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.
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