honor and mercy

Faced with the prospect of having their temple rebuilt in Jerusalem after 70 years of captivity (500 years before Christ), the Jews asked an honest question: Do we keep fasting and commemorating the destruction of our temple and the ruin of our leaders?

God, through the prophet Zechariah answered with another question hinting at their empty formalism:

Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me (Zech. 7:5 kjv)?"

The LORD continued to convict saying that not only were there rituals empty and self healing, but they lacked loving compassion and and merciful social action:

Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother:
And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.
But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear (Zech. 7:9-11)."

So what about us today? Does the LORD ask of our worship the same as of the Jews? Does the LORD seek us to honor Him above our own desires, and does He seek that we respond in worship by extending mercy and loving those of other lands and other ethnicities? Does the LORD desire we help the widow, the orphan and the homeless? Though many verses clarify this issue, one particular may be of interest:

But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.
Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matt. 22:34-40 kjv)."