(A link to a video of the sermon is underneath.)
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to Me. Even though you bring Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to Me. Even though you bring Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)
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Unless you're Westboro Baptist Church (whose rather innocent sounding but repulsive name I promise never to mention ever again) you don't generally mention the words “God” and “hate” in the same sentence. “God is love,” the New Testament tells us. But, as you may have heard, there's a fine line between love and hate. Just because “God is love,” does that mean that God can't hate? Well, apparently not. There are actually a number of things the Bible tells us that God hates. It varies a little bit depending on the version of the Bible that you're using and what word gets picked, but as far as I could come up with, there are 14 things that God hates according to Scripture – everything from burning your sons and daughters as sacrifices to things like violence, deceit and haughtiness, or arrogance. Only one person was ever mentioned – apparently at one time God hated Esau. All intriguing, I suppose. The idea of God “hating” is a strange one, after all, but – there it is.
As I worked my way through the list I developed, I started to divide the things that God hates up into categories – because I don't think we can take these things absolutely literally, after all. We have to try to see the kinds of things that God might hate, as opposed to the specifics mentioned in the Bible. Let's face it, not too many people these days are busy burning their sons and daughters as sacrifices to God! At least, I hope they're not. So what KINDS of things does God hate?
If you take those 14 “hated” items that I found, you could lump them basically into five categories.
God hates violence. Psalm 11:5 says that explicitly, and Proverbs refers to God hating “hands that shed innocent blood.” So many people reject belief in God because of the violence sometimes committed by God's followers, and yet violence is definitely on the divinely hated list! And that must cause God a great deal of difficulty, because it leads right into the next category:
God hates religious extremism. It's true. Deuteronomy 12:31 tells us that God hates those who burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices. I think that would qualify as religious extremism. Some, of course, will immediately leap up and say “but what about the Abraham story. God told him to sacrifice Isaac.” Well, whatever actually happened in the midst of that divine encounter between Abraham and God, the real point of the matter is that God saw what Abraham was going to do, understood that perhaps it was well intentioned as a show of faith – but then didn't let him do it! Religious extremism seems to be out as far as I can see. It's also on the divinely hated list. And I doubt that it matters much whether it's Christian extremism or Islamic extremism or whatever. God hates it. Why? I suspect because it either cycles back into the violence that God also hates, or it cycles ahead into the next thing:
God hates those things that destroy relationships! “That they may be one as we are one.” That was the prayer of Jesus for his followers, and, really, for the entire world. “That they may be one as we are one.” God wants us to be in relationship with each other, in fellowship with each other, in communion with each other. Religious extremism blocks relationship. I suppose it creates a small core group of those you agree with, but it dismisses even the possibility of relationship with those you disagree with. God wants us in relationship because that's the only way we can actually accomplish God's will. So Zechariah the prophet says that God hates when we “plot against each other,” Isaiah the prophet says that God hates “robbery and wrongdoing,” and Psalm 5 says simply that God hates “all who do wrong” - because all these things destroy our sense of community. Which leads to Number 4:
God hates bad or negative attitudes. Really. God does! What use does God have for negative attitudes. For people who see or expect the worst instead of the best. For people who spend their lives cynical or fed up or angry or bitter. Remember, of course – it's not the people God hates, but the attitudes. That's probably why Scripture is full of reminders to us that we are to be thankful people. Proverbs talks about God hating “haughty eyes.” In other words, a sort of angry arrogance that only puts other people down rather than seeking to build them up.
So, there you are – four categories of things that God hates: violence, religious extremism, anything that destroys relationships and bad or negative attitudes. But there's a fifth, that I thought was especially relevant for today, when we celebrate Holy Communion: the Bible tells us that God hates empty religion. Here's how the prophet Amos put it in our reading this morning: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to Me.” Being here this morning, for what is essentially a religious festival or assembly, that hits pretty close to home. Is it possible that God might hate the fact that we're here, doing this? I suppose that to answer that question, we have to identify what it is, exactly, that God hated about the religious festivals and assemblies of His people!
It's not that complicated. They had become empty. All the religious festivals, all the religious assemblies, all the sacrifices made in the temple, all the pious prayers that were offered – they had become empty. They were ends in themselves. People participated in them – and they were left feeling self-satisfied, as if by participating in them they had actually accomplished what it was that God had called them to. The religion of the people had become at best a show but it wasn't being demonstrated in any practical way beyond the religious rituals. People had started to think that religion was all about the rituals. They had forgotten that the rituals were just signposts, pointing us to what God wants us to be about as a result of our faith.
Today is called on the calendar of many churches “World Wide Communion Sunday.” The first Sunday in October is the day set aside by many denominations to share Communion together, and the occasion made me reflect on these words of Amos. Why are we doing this? What's the point of this particular “festival” if you want to call it that? Do we think that gathering and celebrating Communion is an end in itself? Is God satisfied with us showing our piety by being here – even if it's Sunday after Sunday after Sunday – or does God expect more? I think that God expects more! So, to go back to what I said just a moment ago, if Communion is just a signpost, pointing us to what God wants us to be about as a result of our faith, then what direction does it point?
It seems to me that the Communion table, when you get right down to it, is about sacrifice, and it points us in the direction of sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed for the world; we sacrifice for the world. Not in the same way obviously – but living by the same principle of self-giving love for others. Communion only means anything if it's really less about the table and all about the world around us and those in it. If taking Communion is an end in itself for us, and we think we've accomplished something by doing it, then maybe God does hate it. But if we understand what it stands for – and if we respond – then God will surely be pleased!
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