This morning we are in Isaiah 58 and, like last week, it helps to have a little context.  In Isaiah 55 the Lord invites the people to come to him and be healed.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.”

“Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.”

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

Then in Chapter 57 he rebukes those who do wicked things.

“The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart;”

“Whom are you mocking? At whom do you sneer and stick out your tongue? Are you not a brood of rebels, the offspring of liars?”

“Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have been false to me, and have neither remembered me nor pondered this in your hearts? Is it not because I have been long silent that you do not fear me?

“I was enraged by his sinful greed; I punished him, and hid my face in anger, yet he kept on in his willful ways. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him.”

“There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.”

And then we come to our text this morning which we can divide roughly into three parts.

Part One: The hypocrisy of the people.

Part Two: What God defines as worship

Part Three: The Promise of Healing

Part One: The Hypocrisy of the People.

In Texas we have a phrase, “all hat and no cattle” or we might say “put up or shut up” or even “Your actions are so loud I cannot hear what you are saying.” All of it falls under the label of hypocrisy or as Isaiah puts it: “Day after day they seem eager to know my ways and seem eager for God to come near them.” Yet, it’s all talk.  They plan conferences, have discussions, read and write books on knowing the will of God, have study courses in growing closer to God, and countless other activities pretending to want to discover how to please God. But, it is not genuine. It is all “they seem to.”

It is all for show and none of it is real because their hearts are not in it. They are interested in quick and easy answers or shortcuts or a three step formula that will not cramp their lifestyle. They want things to be user friendly, painless, entertaining and, most of all, improve their life without any hardship or effort. They want the show of sincerity but not the discipline. They want the activity but not the obedience. They want the rewards but none of the inconvenience. They want Scripture to support what they already believe.

“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?”  

We can read their response in verse 3. “But Lord, why have we done all this and you have not noticed? Why have we fasted and you have not seen it?”  In other words, “When do we get what’s coming to us?”

Part Two: God’s Response

It is easy to quote verses like 2 Chronicles 7:14 – “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”  Many people apply that to our own country and believe that God will heal the land if we do those things.

My question is do we also believe God’s response to us is the same as it was to the people in Isaiah 58?  Is there more that is required of us than this? Does God have something more in mind that we overlook? After all, if we want to apply the words of God to Israel to our own country then we must be willing to apply the rest of it as well.  It is more than prayer and repentance. It is obedience to the other commands. It is the second part of the promise.

It is not just in this passage that God warns the people about their empty attempts at just enough holiness – even a national day of prayer.

It’s not as overpowering as his response to Job.  God does not say to them, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

However, he does say:

In Micah 7 God says, “The godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains. All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net. Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire – they all conspire together.

Nor is he quite as outraged as he is in Amos: “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

Yet, his response in both Isaiah, Micah and Amos is the same:

Amos 5:24 – “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.

Micah 6:8 – “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Isaiah: “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 proved the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

We can read in James: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a 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.”

We can read in 1 John 3 – “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”

Susan Sontag, a writer and photographer remarked:  ““Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do — but who is that ‘we’? — and nothing ‘they’ can do either — and who are ‘they’ — then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”

Yes, faith without works is dead but compassion without action becomes dead as well. Our hearts become hardened to the suffering right in front of us.

Yes, Paul does say, we can give all we possess to the poor  and surrender our bodies to the flames, but have not love, we gain nothing.  But that is not an escape clause, is it?  We are not to sit around waiting to have enough love so we don’t waste our efforts. Often love follows action. We may never be ready with pure motives but that was never meant as an excuse.  Love is not a feeling as the psychotherapist Rollo May said, “Love is an act of the will.”

Of course, we can say with the scribe who wanted to have an answer to his question about who deserved his help, “Who is my neighbor?” Our question is often, “Who are the poor who deserve my assistance?” We don’t want to help those who will only waste it or have not earned it.  It’s an old question and not one with an easy answer.  That is why we have different answers. Some of us want to have solid evidence that offering aid will actually help or have an impact. That’s fine. Some of us are intuitive and act on hunches and nudges. That’s good. Some of us think about the larger issue of poverty and how to address it while some of us are more aligned with individuals we see who are suffering. For some, it may be how to relieve generic oppression and for others it may be helping a single battered wife or mistreated child. For some, it may be addressing criminal justice reform and for others it will be far more personal.

I had time this week with one of the brightest young people I have met in years. Her question was how to work in a very lucrative business and save up enough money to be able to make a difference.  As well, she was frustrated by the scope of the problems she wanted to solve and was perplexed by the complexity of every issue she wanted to do something about.  She is a global thinker but I shared with her the words of Edmund Burke, “No one makes a greater mistake than the one who does nothing because they can only do a little.”  My experience is those who are faithful in little will be faithful in much.  That is not just about money but responsibility, perspective, influence, and wisdom.  Start small but start. Don’t wait for the big solutions.

Things are different now than so many years ago. Israel was made up of families and tribes. People lived close to each other and were often clustered where the poor and the rich were not separated. Yes, there was also, like today, disparity and injustice but it was almost impossible to make it invisible or to avoid it. It was always present.  So, I don’t believe Isaiah is talking about global hunger, oppression and injustice. He is addressing those who are part of a community. They could not get away from those problems like we can today by simply moving away from them.

As well, there were no institutions or non-profit organizations or safety nets to catch people when they fell into poverty.  Relatives and extended family were responsible for them. At the most, it would be members of the tribe who were charged with making sure people did not fall between the cracks. Even in the early church there were those who needed to be cared for and everyone was held responsible.  We have organizations that do that for us and we just send them money or volunteer to supplement the work of the professionals.  That’s good. It’s efficient. But it separates us from them unless we make great efforts to not grow further and further away from them.  Everything in our world encourages that.

Years ago I read a book that described the stages of how we have addressed the poor.

In the earliest church it was common to be poor and it was those with money who were the exception.

Then, as the church became larger and included more wealthy people it became the practice to glorify the poor as representatives of Christ. They were not to be pitied but in a way to be envied and idealized.

Later, the poor were cared for and included in the community but not excluded. There was no sense of separation. They were not idealized but accepted.

Then, around the 18th century the notion grew that there were deserving and undeserving poor and the challenge was to distinguish between them. How could we know for sure?

That grew into the practice of excluding the poor and isolating them from the rest of society. There were permanently poor and the transient poor and the general attitude was one of fear and the need to protect oneself from them. They were a threat.

Finally, in our time we have taken on the task of eliminating poverty. Poverty is a problem to be solved, a war to be waged, and we have made it into a series of great projects and systems that will fix it. Of course, when we cannot fix something we tend to blame the failure on those who will not be fixed or we move on to other wars to fight.

I believe Isaiah and all of Scripture is written from the perspective of actually knowing each other and bearing each other’s burdens. We are not to be idealized or problems to be fixed. While we may have the advantage of hundreds of thousands of organizations created to address the poor there will never be a substitute for our having compassion and care for those who are oppressed, hungry, in chains and suffering abuse.

After all, Jesus did not say, blessed are you when you count on organizations to take care of the poor.  No, he said, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by 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 came to visit me.’

And what is extraordinary about that? They did not even realize they had done it. They did not set off on grand missions to eradicate hunger, disease, prison reform or homelessness. They simply lived their lives in such a way that when the opportunity presented itself they acted on their faith without show or premeditation. They simply walked with Jesus in such a way that did it naturally.

Finally, Part Three: The Healing of the Land

Not by noisy activity or empty practices or legislation but by becoming so aligned with the Spirit of God that healing comes to the land and the faithful become known as the people who repair broken walls and the people who restore the places where people dwell.  Was there ever a time of such great opportunity as now to be those people?

May it be said of us that we did not make a show of our obedience or fight for power but with no recognition at all we simply became the people who repaired what had been broken and restored what had been abandoned.