Isaiah 58.1-12
- Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. - Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practised righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgements,
they delight to draw near to God. - ‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
and oppress all your workers. - Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high. - Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord? - 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? - Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. - Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, - if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. - The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. - Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
Matthew 6.1-6,16-21
Jesus said, ’Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Sermon
I wonder what the prophet Isaiah would make of the way we observe our Lenten fast these days. On one hand, I’m sure he’d be very pleased that giving up for Lent is still so popular. But it’s not really very distinguishable from ‘Dry January’ or “Veganuary” – going vegan for a month. And I must admit to treating it that way, a bit, myself. I’m desperately hoping that my Lenten fast will finally help me to lose the Christmas bulge, which has been more stubborn than ever this year. But what kind of health am I really looking for here? Is six weeks of giving up the rich titbits of Western consumerism really going to help? And is that what Lent is about? “Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?”
For the Prophet Isaiah, the purpose of fasting was very clear. It was about justice.
- “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?”
He was speaking about the motive for fasting in his own day. The obsession of Israel at that time was to see the end of their exile, the rebuilding of ruined Jerusalem, and their restoration as the kingdom of God. They wanted to see the foreign yoke removed from their shoulders and God to return to his Temple. And they fasted in order to have that prayer heard by God.
And if that seems a tad more godly than me wanting to lose my Christmas bulge, it is still pretty self-centred. It was about getting their desires heard, their welfare sorted, without a care for anyone else. Andy they were cross that their attempts to manipulate God weren’t working. “Why do we bother fasting when you do not see? Why do we bother humbling ourselves if you don’t notice us?” And it was this self-centred approach that Isaiah was addressing so passionately.
The kingdom of God could only be restored when God’s will is done, when God is honoured as king. No point fasting just so God will take notice of you; no point pretending you’re the one with no resources, just so God will take pity on you. It’s not you who deserves the pity. It’s the people who are genuinely hungry, who really have no resources, who deserve the pity; and we are the ones with resources to help them. And pretending otherwise is not going to impress God!
It’s so easy, particularly in our Western world, where self is king, where my right to choose is the unchallengeable ethic, to turn fasting into another thing we do for ourselves; to make us healthier, more spiritual, more self-controlled. But that is not the fast God chooses.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Now, even Jesus’ teaching, at first sight, can appear to be about us, rather than the other. This could just look like an exercise in amassing treasure for ourselves. “Don’t waste your treasure on getting glory here, store it up for later. Don’t bloat your heart on the vain things of this world, but feed your heart by self-discipline.” It is so easy to paraphrase his words in that sort of way, but that twists his meaning out of all recognition.
Jesus here is joining forces with Isaiah. “Don’t fast for your own benefit, rather fast in order to turn back to God”, would perhaps be a better paraphrase. Those who fast to negotiate with God, or to improve their waistline, or even to salve their conscience about the amount of meat they consume have their reward already (and pretty flimsy it is too). The irony about fasting for those reasons is that we can end up being all the more addicted to the thing we renounce, consuming it all the more greedily when our short endurance test is over. All that does is to set our hearts even more firmly on these things. If we are doing it for our health, all it really does is to compound the reasons for our sickness in the first place.
God encourages us is to fast in such a way that changes the way we live, not just individually, but as a society. For Isaiah, it was clear that our “healing springs up quickly” only when we act to heal the sickness of our society, for it is in their health that our health lies. Ultimately, the Bible tells us, true healing is only possible when all things are re-ordered under God’s will, when God heals every ill and restores the whole of creation. We can treat symptoms with drugs, or do our best with health regimes, but there is a sense in which that is only holding the inevitable at bay. Healing, in its deepest sense is only possible when we are restored to God, the source of our life and health, when he is king over all creation once more. That is what we mean by the term ‘kingdom of God’. And for Jesus that only happens when we change the focus of our hearts, treasuring the things of God instead of the things of this world.
St Lawrence, the great deacon of the early Church in Rome, understood this perfectly when the Roman authorities demanded that he hand over to them the treasure of the Church. He rounded up all the poor and destitute which the Church had in its care and brought them to the Prefect. “Here are the treasures of the Church” he said.
Where is God’s treasure? Where is God’s heart? With the hungry, the homeless, the naked, with those we cannot recognise as our own kin, but who bear his image and who are our brothers and sisters. And I think we can be creative with the list, adding, perhaps, the lonely, the housebound, the grief stricken and more. The true nature of fasting is to turn our hearts away from ourselves and to turn them so completely towards those whom God treasurers that we also treasure them, that we recognise our common plight with them, that we recognise that in their wellbeing lies our wellbeing, that we recognise the divine image within them and that we share God’s kingdom with them. “For where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.”
Now, our Lenten disciplines, properly motivated, can all re-orientate our hearts in this way and can bring God’s healing and renewal, not just to us, but to our society. Our fasting can become the rigorous stripping away of materialism, until we see how fake is the glory promised by the things of this world and vow to treasure it no more; Our Bible study can challenge our hearts deeply to live no longer by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from God; And our alms-giving can be challenging enough to change the way we live and make a real difference for God’s kingdom; our Lenten disciplines can become a fast acceptable to God, and ultimately a journey, not of dismal disfiguring, but of wholeness and wellbeing; not of loss or impoverishment, but of riches and treasure.
It is in the very act of turning our hearts towards the true treasures of the kingdom that the kingdom of God becomes a reality in our midst, that treasure in heaven becomes a reality. Treasure in heaven is not a long-term investment redeemable only in the next world. It is a treasure we can find immediately when God’s kingdom comes, by doing his will on earth as it is in heaven.
It is in recognising the poor and needy as part of us and addressing their need that we turn the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of our God. It is in healing the ills of our society that our healing springs up. It is in committing ourselves afresh to love, that God returns to his Temple, for his true Temple is our own hearts. And it is in doing the will of God that the ruins of Jerusalem are rebuilt:
- “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. - Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, - if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. - The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. - Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
Amen.
Preached: Thrimby, 6 March 2019