What are you like when you’re hungry? Maybe you’re a lot like those commercials, where a grumpy character is portrayed by a celebrity, from Betty White to the late Robin Williams and others, who is cranky and difficult until they are offered a Snickers, after which all is restored. The tagline? “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” It’s true, isn’t it? We tend to act differently when we’re in need of a meal or snack. Some describe this condition as being “hangry” – when your hunger causes you to be cranky and snap at others. This is also what’s known as the hour between 5 and 6 pm if you live with a toddler. Generally, we regard hunger as a problem to be fixed as soon as possible.
On the flip side, though, some people of faith have, throughout the ages, utilized the sensation of hunger to prompt a deeper sense of spiritual awareness in their lives. Across many religions, in fact, the practice of fasting can be a part of one’s life of faith, in the belief that by doing so one will be drawn closer to God. Fasting from food is the most common, but in recent years this idea of fasting has also extended to things like technology or even certain behaviors. Here, it can fall in line with some Sabbath practices, allowing for more space for worship and reflection. It is one way to achieve a better sense of health and balance. Still, the primary example continues to be fasting from certain foods, or all food entirely for a period of time.
Fasting is the spiritual practice that is described in Isaiah 58 as the people of Israel engage in devoted acts of worship. Written sometime in the 520s BCE, these words come to a people who have been restored. They have returned to Jerusalem after years of exile, and now hope to live into the promises that have come to them after extreme hardships. It is as if they have been released from their “time-out” by God, and are now trying extra hard to make things right. They do not want to return to the path that led them into such judgment and punishment. Rather, they want to rejoice and reconnect. The temple has not yet been built, but they are ready to worship. Imagine, people who are so excited to be back home who rightly give all credit to God for this return. They are “on fire for God,” with lives that have been ignited by God’s Spirit for a new chapter in their lives. They are well-intentioned and they are hungry – for a relationship with God.
They find satisfaction to that hunger in worship practices. Brett Younger describes what it must have looked like, saying:
During Isaiah’s time, the temple in Jerusalem was standing room only. No one missed a service. They sang psalms – old ones, new ones, all kinds of psalms. They said prayers and gave offerings[i].
They made worship look good. In fact, this is where they put all of their energies. But it doesn’t take long for them to be consumed by this, so much so that they become isolated from the rest of the world, closed off to anything beyond the walls of their worship space. Younger continues:
What they did not do was let worship trouble their consciences. If they kept their distance from God, then they could also keep their distance from God’s children. They did not want to make connections between their worship and their neighbors. They ignored the poor and everyone else they wanted to ignore[ii].
Even though their intentions may have been genuine, they have missed some of the point of what worship is all about. And so God sends the prophet Isaiah to help continue to bring them back in line with God’s way of thinking.
Isaiah critiques their worship practices, particularly their fasting, as self-serving and hollow, pretending to be righteous while allowing injustice to continue in their own backyards. He offers stern reminders that fasting, and other worship, is not about just going through the motions. It’s not about excessive piety and fancy shows. It’s about what happens after that. Namely, how they live in the world.
Rather than being so focused on hunger as a spiritual practice of fasting, Isaiah indicates that their worship, even their fasting, should make them hungry for something more – breaking the bonds of injustice. Going further, the prophet gives several simple, concrete ways that they can accomplish this. He identifies basic human needs – food, shelter, clothing, and indicates that these are the hunger pangs in the world that need undoing, calling upon the people of Israel to be a part of that process. They are called to share bread, offer shelter, and cover those in need even at the risk of exposing one’s self. Walter Brueggemann notes that these instructions are not:
a theoretical debate about the merits of socialism or capitalism, a debate that is a smoke screen about human need and human resources. There is here no debate about governmental public welfare or “the private sector.” The poet does not care and would be likely to say, Do it either way, but do not talk about the private sector in order to avoid public welfare, do not focus on public welfare in order to exempt the private sector. What we are in any case talking about is hunger, homelessness, nakedness, and your bread, your house, your self[iii].
Isaiah gives a definition of true worship, relative to how the people of God care for the most vulnerable in their midst. No doubt these words hit home with a people who had not too recently been in similar positions themselves, as strangers in Babylon, living in a foreign land, struggling to make it and longing to return to Jerusalem.
Isaiah’s instructions are intimately personal. Paul D. Hanson writes:
One cannot read these fourteen verses without the sense of having been addressed by God, without having heard a divine word that is at once severe in its attack on the perversity of self-preoccupation and assuring in its invitation to return to authentic personhood[iv]
Isaiah brings the people of Israel back to their roots, with encouragement to plant and build and grow, and to help others do the same. In all of their attempts at worship and fasting, the people had been crying out to God, clamoring for a response and acknowledgment of how good of a job they are doing. The beginning of our text echoes their frustrations that they are not getting the attention they feel they deserve. Isaiah offers that perhaps it is because their worship has not been complete. By offering them the missing pieces, Isaiah helps again guide the people of Israel back home and into a connectional relationship with God – one that is only found when connecting with all of God’s children. The prophet concludes with the promise that when this is the kind of worshipful light that they embrace, “light shall break forth like the dawn” (Isaiah 58:8) and “light shall rise in the darkness” (Isaiah 58:10).
In a similar way, Jesus follows a list of instructions of how disciples are to be in the kingdom of God, which we explored last week in the Beatitudes, with a similar message – let your light shine. Echoing the call to a worship that infiltrates our everyday lives, Jesus called the disciples, and us, to do more than just hole up inside our Sanctuary walls and practice our faith. Worship is not meant to be just a “me and Jesus” private moment. It’s meant to be a time when we recognize and experience the incredible relationship God has with the world through Jesus Christ, who connects us not only with God, but with other brothers and sisters. Our worship should make us hungry for what is to come, eager and enthusiastic to go out and live as followers of Christ in the world. That hunger is represented each time we gather around the table for communion, as we demonstrate our longing for a closer relationship with Christ, and join together in the meal which he has prepared. We consume the “bread of life” and the “cup of salvation,” and are refreshed by the Holy Spirit, filled and restored. But for what? Isaiah has some answers, and Jesus did, too. To go out.
We are called to go out into the world and participate in those relationships in the name of the one who came to be in relationship with us. One church I attended in seminary had a wooden sign above the exit to their Sanctuary, the last message people would see as they left worship. It read “You are now entering the mission field.” A more comedic take on this looks something like this:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2012/winter/now-entering-mission-field.html
Both of our texts for this morning, though, call us, good little worshippers in the pews, to not let our worship in this Sanctuary be all that our faith is about. If we only focus on what is happening within these walls, and how good we are at it, we have missed the point. Our worship of God should not end when the postlude is over; that is where it should begin. The truest sign of our worship happens on Monday through Saturday, as we live out our faith in the world. I know that you all get this and believe it. I have heard you say it, “don’t just go to church, BE the church.” I, and our texts from today, could not agree more. But sometimes it helps to have a reminder, a little motivation, if you will, to do the work of discipleship. We need a pep talk.
There’s a little football game happening tonight, so it’s a good time for us to follow in the spirit of a pre-game talk and huddle up a bit to talk about what we’re going to do next. As one joke I heard many times this week proclaimed “you should be as excited about church as about the Super Bowl.” I’d amend that to say, “you should be as excited about following Jesus as about the Falcons winning tonight.” Both Isaiah and Matthew are our coaches, calling us to action. I wonder, if they were speaking to us today, if they might not employ Samuel L. Jackson to do a bit of the encouraging. As many of you know, in 2010 he began doing voiceovers for the Falcons commercials, launching the powerful slogan, “Rise Up!” I want to share with you one of these, but invite you to imagine that this has elements of a modern interpretation on our texts today. Replace the word “Falcons” with “Disciples” for a moment. It won’t be a perfect fit, of course, but I think you’ll get the idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRXtzsq4zl4
Rise Up! – Isaiah says “shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” – This is akin to the call to war. Israel is rallied and redirected to a greater understanding of faithfulness. God wants, I think, to take their passion and fervor that they have demonstrated in their over the top worship and fasting efforts, and encourage them to take that same energy into the world.
Rise Up! Matthew says. You are the salt of the earth, bringing out the goodness and full flavors, spicing things up in the world to reflect the full potential of what God has created.
Rise Up! Jesus calls. You are the light of the world. A light not meant to be hidden or kept private, but to be shared so that the very glory of the Lord will be seen by all.
Rise Up! From these pews, brothers and sisters in Christ. God has work for you to do, and this is where God wants your very best. This is the call we should hear each and every time we come to worship. And we should seek to stay hungry for this kind of instruction from God, our mouths watering, our energy brimming, our hopes soaring, all in preparation to break through these Sanctuary walls and be a part of changing the world.
People of God, Rise Up!
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
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[i] Brett Younger, “Homiletical Perspective: Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12),” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Walter Brueggemann, Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).
[iv] Paul D. Hanson, “Isaiah 58:1-14, Your Own Interests, or the Interests of God?,” Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Isaiah 40-66. (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1995).
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