Futile Bargains
Text: Isaiah 1:1; 10-20
Corruption, it seems, has been in the news a lot as of late. We think of Conrad Black’s recent conviction, and last year’s convictions over the Enron scandal in the US. Recently it’s been made public that some Chinese factories use substandard if not dangerous ingredients for consumer goods. Apparently, those who were supposed to be responsible for oversight of these factories have taken bribes to look the other way. We have heard stories of bribery and corruption that are hampering efforts to rebuild governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as we know from scandals in our own government and businesses, it is neither limited to somewhere “over there” and it’s certainly nothing new. Bribery and corruption has been a chronic problem that has plagued society for thousands of years. It is perhaps the one thing that eats away at a nations own ability to care for its people, because individuals use or abuse power for their own personal gain.
Yet when it comes to this kind of thing, we tend to think that it’s someone else’s problem. They’re corrupt, they’re the bad apples, they’re the ones doing it. Yet as someone investigating these types of scandals recently observed, any of us can get into real trouble when we rationalize what we are doing to somehow be the right thing to do… and we do it, because we can. Eventually, this rationalizing can lead us into some very dark places.
As I said, this isn’t anything new… but it’s also a bit more subtle than we care to give it credit. The passage in Isaiah that we heard this morning is all about bribery… But it’s not the kind of bribery we conventionally think of. It’s not paying off some official to look the other way while some criminal enterprise goes on right under the king’s nose. The target of the bribes that Isaiah is talking about is God… and God doesn’t seem too pleased about it.
Isaiah’s opening salvo seems to be directed at the idea of ritual sacrifices. He starts off by comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah, and then launches into this broadside: “11What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; 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. 12When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.”
Isaiah’s tirade goes on to express God’s anger around something in particular: what appears to be abundant ritual sacrifices, but no real justice for all of Israel’s people. It seems that the rich and privileged are performing all the right rituals, in terms of sacrifices and such, and yet do nothing more. They take great pains to make it look like they’re doing the right thing, and yet in the end the people of Israel as a whole are suffering.
Isaiah calls in the whole question of what these sacrifices are supposed to be. Certainly they were mandated in the Temple records… we have surviving accounts of those rituals from the book of Leviticus… but what Isaiah goes after is the real motivation for all of that. Is what they are doing, by offering all of these abundant sacrifices, attempting to bribe or pay off God. They follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it. The sacrifices that they would make were supposed to be a reminder to the people of what God has done, so that they can live in a society, free of slavery and oppression as they experienced in Egypt.
Yet somewhere along the way they lost sight of that. They started paying more attention to the rules and regulations… and seeing exactly how much they could get away with. As long as they kept making the sacrifices to God on a regular timetable, and doing it properly, decently and in good order, God would be pleased and all was well. At least that’s how they rationalized it.
But Isaiah saw something different. Unlike a street prophet, Isaiah had access to the inner circles of the royal court and Temple. He himself had the privilege of access, but at the same time never lost sight of the people. He saw things being done the right way as far as worship was concerned, and yet the poor, the hungry and oppressed were left to their own devices. It was as if the powers-that-be filled the temple with enough sacrifices, God would be too busy accepting them to notice what was going on down at the street. Something wasn’t right… and it was time to let people know about it.
In this tirade from the first chapter, Isaiah reminds the powers-that-be that bribes don’t work with God. It’s a futile bargain to try and pay off God with large numbers of sacrifices. It’s a futile attempt to try and distract God, or pay large sums to ease one’s own conscience. God can’t be bribed, bought or paid-off.
God can’t be bribed, bought or paid-off. It may seem pretty obvious when we think about it… and yet perhaps we do this more often than we think. In its own history, the church of Christ has actually gone so far as to encourage people to offer bribes to God. It has not been one of our brighter moments in history. More than five hundred years ago, the sale of indulgences sparked what would become the Reformation… Indulgences were monetary donations that were made to the church with the understanding that someone else would pray for your soul, and guarantee a place in heaven. Prayer by proxy… buy your way into God’s good graces… and as people believed at the time, you could by a stairway into heaven. Never mind the fact that the funds being raised were to build a massive new cathedral in Rome!
Yet as Isaiah so fiercely reminds us, that’s not the point. What really matters is not the actions and rituals of faith, but the fruits that grow out of a genuine and healthy relationship with God. For Isaiah, this relationship was on a national level. What good is our faith if people continue to starve in our streets, that their rights are ignored, and those who are in need go without? As Isaiah noted, paying someone else to do the heavy lifting for us, trying to appease God by the volumes of monetary sacrifices that we make is a corruption of the faith. It undermines our relationship with each other and with God. In the end, it doesn’t really do much for the good of society. For Isaiah, that’s what really matters; all the sacrifices in the world don’t make a lick of difference if all it ends up being is lip service.
I think in some way, all of us are tempted to make the futile bargain… to do something that really is a minimal inconvenience to ourselves, and yet clears our conscience so that we can continue in our lives without making any real changes. We can convince ourselves that what we’re doing is right, yet in the end, what does that really achieve?
Yet Isaiah is not without hope. What Isaiah calls Israel and calls us to is an authentic change that is reflected in our own actions that genuinely help to benefit others. He tells Israel in his day to “16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” There is room for redemption. Don’t try to buy God off… it’s a futile bargain… but actually honestly work for those things that will build up the community… and not just for the benefit of some, but for everybody. In the end, God can see right through any pretences we might put up… so why bother trying to strike up a bargain, when all God calls us to do is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God?
Amen.
Corruption, it seems, has been in the news a lot as of late. We think of Conrad Black’s recent conviction, and last year’s convictions over the Enron scandal in the US. Recently it’s been made public that some Chinese factories use substandard if not dangerous ingredients for consumer goods. Apparently, those who were supposed to be responsible for oversight of these factories have taken bribes to look the other way. We have heard stories of bribery and corruption that are hampering efforts to rebuild governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as we know from scandals in our own government and businesses, it is neither limited to somewhere “over there” and it’s certainly nothing new. Bribery and corruption has been a chronic problem that has plagued society for thousands of years. It is perhaps the one thing that eats away at a nations own ability to care for its people, because individuals use or abuse power for their own personal gain.
Yet when it comes to this kind of thing, we tend to think that it’s someone else’s problem. They’re corrupt, they’re the bad apples, they’re the ones doing it. Yet as someone investigating these types of scandals recently observed, any of us can get into real trouble when we rationalize what we are doing to somehow be the right thing to do… and we do it, because we can. Eventually, this rationalizing can lead us into some very dark places.
As I said, this isn’t anything new… but it’s also a bit more subtle than we care to give it credit. The passage in Isaiah that we heard this morning is all about bribery… But it’s not the kind of bribery we conventionally think of. It’s not paying off some official to look the other way while some criminal enterprise goes on right under the king’s nose. The target of the bribes that Isaiah is talking about is God… and God doesn’t seem too pleased about it.
Isaiah’s opening salvo seems to be directed at the idea of ritual sacrifices. He starts off by comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah, and then launches into this broadside: “11What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; 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. 12When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.”
Isaiah’s tirade goes on to express God’s anger around something in particular: what appears to be abundant ritual sacrifices, but no real justice for all of Israel’s people. It seems that the rich and privileged are performing all the right rituals, in terms of sacrifices and such, and yet do nothing more. They take great pains to make it look like they’re doing the right thing, and yet in the end the people of Israel as a whole are suffering.
Isaiah calls in the whole question of what these sacrifices are supposed to be. Certainly they were mandated in the Temple records… we have surviving accounts of those rituals from the book of Leviticus… but what Isaiah goes after is the real motivation for all of that. Is what they are doing, by offering all of these abundant sacrifices, attempting to bribe or pay off God. They follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it. The sacrifices that they would make were supposed to be a reminder to the people of what God has done, so that they can live in a society, free of slavery and oppression as they experienced in Egypt.
Yet somewhere along the way they lost sight of that. They started paying more attention to the rules and regulations… and seeing exactly how much they could get away with. As long as they kept making the sacrifices to God on a regular timetable, and doing it properly, decently and in good order, God would be pleased and all was well. At least that’s how they rationalized it.
But Isaiah saw something different. Unlike a street prophet, Isaiah had access to the inner circles of the royal court and Temple. He himself had the privilege of access, but at the same time never lost sight of the people. He saw things being done the right way as far as worship was concerned, and yet the poor, the hungry and oppressed were left to their own devices. It was as if the powers-that-be filled the temple with enough sacrifices, God would be too busy accepting them to notice what was going on down at the street. Something wasn’t right… and it was time to let people know about it.
In this tirade from the first chapter, Isaiah reminds the powers-that-be that bribes don’t work with God. It’s a futile bargain to try and pay off God with large numbers of sacrifices. It’s a futile attempt to try and distract God, or pay large sums to ease one’s own conscience. God can’t be bribed, bought or paid-off.
God can’t be bribed, bought or paid-off. It may seem pretty obvious when we think about it… and yet perhaps we do this more often than we think. In its own history, the church of Christ has actually gone so far as to encourage people to offer bribes to God. It has not been one of our brighter moments in history. More than five hundred years ago, the sale of indulgences sparked what would become the Reformation… Indulgences were monetary donations that were made to the church with the understanding that someone else would pray for your soul, and guarantee a place in heaven. Prayer by proxy… buy your way into God’s good graces… and as people believed at the time, you could by a stairway into heaven. Never mind the fact that the funds being raised were to build a massive new cathedral in Rome!
Yet as Isaiah so fiercely reminds us, that’s not the point. What really matters is not the actions and rituals of faith, but the fruits that grow out of a genuine and healthy relationship with God. For Isaiah, this relationship was on a national level. What good is our faith if people continue to starve in our streets, that their rights are ignored, and those who are in need go without? As Isaiah noted, paying someone else to do the heavy lifting for us, trying to appease God by the volumes of monetary sacrifices that we make is a corruption of the faith. It undermines our relationship with each other and with God. In the end, it doesn’t really do much for the good of society. For Isaiah, that’s what really matters; all the sacrifices in the world don’t make a lick of difference if all it ends up being is lip service.
I think in some way, all of us are tempted to make the futile bargain… to do something that really is a minimal inconvenience to ourselves, and yet clears our conscience so that we can continue in our lives without making any real changes. We can convince ourselves that what we’re doing is right, yet in the end, what does that really achieve?
Yet Isaiah is not without hope. What Isaiah calls Israel and calls us to is an authentic change that is reflected in our own actions that genuinely help to benefit others. He tells Israel in his day to “16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” There is room for redemption. Don’t try to buy God off… it’s a futile bargain… but actually honestly work for those things that will build up the community… and not just for the benefit of some, but for everybody. In the end, God can see right through any pretences we might put up… so why bother trying to strike up a bargain, when all God calls us to do is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God?
Amen.
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