Fasting and Faith that Matters to God
Isaiah 58:1-14:
"Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins. For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. ’Why have we fasted,’ they say, ’and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ "Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
"Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he
will say: Here am I. "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night
will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy
day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights
of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob." The mouth of the LORD has spoken.
This is a powerful passage in Scripture that somehow has not found its way into common use within the church. There are a number of startling images we see here in the Word of God. Reflecting on some of them might help us see why it is that God included this passage in His holy Word.
Clearly as we look at this passage, Isaiah is not speaking to those outside the faith, those outside
the church in our context. In a prophetic voice, speaking for God, he refers to his audience as ‘his
people’. And it’s clear that he’s not simply talking about those in the church who are not engaged in the church, those who are uninterested in seeking God.
How do we know this? The message is to God’s people who seek him. The seek him out, they look to him for real guidance, they are engaged with the Almighty, they for all appearances sure look like they want to know God.
“For day after day they seek me out”. says Isaiah: “They seem eager to know my ways, as if they
were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them”.
These are eager beavers in the church. They’re at all the prayer meetings for sure. They really want God, they want to know his will, they believe sincerely that they are living right before God, they make a big deal about not doing the wrong things. Probably have lists of things Christians aren’t suppose to do, and for the most part endeavor to be faithful to their lists.
These are the enthusiastic crowd at church. Sincere, hungry. They want what’s right and they covet the presence of God.
So what it the world could Isaiah possibly be going on about? Is this a passage where God has finally found the ideal church. I’m a pastor and I’ve gotta tell you that I’d love to have a church filled with people like this. They even fast. And yet...there’s a disconnect. There’s something strange going on. God is being sought with sincerity; God who is love is being loved by his people, but his people are acting oddly.
What are they doing that’s out of character? Well, they’re fasting and they’re exploiting their workers. They’re fasting, seeking God and wanting to be like God, and yet when the fasting is done they turn to their neighbour and bop ‘em in the chops. "Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. Isaiah 58:3b-4
They’re going to church, worshiping with hands lifted up to heaven on Sundays and starting again on Mondays they’re living a contradiction. They’re deeply concerned with themselves and not so concerned about others:
Serene Jones in her essay, “What’s Wrong with Us”, writes of a Christian business executive who in the morning lays off a thousand employees without a qualm to increase profits slightly, and then feels terribly guilty about getting a little drunk that same night. There’s a disconnect. Something’s strange in the state of Denmark.
So...in the end, getting back to our passage tonight, their fast, the devotion, their worship is unacceptable to God. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Isaiah 58:4
What is fasting? It’s one of the more extreme spiritual sports you know. Only for the truly hearty
and gutsy. We take a day or more to humble ourselves before God. We deny ourselves. We don’t eat, we avoid luxury. We turn off the t.v.
We bow before the Almighty in humble reverence, we take deep stock of our spiritual condition and call out to God to purify us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and restore us to right relationship with him, to equip us for the next phase of our journey that we might more thoroughly love him. Sing: “See thee more clearly, love thee more dearly”.
And when we’re done, if we’ve stayed with the program, we do feel prepared for the next leg of the great adventure called the Christian life. That’s a fairly good idea of what fasting is all about, right? Surely God would affirm that. What more could He want? He’d be pleased as punch with us, right? Absolutely... absolutely not.
It’s not that this is a wrong definition of fasting. It’s a partial definition. It’s like looking at the
pencil drawing and thinking that’s the final product, but the colour and hues have yet to be shaded in to give the work of art it’s character. It’s like hearing someone humming “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, and thinking that this is the whole kitten caboodle, when there’s so much more to the symphony.
Isa 58:6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie
the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Isa 58:7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Ohhh! Well, that kind of bursts my bubble. It took me forever to get my head around the idea of fasting. I thought it was about me and Jesus. You know, “Just a Closer Walk”, "Arms of Love”.
But my fasting has to do...with you. With your pain, with the injustice that you are suffering, with the yoke that oppresses...you. My fasting is about my community, my neighbours, my city, my world. My fasting has to do with sharing my life, sharing my food with you when you are hungry, with the broken young teenager on the street who is running from a dad that has repeatedly raped her and a mom that has turned a blind eye in fear.
My fasting has to do with sheltering you from the cold when you are homeless, should you ever be homeless; with the ones out there on our doorsteps who find themselves homeless and fearful and giving up hope that anyone in this whole huge world gives a hoot whether or not they live or die.
My fasting, my devotion to God, my worship is suppose to include clothing the naked, caring for the needs of the poor and oppressed. Isaiah uses an interesting term here. He says that fasting is not turning away from your own flesh and blood”.
My family is ‘part’ of my flesh and blood, but only the closest and dearest to me. Look to the person one your left, on your right. We all share the same humanity, the same natures. The whole point of the story of the good Samaritan is that we are neighbours, all of us and are called to care for one another.
One of the points of the Cain and Able narrative in Genesis is that we are to watch over and care for others. We are our brothers keeper. We are our sister keeper.. Our fellowship is with the human race
We are Brenda’s keeper. Brenda was a youth who lived on the street and frequented Evergreen a number of years ago. Brenda was lured in to the Don Valley and gang raped by a group of Satanists who afterward sliced her up so badly she needed extensive surgery to reassemble what was left of her abdomen region.
Brenda was visited in the hospital by mission staff. Soon afterward Brenda became a Christian, was baptized on a church retreat up north and actually matured in her faith quite quickly. She was a beautiful, gentle person who shared her faith on the streets with street youth, bikers, prostitutes and addicts.
She was accepted by them because she accepted them for who they were. At the attack I mentioned Brenda contracted the AIDS virus. A few years later, miraculously, Brenda had a baby who was born free of the AIDS virus. Brenda and her husband Arthur died of AIDS 8 years ago this June 7. Brenda was 27. We are neighbours, keepers, sharing the same flesh and blood as people like Brenda.
We are Lambert’s keeper. People often wonder why people end up on the streets. Where do derelicts come from? Why do people sleep on heating grates on University Avenue, at City Hall. Lambert was a big First Nations man who had a reputation for his strength and his willingness to take risks. Lambert worked high steel - he was on construction crews who built some of those towering office buildings downtown. Lambert had a family. A beautiful wife and a young child.
Every day Lambert would leave home early to go to work and return home in the early evening. He made a very good living doing what he did. One day, Lambert’s house caught fire and burned to the ground. His wife and child perished in the fire. Lambert was devastated.
Over time he began to heal up and was able to return to working high steel. Five years later Lambert met a new woman. They got married. He was contented again. His life had been restored. He was so thankful to the living God. And then, three years later, wife died of a heart attack. Love found and lost and found and lost again was too much for this believer.
Lambert was destroyed. He had nothing. He hit the bottle. Hard. He would often come into Evergreen in the early days when I first started there. He was normally quite drunk, but always amazingly gentle. He believed in God. Through all that had happened to him, He still believed in and prayed to
Jesus.
I recall seeing Lambert speaking with Rick Tobias, our Executive Director on the sidewalk outside Evergreen. At least once, Lambert pulled Rick down to the sidewalk and prayed with him. Lambert disappeared at one point about 12 years ago. Lambert was in very poor health and elderly, so our best guess is that he showed up at the morgue one day, one faceless John Doe
among hundreds each year who die.
We are Lambert’s brother
Or Robert, an extremely kind and gentle native youth with a great sense of humour and a terrible past. Rob had a terrible drinking problem. He was beaten at least twice by police down at Cherry Beach. The last time he was beaten his jaw was destroyed. I last saw him all wired up, unable to speak, bruised from head to toe. Robert went to Montreal where he encountered a group of skin heads who decided to pour gasoline on him and set him on fire, just for fun.
Robert was my brother, my neighbour. Robert was a poor wanderer; he was hungry, naked. He needed a community to love him. While he lived, Evergreen was that community.
There are many more stories that have happier endings. Candy was a youth at Evergreen for years. She now lives nearby and works in the reception in her apartment. Just the other day she said off the cuff that Evergreen saved her life. That were it not for Evergreen she would be wasting away on the streets as a crack prostitute.
Or Jeremy who has moved on and taken his considerable piano-playing abilities to bless others and who is now working and making a great living.
Or Peter who I fist met at Evergreen 15 years ago and who now lives and works at the mission. And attends church and who has, most importantly, found Christian community to support him and to make a contribution to.
So perhaps we have a limited understanding of fasting, a limited understanding of devotion to God. I am and you are very much created for relationship to God; but we are also created in relationship to one another, and God wants us, quite simply, to care.
To worship Him and love Him in a way that enlarges us toward others. To not turn away from people in need. To find a way to touch people’s lives, one person and one need at a time.
James 2:14-18 What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but
does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by
what I do.
We have questions about our purpose in this life. We have questions about human nature, about the nature of good and evil. We wonder how we can figure out God’s will for our lives. How can we make a difference? Surely it’s about more than plotting our futures and making sure that we will be as well of as possible.
We ask God to use us, to love people through us. Sometimes we wish this understanding would come to us in a flash. But oddly, God doesn’t appear to want us to figure these questions out in an ivory tower, theoretically or abstractly. Just as God didn’t remain distant from us when He could have but drew near to us in the incarnation, in the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, He wants us to be engaged with those around us.
Someone has said, “The point of life is to be the biggest blessing we can possibly be to others. The highest imitation of Christ is in contributing the fullest part of one’s life that one can for the betterment of humankind, one person at a time, one instant at a time, one opportunity at a time”.
There is a stunning, beautiful promise at the close of our passage today that reveals the answer to the question, “Why bother with any of this? Why not just stay cloistered within my own self-made world?”
When we do get involved with others, when we do care for needs of the sea of humanity all around us, one person, one individual need at a time, God says:
Isa 58:8-12 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called
Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Wow!!! What a proclamation of victory. What a promise of joy. This is a call to joy, really, when you think about it. This is a call to fulness of life. Life lived in Jesus in a way that is connected. My Sunday worship experience unites with the rest of my weak and ...
Do you start to see how God’s Word breathes life into our isolation, how fellowship with God involves both praying and praising Him and actively caring for the things He cares about. And it is so clear in Scripture that God cares for people. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than as we listen to the Words of Jesus Himself.
“Luke 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, Luke 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
Jesus came to preach good news to the poor. He came to free prisoners and to bring healing to a broken world. God loves people, period, End of story. And he invites us to love people with His love. To visit the sick, to clothe the naked, to feed the poor, to care for our own flesh and blood -the human family.
God’s Word is a two-edged sword. It protects and it cuts, it reveals us and it shields us. If you are
here tonight and you are a follower of Jesus Christ, I encourage you to seriously consider the words of Scripture, and let yourself be challenged, let yourself be provoked even by the Word of
God.
And then your light, my light, our light as the church of Jesus Christ around the world, will shine for God in our communities, in our churches, in our very lives.
Amen.
