SERVING A BROKEN WORLD
TEXT: Isaiah 58: 5-10
Sunday, November 3, 2002
Let me begin with a story, and as I read it, ask yourself, “Who are you? Who are you in this story?”
There were a bunch of men gathered at the YMCA talking about athletes, salaries, families, local gossip and so on. At one point, one of the men said, “When it comes right down to it, we are all basically selfish. We take care of Number One and the heck with everyone else.” Another man quietly responded, “I don’t agree with you that we are all that way, and I’ll tell you why. I stopped recently to get my paper at a convenience store like I do every day. I’ve known the man who sold me that paper for years, but one day he had tears in his eyes and I asked him why. The store owner said, “Do you see that bus bench over there? There’s a woman who comes every day around this time. She sits there for about an hour knitting and waiting. Buses come and go, but she never gets on and no one ever comes off for her to meet. The other day I took her a cup of coffee and sat with her for awhile. Her only son lives a long way away. She last saw him about two years ago when he boarded one of the buses right there. He is married now and she has never met her daughter-in-law or seen their new child. She told me, ‘It helps to come here and wait. I pray for them as I knit little things for the baby, and I imagine them in their little tiny apartment, saving money to come home. I can’t wait to see them.”
The man at the YMCA said, “The store owner took a deep breath and told me that he had just looked out the window and there were the woman’s son and his family getting off the bus. When they fell into her arms, the look on her face was the nearest thing to pure joy he had ever seen. ‘I’ll never forget the look on her face as long as I live,’ said the store owner. The next day when I returned to the store my friend was behind the counter and before he could say anything, I asked him, ‘You sent her son the money for the bus ticket, didn’t you?’ The store owner looked back at me with eyes full of love and a smile and replied, ‘Yes, I sent him the money.’ The man at the Y told his friends, ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face.”
In that story, who are you? Which one represents your life? Are you like the men at the YMCA who categorize people as largely selfish, and they included themselves in that description–people who simply live for the day and try to take care of their own business and live on a subsistence level. If so, I characterize that person as a cartoon with no color. It’s life, and we are getting the basics down, but there’s not a whole lot of liveliness to the person.
Or are you the man in the story who has experienced the joy of the store owner who was moved and touched by a very heartwarming story, but notice that the story is not his own. He is simply passing on a story that he has heard. He is not the person in the story itself, however. That’s like a cartoon which is done in color and has life and passion in it, but the reality is that the person himself has made no difference in these people’s lives.
Or are you the store owner. Notice the difference in the experience of life. The man telling the story was warmed by it, but the man who made a difference in this woman’s life and joy he experienced is like a cartoon which comes alive and makes a difference. Is that you?
Who do you want to be? Do you want to live and experience life as more than a two-dimensional character on a page without color? Do you want to experience the life and vitality of God? Do you want to be the cartoon that has color in it? Or do you want to be like the man who experienced the joy and color of God in his life and who then brought it into other people’s lives and made a difference. Is that who you want to be? Do you want to experience hope, meaning and purpose in your life–the purpose that comes from touching other people’s lives? Then I invite you to come off the couch and stop watching life pass you like you watch it on a TV set. Involve yourself in the lives of others and make a dif-ference.
One of our great modern-day tragedies is success which isolates us from people. It has isolated us from discovering and experiencing meaning and significance in our lives. Many people cannot answer the question, “What difference have you made in another person’s life?” Many people trying to eulogize a friend can’t think of anything to say that is lasting and meaningful beyond “He was a nice guy” or “She was a nice woman.” Is that what we want?
On Election Day, one of the great mantras or statements that you hear is “I want my vote to count.” Even more so, I hope this morning that you might say to yourself by the time this is over, “I want my life to count.” Your life is more than a vote. You want your life to count. May we catch God’s vision expressed to us in Isaiah 58:5-10. If you read the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, God is basically communicating a word of judgment because Israel had lost their passion for God. As a result, they made no difference in the lives of those who surrounded them. They had lost the saltiness in their lives, and God confronts them. The last 27 chapters, 40-66, God then offers a message of hope to them: “Here’s what I am going to accomplish through the Messiah.” Chapter 58 expresses God’s sincere hope and vision for his people:
TEXT
God’s hope and desire for us, God’s vision for his people, has always been that we serve a broken world. In this passage, God expresses two things that are needed in order to serve a broken world. The first is a deep spiritual root. However, on first impression it seems that God in this passage is ridiculing fasting. If you read the historical books of the Bible, you will note that God established these times of fasting and feasting in people’s lives and they carried them out. Even to this day, you will find that all these feasts and fasts in the Jewish calendar are important in people’s lives. In fact, in the New Testament Jesus participated in lots of feasts, especially in the Gospel of John where Jesus experiences three different Passovers. At one point, Jesus was asked why his people didn’t fast. The Pharisees and their people fasted. You can see that fasting was an important spiritual practice in their day. In Matthew 4, Jesus himself fasted for 40 days in the desert.
The problem was that the Jewish people lost the heart and soul and depth and meaning for fasting. It became only ritual and going through the motions. That’s why in this passage God almost mocks them by asking, “Is this the kind of fast I’ve chosen, one day to humble yourself, one day to bow your head, to lie in sackcloth?” Is it just the activity, just the function, just the ritual, just the ceremony? Then you’ve forgotten what it’s all about.
We have done the same. When is the last time you heard a sermon on fasting? Protestants in general do not fast. If we hear about fasting, it is usually in the context of the Roman Catholic Church. A lot of them fast. My wife worked with people who were Roman Catholic and we loved them. There are a lot of genuine, heart-felt Catholics out there who follow the Lord. However, she also noticed that there were a lot of Catholics who never darken the door of their church until Ash Wednesday or one of the great fasts. Then they rush to the church to get the ashes on their foreheads, and then they leave. They say that during Lent they will give up chocolate, but this makes no difference in their lives. This is what Israel has done. They were simply reducing what was a real spiritual activity which could bring the power of God into their lives to simply an act. They lost the heart and purpose of fasting.
Fasting is a practical thing. It frees us up by not preparing food so that we can take that time and spend it with God. As the Jewish people spent time with God, they developed a closer relationship and a closer walk. God’s fire and spirit and presence and word would then speak to their hearts and minds and touch their lives and empower them for greater obedience. In this way their lives could be conformed into the image of his son.
Fasting is a symbolic act. Why did God choose food? Because it is a symbolic way of saying that there are more important things than the tangible, than our possessions, than food, than this here-and-now life that we experience. There is one thing more important, and that’s God. We need God more than the physical things we tend to focus on. In Matthew 4:4, Satan told Jesus to turn the rock into bread to satisfy his hunger. However, Jesus clearly communicated the priority in his life: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God.” Israel forgot that, and they put bread above God. They reduced fasting, which could have put them in touch with the living God, to ritual and ceremony, only going through the motions.
Does this describe our devotion? Does this describe why we attend church? Does this describe how we worship? Are we simply here just for the bowing, just for the humbling, just to look as if we are faithful and religious and we are Christian people? Is it just to go through the ceremony? Then we are no different than that black-and-white cartoon, living a very sterile existence, living simply in the area of body and soul. We lack spirit, we lack passion, and we lack heart. We are simply surviving like Israel.
If this is you, I encourage you to come out of the gray and into the colors of God. One of our young people had a faith statement based upon the colors of the rainbow. I liked that as a way of describing what God does in a person’s life. When God comes into a person’s life and empowers their heart and soul, mind and spirit, it enlivens and animates them. It brings God’s colors into their life. Are you experiencing the full color of God? It is interesting that God is described as light. As we know, the full spectrum of light has every color that exists, coming together. God desires to bring that color and life into us. Are we plugged in, or are we simply going through the ritual, going through the emotions?
If there is any strength in White Clay, it’s this: This church has always been a part of the New Side. There was a great controversy in the church at one time involving the New Side and the Old Side. The Old Side was focusing on the ritual and the order of religious life. The New Side stated that it was not just about church and order. It was not just about the ceremony. It was heart and passion and soul, and it needs to begin there. This church went the way of the New Side. George Whitfield preached here, and his spirit still exists here, crying out to us that Christianity itself is a relationship. It begins with a heartfelt commitment to God.
Does this describe your life? Have you made a heartfelt commitment to God? If there is any message that White Clay speaks to our denomination, it is that church and religious life and Presbyterianism is not simply order and polity, but it begins with a passionate commitment to God. Too often churches have left this passion out and all that’s left was the cold, black embers of religion, ritual and social activity. As a result, some churches are no different from any other social agency.
Is the spirit of God in your life? Do you have passion? In order to serve a broken world, it begins there but it doesn’t end there. Once we have this vertical relationship with God, once we have God’s world animating our lives, it then spills out in the horizontal dimensions of our lives. It is interesting that the first four of the Ten Commandments all deal with loving God and having a passionate devotion to him. The last six commandments deal with our relationships with each other. They deal with loving people.
What does God want us to do? If we take this passion and relationship with God into real life, he says that fasting should motivate us and empower us to loose the chains of injustice, to set the oppressed free, to share our food with the hungry, to provide the poor wanderer with shelter, to clothe the naked, to not turn away from your own flesh and blood, to do away with the yoke of oppression and the pointing finger and malicious talk. It is interesting that in the midst of this great social context, God mentions, “As you feed the poor, also do away with the pointing finger and malicious talk.” What does that refer to? In general, it’s character assassination, but it is in the context of the poor. It means to also do away with the attitude that as we give and minister to those who are broken, we don’t judge them by saying “They really should get a job” or “The reason they’re having these problems is that they have to quit making babies.” We need to turn away from all those malicious things we say and the conclusions about people’s lives whom we don’t know.
What are you doing in your life to accomplish God’s purpose? How are you making a difference? It is very clear when you read Matthew 26: 34-36. “Then the king will say to those on his right ‘Come, you are blessed of my father. Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you visited me.” What are we doing to touch people’s lives?
God is telling us to find a need in someone’s life and meet it. Sometimes it’s easier to put things in simple language, and I’ll put this in very simple, child-like language:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty
Dumpty together again.
That’s the world. Genesis 3 is about the fact that we have all fallen off the wall. We all have a brokenness in our lives. People cannot bring the healing that only God can bring. If God has put your life back together, he then charges you to go out and find people who have fallen off the wall and to help put their lives back together again. Are you doing that?
Stephen McCovey, one of my favorite writers, says that if enough people got involved, we literally could solve all our social problems. It is not magic, it simply means getting involved. He advocates that families draft a mission statement which says this: We are not just about ourselves. We are about making a difference. Stephen McCovey does one act of service per week. How about you? Can you say that of your life? Would that be a mission statement that describes you? We are not about ourselves. We are about making a difference. Faith makes no difference unless it comes into the 3-D world we live in. Unless it does, it is like a movie on a TV screen. It’s great to watch and I laugh sometimes, but it makes no difference in my life. It has solved none of my problems.
One poet writes, “There are two kinds of people on earth today, just two kinds of people, no more to say. Not the good and the bad for tis well understood that the good are half bad and the bad are half good. No, the two types of people on earth I mean are the people who lift and the people who lean.” Who are you?
Many people ask this question and have no answer, “What is God’s purpose for my life? Why am I here?” The answer for you is that God wants you to touch broken people’s lives for him, to take this two-dimensional word which is simply black and white on a page and make it real in people’s lives.
Do something today to bring gladness to someone who’s pleasures are few. Do something to drive off sadness or cause someone’s dreams to come true. Find time for a neighborly greeting and find time to delight an old friend. Remember, the years are fleeting and life’s latest day will soon end.
Do something today that tomorrow will prove to be really worthwhile.
Help someone to conquer sorrow and greet the new dawn with a smile, for only in kindness and giving of friendship and service and cheer do we learn the pure joy of living, and find Heaven’s happiness here.
Let’s pray.
