When God Hates Worship

In the book of Exodus, when God comes to Moses in that whole shrubbery/arson scene, there is a statement that God makes that gives us an insight to what kind of God He is. It’s something that we do well to pay attention to. God tells Moses the reason for the whole botanical light show is because He noticed something that was going on in Egypt, specifically slavery. Listen to what God actually says:

“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering…And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you.”

There is a lot to say about just those couple of verses, but the thing I want to point out is that when God hears the cry of the suffering, he looks for someone who can hear Him. And he asks them to do something about it.

I read a story a few months ago that haunted me. It was about this church in Nazi Germany during the 30′s. They were just a few German Christians who would gather and worship together each week. It was about as normal of a church as you’d expect. If one of us were to have shown up we probably would have been able to fit in without standing out (other than that whole not speaking German thing, that would probably be noticeable). But the problem was that the church had been built too close to the train tracks. And lately, the trains had been running a lot.

But the problem wasn’t the train, it was the cargo.

Because in this little church building, the German Christians could hear the sound of Jewish people on those trains, and they were screaming for help. When the people on the trains would pass by, they would think maybe the church would help, so they would yell.

And so the church sang louder.

Their plan of action was to just drown out the cries of suffering from others by singing songs to the LORD.

Now the Scriptures have a lot to say about this specific situation. Because the truth is, this is nothing new. The people of God throughout the centuries have been trying to pull this one off. It’s easy for us to start thinking that if we just perform the right ceremonies or do the correct rituals than God won’t expect more of us. But this is not the case. From Moses to the Prophets to Jesus, God has been adamant that part of what it meant to be the His people has a lot to do with engaging the world outside of whatever walls we find ourselves in.

Like in Amos, the prophet has got a fire in his belly because the poor don’t have food in theirs. The wealthier merchants of the day had made a practice of sweeping up the dirt and dust off the ground and mix it in with the wheat. Then when the poor people would buy they would sell it to them in order to have larger profit margins. And then they would go to church and sing. And this is what God says about that:

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!

In the book of Isaiah, we actually find that this kind of worship, worship that stops with the song, actually makes God ill. That in reality, God’s got larger purposes for his people than being on key.

Think about what these German Christians missed out on. Paul says in Acts 17, that God ordained the times and places that we would live, and I assume that includes these brothers and sisters. They were there for a reason. They could have stood up against the grave injustice that was rampant in Hitler’s regime. But they didn’t, and if you were to ask them why they might have had the most pious sounding reasons. They were after all worshipping the living God, just not in a way that he approved.

And so now they are reduced to being just an antecdote for the history books. They serve as a parable of warning for those of us who come after them. But they could have been so much more.

They could have stopped singing, gone outside and done something. They might have even saved a few men and women’s lives, sure they would have had to stop doing church. But they could have been the church.

And that of course is worship too.