Shut up! Shut up! Just shut up!
By Jon Carlson of Club Worship
"Shut up! Shut up! Just shut up!"
What would you do if someone stormed in during your church's worship service, shouting that at the top of his lungs? Would you try to silence him? Would the worship team just crank it up a notch, trying to drown him out? Would you let him take the pulpit? What if he said something like this: "Thus Saith the Lord! 'I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice offerings I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your guitars. Is this the kind of worship I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a church service, a day acceptable to the LORD?'"
Maybe now you'd start to sit up and take notice. What if this walking interruption continued, proclaiming something like this: "Is not this the kind of worship I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter — when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? You hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth. You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain (or make your sneakers.) But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!"
What would your response be? In case you're wondering, those quotes are taken almost directly from Amos 5 and Isaiah 58.
I don't think I would get much opposition if I made a statement to the effect of this: God's highest purpose for your life is that you would worship him. God created humans solely to receive their worship. We were created for God's pleasure. We would all agree with that, right?
So how intense, how zealous, must God be for the marginalized people he rebukes His children for ignoring and mistreating? How much must God care about the hungry, the poor wanderer, those who cannot find justice in the courts, that he would tell His people to cease their religious ritual (to cease their worship, if you will) until they have dealt with these things?
So next time you're worshipping, listening to the worship team jam out to the latest popular song, ask yourself if you've trampled the poor lately. Ask yourself, when was the last time you worked to maintain justice in the courts? When was the last time you shared your food with the hungry, or provided the poor wanderer with shelter? I think we better start paying more attention to this, before God starts sending radical prophets our way again, telling us to shut up.
