Isaiah 58: 1-9a; Ps. 112: 1-9; I Cor. 2: 1-12; Matt. 5: 13-20
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
The prophet Isaiah had the unenviable vocation of speaking truth to power: “Shout out, do not hold back!” God commands him, “Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins…”
I think I feel Isaiah’s pain! Those of you who were here last week when I preached on the always popular subject of death will understand why I might be approaching this morning’s text with more than a little fear and trepidation. Afterall, I do very much want to be invited back! Yet the words God speaks to God’s people through Isaiah, God speaks to us, too. And they’re pretty harsh words…sort of the Divine version of “tough love.”
Through the prophet Isaiah, God is calling His people to repent, yet again. Not just some of His people, but all of his people. Not individual sinners for their personal sins, but an entire people for their communal, corporate sin. It’s like rabbinic scholar Abraham Heschel once wrote, that “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Isaiah is speaking to a people who have turned away from God without even realizing it. They still go through all the right motions and religious rituals, but the reality is that they’ve come to rely more on themselves than on God. Despite their religious observances, their lives are fueled by mostly by self-will and self-reliance--and not enough on prayerful discernment of God’s will.
It’s understandable: Everywhere they look they see mind-numbing, heart-hardening oppression and injustice. They can’t understand God’s apparent failure to do anything about it. So, they’ve turned back to relying entirely on themselves, and kind of forgotten about God. To use the Biblical language—they’ve rebelled against God, they’ve turned away from God.
Mind you, they say they want to know God and to be in relationship with God, as if they’re moral and righteous and obedient to God’s will….As if they’re living in right relationship with God’s creation and with each other…As if they’re practitioners of justice, mercy, healing, and reconciliation.
But the truth is that they’re none of these things. Too many religious leaders are preoccupied with debate and dogma; too many political leaders are preoccupied with power and partisan pride; and too many business leaders are preoccupied with profit and prestige.
So, God commands Isaiah to hold them all accountable…to “…shout out and not hold back…” to lift up his voice “like a trumpet.” Poor Isaiah is the bearer of some mighty bad news. Except that Isaiah is a prophet, not a reporter. It’s his job to call God’s people back—to call all of God’s people back—with whatever it takes. Because Isaiah gets it. He knows that although few may be guilty, all are responsible.
Isaiah knows that all are responsible for the finger-pointing and self-righteous judgments that are causing such bitter divisiveness among the people. All are responsible for the arrogant and vindictive spirit they’ve been displaying towards each other, each excluding the other from God’s plan. All are responsible for the increasingly oppressive social and economic conditions that are rife with homelessness and hunger at one end of the social spectrum, and with rampant greed and corruption at the other. All are responsible for the pervasive sense of hopelessness and low morale that has insinuated its way into the hearts of the people. All are responsible, because all are God’s people.
Old Testament scholar Paul Hansen aptly says this passage of Isaiah cuts across the centuries with more power and passion than any other, and that we can’t hear these words without a heartfelt sense of being addressed directly by God. He is so right! “Look around you,” God seems to be saying directly to us, “Look at the injustice, the oppression, the division. And you call this a day ‘acceptable to the Lord’?”
Ouch!
Surely to hear Isaiah’s words in light of our newsfeeds and our 24-hour news channels— our contemporary bearers of bad news—is to be convicted by the prophet’s words as powerfully as his original listeners.
Thankfully, Isaiah gets to deliver some good news, too: The good news that because all are God’s people, all get to share in God’s promises, too. So now Isaiah boldly proclaims, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil; if you offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like noonday.”
If God’s people turn back, and start representing God’s interests in the world instead of their own—the interests of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the powerless—then the Lord will be their “rear guard.”
If they work for social justice, moral righteousness, and merciful love--as a people, as a nation—then all will see their “light break forth like the dawn” and their “healing… spring up quickly.” All will see that when they call, the Lord answers, “Here I am.” All will see that by doing the work of healing and reconciliation, they too will be healed and reconciled. All God’s people, made whole, healed and reconciled.
It gets even better: If they care for God’s people and God’s creation as God does, God will “guide them continually, He will satisfy their needs in parched places and make their bones strong.” They will be called “the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”
Can you imagine? What a vision! What a promise! To be known as the repairers of the breach and the restorers of streets to live in!
And it starts with us. With you, with me…at home and in lands distant. We are God’s people. We are called to be the light of the world that should not and cannot be hid. We are called to end oppression, stop the blame game, and engage in transformative dialogue…called to end hunger, racism, and injustice; called to be the repairers of the breach and restorers of streets to live in that God created us to be. It is a high calling indeed.
May God grant us the will, and the grace, to live into this high calling, that our light may break forth like the dawn in every life we touch, as we represent God’s interests in the world with merciful love…and steadfast, stubborn, hope.