Who says there’s nothing new under the sun? The pastor not accepting the offering! Lots of folks think that raising money is about all we ever do in church. Wish they could have seen that!
But, you see, the problem is there isn’t any room up here on the altar. We have a dirty altar today. It’s absolutely cluttered up with all this stuff. No room for the offering.
Now how did our altar get to be such a mess? I can’t understand it. Garbage on the altar!
I could understand a mess in the offices. Somebody asked me the other day if we had some scrap paper she could use. I told her it was just about all scrap. The offices, with all the construction work, are chaotic. I could understand a dirty office. But a dirty altar?
I could understand a mess in the basement. Ever since the workmen came in several months ago, we’ve hardly been able to walk down there. The dust is thick, the odds and ends of pipe are everywhere, and the whole room is a dismal sight. I could understand a dirty basement. But how did we get a dirty altar?
I could understand a mess in the kitchen, where yours truly has been known to leave food scraps lying around until they grew beards. I could understand garbage on the social hall stage, where we seem to hide everything we really need. I could understand clutter on my desk, where there are always a baker’s dozen unfinished projects. But how did we get a dirty altar?
Maybe we’d better take a look at what’s up here and see if we can’t clean it up.
I
This looks like a good place to start. Here is an old-fashioned frying pan. You know what these are used for, don’t you?
A frying pan is used to sizzle steaks and fix gospel birds for the preacher. It cooks all sorts of unhealthy but delicious foods. The frying pan is used to prepare the kind of food we like to taste, but we know it’s bad for us. Fatty and fried, loaded with cholesterol. That’s what comes out of the old-fashioned frying pan.
And what else does this frying pan remind you of? Well, every old movie you ever watched, every old cartoon you ever saw, used a frying pan as kind of a symbol of domestic friction. When the old lady had had all she could take off the old man, she would get out the frying pan and chase him out of the house with it, planting lumps the size of oranges on his cranium. The frying pan reminds me not only of unhealthy food but also of unhealthy families.
Why is the frying pan on the altar? Because there is something terribly unhealthy but wonderful tasty that a lot of us bring to church. There is something corrosive, destructive, devastating that we keep on bringing to church. It’s anger. It’s anger.
Anger is not just the momentary flare-up, not just the quick quip that slashes and burns. Anger is the teeming, seething, slow-burning hostility that eats away our humanity. And the trouble is, we enjoy it. We nurse our anger.
You see, when we are spiritually sick, we are hardest on those closest to us. When we are spiritually unhealthy, rather than take responsibility for our own illness, rather than get the help we need, we turn on those who love us. The frying pan is the symbol of all the pent-up anger, the sometimes violent hostility we hold against those we live with.
Anger is the secret with which some people have lived for a long time. Wives who are battered routinely by husbands who then apologize tearfully and ask for forgiveness. Children who are abused both physically and emotionally and who do not know what to make of it except to suppose that they have done something to deserve it. Even men whose professional and personal lives are destroyed by hostility. Anger is the frying pan whose fatal products we love too much.
And sometimes anger comes to church. I know very well that often desperate people come to church with their secrets, hoping to hear a word from the Lord. I know that hurting people as well as people who do the hurting come to worship, trying to find a way through. And I know that when that happens it is all too possible that they go from the frying pan right into the fire.
The Lord Jesus has a word for us. He says, "If you are angry with a brother or a sister, you will be liable to judgment ... so when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or your sister [and may I add, your wife or your husband, your parent or your child] has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled ... and then come and offer your gift.” Do you see why when anger occupies a dirty altar there is no room for anything else?
Whether we be the angry or the objects of anger; whether we be the abusers or the abused; the word of the Lord is, "Take responsibility for that anger. Get some help. Get it now." Then and only then will we find that our worship has power and our gifts have meaning.
If you are angry with a brother or sister ... go, first be reconciled ... and then come and offer your gift.
I hope we can clear the frying pan off of God’s dirty altar today.
II
Now, what else do we have? Here is a book. Somebody left a book other than the Bible up here on the altar. What is this book?
The title is "1911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said" What would be in, "1911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said"?
As I look in it, it seems to be a collection of little sayings, most of which are put-downs. Witty sayings, quotations, most of which suggest that others are ignorant or stupid or incompetent.
Here’s one: from the old sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken. Mencken said, "I never lecture, not because I am a bad speaker, but because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and I don’t want to meet them.” That’s a put-down.
Here’s another, from actress Sophie Tucker: “From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents; from 18 to 35 she needs good looks; from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality; and from 55 on she needs cash." That sounds like a put-down, a put-down of women.
And here’s another that will really get to you; some unknown author is quoted as saying, "Cats are like Baptists; they both raise hell but you can’t catch them at it."
This book is on the altar, making it a dirty altar, because a lot of us, Baptists or otherwise, bring to church our putdowns, our snobbishness, our holier-than-thou feelings. A lot of us bring to the altar of God the notion that I’ve got it right and the rest of the world can’t be trusted. Some of us even compromise our church by writing off one another.
Like the old Quaker who was commenting to his friend, "All the world is wrong except me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee.”
Like the soldier marching in the parade who insisted that everybody was out of step except for himself!
Like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, standing before God and praying, "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, or even as this publican.”
Like all these, some of us come to the altar of God and clutter it with put-downs and cynicism about our brothers and sisters.
For us, the Lord Jesus has a word too. The Lord Jesus has a word for the snobbish and the self-righteous. He says, “If you say ’Raca’ to a brother or a sister, you will be liable to the council.” In this translation it says, if you insult your brother or sister. That’s just an attempt to translate an Aramaic word, ’Raca’. ’Raca’ means something like ’stupid’ or ’you idiot’ or, as Lucy would say to Charley Brown, ’Charley Brown, you blockhead.’ One scholar even suggests that the very way the word ’raca’ is pronounced sounds as though you are getting ready to spit, showing your utter contempt.
So, if you say, ’raca’, if you call your brother or sister stupid, if you feel like spitting on someone, you will be liable to the council. “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or your sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled ... and then come and offer your gift."
The word of the Lord to us who put others down is, "Take responsibility for that ego that runs rampant, and remember that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." The word of the Lord to those who have accepted being put down is, “You are a child of the King. Act like one. What I have called clean, let no one call unclean.”
Then and only then will we find that our worship has power and our gifts have meaning.
If you insult, if you think a brother or sister is unworthy … go, first be reconciled ... and then come and offer your gift.
It’s time, high time, to clear the book of putdowns and insults from God’s dirty altar.
III
But I see that even after removing the frying pan and even after putting up the putdown book, the altar is still dirty. It is cluttered with scraps of paper. Scattered everywhere are clumps of paper, obviously what somebody had used up and wanted to get rid of. Why all this waste paper, why all this clutter at God’s altar?
You know, this looks a little like my study, where I labor to give birth to sermons week by week. When I get started on preparing a message, I take the germ of an idea, based on the Scriptures, and then begin to scribble down all sorts of thoughts that come to mind. Anything and everything that suggests itself to me gets jotted down, and then later I go back and organize all these random thoughts into something that, I hope, usually makes sense.
But in the process a lot of perfectly good ideas get wasted. Just thrown away, discarded. Pieces of paper with scribbles on them get tossed away for no other reason than that I chose not to use them. And the trouble is, I may never use them, because I throw them away. I discard and even waste many good things in the process of trying to do my job.
This waste paper, crumpled and torn, suggests to me that we often come to the altar of God having discarded and forgotten about all kinds of people. We come to the altar of God to do our spiritual thing, never realizing that to be spiritual is to connect with others, not to discard them, not to waste them. To worship is not to exclude others or devalue others or ignore others. To worship is to value all of God’s children.
Even for that the Lord Jesus has a word. The Lord Jesus has a word for us who forget, for us who isolate others. He says, "If you say ’You fool’, you will be liable to the hell of fire." His very harshest word is reserved for those who simply write off whole classes and groups of people and work to exclude them. If you say, ’you fool’, ’you nothing’, you will liable to the hell of fire.
Oh, church of Jesus Christ, repent. We have come to the altar of God having forgotten. Having forgotten about the elderly and the frail, devaluing them and supposing that they are no longer with it. Our altar is dirty with our forgetfulness.
We have come to the altar of God having written off our young people, even secretly happy that few of them are here because we can worship in our quiet way without them. Our altar is dirty with our callousness.
We have come to the altar of God having discarded the poor, the ignorant, the uncultured, the unwashed. We have placed on the altar of God our pretense at righteousness and have not realized that, as the Scripture says, all our righteousness is as filthy rags. It is a dirty altar not because we have brought into this church those whose lives are messy, but because we have not brought them in. God forgive us!
And we have come to the altar of God on this Martin Luther King memorial Sunday, having written off whole races and classes of people, having said time and again, “Oh, you know how they are. Not like us. Not our kind.” And in this very church, at this very altar of God, though we have said that we value so very highly our stance as a multiracial congregation ... even at this altar of God we have discarded some folk because of the way they looked or talked. Oh, we have not sent them away. But just by not reaching out into the needs of this community we have said, "You fool". Just by leaving alone the poor, the oppressed, the addicted, the lonely, we have said, "You fool". And our altar, God’s altar is dirty from our neglect.
It’s time to clean the altar. It’s time to stop wasting the opportunity to reach others. Time to initiate ministries to the least of them. Time to make a commitment to the power of a Christ who will save to the uttermost all who trust Him.
Then and only then will we find that our worship has power and our gifts have meaning.
If you say, ’You fool’, if you write off a whole group as not worth the time …go, first be reconciled ... and then come and offer your gift.
It’s time, well past time, to clean off every scrap of waste, everything that throws away one of God’s good ideas. It’s time to clean the altar thoroughly, time to see every person walking these streets as potentially a child of God.
The altar of God is now clean. Entirely clean. And the Lord Jesus Christ will also make you clean and accept your gifts. It can be done. It must be done. It is done not because you and I clean up our acts on our own. It is done because of His amazing grace, grace that can pardon and cleanse within.
Will you today clean the altar of your heart, being reconciled to God, being reconciled to God’s people?
