“I Have Had Enough”
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
August 10, 2025
Burnt Hills United Methodist Church
behavioral health conditions. I’ve shared it here and there at various points—one on one conversations, a meeting here and there, and maybe even during some classes.
But yeah, I am just a little, as the kids say, neuro-spicy.
Just a touch of General Anxiety Disorder.
A twinge of Major Depression Disorder.
And a pinch of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
So be sure to hold space tonight for my poor teachers growing up.
Now, before you get too concerned, don’t worry—it’s all really well-managed at this point.
Therapy, it turns out, is a godsend—more folks should try it—and as I’m fond of saying: Jesus loves me, this I know. For he gave me Lexapro.
So today, for the poor, unfortunate neurotypical souls out there—bless your hearts—I just wanted to pull the curtain back and show you, what I think is maybe one of the most accurate pictures of what living with anxiety and ADHD is like.
Now, in case you’re having trouble seeing this from your pew, something has clearly gone very, very wrong here. What we have here is a really quite lovely china cabinet with these beautiful glass doors on them so that you can see the really quite lovely plates and other dishes inside.
But here’s the problem. Something has happened that has gotten all these dishes all kinds of jostled up. They’ve fallen every which way, some clean off their shelf and are pressed right up against the door to the cabinet.
The door that you can see right into.
Because it’s glass.
Meant to show off your lovely dishes, but now showing off your lovely mess.
And now you’re left with a choice:
You can bite the bullet and open the cabinet door. Save what you can and give the rest to Holly for the white elephant tent at the Lord’s Acre Fair.
Or, you can just leave it. You can let it fester there and try to ignore it as best you can. Sorry honey, we’re not going to be eating off these plates any time soon.
Except you can’t quite ignore it. Every time you walk by it catches your eye and you know you have to do something about it but not right now. You’ll deal with it some other time.
With each passing day, the plates seemingly get louder and louder and that beautiful glass door stays shut keeping immediate catastrophe at bay while broadcasting to the entire world that your plates are in shambles right there in plain sight for all to see.
Because opening those doors will cause a mess that you’re not quite ready to deal with, so you just…leave the door closed.
But the thing about leaving the door closed is that it doesn’t make the mess go away. It just keeps you living with it in full view.
And here’s the kicker: eventually there comes a time when enough is enough and you have to open those doors.
Because the truth is, no matter which choice you choose, your dishes will eventually be sitting in the White Elephant Tent at the Lord’s Acre Fair.
Eventually, there comes a time when enough is enough, and you have to open those doors.
It’s a common refrain throughout the prophetic witness in the Old Testament.
The prophet looks around and sees that something isn’t quite right. The way that things are do not align with God’s vision for the community’s life together.
The people’s focus and devotion drawn to the wrong things. Life ordered in a way that precariously preserves wealth and status, privilege and power in an ever-shrinking select group of individuals.
Institutions that were meant to promote community flourishing have been twisted into machines that exploit the poor.
The holy and set-apart has been profaned.
The vulnerable are chewed up and spit out.
In our reading from Isaiah, something has clearly gone wrong. We can see it. Isaiah can see it. And, more importantly, God can see it.
God looks right through the glass doors at God’s people and sees the mess that’s there, clear as day, says, “I have had enough”, and opens the doors.
But before I get too much further, let me offer just a little bit of context.
Now, if I told you that most biblical scholars have identified three distinct sections of the book of Isaiah that were written in three different time periods, by at least three different individuals, it probably should come as no surprise that our passage this morning, from the first chapter of Isaiah, comes from that first distinct section, aptly named: First Isaiah.
These are the kinds of rich and complex insights you get from a seminary education.
And right off the bat, we can see one thing pretty clearly about what’s important for First Isaiah. Before anything else, Isaiah firmly roots his prophecies in a particular place—Judah and Jerusalem—and in a particular political time in history—during the reigns of four Judahite kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
Now, if you want to really get into the nitty gritty of who these kings were and how they ruled, then you’re my kind of nerd. But for today’s purposes, you just have to really know that all of this is happening before the Babylonian captivity and destruction of Jerusalem—that paradigm altering series of historical events between 597 and 586 BCE whose ripples are still being felt throughout our social order to this day.
First Isaiah is telling his readers that all of this is happening in that time period I like to call “the before times”.
How before? Just a little over a century..
Now, whenever I teach about the socio-political realities of pre-exilic Israel and Judah, I’m always sure to tell my students this.
The thing about Judah is that it was nowhere special, but it was smack dab in the middle of everything that is. Let me show you. 
So here we have a map of the Mediterranean Sea—the great sea as far as the ancient Near Eastern world was concerned. Civilizations emerged around fertile river valleys, and trade was conducted through over land and by sea.
We can see three big geopolitical forces that dominated the region during the time of our passage from Issaiah: We’ve got Egypt to the south, Assyria to the north, and Babylon to the east. And if you squint your eyes really hard, you can see that right there, smack dab in the middle of it all is the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
That small body of water there? That’s the Dead Sea. Jerusalem would be just a little bit to the west of its northern edge.
There was some land suitable for small-scale agriculture, but there’s also quite a bit of desert. Nowhere near enough farmable land to become a regional power yourself. Which, you know, would be fine, except for just three small problems.
As you can see, Judah was not just a small sea-side kingdom hanging out on its own but was instead surrounded by far bigger regional powers.
Now, if you’re a Judahite king looking at this map, you’ve got a choice to make.
You can do nothing and wait for one of three giant armies to steamroll you and your people.
Or, you can roll the dice and choose which regional power you want to cozy up to for protection.
But protection comes at a hefty cost. You’ll have to pay tribute, which means you need to fill your treasury fast. How do you do that? You impose predatory loans that your peasants can never repay, seize their land, and take their harvests.
And then, because you’re looking out the palace window and see the temple, you realize you can turn the worship of God into your personal tax system.
Tell the priests to increase collections during festivals. Frame it as faithfulness. Use the trappings of worship to funnel wealth upward so you can write big checks to the empire you’ve decided to trust more than God.
Offerings, incense, and solemn assemblies, once meant to point toward the God who freed you from slavery, become tools to exploit the poor and keep your grip on power. Religious spectacle masking systemic injustice.
These are the conditions into which God is speaking through Isaiah.
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
God sees the mess inside the china cabinet and says enough is enough.
And notice: God doesn’t say, “Polish the glass and rearrange the plates so they look pretty again.” God’s not interested in better incense, bigger offerings, or a more impressive worship calendar.
Because more than any trappings of worship and devotion, what lies at the heart of God’s teachings—what lies at the heart of God’s law—is a deep and unshakable concern for justice.
Justice for the poor.
Justice for the foreigner.
Justice for the widow and the orphan.
Justice for all those who are oppressed.
Learn to do good.
Seek justice.
Rescue the oppressed.
Defend the orphan and plead for the widow.
Friends, these aren’t just poetic or rhetorical flourishes in a prophetic oracle or a simple list of things we pay lip service to or check the box to just say we did them. They are the foundation of what it means to live together as the people of God.
Our God provides. Our God nurtures. Our God doesn’t want us to concern ourselves with self-preservation—especially if that self-preservation comes at the expense of our neighbors.
Nowhere in all of scripture will you find the verse “God helps those who help themselves” because it’s simply not biblical.
We see this same story play out over and over and over again throughout the entirety of our scriptural witness. Because as sure as oceans rise, empires fall.
Babylon would emerge as the dominant powerhouse in the region, but within a generation or two, Babylon would give way to the Persians
And the Persians would give way to the Greeks.
And the Greeks would give way to the Romans, and each and every time, the same story would continue to play out.
A select few try to hold on or grasp for power, status, and privilege with no concern at all for anyone else around them. And time and time again, the same thing happens. No matter how hard you try to ignore that collapsing pile of dishes in your cabinet, they’re still there, just waiting for you to open that door.
And Jesus? He picks up right where Isaiah left off. Same disease. Different century. Same cure.
Don’t put your trust in yourselves. Put your whole trust in God and get rid of everything that stands in the way of you doing that. Sell your possessions. Give alms. Be dressed for action. And keep your lamps trimmed and burning.
Because in Jesus’ day, different folks in charge were dealing with different regional empires, but not much else had changed. Religious and political systems protected wealth and status while the poor stayed poor.
Jesus speaks into this, and he tells his disciples that where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
I do believe that one of the foundational points of our faith is that God is God and humans are humans and humans will never be God. And yet, I also believe that one of our beautifully human capacities is the deep longing and yearning to align our hearts with the heart of God.
We will never be God.
But that should never stop us from living as though we can love like God.
We will never be Christ.
But that should never stop us from living as though our hearts can beat with the heart of Christ.
And where is Christ’s heart?
Among the poor.
Among the stranger.
Among the hungry, the sick, the prisoner.
Among those the who the world forgets but who God remembers. The very ones for whom Jesus suffered and died at the hands of the imperial juggernaut of his day and age.
Jesus tells his disciples, put your treasure there.
Put your time there.
Put your attention there.
Because when our treasure is there, our hearts will follow.
So, Church, where is our treasure?
Is it where God is or is it somewhere else? Do our hearts beat in line with God’s or do they beat on their own?
Do we turn to our traditions as a source of comfort, or do they challenge us to look beyond ourselves to be in relationship with our neighbors?
Are we held captive by a vision of a glorious past that never was, or do we look to our shared story to propel us to a brighter tomorrow?
Do we fill our calendars with programs and activities to keep us busy—too busy to attend to the weightier matters of mission?
Are the habits and rhythms of our faith opening our eyes to the reality of God’s vision for us as a people of God, or do they insulate and blind us to the suffering all around us?
So take stock this week. Look at your calendar. Look at your budget. Name one thing that’s drawing your energy toward doing good, seeking justice, and caring for the vulnerable, and name one thing that’s getting in the way.
What are the things that are keeping us from putting our treasure where God’s heart is?
Fears of inadequacy?
Fears of scarcity?
Lay them down at the altar, because dear ones, the scandal of the Gospel is that there is enough.
There is love enough for all of us to share, together.
Because, eventually, we’re going to have to open that cabinet door—we can’t keep ignoring it forever, hoping that those plates will magically fix themselves.
But hear this good news. No matter the size of the mess that may follow, we will not be left to clean it up alone. We have been given the greatest gift of all: we have been given the gift of each other.
So let’s open those doors and let the plates fall where they may. Let’s trust that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can salvage what we can and make something beautiful from the shards that remain.
We just might find that the broken pieces we feared are actually the beginnings of justice, mercy, and love taking root.
May the one who began a good work be faithful to complete it in us.
The work continues.
Amen.
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