Shattered Justice ~ Isaiah 58:5-12

 

 

Last week we learned that we are giant sequoia trees – that God has made us serotinous. We learned that suffering and shattering were often the best conditions for the regenerative process of transformation and the best evidence for love. And this week – (shatter something) - we learn that sometimes love for God and for others means that we shatter stuff, that we break things – like oppression, alienation, shame, violence, selfishness, hatred, yokes, the Scripture calls them. Yes, we sing, “They will know we are Christians by our love” – by what we are willing to suffer and be shattered for. But they also will know we are Christians by what we are willing shatter, what we are willing to dismantle so that others are no longer hurt. Somethings, it turns out, are made to be broken.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

Vs. 5 Fasting is not to be only a thing about you. Fasting for personal reasons isn’t bad. Humility isn’t bad, personal repentance isn’t wrong. It’s simply not enough. A spirituality that only concerns yourself is not the spirituality of the One who says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

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?

Vs. 6 asks us the question, “Does your fasting shatter?” God says to shatter injustice four times less we miss the point. Four times! That’s the Scriptural equivalent of your mom calling you by using your first, middle and last name. Whatever it is, you better do it. Your fasting should end every form of oppressive enslavement, break every yoke. The term yoke is used figuratively for slavery and hardships. When God delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery, he said, “I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect” (Lev. 26:13). When God’s people were oppressed by Egypt it was called “a yoke of iron upon your neck” (Deut. 28:48). A yoke of affliction is mentioned in Lamentations 3:27 which speaks of physical and emotional pain. Isaiah states that for every person the Messiah will break “the yoke of his burden” (Is. 9:4, 10:27). Sometimes the term is used to describe the burden of a person’s sin (Lam. 1:14).All of these yokes are often the “isms” of our world – the spirits that haunt our lives which demand our loyalty and seek to create barriers between us and God, us and others, us and ourselves, and us and all of creation (like racism, sexism, classicism, nationalism, cynicism, individualism) – in the Jewish world these were the idols, false gods which seek to oppress us. They are the social, spiritual, political, forces of abstraction that seek to destroy our lives. Are we looking and listening for yokes? Are we placing them on others? Are we choosing to wear them ourselves?

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 them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Vs. 7 Does your fasting provide for people? Is it motivated by a sense of kinship? How will you know? You care about immediate and embodied needs. Cole Arthur Riley: “Do you want to talk about the love of God? Ask when I’ve last eaten.” Do you want to talk about righteousness? Ask where I live? Do you want to talk about my healing? Remember that my wound is also your wound. If you want to understand the good news, redemptive love of God then you must understand that all whom you meet are to be “your own flesh and blood.”

⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

Vss. 8-9a This verse can easily be missed over without noticing the subtle subversion. It doesn’t say what we would expect “they will be healed.” It says then you will be healed, experience light, discover righteousness that actually protects, and see and hear God well. This is the Biblical truth about kinship. We are bound together. I know that this is a big task to think this way. Start practicing with these people here. You will never be able to claim the kinship of strangers if you can’t claim kinship in this fellowship, with these people. Let’s be honest, we have plenty of strangers in our midst. You will never be able to bring justice to bear on people’s lives, if you can’t actually do so with those who sit beside you now.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ 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.
¹¹ 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.

Vss. 9b-11 Recapitulate the following truths about what fasting is and for whom (all of us). Note the addition of “the pointing finger and malicious talk.” That’s often where this goes wrong. We once again forget that it’s all of us or none of us. Friends, we will never be able to rightly speak of the answer if we actually never become the answer. We are fighting the pointing finger and malicious talk. And you can’t fight malicious talk with malicious talk. Malicious talk is another form of yoke making, oppression. The current means of slander for the sake of the good as the supposed force for change doesn’t work. It’s as silly as trying to get someone to see something by poking them in the eye. God doesn’t love us if we change. God loves us so that we can. That’s true of us as well. Love others so that they can. Speak to others in a way that allows them to change.

¹² 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.

Vs. 12 reminds us that our shattering work must never be our primary work. Our primary work is Tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”. We must “rebuild.” We must rebuild what sin – our sin – has shattered.

We must be about more than tearing down idols that glorify cynicism, tribalism, individualism, scarcity, and fear? What if we were committed to God’s vision for the world, and we trusted that our actions, no matter how local, were part of unseating these idols from Earth? And so we have to ask ourselves: “Who do we want to be?” “What kind of person do I want to be?” “Do we want to repair the world, or do we want to burn it down?” There is an art movement in the world right now which centers upon Tikkun olam and uses Legos (https://trendland.com/jan-vormann-lego-street-art/). Let’s bring a bit of joy, a bit of silliness to this task.

Do I want to be someone who returns ugliness for ugliness, violence for violence? Do I want to be someone who stereotypes and dehumanizes? Do I want to post Facebook memes I don’t fact check just because they reflect what I want to be true? Or do I want to be someone who rebuilds and restores through acts of love, in patience, in gentleness, in self-control? Do I want to be someone who acts justly even in an unjust situation? Friends, “What do we want to be called?” Restorers, Repairers? Then, grab a Lego and let’s get to work.

Shattered Treasure ~ 2 Cor. 4:7-12

 

Shattered. Does that word do something to you? What images come to mind? If that word doesn’t do anything to you I suspect this might (break the heart-shaped vase). When you hear that sound what happens? Where does your body go? Does it want to run? Does it want to fight? Does it touch a broken place? In our series for Lent we are going to reflect on images and sounds of what it means to live faithfully in a fragile and shattered world where we break, where things get broken, and where we are invited to do a little breaking. And right of the bat we learn,

1.    We are shattered. We are more than shattered.

We are jars of clay, Paul says, shatterable – all of us. There’s not a one of us that doesn’t hear Paul’s list and feel his words – afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down – carrying in our body death. And before we move on let that Lenten truth settle among us. We are the shattered. Look around and feel that reality for others. Consider what might be shattering them. Take a moment. But there’s also a darker reality. We are the shatterers. We rend one another apart. Most of the suffering that Paul acknowledges was because of people’s actions toward him, some even by believers. It turns out, we are fragile things that carry hammers. We are the shattered who shatter – others, ourselves, and all of creation.

But – we can be more than shattered. Transformation, Paul says, is available. Because if you don’t allow your pain to be transformed, you will transmit it to others. There is in our passage a “but not” – But not crushed, but not in despair, but not abandoned, but not destroyed. For we have within us, Paul writes, the life of God in Jesus. Friends, often what was intended to shatter can be restoring. Often what feels like destruction can carry healing not because suffering is good but because Jesus is good. It’s often not until we are shattered that we recognize and rely upon God’s power and presence. Friends, on either side of shattered, God is present. But it’s often only after that we have eyes to see it – to see God. There is a line from a Leonard Cohen song that has been haunting me over the last couple of weeks: “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” We are cracked, Paul agrees. And that light is Jesus, who works in us resurrection power. That light is God who can transform your pain and preserves who you are by being in your very center. That’s how the light gets out.

Friends, what if God made us to be giant sequoias? You are a giant sequoia. And giant sequoias are serotinuous, which means that fire is needed to release their seed. Sequoias release most of their seeds to coincide with fire, because the fire creates ideal conditions for regeneration success. So suffering and pain, despair and doubt, must never simply be relegated to our failure, our sin. No, they are ideal conditions. So, forget your perfect offering. In Jesus, suffering is fertile soil. How do I know? Easy – we’re sequoias and Jesus was shattered. Jesus, as a human being, was serotinuous too.

2.    Jesus was shattered

Jesus’ life and death unmasks one of the more terrible myths that has plagued humankind. The idea that if I do everything right, then I will never suffer. And if I suffer, I must have done something wrong. This myth claims that the existence of suffering is always, clearly, plainly, and undeniably, your fault. But how can that be if Jesus, the sinless one, was shattered?

When I was child I suffered from a fair amount of bullying – very short, a terrible speech impediment, a lover of music and church, did not make my grade school years a party. No, they often left me in playgrounds and gatherings alone (well, at least being alone was sort of a blessing. Better than being beaten up). And I vividly remember being a little boy in my room and praying: “Lord, let me be like Jesus so that everyone will like me. Let me be like Jesus so that everyone will want to be my friend.” No one had ever taken the time to actually explain to me that you can do nothing wrong and suffer. No one told me that I could talk to Jesus because he understood being shattered. No one ever explained to me that to love like Jesus means to live shattered. No one ever explained to me that suffering could actually bring me closer to Jesus and could allow his life to be at work in mine. No one ever told me that real love – God’s love – wasn’t successful love but a shattered love.

3.    Shattered is the place of authentic love.

The Apostle Paul is telling us that there is a straight line between love and suffering. We intuitively know this – that suffering is the only real evidence for love – not sex nor passion or googly eyes. Suffering is the real test, the real evidence of actual love. How do we know? What are you willing to do you for your children, your best friend, your career? Suffering reveals and prioritizes things. How do we know? The Christian icon for love is not a beautiful heart, or flowers and candy, or a God shaped stuffed teddy bear. The Christian icon for love is God offering God’s own self from a crucified position. So Paul’s argument for faith, his evidence for the gospel, is not in some general argument for success or amazing worship or even relevant wisdom. According to Paul the true test of Christianity, probably for any religious belief, is how it addresses the human condition of suffering. For Paul we don’t have to ignore it, or believe it to be good – again, only God is good. But in God’s economy nothing is wasted and God has gone to great lengths to twist the pain of our world into an incredible place to experience love and growth. God has taken up our suffering and transforms it by going through it. He has made us serotinuous and promises us that we can be transformed not destroyed by it. The true test of Christianity is that God promises that the shattered life of Jesus, even as we suffer, will give us life.

Welcome to Lent – dear friends. Welcome to the broken, breaking, shattering and shattered love of God. Welcome to a love that looks like this broken bread and poured wine.