A Babel to Our Religiosity

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
 First Reading for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)

The heat of the words cannot be ignored. Not here where there is a church on every corner. If you stacked them up they would touch the sky. But the words from God scorch the earth. Sacrifices and offerings can be traded for hymns, praise songs, and tithes.

Faith and religion, our church-going has to make some sort of mark on the here and now. It cannot just be praise and prayers. It cannot just be growing the church or prepping people for the afterlife. Faith must "learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." Otherwise our worship services are a yammering noise to God. It makes God sick, this Tower of Babel to our own religiosity. It is pious posturing. 

And those are dangerous words for me to write. For what have I done to seek justice and rescue the oppressed? I cannot point fingers to others building their skyscrapers of spirituality as I help hoist the steel to the heavens. I don't want to fall prey to the easy mistake of always assuming that the prophetic word is for them. 

Isaiah gives us a grace note from God at the end. There is hope for our scarlet sins to be cleansed. Yet it cannot erase the challenge that precede. The prophet's words in verse 19: "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land..." If you are willing. If you are obedient. The praise and offerings do not mean anything without the beating heart that God has for the world inside of us. Otherwise we're just a civic club that occasionally talks about Jesus. And if that's the case, then what on earth are we--am I--doing?