Acceptable Worship (Isaiah 1, Isaiah 58, Amos 5, Micah 6)

 There are a couple of things that catch my attention in today’s scripture reading. Was there anything there that caught your attention? What words or phrases stood out to you?

Sodom and Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

The prophet begins with a bit of poetic name-calling. “You rulers of Sodom! You people of Gomorrah!” This is obviously not a compliment. 

Long ago, God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sin. By invoking those names, the prophet here is implying that the sins of the people in his own time are just as bad as the sins of those ancient cities.

But what was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Many modern Christians believe that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was homosexuality. But that’s not what the Bible says.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is found in Genesis 19. In the story, a man named Lot welcomed two travelers into his home.  These two travelers appeared to be immigrants on a journey, but really, they were angels in disguise.

Lot offered them hospitality and refuge; a safe place to spend the night. Showing hospitality like this to travelers and immigrants was a sacred duty; people of faith were obligated to provide protection to travelers and immigrants, because of the vulnerable situation they were in. Lot fulfilled his sacred duty by doing just that: offering hospitality and protection.

But others in Sodom didn’t look so kindly on foreigners and immigrants. They arrived at Lot’s house and demanded that Lot turn the men over to them, so they could attack and rape them. Lot refused, because he had promised the two men his hospitality and protection.

Now: would the crime of the city be any less if the two travelers were female? Would it be OK to attack and rape them if they were women instead of men? Of course not. So the story is not about homosexuality. It’s about the sacred duty to provide hospitality and protection to immigrants and other vulnerable persons.

To use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a weapon against homosexuality is to mis-use and abuse scripture, to pervert the meaning of God’s word so that the Bible appears to support one’s own prejudice and bigotry.

As if the story in Genesis 19 isn’t clear, Ezekiel 16 addresses the topic, and says:

This was the sin of Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

In Genesis 19, the “poor and needy” happened to be these immigrants; these foreigners; these “angels in disguise.” So the sin of Sodom is specifically failing to show care and hospitality to immigrants and foreigners, and generally failing to show care and hospitality to anyone who was poor or vulnerable.

So when the prophet in Isaiah 1 mentions Sodom and Gomorrah, he’s making a comparison to those who neglected to show hospitality and provide protection to the poor and needy.

When Ezekiel talks about Sodom and Gomorrah, he doesn’t say anything about sex. When Isaiah talks about Sodom and Gomorrow, he doesn’t say anything about sex. 

What Isaiah talks about - and what all the other prophets talk about - is the sin of not caring for the poor, of not providing justice for the most vulnerable segments of the population.

“I hate your festivals.”

The next thing that catches my attention in Isaiah 1 is the declaration that God hates the religious festivals of the people. Worship is the people’s gift to God, but here, God rejects that gift. 

This is a startling declaration - as startling as being compared to the people of Sodom. The people offer God their sacrifices, they make their offerings to God, they observe the festivals and religious holidays - and now God says that God will not accept their sacrifices and offerings, and that God hates how they observe the festivals!?!

But that’s exactly what God is saying. None of their acts of worship are acceptable.

This isn’t the only place where God makes this declaration. 

God says the same thing in Isaiah 58, which - even though it’s the same book of the Bible - was likely written by a later prophet. There, in Isaiah 58, God says:

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers…Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.

All your acts of worship, God says, are not acceptable; but then, God goes on to say what is acceptable. God says:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loosen the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

That is worship that is acceptable to God.

Amos is another prophet who talks about worship that is - and is not - acceptable to God. In Amos 5, God says:

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. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

No festivals, no offerings - not even songs of praise - are acceptable to God… unless there is justice and righteousness in the land.

Micah is another prophet who talks about these things. In Micah 6, the prophet is wondering what kind of worship he can offer, that would be acceptable to God. 

The prophet asks:

‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Worship must consist of justice, kindness, and humility, to be accepted by God.

“Your hands are full of blood.”

Here’s a third thing from Isaiah 1 that catches my attention: When God says to the people: “your hands are full of blood.”

This is poetic metaphor, but it’s a very vivid metaphor. We hear it read, and the image is there: hands covered in blood.

It’s the blood of the poor. It’s the blood of those who have been denied justice. It’s the blood of the vulnerable who have not been offered protection. It’s the blood of those who have been attacked, abused, and raped by a greedy society that cares more about income and profits than it does about people and human lives.

It’s the blood that covers our hands when corporations are given rights as persons, while actual people have their rights taken away from them.

It’s the blood that covers our hands when we care more about for-profit healthcare companies than we do about actually providing health care to those who need it.

It’s the blood that covers our hands when we neglect any public service that the poor depend on, from public schools to public transportation to food assistance, while subsidizing private schools and private transportation for the wealthy.

It’s the blood that covers our hands when we spend more on weapons of war than on tools for peace.

It’s the blood that covers our hands when we refuse to fund mental health care and refuse to regulate guns and then offer only thoughts and prayers every time there’s a mass shooting.

And when our hands are covered in blood, no act of worship will be acceptable to God. No songs of praise will lift God’s heart. No offerings or sacrifices will be pleasing to God. 

Washed Clean.

So how do we wash this blood from our hands? How do we make ourselves clean?

Through Isaiah, God tells us:

To wash yourselves, to make yourselves clean: remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow.

In other words, do what is right for those who are vulnerable. Those in need of protection. Those who are suffering. Those who have been victimized by unjust legislation. 

Do what is right for those who have had their rights taken away.

Do what is right for those who have been attacked, abused, and raped - literally and figuratively.

Do what is right for the poor.

Do. What. Is. Right. 

Because the most important part of worship is what you do outside of worship.

Jesus said the most important commands are to love God and love one’s neighbor. That’s not something one does one hour a week. It’s something one does every day. It’s something one does with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength.

What all this means is that there are people who work for justice but who never attend a worship service, whose lives are more acceptable and more pleasing to God than many who do attend worship, but who neglect to work for justice in the world. 

And I find myself wanting to learn from people who spend their lives working for justice for the poor, doing their best to love them, even if they never go to church, because their lives seem closer to Jesus than the lives of many who do go to church every week. 

But it doesn’t have to be an either/or. We can sing God’s praises and we can offer to God our sacrifices and our offerings, and such things will be immensely pleasing and acceptable to God, because we have worked for justice. Because we have voted for justice. Because we have communicated with our elected leaders about justice. Because we have loved our neighbors.

That is the ideal we are called to pursue. It’s what Jesus did. He went to the temple, but he also worked for justice. What he learned in the temple inspired him to work for justice, and the work he did for justice shaped how he interpreted the scriptures and applied them to his life.

And if we are able to follow that path, the scripture says, then our light shall rise in the darkness. Our gloom shall be like the noonday. The Lord will guide us continually, and satisfy our needs in parched places, and make our bones strong; and we shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Our ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; we shall raise up the foundations of many generations; we shall be called the repairers of the breach, the restorers of streets to live in.

Plumb Line (Amos )

Five miles south of Bethlehem, in the nation of Judah, sat a tiny village called Tekoa. Tekoa sat at the base of a small hill upon which sheep and goats would graze.

Amos was a herder of sheep and goats from that village of Tekoa. His days were quiet. Calm. Peaceful.

But one day the Lord said to Amos: “Get up! It’s time to leave this place!” (If you remember last week’s sermon, you know God has a way of telling people to get up and get going. Last week, it was Jesus telling the disciples to get up and go. This week, it’s God telling Amos to get up and go…)

God told Amos to leave Judah and the quiet village of Tekoa, and travel north to the kingdom of Israel. There, God wanted Amos to prophecy to the kingdom of Israel, to speak truth to a nation that had strayed from God’s ways. 

Why did God call a lowly shepherd from Judah to go preach in Israel? Wasn’t there anyone in Israel who could speak truth to the rulers of that nation? 

Apparently not. 

All the priests and other religious leaders in Israel enjoyed a certain level of power and prestige, which came from their close association with Israel’s king, Jeroboam. The religious leaders were preaching a version of the faith that perverted the teachings of God, twisting those teachings into something they were not, so that they could justify the injustice that characterized King Jeroboam’s reign. 

To preach against the king would be to bite the hand that feeds you. No one in Israel would do that.

So God called Amos, to come up from the south, from the land of Judah, and preach truth to Israel, to preach truth to King Jeroboam, and to preach truth to the religious leaders who should have known better.

What, exactly, was it that God was so upset about? How, exactly, had King Jeroboam strayed from the truth? 

According to Amos, the king and those aligned with him were “delivering up entire communities, denying compassion, and rejecting the Lord’s teachings.”

In chapter three, we read that they “sold the innocent for silver, and those in need for a pair of sandals. They crush the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way.”

In chapter four, we read that the king and those aligned with him cheat the weak and crush the needy.

In chapter five, we read that they turn justice into poison, and throw righteousness to the ground… and they reject the one who comes speaking the truth...

Amos says to them: “You crush the weak! You tax their grain! You have built houses of carved stone but you won't live in them!... You afflict the righteous; you take money on the side; you turn away the poor who seek help!” 

Also in chapter five, Amos proclaims this word of the Lord. The Lord says: "I hate, I reject your festivals. I don't enjoy your joyous assemblies. If you bring me your offerings and your gifts, they won’t make me happy… Take away the noise of your songs. I won't listen to the melody of your harps. Instead, let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream!"

God is fed up with the hypocrisy of those who attend worship, with those who attend national days of prayer, then go out and deny justice to the poor and compassion to the needy. God is done with all those who offer up “thoughts and prayers” to the evil in the land, but refuse to do anything to combat that evil...

In chapter six, Amos proclaims: “Doom to those who ignore the evil day and make violent rule draw near: who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on their couches, eat lambs from the flock, and bull calves from the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and, like David, compose tunes on musical instruments; who drink bowls of wine, put the best of oils on themselves,... but who aren’t grieved over the ruin of Joseph!” 

These are the ones who, if they were alive today, would have the latest contemporary Christian praise songs on their playlist, and who would attend worship wearing the latest hipster fashion, but aren’t concerned at all with black lives, or immigrant lives, or poor lives, or transgender lives, or any lives other than their own. They sing their songs of praise, but do little to establish justice in the land. 

In chapter eight, Amos says “Hear this, you who trample on the needy and destroy the poor of the land, who cheat the poor with false scales, in order to buy the needy for silver and the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain… The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget what [you] have done.”

At one point, the Lord shows Amos a vision. This is the passage we heard this morning. In that vision Amos sees God standing by a wall, holding a plumb line.

A plumb line is a long string with a weight at the end of it. A builder building a house would hold that plumb line up, with the weight hanging down at the bottom, and once it stopped swaying, that line would show true vertical.

The plumb line was a tool that allowed the builder to build his wall perfectly straight. If the wall was not straight, if it was crooked or if it leaned, then the structural integrity would be compromised, and the building would be in danger of collapsing. 

God says to Amos: “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. It is time to see how the nation measures up… 

“And I see that the walls are not straight. I see that they lean, they’re crooked. They stray from what is true. And the whole thing will come tumbling down. The whole nation will come tumbling down, because its leaders have strayed from my truth.”

And Amos went around Israel, proclaiming his vision. I’m sure he carried an actual plumb line with him, so he could hold it up while describing how the nation had strayed from what is true. He went around, calling for the nation’s leaders to return to truth, to return to God’s teachings, to return to practicing justice and compassion and equality…

Amos would hold up the plumb line and list the sins of the king, and the sins of the leaders aligned with him.

Amos would hold up the plumb line and point out how they have neglected to show hospitality to the stranger, neglected to show compassion to the poor, neglected to show concern for the weak, neglected to provide justice for the oppressed.

A priest named Amaziah reported to King Jeroboam what Amos was doing. Amaziah the priest accused Amos of plotting against the king and of being an enemy to the kingdom. 

Amaziah the priest said that Amos was full of lies, that Amos proclaimed a fake truth. Amaziah the priest told Amos to go back to Judah. 

And Amos said “I’d love to go back to Judah! I’m just a humble shepherd, after all. But God told me to get up and leave Judah, and come up here to Israel and proclaim God’s truth - the truth you have ignored, the truth you have perverted, the truth you have corrupted and made into something that is so far from actual truth, yet you pretend that it is true, that it is right, that it is what God wants. 

“But this is not what God wants. God wants justice! God wants compassion! God wants mercy and hospitality! And God sent me to proclaim this message, and I cannot refuse to proclaim what God compels me to proclaim.”

The story and the words of Amos have never been more needed than they are today. So many leaders who claim to be Christian have strayed so far from the truth, and the metaphorical buildings which they have erected are in danger of collapsing. 

Our society is in danger of collapsing.

Amos, and all the prophets, and Jesus, too, speak of welcoming the stranger, loving the neighbor, showing hospitality to immigrants, defending the weak, caring for the poor… 

This is the heart and core of our Christian faith! This is the plumb line by which we measure our behavior as Christians.

Yet so many who claim to be Christian make the Christian faith about something else, and too many Christian leaders and priests and pastors align themselves with rulers who do the exact opposite of what the gospel demands of us.

They claim to be pro-life, yet deal in ways of death.

They claim to be pro-family, yet defend policies that separate families.

They claim to be pro-truth, but they deal in lies.

But the real truth is found in the gospel. 

The real truth is found in the writings of the prophets - prophets like Amos, who speaks of letting justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. 

Prophets like Micah, who speaks of seeking justice, showing love and kindness, and walking humbly with God.

The real truth is found in the teachings of Jesus - which are summarized in the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are those who make peace,” he said. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right. Blessed are those who show compassion…. Love your neighbor - and every person, even the one you hate, is your neighbor… Bear good fruit.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also said: “Not everybody who speaks my name and calls me ‘Lord’ will enter God’s kingdom; only those who actually do what the gospel requires will enter and live there.”

The plumb line is being held up in our midst, and our society and our nation have been found to be way out of alignment. 

But there is hope.

There is a resistance movement, working to restore integrity, working to bring us back into alignment with God’s truth. There’s the Poor People’s campaign, led by William Barber. (Do yourself a favor, and watch the livestream when he preaches at General Assembly next week.)... 

There is the work of our own Disciples of Christ, working to bring justice through so many ministries such as our Reconciliation Ministry, Global Ministries, Week of Compassion, and more. 

There is the camping ministry at Loch Leven that our church and the other churches of our region sponsor, and similar camps throughout our denomination and many others, teaching the ways of Jesus to new generations of Disciples.

There are even rising politicians trying to make a change, in congress and elsewhere, though the odds are stacked against them. But we can help them. We can learn about which ones support causes of justice and equality, and show them support.

And God will not ignore all these efforts to bring justice and reconciliation and hope to the world. At the end of the book of Amos, God says: “I will improve the circumstances of my people. They will rebuild the ruined cities of this nation. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine. They will make gardens and eat their fruit.”

And the kingdom of God will be established in our land, in Long Beach, in the U.S.A., and throughout the world, in our lifetime, by the grace and the power of God working in us.

Service (Matthew 25)

This past week I spent three days with over 100 clergy in our region at a 3-day conference with our General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins, as well as her husband and seminary professor, Rick Lowery. The warm California sun was shining brightly as we studied the Bible, took part in conversations with Sharon Watkins, and worshipped together in three different languages. Before the retreat, Sharon spoke at First Christian Church in Orange, and it was good to see Hattie there along with many others from our regional church.

I also spent two days at Founders Day, an event at which the covenant between Chapman University and the church is most visibly manifested.

For me, this has been an amazing week of spiritual growth, as well as an opportunity to knit more strongly the ties that bind us all together as one church.

In the midst of all this, I did, in fact, find time to write a sermon. Fortunately, I started putting thoughts together long before this past week began. Two months ago, when the idea came to me to do a sermon series on spiritual practices, I wasn’t sure about including a sermon on the practice of service. For one thing, the series of books on ancient practices that I’ve been reading doesn’t include a book on the practice of service, which meant that my search for resources in preparation for preaching would be just that much more complicated. But a more significant reason I hesitated to preach on service is that I didn’t really know what I could say about service that you all didn’t already know.

After all, doesn’t everyone believe that it is good to serve others? Even non-Christians, even people of no faith at all, understand that it is good to serve others. The value of service is impressed upon every one of our children, who must perform community service in order to graduate from high school.

Even the Walt Disney company knows the value of service. It planned a year-long program of getting one million people to serve their communities by rewarding them with a ticket to Disneyland or Disneyworld. That year-long program ended after just two months, when the goal of one million people was reached much sooner than expected. People wanted their free tickets, yes, but they also wanted to be able to do something they felt good about doing.

This week, there was a wonderful article in the Uptown Gazette about the work of Christian Outreach in Action, an agency here in Long Beach that serves people who are hungry and homeless, an agency that we here at BKCC support through donations and by preparing meals.

And so, the people of BKCC, I thought, know about service. The people of our community and our nation, I thought, know about service. We know that service is about helping others. We know that Jesus commands us to serve one another, and we ourselves feel within us a desire to do just that: to serve others, to help the “least of these,” those who, for whatever reason, are economically or socially disadvantaged: the poor and the oppressed; to restore wholeness to a fragmented world; to restore justice, in ways big and small, to those who have been denied justice.

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I didn’t think I had anything else to say about something that I thought everyone agreed upon, that serving others and working for justice is a core value of the Christian way of life.

Then someone told me what Glenn Beck said on his show a week and a half ago. He said that justice does not belong in church. He said that justice, that social justice and economic justice are code words for Nazism and communism. He held up images of a swastika and a hammer & sickle to emphasize his point, to show that he really meant what he was saying.

Then he said that if your church’s website mentions justice, that if it has words like social justice or economic justice, that you need to leave that church and run away from it as fast as you can; and he also said that if your pastor talks about justice, social justice and economic justice, then you need to report him to the church authorities.

Well, just so you know, our church website does mention justice. In fact, justice is the first thing mentioned in our congregation’s mission statement, which is based on Micah 6:8: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. And, just so you know: as far as reporting pastors who talk about justice, who teach and preach about the need for social justice and economic justice: I’ve already reported myself. I am a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Jesus calls his followers to justice, to removing the yoke of the poor, and the burden of injustice, to providing food to the hungry and water to the thirsty; to restoring fairness and integrity to property and economic policies.

This is certainly not the first time that those who work for justice have been accused of being communists. Hélder Câmara, a Roman Catholic archbishop from Brazil, once said: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”

We talked about Sabbath last week, that spiritual practice that is the fourth of the ten commandments. Justice is at the very heart of the practice of Sabbath, because on the Sabbath, rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, all people are given a day of rest. Scripture also talks about Sabbath years – every seventh year – in which fields would lie fallow as a rest for the land.

And then there’s the year of Jubilee, which takes place after seven sets of seven years: in that fiftieth year, all debts are to be forgiven, all slaves are to be set free, and all landowners who had had their property taken from them would have their property restored to them. That’s radical social and economic justice. It’s also biblical.

Here at BKCC, I’ve already mentioned our support for Christian Outreach in Action. We also support Centro Shalom and other agencies; we prepare food for the hungry; we collect canned food and gently-used clothing; we support the work of our larger church, the Disciples of Christ, which does a lot of work for justice throughout the world, through Global Ministries, through Homeland Ministries, through the office of the General Minister and President, and in so many other ways. We actively serve others by working for racial reconciliation and immigration reform. Disciples are traveling to the Gulf Coast, to Haiti, and to many other places, in order to serve people in need.

Which brings to mind our upcoming Pacific Southwest regional trip to Hawaii. A lot of people go to Hawaii to vacation, to lay on the beach, swim in the ocean, and see the volcanoes, but we are going to Hawaii to work.

Hawaii is part of the Pacific Southwest region, and there are a couple of churches there doing ministry, but they need a little help. They have property needs that need attention, but they do not have the resources to adequately address those needs.

And even though they are a part of our region, a part of our Pacific Southwest family, they often feel excluded from regional life. Now I spent two years at First Christian Church in Morro Bay. I groaned over having to drive six hours from Morro Bay to Loch Leven, and six hours from Morro Bay to the regional assembly which, while I was in Morro Bay, just happened to take place in San Diego. So I know what it’s like to feel detached, alone, in a remote part of the region, away from the life of the larger church which is designed, in part, to help sustain and support congregational life.

But Morro Bay, I suspect, is nothing compared to Honolulu, or Wahiawa, or Kailua. The work that our region is preparing to do, the service that we have committed ourselves to, is not just to address some important property and building issues, but is also to foster a greater sense of community with the farthest congregations in our region.

Our trip to Hawaii is called “Miracle Week.” I’ve mentioned it before. It takes place the third week of August. It is my hope that we can get a group of us to go and be a part of this exciting opportunity; and it is my hope that we will be able to raise some money to help them go, since flying over to Hawaii and renovating churches is not cheap.

If you are interested in going, now is the time to start making plans. I invite and encourage you to read the insert in your bulletin, to check out the information about Miracle Week that’s posted on the bulletin board in the fellowship hall, and watch the video that I’ll have playing in the fellowship during our Baked Potato lunch.

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In a Bible study at last week’s regional clergy conference, Rick Lowery reminded us that, throughout much of human history, inviting someone to eat with you was a highly symbolic act. Think of how often meals are depicted in scripture: starting with the time Abraham prepared a feast for the strangers he encountered, those angels in disguise, and continuing all the way to Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, not to mention the meal in Emmaus, the breakfast by the lakeshore, the feeding of the 5,000, or the many other meals mentioned in scripture.

The symbolism is such that one who dines with you is no longer a stranger. In eating together, your table companion becomes your brother, your sister, someone who, no matter what happens, will never be your enemy; someone with whom you will live the rest of your life in mutual love and loyalty. The bond of love and friendship established as a result of table fellowship can never be broken.

Several of the 8th century prophets describe feasts that God’s people prepared, to which they invited God as the honored guest. The sacrifices were carefully prepared: the finest bulls, rams, calves, and lambs. The table was meticulously set with the finest table linens and dinnerware available. The invitation was sent out to God: there is a place prepared for God at the table, the place of honor.

But God refused the invitation. God broke with accepted protocol, and refused to come. God dared to insult the hospitality shown. In Isaiah, God says: “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats….[Your feasts and festivals] have become a burden to me.”

In Amos, God likewise refuses the invitation: “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.”

Why does God refuse the invitation? Why does God dare insult those who have offered up such hospitality to him?

God refuses the invitation because at these feasts, justice is not on the menu. Service to others is not one of the entrees listed. The people have prepared these meals to serve only themselves.

In Isaiah, when God refuses the invitation, God says: “Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” And in Amos, God explains his refusal to come by saying, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

The spiritual disciplines are practices that are meant to draw us closer to God. Well, you cannot get close to God without justice. God will not respond to your invitation if you are not serving others.

But in serving others, and in practicing justice, God will come near, and you will dwell in the light of God’s love. In serving others and practicing justice, God will say to you, “Come, you that are blessed; inherit the kingdom prepared for you. For 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… Whenever you do these things to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you do it to me.”