A Hebrew professor in St. Louis told us about the university language department visiting rural school districts in Missouri trying to convince them to start a language program. In one meeting an elderly member of the school board patiently listened to the presentation, stood up and proclaimed “I don’t see any need for foreign languages. If the English language was good enough for my lord Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”
It is human nature to resist change. Sometimes we do it out of ignorance and sometimes for good reasons.
As you have observed this summer the Church of England and Episcopal Church have produced eight major revisions of the prayer book with each one embodying different language and different theologies, that is who God is to the community, how God is present in the community, how God works through the community and what is the role of human sin and divine forgiveness. At each stage of revision we have seen how many people clung to the old familiar service while charging the Church with committing heresy and using its position of power to coerce people into accepting new-fangled ideas.
People have resorted to violence in their strong disagreement with prayer book revisions and positions the church has maintained. The 1549 BCP changed some long standing medieval practices such as going from communion only once a year at Easter to regular congregational communion. The popular practice of a procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the town right after consecration was banned leading to widespread opposition and the church sending out commissioners to enforce the ban.
At various times clergy and lay people left England because of their disputes with revisions of the prayer book. After the reign of Elizabeth I, the prayer book was completely replaced with a book of instructions titled “Directory of Public Worship.” During these few years, the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 was used clandestinely in some English churches. When the 1662 book was released, nearly 1,800 clergy were unwilling to accept the changes in that book and they were “deprived of their livings.” They were fired.
The American prayer book revision in 1979 led to an enormous amount of discontent by people who felt offended or alienated by the new book. Of course American cultural upheavals of the decades leading up to 1979 fueled a great deal of anger and discontent among some of the same people. For five hundred years we have seen how revisions of the Book of Common Prayer become proxies for much wider and deeper political and cultural power struggles.
In the wider scheme of salvation and even the survival of Christianity itself, prayer book revisions are really really small stuff. In family settings we have all seen how children may fight over a toy when the real issue is they want the parent’s attention. We fight over the prayer book when there is a much more important issue at stake.
Through the prophet Isaiah we find that we must address the question “What makes our worship acceptable to God?” Here is how God feels about Jewish worship about 700 years before Christ, “Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me” Ouch!
This raises an important question about worship. Are the exact words, phrases, actions, even theologies important to God? You don’t hear God saying through Isaiah, “You know I really think the English language of 1552 is beautiful and defines what worship should be.” Fundamentally what should our community be doing for our worship to be acceptable to God?
I am suggesting what might be a heresy for Episcopalians – that there are only two things Biblically mandated and fundamental to our life together as a community of Christians: 1. that we grow 2. that our worship is acceptable to God. Let’s listen to God’s list of what the community needs to be and do in order for worship to be acceptable:
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, I will forgive you. You shall eat the good of the land.”
God did not condemn the kingdom of Judah for bad worship. God condemned them because they used worship as a cover for their FAILURE to do good, seek justice and rescue the oppressed. Grace Church now has a terrific worship team that will be helping shape our worship starting in September. I am thrilled to have some good help. But even if we conducted our worship as well as some big city cathedral it would not be acceptable to God unless the WHOLE COMMUNITY becomes a justice-seeking community.
Grace Church has some good first steps in this direction. Meals on Wheels, Servings of Grace, Fr. Tamba, and our new Environmental Ministry are all good works of mercy and justice. Through Isaiah, God is telling us that we ALL need to learn to do good and seek justice.
September 12 we are going to have a ministry fair and fish fry. While you are enjoying the fish please ask yourself how you can make a difference for the oppressed in this community. Maybe you will help start a new outreach ministry at Grace Church. Maybe you will join an established ministry here or some social program in the city.
Walk down the streets of Muskogee. You will find people living in dilapidated housing, people living without air conditioners and some without fans. You will find a violent crime rate more than double the national average. You will find educational achievement needing lots of room for improvement.
Great worship that is acceptable to God is not just the product of the rector, a worship team, and a music department. Great worship that is acceptable to God starts with the orientation of YOUR hearts. When people’s lives are changed in the community because we care about the widow, the orphan, about justice and the oppressed, then your hearts are changed too. When people’s lives are changed in Muskogee because you care, God will hear our praise and prayers in worship and as Isaiah says, “You will eat from the good of the land.”