Creator’s creation.

We come to worship so that our incomplete, defective reasoning can be confronted with the far-sighted, creative, and perfect reasoning of the Creator. We come to worship so that our foolishness can be confronted with God’s wisdom. Worship is perfect in God’s sight if it springs from our celebration and practice of wisdom.

A well-known story has come to us from the days of the so-called Second Great Awakening in the United States during the first couple decades of the 19 th century. The legendary circuit riding preacher, Peter Cartwright, had stopped off at a little church in Cane Ridge, Kentucky to preach a series of revival services. For three days, two young men came with the rest of the crowd and would stand at the rear of the sanctuary heckling Cartwright. On the fourth night, he’d had all he could take.

While the young men stood at the rear of the crowd, arms crossed on their chests and smug smiles on their faces, Cartwright excused himself, walked off the platform leaving his Bible open on the pulpit. As he strode up the aisle, he reached inside his long-tailed day coat which was flapping behind him in the breeze created by his stride. Just as he reached the two young men, the congregation looking on in wonder, Cartwright whipped out a large revolver and proceeded to pound the two young men with it until they were on their knees, bruised and bloodied.

“That’s the attitude you take in worship,” bellowed the preacher, and right on the spot, the two men made professions of faith.

It’s not exactly the kind of evangelistic method I ever plan to employ, but one thing Cartwright impressed upon those two guys – the content of the message made that worship service no kind of game.

And it’s not for us, either. “Come, let us reason,” says the Lord. “Forgiveness is here. Your sins, though they are scarlet, are now white as snow. Transfer this to others in full equity. How about that family that lives next to you that’s being pulled apart by addictions? Are you bringing redemption to them? That’s the point of this whole thing!”

Oddly, there is no biblical precedent for the way we do worship. In fact, there is no biblical precedent for the way any denomination does worship. We have no order of worship preserved in scripture. We know that the earliest Christians sang songs, shared a fellowship meal, and listened to scriptures being read. The Christian sermons we have recorded in scripture, though, didn’t happen in a planned worship service. The earliest of these was delivered by Peter. It’s in Acts 2 and it takes place where the Christians have gathered together, but was also accessible to anyone else passing by. Like it took place in the grass at an interstate rest stop. AND, it’s dialogical. In other words, the passers-by are wondering about what’s going on, Peter explains it, and then the passers-by ask follow-up questions. The whole point of the sermon, of the worship services we have recorded, was to open the fellowship to non-believers.

Easter Sunday 2000 found me sitting in the Moen Church in downtown Shanghai, China. The sanctuary was packed for the fourth time that day, as it is every Sunday. People stood behind other people who sat in the aisles and exits in folding chairs, people packed in clusters and places that would’ve made a US fire marshal clutch his chest. A children’s choir sang, a giant children’s choir, outnumbering the membership of most Virginia Baptist churches. They had a multitude of announcements. Then they had a sermon, and to emphasize that those Chinese Christians are really no different than American Christians, during the sermon I counted at least 20 people sleeping. My translator even fell asleep – in mid translation.

I celebrated with those Chinese Christians and celebrated how the body of Christ defied even the iron fist of harsh communism under the so-called “Gang of Four.” But I still felt a profound sense of grief. And I knew why: never once did they sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” The great organ never raised those majestic strains. There were no Easter lilies, no Easter bonnets. And through the open windows of the sanctuary, I could see construction workers moving on bamboo scaffolding and the bright shimmering blitz of a welder’s torch on the office building rising from the site next door. I wanted to go home. I wanted to hear our organist at FBC Winchester, Susan Foster, play the Ralph Von Williams doxology. I wanted a REAL worship service for Easter!

Then the worship service ended. The choirs filed out. The clergy left the platform. I would say that about half the congregation got up and filed out of the sanctuary. But all around the room, hundreds of people remained seated. Scores came to the front, knelt and prayed. Around me others sat and meditated. We didn’t leave because our hosts wanted to sit and meditate. My translator’s eyes were closed and his lips moved slightly as he prayed. Maybe he was asking forgiveness for falling asleep in the middle of translating.

Then the insight dawned on me like the sun’s rays breaking through clouds after a thunderstorm: these Chinese had been profoundly affected by the service. For me it had been gobbledygook not in small part because of the language, but they had profoundly worshiped. They had encountered God. And as I sat there simmering in the juices of my judgment, their souls communed with the Holy Spirit.

You’d have thought that I would have known better. I’ve been in more kinds of worship services than Wal Mart has cheap plastic gadgets. Not only have I participated in Catholic masses, Episcopalian and Lutheran liturgies, and Pentecostal sway-fests, I’ve been in churches in West Africa, France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, the aforementioned China, Slovakia, Russia, and Brazil. Everywhere it’s different.

For example, some years ago in Ivory Coast, on the horn of Africa, Julie and I sat on sagging boards placed on up-ended cinder blocks – their pews – while a preacher intoned an impassioned sermon and children ran through the open windows and climbed over the adults, Julie and me included. No one noticed the kids. They hung on every word the preacher said – for two hours. The sermon had been in English, but all I had heard was the noise the children had made. It was obvious, though, that the Africans had heard only the sermon. I had to conclude that the trouble wasn’t with the transmission – it was with the receiver.

On the platform of First Baptist Church, Paranaquá, in southeastern Brazil, two drum sets, two speaker columns, electronic keyboards, conga drums, bongos, and microphone stands surrounded the elaborate pulpit. Just before the preacher delivered his sermon, the band sounded like Sergio Mendes and Brazil 88 as a sultry samba pulsed across the jammed sanctuary. Now, I associated the style with sensuality, but as the sounds enveloped the worshipers, pious elderly women raised their hands in praise. I realized: what was going on in me determined how I reacted.

In Austria, the music in the main worship service consisted of the congregation singing every one of 10 to 11 verses of slow and plodding hymns that felt to me like a prime way of extracting information from suspected terrorists. (“I’ll tell you anything, just get me away from this!!”) After one such hymn sing on a Sunday in 2001 on one of my official visits to Austria as project coordinator for the VBMB, I noticed the face of the woman sitting next to me. I had known Annaliesl Reitzner since my journeyman days and I noticed that her face was streaked in tears. Unlike in China, in Austria I had understood every word. As the preacher rose to preach, with Annaliesl’s tear-streaked face burned on my mind, I re-read the lyrics to the hymn, lyrics I had missed so hung up as I was on the style in which it was sung.

Von guten mächten wunderbar geborgen;

Erwarten wir getrost was kommen mag;

Gott ist mit uns bei Abend und am Morgan;

Und ganz gewisst am jeden neuen Tag.

(From faithfulness miracles are born;

We await in complete trust whatever will come;

God is with us in the evening and the morning;

And with complete faithfulness with each new day.)

That’s when it came back to me Annaliesl’s story. She had been a young girl when World War II broke out. Her family, and especially her father, Günther Hegel, had been outspoken anti-Nazis. One evening the Gestapo came to the Hegel house and gave Herr Hegel a choice: serve in the German navy or have his family sent to forced labor camps. This had no Sound of Music ending. Herr Hegel chose to protect his family by going into the navy.

In the autumn of 1942 word came that Herr Hegel’s U-boat had been sunk off the North Carolina coast with the presumed loss of all hands. Annaliesl and her mother subsequently took their bereavement and all their belongings to Schweinfurt to be near to her mother’s family and where her mother got work in the ball bearing works. In September 1943, the Allies launched a bombing raid against the ball-bearing works and while the factory was 75% destroyed by tremendously accurate bombing, one errant strings of bombs marched through Annaliesl’s neighborhood killing her mother’s family and severely wounding Annaliesl. Her mother never came home from the factory, either.

From the hospital where they could only sew up the gash across her cheek, Annaliesl was sent to an orphanage near Salzburg, Austria to await the end of the war. Conditions in the orphanage were pretty good, but most of the kids didn’t know how to handle their grief, most being the victims of allied bombings. As a result all manner of cruel pranks were pulled on the girl with the scar and she was called all kinds of names. Pretty soon, she became terrified to even walk to meals.

Then one day, the sky no longer rumbled with the sound of bombers. Not long after that, a long column of tanks and trucks rolled into town with white stars painted on the turrets and doors. A red, white, and blue flag ran up the pole in front of the Rathaus and soldiers wearing olive green helmets and leggings up to their knees walked around town. One day, about a year later, one of those soldiers came into the orphanage just as Annaliesl was walking by. She stopped to stare at him and he smiled down at her just as the director came out. The soldier asked the director, amazingly, if the orphanage had a girl named Annaliesl Hegel living there.

“Yes,” said the director, “In fact, that’s her there.”

The soldier turned and said in German, “Fraulein Hegel, your papa is looking for you. Now that we’ve found you, he’ll be by to get you next week.”

“But my papa died in the war.”

“No. His U-boat was sunk, but most of the crew survived and were taken prisoner. They’ve just been released from a POW camp in Indiana and he’s on his way home. He’s coming to get you.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. The director shook the soldier’s hand wildly, a huge smile on his face. Such occurrences were rare and this was something to celebrate. The word spread around the orphanage and the girl’s counselor carefully laundered and ironed Annaliesl’s only dress so she would look beautiful when her father came to get her.

But the celebration wasn’t shared by many of the other children. Who can really blame them? It was more than likely that they’d never see any of their families and they took their anger out on Annaliesl. The pranks increased. The name calling got crueler. “When he sees your scarred face, he’s gonna run away in terror.” And Annaliesl half feared it was true. But she put the ironed dress underneath her mattress so that by sleeping on it, she would keep it away from dirt and her weight would keep it pressed.

Then the third morning came. It had been raining as it does incessantly in Salzburg and the courtyard of the orphanage was a muddy morase. The girl’s director got Annaliesl dressed and pulled her long, naturally curly blonde hair up in a blue bow. She held Annaliesl at arm’s length and said, “You’re absolutely beautiful, darling! When your dad arrives we’ll walk around the courtyard underneath the colonnade.”

They heard the front door open and greetings ring out. The girl’s director took Annaliesl’s hand took her to the porch. And there across the courtyard she saw him: the full white uniform of a German Naval Officer shining like a beacon in the grayness of the day and the war worn paint of the orphanage’s inner courtyard. He held his hat under his left arm.

Excitement shot through her and she broke into a run to go greet him, when one of the boys stuck out his foot and tripped, and pushed her. Annaliesl careened to her right and out into the muddy courtyard where her feet slipped and she fell headlong, face first into the mud.

Annaliesl pushed herself up out of the mud and immediately felt the tears coming; but before she could cry too long, she saw a white shoe plop down in the mud right in front of her face. She saw the snow white fabric straining over a bent knee as it sank into the dark ooze, saw the muck seep into the fabric. Then she felt two firm hands go under her arms and lift her up. She saw the mud from her dress staining the lapels of the white coat, saw gold epaulettes shimmering, and then saw the sky blue eyes that she recognized from the one photograph she had saved from the rubble. She saw the huge smile and the tears streaking the sea-weathered cheeks.

She heard a voice cry out, “Captain Hegel! Your uniform!”

And the deep voice boomed from the breast against which she was held, “This is my Annaliesl. The mud means nothing to me.”

Von guten mächten wunderbar geborgen. From true faithfulness, miracles come to us. That’s what Annaliesl Reitzner brought to worship that day. Her life sanctified that room, not the other way around.

“Come, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “You see, you are mine, and the mud means nothing to me.” When we live our lives out of that truth, every hour, every place, anywhere, will be worship.