July 22, 2007

Background Scripture: Jeremiah 7:11-15; 2 Kings 23:36-37
Devotional Reading: 2 Chronicles 7:11-16

I was born in 1930, when The Great Depression had just begun. In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and World War II became our next national crisis.

We had no sooner defeated the Axis powers in 1945 than the Cold War with Communism began 40-plus years of international struggle and the growing threat of nuclear annihilation. But a few years ago, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall came down and with it, the Communist empire.

We hardly caught our breath before 9/11 plunged us into another international conflict. As I write this, the end of the War on Terror and the potential conflict with a militant Islam are now in sight.

So, when we read the history of Israel and Judah in I and II Kings, it should not be difficult for us to understand why these people also seemed to pass from one crisis to another.

After a succession of corrupt or inept monarchs, the throne of Judah passed to Josiah, who would be both a religious reformer as well as one of the nation’s best kings.

In 621 B.C., Josiah established the Jerusalem temple as the only place for sacrificial ritual. But 13 years later, he died fighting the Egyptians at Megiddo. It was probably three months after that when Jeremiah preached his sermon in the gate of the temple. It was to be one of the most important events in his life. (Maybe we have more in common with ancient Judah than we might think.)

Morals and rituals

Although well-intentioned, the religious reforms under Josiah had not sufficiently changed the spiritual health of the nation. In fact, the people came to believe that the temple would assure them of God’s protection.

Jeremiah’s sermon was intended to warn them that the temple was not their security. “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’” (7:4). Theirs was an edifice complex, trusting in a building that represented God rather than in God Himself.

As a pastor I was involved in two major building campaigns. While I appreciate that a congregation needs an adequate, even attractive, building, I have come to realize that the money and effort we put into our edifices is often out of proportion to their true value in the mission of the church.

It is our mission, not our edifice, that is of primary importance.
It was not that God opposed their rituals, but that the rituals had become a substitute for the complete moral change that Judah needed to make: ”For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land I gave of old to your fathers for ever”  (7:5,6).

So, building churches can become a substitute for helping the alien, the fatherless, the widow, the poor, the oppressed and the imprisoned.

Before and after

God was calling them – as He calls us – not to change their way of worship, but their way of living: “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Ba’al and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’ – only to go on doing all these abominations” (7:8-10).

Worship is indeed vital, but it also must be unfailingly attached to what goes on in our lives before we come to church, as well as what takes place after we leave.

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Sir Guy, a time-transplanted American, watches with keen interest the physical gyrations of medieval monks as they bow and scrape in prayer. His Yankee mind determines that there is a lot of effort and energy being wasted, and so he builds an apparatus that will grind the grain powered by the saints swaying and bending in their devotions, a satirical demonstration of what happens when worship and service are linked together.

 So, too, our church buildings, worship and service must be irrevocably linked.