Over the 20 years that I worked for a well known manufacturer I attended quite a few retirement gatherings.
Some of my coworkers retired with the love and respect of all and the admiration of management. When it came down to the party we sent them off with speeches, stories, handshakes, and sincere appreciation, along with a nice check and a gold watch.
Then…. Grumpy Dwarf retires. You know the kind. He’s got the personality and people skills of a sock. Ole Grumpy did nothing more than the absolute minimum in 40 years of service. Over time he got pretty heavy as the rest of us carried his load.
You ‘d think he’d know that he probably wasn’t doing that great of a job when on the day you announce your retirement, company stock closes with a record gain.
Despite all this, we had a retirement party for grumpy too. Secretly relieved, we sent grumpy off with the traditional speeches, stories, handshakes, along with a nice check and a gold watch.
The difference is that we did this out of a percieved duty rather than a desire to honor him. It was really just an obligation.
In Matthew 15 Jesus was in a confrontation with the Pharisee and teachers of religious law when he quoted Isaiah and said:
Isaiah 29:13 (New Living Translation)
13 And so the Lord says,
“These people say they are mine.
They honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
And their worship of me
is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.
I don’t really use the word “rote” so I looked it up in the Webster’s Dictionary.
rote pronounced [roht]
1. routine; a fixed, habitual, or mechanical course of procedure: the rote of daily living.
the rote of daily living
2. by rote, from memory, without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way:
to learn a language by rote.
Throughout the Bible, Worship always involved action. The main word for worship in Hebrew means “to bow down.” Worship was performed in bowing, lifting the hands, kneeling, singing, praying, reciting Scripture, etc. All this can be called worship. But all this can also be done when the heart is far from God.
My prayer is that as we worship together as a church this Sunday we can lay aside all the things in life that distract us and that our hearts will truly be on Jesus. Let us give genuine honor to the one who saved us from ourselves.
