A great nation had been humiliated by something they had never supposed could happen. Because they saw themselves as the people of God, chosen by him for a special role in the world's history, they had imagined themselves invulnerable. God would never desert his people, they believed. God would not permit them to suffer defeat or disgrace or despair. They were certain of that, and in the exuberance of their first years as a nation they had grown and matured and had become a marvel to all their neighbors. Their wealth had exceeded their fondest imaginations. Their culture was recognized as young, dynamic, productive. Their government was thought of as fair and just, even though sometimes charlatans and quacks and thieves were running it. Their destiny had seemed assured. But then, just as some of the nation's wiser minds had foreseen, there was a national disaster. There was a disgrace of monumental proportions. There was a defeat: a military defeat, yes, but more important, a spiritual defeat, a psychological defeat. And the spirits of a decimated nation had sunk to a low ebb.
Now, however, things were changing at last. A few years had passed and the worst was over. They were on their way back from discouragement and self-doubt. It looked as though they were finding their feet as a people again. Slowly, ever so slowly, the nation and its basic institutions were being rebuilt. Slowly, painfully, the people were finding it possible to look at themselves with some degree of pride. In fact, one of their most prominent leaders continued to assure them that they were back: back from exile, back from discouragement, back from the years of uncertainty.
But in the midst of this growing new self-confidence, which most of the people thought was just fine, another voice was heard. Another, dissenting, penetrating voice, who began to urge the people to think more deeply, to discern more carefully, to go beyond his new self-assurance. This voice …I'm sure he saw himself as a voice crying in the wilderness … this voice cried out for a new sense of justice, a commitment to the care of the needy, a determination to break the bonds of the oppressed. This voice, this prophetic voice, even spoke to the people about their faith and their religious concern, and urged them to move on from shallow faith to deeper faith, urged them to forge ahead from “me and my God" religion to a religion of concern and of justice.
The nation of which I speak … or at least one of the nations … is Judah after her exile; in the sixth century before Christ she had finally been freed from the dominance of Babylon. Through the intervention of Cyrus, King of Persia, Judah had finally been allowed to return and to rebuild her homeland. Deserted streets were once again crowded with people; broken walls were being repaired; priests and prophets alike urged the reconstruction of the Temple; and, to a degree, all seemed well. Religious participation was up, the psalms were being sung vigorously, the law was being rediscovered. All seemed well, spiritually, materially.
But the voice of the lonely prophet, whose name we really do not know. His prophecies are bound with the Book of Isaiah, and sometimes he is called Trito-Isaiah, the third Isaiah. We do not know his name, but we can call him the prophet of the return; we do not know his name, but his voice speaks with power and with clarity to us: Isaiah 58:5-11
A great people, humiliated by something they had never supposed could happen, because they were the Lord's own. But defeated and desperate though they had been, now at last they were on the way back. Now they had a measure of self-confidence, and their people were even coming back to the house of the Lord and doing all kinds of spiritual things. Where does this man, the prophet of the return, get off questioning all that? How dare he suggest that the fasts and the Sabbaths and the great and eloquent prayers of the faithful are not enough?
Another great people have been humiliated by something we had supposed could not happen. We too thought of ourselves as the Lord's own. Born in a burst of hope; nurtured with the wide open prairies and the rich forests at our fingertips; brought to maturity in the 19th century with its doctrine of manifest destiny, which held that the United States was God's instrument to civilize and Christianize the world, we Americans too thought of ourselves as well nigh indestructible. Like young people everywhere, who never give a moment's thought to the notion that they will someday die, we Americans marched into the 20th century full of confidence, full of boosterism, like a young giant flexing muscles for all the world to see. The First World War made us an international power. The Second World War sealed our dominance on the global scene. And the prosperity of the fifties lifted our confidence to unparalleled heights. We Yankees could do anything; we had that invaluable something called know-how, we had grit, we had everything. And then it happened.
Vietnam. Vietnam: the name still sticks in the throat, doesn’t it? Because on the Plain of Jars and in the Mekong Delta and in places like Saigon and on trails like Route 1 something happened to the American mind, the American heart. We found out that Indochina could swallow us up and spit us out. We chose not to call it a military defeat, just a withdrawal. We even had leaders who told us we were leaving because we had accomplished what we set out to do. But we knew better; we knew better. And thousands of refugees, many of whom live within blocks of us right now, bear testimony: we were defeated.
My concern, of course, is not with military defeat; my concern is with the emotional, the spiritual. America began to take stock of it self as never before; and that is to the good. American began to doubt itself to a degree, and even that is to the good. But the trouble is that we got over it! We got over it in the wrong ways.
And like ancient Judah becoming too satisfied, too happy with herself; like ancient Judah trying too hard to forget the past; like ancient Judah, picking up on religious exercise as a way to escape, Americans in the post-Vietnam years have decided to turn inward. We believed, because we wanted to believe, America is back, so all is well. And we have forgotten something; we have forgotten something vital.
And so to us the prophet of the return speaks; as powerfully and with as much relevance as he addressed Judah six hundred years before Christ, he speaks to us today as well.
I
For one thing, the prophet of the return would call us back from preoccupation with ourselves, and especially from preoccupation with self-serving, inward -looking religion. This great voice from Judah would want to say to us, Americans, American Christians, you are so interested in being religious. And that's fine, as far as it goes, but is this really what God wants? Have you properly and fully understood God's will? Why is the bottom line for you always "me and my God?" Listen to the prophet:
"Is the fast that I choose a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?"
The prophet is telling us that our God is not all that interested in folks whose spiritual life is summarized in what they have given up -- their fasting, their self-denial. Our God is not all that interested in self-preoccupied religion. Is this what is acceptable to the Lord: fasting, self- examination, navel-gazing? No, it is not.
Now this comes as a bit of a surprise to us, you know. Most of us are conditioned to think that what our God wants is me, the inner me, my soul, my heart, my loyalty. And that is true. There is no substitute for that. But the prophet of the return has seen that if you go no further than that, you end up with a kind of private religion, a me-and-Jesus faith, in which we get all wrapped up in taking our own spiritual temperatures. We get all tied up in looking for our own soul’s salvation, and never get beyond it.
"Is this the fast I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? To bow down his head like a rush and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this acceptable to the Lord?"
Can you catch the flavor of what the prophet is saying? None of this is wrong; it's just not enough, that's all. To be preoccupied with your self and with your own welfare, your own happiness, may not be bad or wrong; but getting stuck there is wrong. Never going beyond that is wrong. Getting caught in the tentacles of the me-decade, getting captured by consumerism; being preoccupied and passionate in the pursuit of pleasures, however spiritual – isn't it revealing that the most popular forms of religious expression today are really forms of entertainment too? – being nourished on nothing but narcissistic navel-gazing. This will not do; not if we hear the prophet of the return.
II
What then would he have us do? What is this prophet's counsel? If getting caught in the self-righteousness of a morality that majors on what it doesn't do instead of what it does do is not the answer, then what is? Ah, here we come to the heart of the prophet’s message, and here we address the soul of America:
"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" This is the kind of religion, I'm looking for, says God's prophet; I want folks who go beyond fasting and self-denial for its own sake. I want folks who are not into telling me what they do not do. I want men and women who will give themselves to justice. I want men and women who will loose the bonds of wickedness, wherever it is found; who will undo the thongs of every yoke that bears down upon the neck of another; who will let the oppressed go free and break every yoke, break every bondage. This is what God wants from us who live in a day in which we would try to forget our past by concentrating on giving ourselves a high old time. This is what our God wants: a commitment to justice, breaking bondages.
A few years ago several of us were planning a worship service at Howard University. It was to be a service celebrating the mighty acts of God as He works toward breaking these bonds of oppression. And as we all talked through language about oppression and slavery and bondage; as we walked through the marvelous Biblical material of the Book of Exodus, some of the students – now, Howard students, mind you, black students, some of those whose minds are a terrible thing to waste – they started asking, "Hey, why all this talk about oppression? Why all this stuff about freedom. I have freedom. I've never experienced oppression or slavery or bondage. Where does all this come from?"
And I thought, Great God, how we do try to escape the past! How we do try to forget our history, and the most dangerous, the most subtle way to do it is to forget about bondage and to give ourselves a spiritual high. Oh, but I tell you, it’ll be all right to sing, "I come to the garden alone" if at the same time you can sing, "Where cross the crowded ways of life." It’ll be appropriate to sing as loud as you want, "Oh, how I love Jesus, because he first loved me, me, me," if you can follow that up with a resounding, "Oh brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of God is there. To worship rightly is to love each other." Justice, justice, breaking bonds; that is the desire of our God.
Noble words, those, from the framers of the American constitution. Noble words expressing the hopes and dreams of a young nation; but words which went on to embody something of the spirit of the prophet as well: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice" - there it is, the prophetic word – "in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…" I cannot help but believe that they understood, to be sure imperfectly, but nonetheless they saw it that you will never insure domestic tranquility unless you have established justice. You will not adequately provide for the common defense unless that defense is shot through and through with justice and compassion and mercy.
"Is not this the fast that I choose? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" We the people of the United States, in order to establish justice; how much more then, we the people of God, we the people of His church, must go beyond mere piety and must go on to justice, must go on to breaking bondages. We are to break every yoke.
Folks, there is no escaping this imperative. We the people of God's church have heard the prophet, and more; we have heard the Christ, who says that our God will judge us on the basis of what we have done for the poor and the hungry and the thirsty, not on the basis of our orthodoxy or our attendance at worship or how many verses we toted up in our daily Bible readings, but on what we have done for the least of these. "This is the fast I choose: to break every yoke, to break every bondage."
III
But let me conclude by showing you how gracious our God is; let me bring forward once more the voice of the prophet of Judah's return in order to assure you that there is a payoff for this; there is a reward. And our God gives us the desire of our hearts if we are but obedient. Listen:
"If you will do these things…" (That is break every bondage, share bread with the hungry, house the poor, cover the exposed) "then shall your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire with good things."
Oh my people, how easy it is to have self-centered religion, and plenty of it. How easy it is to seek God in worship and in prayer and in Bible study and still remain unsatisfied. If you have been frequenting this place, if you have been waiting for rousing music and spiritual high type prayers, if you have been daring your pastor to move you out of your seats and send you out of here six inches off the floor, then maybe it’s time you heard this prophet. "If you will take away the yokes, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then, then, only then shall your light rise. Then, only then, shall your gloom be bright as noonday.” Then, only then, will the Lord be real to give you, satisfy you with good things."
Those who framed the constitution did better than they knew; they compromised, sad to say, with great injustice. They dealt the injustice of slavery only half a blow and did not remove it: Thomas Jefferson, commenting on it all, said, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." But because their heart's intent was to establish justice, they built enough into that remarkable document so that when the justice of God came full measure, as always, always it will, then President Lincoln could see that the coming of justice, the breaking of bonds, was more than politics, more than military good fortune. It was, for him, the triumph of a just God. God is to be found wherever justice is done and bondages are broken.
Do not, then, today, seek God by going farther into yourself; find him by going outside yourself. Do not seek God by sitting in church Sunday after Sunday, waiting for the lightning to strike. Seek him and find him by gazing into the faces of the needy, the poor, the downcast, the oppressed, and find Him there.
God in a prisoner at the jail? Why not; God in Christ spent days behind bars and at the flogging post.
God in a mental patient? Why not; God in Christ was thought be his own mother and brothers to have been deranged, beyond sanity.
God in a homeless man; why not? God in Christ reminded one who would follow him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head."
God in the oppressed of this world; why not? God in Christ applied to himself the words of this same prophet, the prophet of the return, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted."
We the people of the United States; we the people of God; we the people of Takoma Bark Baptist Church, in order to form a more prefect Union, establish justice, break the bonds of the oppressed, and then the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire with good things.
