Blowing in the Wind: Day 3
“to bow his head down like a bulrush” Isaiah 58:5
Bulrush – When I was a child, we called them cattails. Those long green stalks rising from the water’s edge, ending in a clump of densely packed seeds. Isaiah uses this image to describe one important aspect of false worship: the ease of bowing in the spiritual wind. It doesn’t take much to see a bulrush bend. There is little strain and little discomfort. And as soon as the moment passes, the bulrush straightens up as though nothing had ever happened.
That, says God, is what your worship is like. It is not demanding. It doesn’t strain your style. It makes no lasting impression. As soon as you step outside the church door, you straighten up in conformity to the world.
Today we celebrate the Christmas of bulrushes. We worship the gods of convenience, comfort and tolerance. Our greatest strain comes at the mall, trying to buy one more perfect present. Christmas is filled with old television reruns, another overstuffed meal and long-distance conversations. Christmas services have the obligatory angels and baby Jesus, the standard carols and the usual candles. The only demand is to make sure all the kids are wearing their new Christmas best and the service is over in time for football.
When we forgot the shout and the invasion, we soon forgot the reason for worship. When ritual replaced thanks, worship became performance. Now we pay to see the singing Christmas tree instead of falling on our knees in front of the invading King. We are not wise men, traveling for months to have one day with the baby. We are sycophants, checking the clock to make sure the service ends on time. We celebrate the celebration, not the demonstration of humility, emptiness and vulnerability. We don’t understand a love that does not first regard its own desires.
God looks for broken oaks, not bulrushes. He wants worshippers who are splintered, shattered and fractured, not pliable reeds pushed along by whatever wind blows. God can use a broken oak. Reeds go into the fire.
On the way to Bethlehem, examine your core. Does worship hurt? Is your pride injured? Is your ego seared? Do you feel the strain when the knees bend? Or is it just so easy that it never causes a single splinter in your image? What is worship without surrender? What is surrender without breaking?
Christmas is hallowed ground. What made you think you could enter with your shoes on?
