Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Hey, excuse me. Look up here, everybody. People seek attention in different ways and for different reasons.

 

Some will seek attention with loud outbursts dominating the sound waves and overpowering every other voice in the room. But you can also draw attention in quietness and whispers. Some will seek attention more by their actions. Of course, hitting, stomping feet, and throwing things come to mind, but there are also ways of drawing attention to yourself that seem much more reverent and pious.

 

People can draw attention to themselves by demonstrating the impressive talents and skills that they have. They can draw attention with feats of strength or musical prowess. They can also draw attention to themselves by doing unexpected, humble acts of service, rushing to the aid of someone who has fallen, even picking up some litter overlooked by everyone else. Attention is drawn to them because they have done something out of the ordinary.

 

As varied as the ways by which people draw attention to themselves, there are fewer reasons why they wish to do so. There is really only one reason, and that is to get something you desire. It could be the applause of an adoring crowd. It could be the gratitude of just one particular individual. It might be for an inner sense of accomplishment or pride. It might be just to get a cookie.

 

And it hurts when the attention you desire, or even need, is ignored. It can bring tears if you are denied a cookie. But lack of attention can also cause you to doubt your worth, or to question if anyone really cares about you. Often the response is to do something more dramatic in order to demand that attention you crave. And oftentimes that turns into rather ugly tantrums of one kind or another—sometimes kicking and screaming, but also other overly dramatic ways that reveal the resentment that has set into your heart.

 

“Why have we fasted and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no notice of it?” (Isaiah 58:3). It is the tantrum of God’s people when they have thought they had done an exceptional job of being His people, executed the extraordinary, and He doesn’t seem to be responding. What is it we have to do to get His attention? What do we need to do to get Him to answer our prayers, to come to our rescue, to give to us His healing and blessings, to defeat our enemies, to make us feel better or to change our bitter circumstances?

 

The LORD told Isaiah to explain to His people that they did not lack His attention, rather He was all too aware of them and their prayers and their worship and their lives of misery. They had their periods of religious reform, when they would put forth an extra effort to try to do the things that God had commanded them to do so that He would pay attention and answer their prayers.

 

When they truly wanted God to intervene and save them from the wicked peoples all around them and deliver them from the threat of attack and domination, then they would go to the temple, as God had told them to do. They would gather for the festivals He had directed them to observe. They would offer the sacrifices He commanded them to give. They would do all the proscribed preparations to come before Him with their prayers and pleas, and sometimes in overly dramatic ways.

 

These times of fasting (not just restricting their diet according to the ceremonial laws handed down to them, but the observance of all of the religious practices that they were taught to do) were their way of showing God that they were serious about needing His help. It was much like recommitting ourselves to daily reading of the Bible when the first fears of the pandemic set in; or resuming more intense prayer every day once we think we are losing a loved one to severe illness or apostasy. At times when we feel the dissolution of world peace might impact our lives directly, we return to the LORD with more intense and intentional acts of piety. “Yes God, we are serious. We need your help.”

 

Isaiah was to tell the people like us, that we have God’s attention. The intensification of our acts of prayer and fasting and religious observance has His eye. In fact, that is not the only thing that has His attention. He sees our fasting but He also sees how we never cease to feast on our sinful pleasures. He knows of our humility before Him, but He also knows how we humiliate and oppress those whom we demand to serve us. We seek peace from Him while fighting with our family members. We look for blessing from His gracious hands while we clench our fists in wicked aggression against our fellow man. And all of that has His attention.

 

This is not how the LORD wants us to bring our requests before Him, even if it is accompanied by the very acts of pious worship that He has directed us to observe. For our evil thoughts and deeds against those around us have just as much of His attention as our folded hands and bowed heads and generous offerings. We have so much of His attention that these humble acts of worship in His presence do not distract His attention from the way we treat our family members, the outcasts of our community, or the oppressed peoples throughout the nations.

 

What this means is that we cannot manipulate the LORD with our “act” of righteousness. Just as the LORD had Isaiah declare the to the pious people of His day, so the Lord Jesus warned people against the shallow piety of the Pharisees and sanctimonious Scribes as recorded in our Gospel reading today: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

 

The Scribes and Pharisees knew better than anyone else what the LORD had commanded His people to do when they wanted to come before Him with their prayers and pleas. And they were more conscientious and zealous to actually do those things. But the Lord Jesus repeatedly condemned them for making life more difficult for people who were already struggling, and not doing anything to relieve those crushed under the burdens of life (Matthew 23:4). And so, as Jesus pointed out, it is not the prayer of the Pharisee who could list his accomplishments that was heard by God, but the prayer of the repentant tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 11-14).

 

There is a way to get the attention of God to hear your prayers, and to redirect His attention from your sins. The tax collector who went up to the temple to pray found it. It was through repentance, sorrow over sin, and the acknowledgement that there is nothing that you can do to demand the attention of God’s grace.

 

When you come to this conclusion, you can already be assured that you have the attention of God’s good favour. It is He who reveals to you your need to repent of sin before seeking His blessing. It is because He is more attentive to your need than you are aware of it yourself, that He calls His prophets and pastors to bring this to your attention. Because He is attentive to your spiritual condition, He calls you to repentance.

 

When He does not answer your prayers or respond with His blessing, He makes you wonder if He is paying any attention. Yet He speaks to you in His Word, warning you that this feeling of abandonment, devoid of His blessing, is a prelude to what you will suffer eternally in hell if you do not repent of your sins against your fellow man and your attempts to manipulate God with your pious acts of prayer.

 

The LORD allows the sin and wickedness of the world pressing upon you to expose your own sins and wickedness. When you are concerned about what the wicked are doing to you and try to manipulate Him to act in your favour, then He exposes how wicked you are being toward others. How you have become so concerned about Him delivering you from your oppression that you have neglected to relieve the people that you oppress with your attention-seeking behaviour.

 

But you have even more of the Lord’s attention, beyond His mercy in pointing out your sins for which you need to repent. He also reveals to you what it means to relieve the oppression of those who are suffering due to your action and inaction. The Lord God Almighty took on a proper fast when He took on our human flesh and all of its frailties and temptations.

 

He endured a literal fast of forty days in battle with the devil who tempted Him more severely than he has tempted any of us. Jesus did not seek the easy way to relieve His own suffering by crying out to the heavenly Father to save Him. Rather, He showed submissive obedience to the will of the Father and endured His suffering, rejected the glory of men, and entrusted Himself to the One whose love He knew.

 

In that faithful obedience, Jesus sought out the cross the Father asked Him to bear, rather than seeking the attention of men. In seeking out the cross, He sought to relieve the oppression of others (the very opposite of the goal of the Scribes and Pharisees and all who are like them). Being attentive to your need to be set free from the bonds of sin and death, and to relieve your oppression under the attacks of the devil and this wicked world, Jesus did not manipulate the heavenly Father to action, but showed His love for the Father by obedience, even to the point of death upon the cross (Philippians 2:8).

 

You can be sure that the LORD’s attention is on you to hear your prayers, and His attention is on the cross of Christ where atonement was made for all of your sins of manipulation and oppression. When you approach Him, abandoning the pious manipulative attempts of Scribes and Pharisees, and come as the repentant tax collector seeking the attention of such a God as would send His Son to the cross in order to relieve you of the oppression of sin and guilt and shame, then you have His gracious attention.

 

His attention is on your love for Him in response to His great love for you, which you express with actions of true piety and prayer, the kind of fast He instituted. He sees your repentant heart and your loving hand extended to relieve the oppression of others as He has relieved yours. When you cry to Him for His gracious and merciful forgiveness rather than for some kind of recompense for your piety, then you can be sure that His loving attention is directed at you.

 

We do well to consider this just a week and a half before the start of the season of Lent, a traditional time of fasting for Christians. How will you make sure that you are observing the kind of fast that draws the right kind of attention from the LORD?

 

When you pay attention to this loving grace and mercy from Him to you, you come before Him with a repentant heart and you live toward others with the same grace and mercy that you have received. The LORD not only pays attention to that, but He also draws the attention of the world to it. He wants everyone to pay attention to His own love and grace testified and shared throughout the world in the merciful acts of love given freely by His children. God shines His light upon your merciful deeds to others so that they too might be mindful of the attention the Lord pays to them.

 

And so Jesus has told us: “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Let them see not empty pious fasting like the Israelites Isaiah was directed to condemn or like the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus criticized, but let the light of God’s love at work in you shine forth in reverent pious worship that is directed by a repentant heart, and accompanied by acts of mercy to relieve those who have suffered under your oppressive hand.

 

As the LORD’s refusal to answer prayer and His withholding of blessings is a prelude to the abandonment that unrepentant prideful sinners will suffer for eternity in hell, so the light that God shines on your good works in the world is a prelude of the eternal life that repentant and forgiven sinners will have in the light of His loving presence.