Enter the Champion [Sermon from Palm Sunday]

You know, Lent has always been a kind of a downer. It’s sorta designed that way, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a period of repentance and mourning, not happy stuff. It starts out on Ash Wednesday, which is a whole service built around reminding us of the reality of death. Then we go through the entire month, giving something up or fasting or adding on more spiritual disciplines – if you’re observing Lent, it’s tough. Sundays are a relief, since technically Lent takes a break on Sunday and you can do whatever, but it’s still not a happy time. In fact, an ancient tradition holds that we’re supposed to “Bury the Alleluia” during Lent – we’re supposed to put away the word Alleluia (literally, singing praise to the Lord), and not speak it again until Easter. Some congregations even do this physically, making some object that represents the Alleluia and burying it in the ground until Easter. It’s not a celebratory time, Lent.

But then you get Palm Sunday, a party within the dark journey. In case you’re not familiar with Palm Sunday – which we celebrate today in the church calendar - let me give you the basic rundown: After Jesus is more or less finished with his teaching ministry, it’s almost time for the Festival of Passover. Jesus, with thousands of other devout Jewish people in that part of the world, makes the pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem for the festival. Outside the city, he has two of his followers borrow a donkey from in town, and he rides the donkey to the Temple. As he’s coming, crowds start gathering. They recognize this guy. They know who he is, what he’s done, and they have an idea of what he’s doing now. They get excited. They greeted him on the road, waving branches and shouting and singing: “Hosanna to the Son of David” (“Hosanna” literally means “Save us”, but it’s a much more joyful word than it sounds, and it almost became sort of a catchall praise-word)  - “Save us, Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” In Matthew’s version, Jesus then goes on to start a ruckus at the Temple with the moneychangers. In Luke’s version, Jesus goes from his donkey to a hilltop where he weeps over the city. In Mark’s version, he and the disciples go look at the Temple, but it’s late so they go back to the suburbs where their rooms are. Some accounts are more dramatic than others.

But it’s exciting, you know? The people are excited! These shouts of joy seem to come spontaneously, unprompted. They see Jesus, they remember him, and they’re excited for what he’s doing. They see God’s hand in all of this. In fact, when they see him, they remember all sorts of words from the prophets – like Zechariah, who talked about the King coming to the people riding humbly on a donkey, instead of a great warhorse like most kings do – and they think “Yes! I recognize this! This is what God does when God sends us a King!”

They’ve been wanting a King. Some have been wanting a Messiah, the holy king anointed by God. Some have wanted just, y’know, not the Roman Emperor, or King Herod who was a puppet of Rome and wasn’t very good to his people. The people wanted a new, better, leader. As I was studying for the sermon, I kept thinking of some lyrics from one of the great hymns of my generation:

  “Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?

  Where’s the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

  I need a hero! I’m holding out for a hero til the morning light.

  He’s gotta be sure, and he’s gotta be soon,

  And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight!”

Okay, that’s not from a hymn. If you are my age or older, you know that’s the 1981 Bonnie Tyler song, “Holding Out For a Hero”, best known as part of the soundtrack for Footloose.

[EDIT: I'm told by people much hipper than I that this song is now better known from its place in Shrek 2. If you say so, dear!]

But I’ll tell ya, it hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it? Our songs and our poetry, they have a way of doing that, of really landing right on these feelings.

In fact, our text for today has a little something in common with that. We’re going to be reading from Psalm #118 today – many of the Psalms are in fact meant to be poetry or music, many of them were originally songs, and that’s why many Jewish and Christian traditions still sing them today. Psalm 118 isn’t a song, though – it’s a dramatic performance. Psalm 118, the best scholars can figure, is what’s left of a religious-slash-political ceremony, involving the King (or a priest playing the part of “King”) coming into the city after a great battle. It's got more than one part, and it's meant to be performed responsively. Accounting for the limitations of this medium, however, you'll have to imagine the call-and-response. Or, y'know, grab a friend a perform the Psalm together!

This is the first piece of Psalm #118, verses 1-4, adapted from the Common English Bible. The leader's words are in plain text and the people's responses are in bold text.

1 Give thanks to the Lord for God is good,

 because God's faithful love lasts forever

2 Let Israel say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

3 Let the house of Aaron say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

4 Let those who honor the Lord say it:

"God's faithful love lasts forever!"

Amen! That was the simplest bit. We’ll come back to read a little more of Psalm 118 in a few minutes.

God’s faithful love lasts forever!  At that moment, at that time, when the great teacher Jesus is making his way into Jerusalem, the people know about God’s faithful love. At that moment, they understand that God is still with them, that they have not been forgotten. In one way or another, the crowds thought, their champion had come.

We know what it’s like to root for a champion. To put your trust and hope in somebody, to cast your support with somebody and push them towards their prize. You know this feeling if you’ve ever supported somebody in an election. If you’ve ever thrown your hat in behind a team or an athlete. 

Or a Lent Madness athlete. I know that some of you have been following the Lent Madness contest, the unique Anglican devotional that pits 32 saints against one another in online-voting-combat. Have any of you picked favorites and followed them? Well I’m happy to say that one of my favorites – one of the saints that I preached about a few weeks ago – has made it to the semifinal round, the Faithful Four: Hilda of Whitby will be squaring against Frances Perkins. Just to remind ourselves, Hilda of Whitby was a woman in the 600s from the British Isles who founded an abbey and a whole new rule for monastic living that upheld Celtic Christian practices instead of the more dominant Roman Catholic ones. Frances Perkins, her opponent, was the US Secretary of Labor under FDR, the first woman to be in the US Cabinet, and she was responsible for a lot of the social justice programs that keep poor Americans alive, like unemployment benefits, pension, child labor laws, minimum wage and overtime laws. That was her way of living out the call to serve humanity in love – she once said “I came to Washington to serve God, FDR, and millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.” 

That’s Monday’s matchup. Tuesday brings us the bizarre pairing of St Luke the Evangelist versus Oscar (o-SCAR) Romero. Luke, as you might know, is the traditional author of the Gospel of Luke, traditionally depicted as a physician and historian. Oscar Romero, on the other hand, was the Archbishop of San Salvador in the 1970s, who used his position to speak out against El Salvador’s government’s repression, its violation of people’s civil rights, its violence against its own citizens. Eventually he was assassinated by his government, while celebrating Mass, the day after he called for Christians in the Salvadoran military to stop participating in the violence and repression. He was shot as he lifted the cup to celebrate Communion. He’s considered a martyr.

[NOTE: This was preached Sunday March 24. Today, March 27, brings us the winners of those matchups, and today is the final showdown between Frances Perkins and Luke the Evangelist!]

Make no mistake, these people are heroes. They are champions. They changed the world. They showed us ways to love God and carry out God’s mission. They showed us new ways to love the world and the people in it – Frances Perkins and Oscar Romero, who worked to liberate people from the injustice and oppression in the world, to lift people out of poverty and into joy. They showed us new ways to understand our old stories – Hilda of Whitby, who make Christianity make sense to Celtic pagans, and who showed people God in a way that truly made sense to them, even if you and I would barely recognize it. They showed us how God was working in the world – Luke the Evangelist, who conducted countless interviews and collected countless stories of Jesus and his followers, so that the world would have the most complete picture of Christ possible.

Our champions show us the best of our past and the best hope for our future.  They give us confidence in our victory – at least, they give us confidence that we will not be defeated, that we will not be overtaken and destroyed. For the Jewish people two-thousand, 2,500 years ago? They had lots of great champions, from Samson (super-strength, long hair) to Elijah (prophet, power of God at his fingertips, so awesome that he didn’t even die but God whooshed him up to the sky in a chariot of fire), all the way back to Moses (who faced Egypt and her armies in God’s mission to free the Hebrews from slavery). But for these people, the #1 hero of their culture and their stories was King David. Well, any King, really, but for them, every King was a recasting of David, and David set the standard for every King. How many leaders – presidents, monarchs, emperors – get people so hyped-up for them that they’re the standard by which every other leader is judged for literally centuries?

David was a textbook champion – he was the runt of his family, but he was chosen by God’s messenger. When he was still a teenager or a young man he took out the opposing champion, Goliath, with his slingshot. As the leader of Israel, he won battle after battle, taking territory and strengthening the nation.

Heck, according to tradition, David’s the one who wrote the Psalms! Now, it’s almost certainly not true, but the Psalms do show us a lot of the people’s celebrations about the King, about his protection and wisdom, about his special connection to God (the real leader of the people), about his military victories.

When the people saw Jesus riding into town, it’s no wonder that they thought of the words from the Psalms. Here was Jesus, the humble yet wise and crafty teacher from Galilee, doing a Triumphal Entry! Riding into town like a King returning from battle, and here they come with the shouts of joy and praise. Here they come, waving the palm branches and the laurels, the symbols of victory.

Read along with me the second part of the text (though you don’t have a speaking part in this one). Psalm 118, verses 5-18, as the King tells the story of his battle and his deliverance to the excited, gathered crowds.

⁵ In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord.
    The Lord answered me with wide-open spaces.
⁶ The Lord is for me — I won’t be afraid.
    What can anyone do to me?
⁷ The Lord is for me—as my helper.
    I look in victory on those who hate me.
⁸ It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust any human.
⁹ It’s far better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust any human leader.
¹⁰ All the nations surrounded me,
    but I cut them off in the Lord’s name.
¹¹ Yes, they surrounded me on every single side,
    but I cut them off in the Lord’s name.
¹² They surrounded me like bees,
    but they were extinguished like burning thorns.
    I cut them off in the Lord’s name!
¹³ I was pushed so hard I nearly died,
    but the Lord helped me.
¹⁴ The Lord was my strength and protection;
   God was my saving help!

¹⁵ The sounds of joyful songs and deliverance
    are heard in the tents of the righteous:
    “The Lord’s strong hand is victorious!
¹⁶     The Lord’s strong hand is ready to strike!
        The Lord’s strong hand is victorious!”

¹⁷ I won’t die—no, I will live
    and declare what the Lord has done.
¹⁸ Yes, the Lord definitely disciplined me,
    but God didn’t hand me over to death.

This is what they expect of Jesus. They know that his battle isn’t fought yet, but it’s still what they expect – a show of might! A little propaganda, if you please! It’s the only way they can expect him to behave.

The big thing about champions is that they show us the way out of our despair. They answer the great question that is on our heart, show us the light at the end of whatever tunnel we’re crossing. And for the people of Judea in the first century, the question on their minds is, “How long do we have to suffer Rome? How long will the Emperor declare himself our leader, and how long do we have to pay him tribute, have to use money that says he’s a god, have to wait on pins and needles until he decides to crack down on our religion again and decide that we all have to worship him? It’s happened before; it’ll happen again. We need deliverance – who will bring it? Whom will God send?”

And when Jesus comes a-riding into town on that little donkey, they recognize it. They recognize him as the champion that God has sent to free them, to give them independence and rebuild the throne of David! Put yourself in their shoes – you can feel the excitement, can’t you?

  “Up where the mountains meet the heavens above;

    Out where the lightning splits the sea;

    I could swear that there’s someone somewhere watching me.

    Through the wind and the chill and the rain, and the storm, and the flood,

    I can feel his approach like a fire in my blood!

Okay, so that was Bonnie Tyler again, but you feel it, right? Aren’t you ready?

They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is going to defeat the emperor. They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is going to remove Israel out from under the thumb of Rome, and restore her glory. They don’t know how he’s going to do it, but Jesus is about to wreak vengeance upon those who have hurt God’s people, and strike down those who have surrounded them.

That’s his job. That’s what the King is supposed to do. That’s what the Champion is supposed to do – the Messiah, the anointed one, “he who comes in the name of the Lord” – that’s the whole idea!

And they’re getting ready. They’re rehearsing the processional already. Let’s hear the final part of the procession liturgy, so we know what they expect. As we read this together, imagine that you’re the crowd, shouting acclaim at your champion as he rides up to the gate of the city, the one who was once beaten down and who is now triumphant entering the holy place. Again, read the underlined parts of the text as we go through the rest of Psalm #118 together.

¹⁹ Open the gates of righteousness for me

    so I can come in and give thanks to the Lord!

          ²⁰ This is the Lord’s gate;
    those who are righteous enter through it.

          ²¹ I thank you because you answered me,
    because you were my saving help.

          ²² The stone rejected by the builders

    is now the main foundation stone!
²³ This has happened because of the Lord;
    it is astounding in our sight!
²⁴ This is the day the Lord acted;
    we will rejoice and celebrate in it!

          ²⁵ Lord, please save us!
    Lord, please let us succeed!

          ²⁶ Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;
    we bless all of you from the Lord’s house.

          
²⁷ The Lord is God!
   God has shined a light on us!
So lead the festival offering with ropes
    all the way to the horns of the altar.^[d]

           All/
²⁸ You are my God—I will give thanks to you!
    You are my God—I will lift you up high!
²⁹ Give thanks to the Lord because God is good,
    because God’s faithful love lasts forever.

-          Amen and amen! The champion is finally here, to lead us in celebration and free us from our enemies!

There is no doubt that those people needed saving from oppression. There is no doubt that people today, all over the world and in our own community, cry out for champions to save them from despair and pain and injustice. And indeed, we can and should lift up our human heroes who do that work, some inspired by God’s love and some inspired by simple human empathy.

But the big secret about Palm Sunday is that, in Jesus, God had bigger plans. Plans that nobody could have imagined. It’s right and true and valid that these people hail Jesus as the one who comes in the name of the Lord – because he is. It’s good that they were shouting praise to God for this one who would deliver them from their oppressor – because he was in fact about to do that.

But it wasn’t the Rome Question that Jesus was about to answer. It wasn’t the Emperor’s house that has was going to storm and plunder. There is one greater thumb upon them – upon all of us. There is one great question, one great problem, that is universal to all people in all times and places: Death. The end. Nonexistence – or, as some people of the day thought, a pale half-existence in a kind of underworld place where God was distinctly not there.

Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that this scruffy young rabbi riding a borrowed donkey into town would defeat death? How could it be? Listen, if through Jesus God is eliminating the power of death, that’s not just for these particular people at this particular time. It’s a game-changer. It changes the whole universe. In Christ, because of what God did through Jesus, the end is no longer the end for anybody. Death is but a hiccup in eternity, and life in God awaits us all. And that’s a greater victory than any saint, prophet, or any other human champion could ever do. That’s the kind of victory that only God can achieve.

Amen.

When to Stop Believin'

So, somebody on my Facebook shared this article recently:
http://tv.msn.com/mom-pop-culture/10-reasons-we-have-stopped-watching-glee/photo-gallery/feature/?photoidx=6

"10 Reason We've Stopped Watching Glee"

If you are or ever were a "Gleek", as they call 'em, you might enjoy reading that list. Or it might depress you a little. But even if you're not, the Glee phenomenon casts an interesting light on we who love(d) it.

I've always been a musical theatre nerd. I sing constantly, I acted in high school, I cry like a little girl pretty much every time I see a musical production. So when Glee came on the air, back in 2009, I was all kinds of excited.

And the show didn't disappoint. Between a clear love for classic rock (Journey, anyone?), a predilection for mashups (love!), and an unrelenting message about tolerance and be-yourselfiness, Glee was clearly the entertainment that the Chris Geigers of this world were seeking.

In case you weren't aware, the show became a cultural landmark. We were inundated with media, from iTunes Glee-album releases to a 3D feature-length concert in movie theatres. People were fanatical about this show - I among them.
People watched Glee religiously. It was a spiritual experience for people. It hit them deep in their core, the way that love and hope and joy can do when you wrap them all up together with music.

For many people, the story of coming to faith has a similar ring to it. People come to a world that they had never before imagined, with a new sense of joy, of belonging, of exuberance in all of Creation.
It happened to me. Even though I grew up a Christian, grew up very much "in the church", I still remember the awe that I felt when I truly began to discover my own faith, my own love for the God revealed in Jesus Christ. During seminary, when I rediscovered my love for the church, I could hear Journey playing in my head.

Don't stop believin'...
Hold on to that feelin', yeah...

Top of the world, man! In God, all things are possible. With God's people, gathered in holy spaces, all things are possible.

But the reality for many people, in many churches, is that the feelin' is harder and harder to hold on to. They may continue believin' in Christ, but they stop believin' in the church - for all sorts of reasons, good and bad - until one day we look around and the churches are empty. There's basically nobody left. Sure, you see the occasional concentration of folks in megachurches, but even a handful of 10,000-person services doesn't change the fact:

Church is dying.
Churches are dying.
Hundreds, even thousands, of churches and church people are struggling each week with the growing suspicion that they must either allow their church to die, or abandon their devotion to Christ in favor of devotion to the church itself. Either give up your true missional faith, or give up your place of worship and fellowship. Your home.

I feel sometimes like our culture suffers from "Don't know when to quit" syndrome. Like the folks who made Glee have built up this institution and now must maintain it, must maintain its brand and its philosophy and its performances, long after they cease to build up the world around them, long after they bring the joy and exuberance that they once did, to old generations or new. Like the folks who make churches, and make them run, are working their butts off to keep these institutions running, long after they cease to ignite people's passion for God.

I've talked many times about the need for "church hospice" - a way for churches that can no longer maintain their institution to come to terms with its death, to rejoice in its long life and find a way to turn their passions for The Church into passion for the next thing that God is doing.

What we need, as a society, is a better understanding of death and transition. A better understanding of grief. Yes, we need to prolong life, be it the life of a person or a church or even a TV show. But when that life has ended, we have to learn to let go of what we have loved about it, and turn that love into a New and Beautiful Thing.

I've quit watching Glee, just as the authors of the article above have. There are time when I've wanted to quit church. I suspect some of you have wanted that too. Maybe you have quit church, once upon a time or altogether. I've occasionally gotten disillusioned about church in general, and there are some churches that we all understand would better serve God by closing their doors. But what we can always do is to constantly re-evaluate ourselves, so that we can better focus our passions and our energies on the ways that we can better our world, better our lives, and better serve God - today, tomorrow, and always.

Why Lent? (Sermon March 3, 2013)

Sermon March 3 2013

Isaiah 58:1-12;   Martin of Tours and Pope Gregory I

---

                How’s your Lent goin’? I hope it’s going well. Is that the right compliment? How do you compliment somebody’s Lent? “Oh wow, you look hungry!” “Oh, you sure do… look like you haven’t eaten chocolate except on Sundays for a few weeks!” I dunno. Are any of y’all giving anything up, taking anything on, doing anything different? Maybe? A few of ya? Is it helping your spiritual life? Have you found yourself more connected to God? More connected to other people, maybe? More loving and compassionate? Maybe, maybe not? When I was a teenager, I tried the whole gamut of Lent-ideas: I gave up TV once; I gave up sweets a few times, not that it ever stuck; I’ve tried fasting, and praying through devotionals. I gotta say, some years, even some weeks, the Lent stuff just didn’t do it for me. Sometimes I felt closer to God, but sometimes, I just felt hungry and annoyed.

                It’s tough, isn’t it? It’s tough to make the practice really tie to the spirit, isn’t it? I get that. And we’re near the halfway mark for the Season, so if you are doing something for Lent, I know right around now is the time that you’re starting to wonder if it’s worth it, starting to wonder why you’re doing this, starting to think that God wouldn’t mind if you had that beer, watched that TV show, or whatever. And frankly, I don’t think God would mind if you broke your Lent Agreement. Really, are you doing it to please God? Or could there be some other reason? Could there be some other legitimately good spiritual-devotional reason to give something up, other than because it directly makes God happy?

                Consider Lent Madness. I were counting the list of things that count as devotion and praise to God, I don’t think that “voting in an online contest to see which holy servants of God are the coolest” is really near the top of the list. So why are we doing it? How is it a devotional tool? How does it make us closer to God?

                By way of answering, consider the two saints that are being pitted against each other tomorrow: Martin of Tours and Gregory the Great, aka Pope Gregory the First.

                Well before he was the Pope or The Great, Gregory was a Roman monk in the 500s. As one story about him goes, he was walking through the forum one day and saw an auction. A slave auction – young boys brought from the newly-conquered territory of Britain were on the market. Gregory paid for the boys and took them to a monastery to live, to be cared for, and to receive an education.

How’s that for giving something up? Gregory lived in a culture where you could buy and sell people. Especially conquered people – Rome decides to take another territory, and the people who live there are carted all throughout the Empire to serve as slaves for Roman citizens. It was a way to #1 – get them out of the way in their home, just in case they stir up any trouble; and #2 – break their spirits, humiliate and shame them so thoroughly that they would never consider running away, never consider defying their owner or the Empire. So it wasn’t just okay to own slaves, it was a vital part of participating in the Roman Empire. If you were a person with some cash, it’s just about your duty to participate in the slave economy. And Gregory, a monk with very limited means, worked to have these young men freed, cared for, and educated. Amen.

Now, I’ll have to admit, that story probably didn’t truly happen in history, at least not in that way. There are other versions that tell things differently, but frankly, I’m not concerned with what the historical truth of what really happened with some Italian monk fifteen hundred years ago. What gets me about Gregory, about the stories from a lot of these saints, is that they’re parables that lift up moments when a follower of Christ really and truly nailed it. I mean really got it right. Truth be told, I’m not all that convinced that Gregory was what I would call a good person – by all accounts he was really strict, kind of a jerk, and what he’s mostly known for is vastly expanding the power of the Church, giving the Church political clout and wealth like it had never seen and using it to pressure faraway territories into converting. That’s not good. That’s not how we live out the Gospel, how we bring love and light to a tired and hurting world. So even if the slave story is true, I don’t know if that moment outweighs the bad stuff and the questionable stuff he did with a lot of his life. I don’t know if this guy is worthy of Sainthood, if he’s exalted and special in the eyes of God. I sort of doubt it, but the point is that his story, a story of breaking bonds, can push us further into the path of Christ. If nothing else, releasing captives and caring for people who are abused and oppressed, when you could just as easily take advantage of them and exploit their misery? That’s a saintly move. That’s Christlike. That’s holy.

I think we can draw particular instances from people’s lives, from people’s stories, and see God in those moments and those stories. Gregory’s opponent, Martin of Tours, has a lot more of those inspiring stories than Greg did, but there’s one in particular I want to hold up. You see, Martin had explored Christianity as a teenager – this was the 300s, when it was still very much a tiny minority religion - but before he could really make any commitments or anything, he was required to serve in the Roman cavalry. He served in the military for some time, but as the story goes, one day he was in the territory of Gaul – France, basically – and as he was approaching a city, he met a beggar, wearing torn-up rags. On an impulse, Martin took his military cloak –a big wool cloth – and cut it in two, gave half to the beggar. That night, Martin had a dream, and in this dream he saw Jesus wearing his cloak, and Jesus said to the angels, “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clothed me.”

Two men, venerated for a thousand plus years as saints. One a veteran churchman who may have occasionally freed slaves and given them a good life, the other a soldier whose impulsive act of care for the poor garnered him a special connection to God. Martin’s vision is a pretty strong parallel to the words of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Jesus is speaking about who gets God’s favor and who doesn’t, and Jesus is pretty clear that the people God wants are the people who clothe the beaten and torn people of the world, who feed the hungry people of the world, who actively care for the people in our world that nobody else cares for. And this isn’t just the path of Jesus – it’s truly the overwhelming thrust of all of Scripture, especially the words of the prophets. Have you ever listened to Isaiah? The book of Isaiah is all over the place, probably because it was written by generations of people all working in the same tradition, but his words about how we live our lives stay pretty consistent. Hear with me some of his word from Isaiah chapter 58, verses 1 – 12. I’m reading from the Common English Bible. 

Shout loudly; don’t hold back;
    raise your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their crime,
    to the house of Jacob their sins.
² They seek me day after day,
    desiring knowledge of my ways
    like a nation that acted righteously,
    that didn’t abandon their God.
They ask me for righteous judgments,
    wanting to be close to God.
³ “Why do we fast and you don’t see;
    why afflict ourselves and you don’t notice?”
Yet on your fast day you do whatever you want,
    and oppress all your workers.
⁴ You quarrel and brawl, and then you fast;
    you hit each other violently with your fists.
You shouldn’t fast as you are doing today
    if you want to make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I choose,
    a day of self-affliction,
    of bending one’s head like a reed
    and of lying down in mourning clothing and ashes?
    Is this what you call a fast,
        a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ Isn’t this the fast I choose:
    releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke,
    setting free the mistreated,
    and breaking every yoke?
⁷ Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry
    and bringing the homeless poor into your house,
    covering the naked when you see them,
    and not hiding from your own family?
⁸ Then your light will break out like the dawn,
    and you will be healed quickly.
Your own righteousness will walk before you,
    and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.”
If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the finger-pointing, the wicked speech;
¹⁰     if you open your heart to the hungry,
    and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted,
    your light will shine in the darkness,
    and your gloom will be like the noon.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually
    and provide for you, even in parched places.
    God will rescue your bones.
You will be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water that won’t run dry.
¹² They will rebuild ancient ruins on your account;
    the foundations of generations past you will restore.
You will be called Mender of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Livable Streets.

                This isn’t just about our acts of devotion. It’s not about what we give up for Lent – really, it’s not about us at all. If you’re in a position where you’re able to give something up, then you have plenty.  Fasting, praying, bowing down, putting ashes on our faces… these can be things we do to try and curry God’s favor, but is God truly that petty? What could God get out of us looking silly and making ourselves miserable on purpose? Isaiah is pointing out to people in his own time something that could just as easily be said of many religious people in our time – our practices are only a shadow of the love that we’re supposed to share for one another for all of God’s creation. God doesn’t care how we express devotion to God – God cares that we show love to the people around us who need it, because God loves them, cares about them, God wants their joy and their fulfillment as much as anything else in the universe.

                If we fast, if we give stuff up, if we deny ourselves, it has to be just one piece of a larger worldview that permeates our whole lives. If you, like me, grew up hearing that such-and-such cereal is healthy as long as it’s “part of a balanced breakfast”, then you know what I’m talking about. If you deny yourself something you want, it only matters if it causes you to do two things:

                #1 – Recognize the respect the pain and the experience of everybody else who has to do without things that they want, things that they need, and

                #2 – Give from our abundance to help other people’s need. If we can choose to not eat something, then we have the luxury to feed the hungry. If we can choose to put aside our gifts and our hobbies, then we have the luxury of using our talents to lift up other people from the suffering of oppression and pain. If we can choose not to do something with our time, then we have the luxury to serve other people in God’s name.

                It’s not about currying God’s favor. It’s not a this-for-that scenario, where our self-inflicted sacrifice makes God like us more. But, as Isaiah tells us, God’s grace is such a strong part of our lives, such a strong part of our universe, that when we live out our love of other people…

“Then your light will break out like the dawn… The Lord will guide you continually and provide for you, even in parched places.
    God will rescue your bones.You will be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water that won’t run dry.”

Amen.