“Charades”
Isaiah 1:10-20[1]
For many of us, “Charades” refers to a parlor game that we used to
play back in the day. You had to get your “team” to guess a word or phrase
based solely on your efforts to act out the idea. It was harmless and fun; at
times it could be hilarious. But that rather innocent use of the word “charade”
is very different from its true meaning. To put on a charade is to pretend to
be something you’re not. It’s a matter of “play-acting” or “faking it” in order
to disguise your true identity and intentions. A charade is oftentimes meant to
deceive someone. It is a matter of dishonesty at worst, and at the least it is
a matter of hypocrisy. The parlor game really has little to do with the
charades we play in life.
And, make no mistake about it, we all play charades in life. None
of us is as upstanding, as good, or as honest as we’d like to think we are. And
we’re certainly not as good as we’d like others to think we are. As much as
we’d like to believe we are “what you see is what you get” kind of people,
there are parts of our true identity that we conceal from others. As fallen and
flawed people, whether we want to admit it or not, we’ve all either done things
we shouldn’t have, or we’ve not done things we should have. This applies as
much to our practice of faith as it does to any other area of our lives.
Perhaps even more so, especially when we come to church.
This is the gist of the message the prophet Isaiah had for the
people of Judah. In fact, I would say this was the gist of the message all the
prophets delivered to the Jewish people. The people had pledged to be true to
God, to love and serve him above all else, and to follow his ways. Those ways
were embodied above all in the Torah,
the teaching of God. That teaching could be summarized in two great commands:
to love God with everything you are and to love others genuinely. But the
Jewish people failed to actually fulfill their commitment to live out the faith
that they professed.
Like Isaiah, the prophets essentially “called” the people out for
the charade that their practice of faith had become. We tend to think of a
“prophet” as someone who predicts the future, especially warning of gloom and
doom. But the reality was that the prophets were preachers. And their message
was the same: the people had pledged to follow God’s ways, they had promised to
love God and love others, but their lives betrayed the fact that they really
had no intention of making good on that promise. Instead, they thought they
could somehow fool God by engaging in worship that was hollow and
superficial—simply “going through the motions,” or putting on a charade.
That is the message of our lesson for today: the people of Judah
thought they could show up to “worship” God and then they could go out and live
their lives however they pleased. But Isaiah says in the name of the Lord that
this is nothing more than a “trampling” of his courts (Isa. 1:12)! Thinking
they could simply show up for a few religious ceremonies and call it good was
something that was “futile,” an “abomination,” and “evil” in God’s eyes (Isa.
1:13). All of those words in the Hebrew Bible are also associated with the
worship of false gods. In a way, Isaiah was saying to the people that they came
to the temple under the pretense of worshiping God, but the way they lived their
lives betrayed the fact that it was not God they were worshiping, but rather
the idols of their own making!
We might wonder what it was that made their worship so offensive
in God’s sight. I think our lesson makes it clear that the “evil” that they were
perpetrating was a failure to follow God’s standards of justice. Rather than
caring for the most vulnerable in their society, they were only concerned about
getting what they wanted out of life. And they didn’t care whom they trampled
in the process. And they didn’t care that it was a direct violation of God’s Torah, God’s commands. Throughout the
Bible, caring for the immigrants, the disabled, the widows, and the orphans in
society was the benchmark for God’s justice.[2]
Because the people failed to practice even the most basic aspects
of God’s justice, the prophets like Isaiah warned them that they would suffer
the consequences. This was not simply an arbitrary punishment. When any society
ignores justice, they are headed for collapse. But Jesus went further than
that. He said that how we treat the most vulnerable people in our world is the
basis upon which we all will be judged! He said it this way: “I was hungry and
you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick
and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:35-36).
And to make sure we don’t miss the point, he added, “just as you did not do it
to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25:45).
Throughout the Bible, the gift of God’s love and grace and mercy
to us calls forth a response: that we love God with all our hearts and that we
love others sincerely. But the simple truth is that it is always easier to
“honor God with our lips, while our hearts are far from him,” as Isaiah could
say elsewhere (Isa. 29:13). The kind of worship that God seeks from us involves
devoting our whole hearts to God. And one of the ways we do that is by putting
God’s justice into practice in how we treat the most vulnerable people in our
world. Anything less amounts to a “charade.” And the only way to change that is
to “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isa. 1:16-17). That won’t happen
overnight, and it won’t happen without making an effort to learn to align our
hearts with God’s will so deeply that practicing God’s ways becomes like second
nature to us. That’s what it takes to live authentically instead of putting on
a “charade.”
[1]
© Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/11/2019 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
See Exodus 22:21; 23:9; Leviticus 19:10, 33; 23:22; 24:22; Numbers 15:29;
Deuteronomy 1:16; 24:17, 19, 21; 27:19; Jeremiah 7:6; 22:3; Ezekiel 22:7, 29;
Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5; James 1:27.
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