Not to be serving our interests
I got excited as I read Isaiah 58.1-12 for this weekend because I do this wrong too!
This scripture is about to doing "godly" things for the wrong purposes. Verse two draws us all in, we want to know God and God's ways. This is a good thing; but so often chasing after God we place ourselves as he image we seek. Yet churches become about us, not the community but what it does for me. When you go beyond the local level (or at the local level too) you get into fights of righteousness, "We are better then you", "I do more prayer then you", "We evangelise better then you", "We care for our own better then you", "We serve others better then you"... The last one at times is the most dangerous.
We know it from the Gospel, Matthew 6.17, "But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face," none of this is meant to give us a superiority complex but so often all our service becomes about how we can be better. Churches look at themselves from the inside and decide how they can be better ignoring the temporary nature of the church and our service to the Kingdom of God. Throw away our institutions today and there is still work to do, it transcends our wants as individuals and groups and looks to God as the grand mediator. This is what we are called to, Isaiah 58.9b
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
We place the yoke on us and I certainly don't hold the solution. We desperately want to see statistics and quantify our work in some way or shape knowing that the statistics mean nothing beyond the work, the church will fall away and we are called to forget the work we do.
When we fast, we fast to serve God, not ourselves. When we serve humanity, we serve Jesus. None of this is calling for the attack of others, but mere service. As we turn to the gospel, Matthew 5:13-20, we are asked to not hide the church away yet we see how easy it can happen. How easy the church can cover its own light in a basket of selfishness, data and statistics. How easy the church can lose any respect of interest, becoming tasteless and trampled.
Who do we serve? We are not to read this and feel guilty for the self focused systems we put in place but to once again raise our heads, acting on our called in we find throughout the Gospel, in that who knows what we might behold...
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58.12)
