True Fasting

Opening Prayer:

Lord, you know us so well. We thank you for your presence in our lives, even when we don’t recognize it. This day we have gathered, coming from a week of unexpected happenings and events which have surprised us. Make us ready to become stronger witnesses for your love as we receive your word and find our spirits and lives healed. AMEN. Scripture: Isaiah 58

“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? 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? 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.

Main Idea:

Our motivation in our disciplines & our relationship with God should be to help others

Our worship should be to leave lives changed

Intro:

In today’s sermon, I wanted us to take some time and share with you a little bit about our mission trip to North Carolina last month, but I also wanted to spend some time sharing some things that God taught me through our experience at Hinton.

This passage from Isaiah is one that really stood out to me as I thought about the work that we did at Hinton, the posture towards the work that the youth and adults had throughout the whole trip, and I think really shows our “why” for why these youth and the adults that help lead them are so passionate about mission work.

This reading comes from Isaiah, chapter 58, verses 6-8. Hear now a word from God.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Will you pray with me?

Prayer:

Lord God, we thank you for your word and it’s power. This morning as we gather together and are in community with one another, bless us. Let us be people who are proof that you are good, you are enough, and you are God.

Amen

Sermon:

Right before this passage in Isaiah we see people asking God why he has not noticed the things they are doing for him. Verse 3 says “Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” These people had felt as if they had been doing all the right things but God answers them through Isaiah and tells them “on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists.”

The people of Isaiah’s day remind us a lot of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. These people are primarily focused on the outward appearance of their fasting or any of their religious rituals. In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18, Jesus makes it a point to say that this Pharisee is boasting in the fact that he fasts twice a week and tithes what he has. But who does Jesus say is the justified one in this parable? It’s the tax collector, the man who couldnt even lift his eyes to heaven, and quietly prays for mercy. The point of this parable that Jesus spoke was to show us that when we exalt ourselves based on our deeds, we are humbled. But when we humble ourselves, quietly putting ourselves before God in prayer, we are exalted.

We then are gone on to be told by Isaiah what true fasting really is- that it is a calling for our lives to be focused completely on God and on justice in this world- in what we say, what we believe, but mostly in what we do.

Isaiah lays out for us what exactly is the true fasting that God desires for us in verses 6-8

First we are loose the chains of injustice,  untie the cords of the yoke and set the oppressed free. What this means for us is that we have to look around and see the ways that we may be tightening the chains of injustice, even if we don’t mean to. Now, I don’t think anyone in this room goes around actively looking for ways to discriminate or oppress others, but we live in a world where these things can be not as obvious as we think. It’s up to us as followers of Jesus to be the ones to be aware stand up to the evils that are so present in our communities: racism, sexism, the glass ceiling, slavery, poverty, just to name a few. This past week, I was in Colorado visiting some friends and we spent a day in Rocky Mountain National Park. As I was just so immersed and surrounded with all of this natural beauty and God’s creation, I couldn’t really get it off of my mind that a whole nation of Native American  people were violently kicked out of this land so that our government could profit from it. Even though I couldn’t do anything about this, just being aware and having compassion of the ways that people are and have been oppressed around us is a way to start loosing the chains of injustice as we are called to.

Next we are to share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our homes, cover the naked, and not hide ourselves from our own families. Once we begin to see and become aware of the ways injustice is around us, we have to start doing something about it. There are so many awesome things we can do to help those being oppressed, but what God tells us through Isaiah to do is to do the small thing. Share your food with your neighbor, give people in need what they need, and love each other.

This talk of ending injustice and oppression is really taxing for us to hear and hard for us to do on our own. But we have to remember the truths that we find here in this passage.

That we are not called to do everything on our own, but with God as our guide, we are to simply love and help those around us in need.

And when we do this, when our fasting is put together with action, Isaiah shows us that our light will shine in all of the darkest places in the world. And that we have nothing to fear because the glory of the Lord will be what he calls our “rear guard.” That he follows us, giving us strength, encouragement, and protection.

Mission Trip:

By this point in today’s service, you have been able to hear and see from people who were on this trip about the things that we did and all of the awesome things that happened.

About a week before the mission trip, I was reading through Isaiah and came across the passage that we are talking about today. Something in this passage really stuck with me and made me realize that maybe I didn’t have the best motives for going on this trip. Even though I was super excited about spending the week with our youth and chaperones, there was still a little piece of me that didn’t want to leave my comfort zone for a week. And there was another little piece of me that was thinking of the ways that I could benefit from this trip, instead of how God would be working in this trip to make our world a little more like heaven. And I’ll admit that even after reading and thinking through this passage in the days leading up to this trip, those thoughts were still lingering in my mind and I was oftentimes focused on my own interest instead of the interest of those who we were serving. But even through this, this community, working together, was being strengthened and guided by the Holy Spirit during this week.

In our worship, our missions, I saw what true fasting was. True fasting is putting your own interests behind the interest of God not to regard yourself as less, but to regard the things of God higher. It’s focusing on the way you can comfort those around you even when you may rather be doing something else.

Most of the time when I hear or read of people talking about fasting, the main focus of their fast is for them. The way fasting is viewed by many today is that your deprive yourself of something so that you can focus on God more. And that’s not wrong at all, but we have to remember that our prayer and our focus on God is not just about us, or making us feel better about ourselves, it’s about those around us. Especially those around us who are marginalized, hurting, hungry and poor.

Like Jesus says, it’s letting your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” We don’t spread the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection by only focusing on our own faiths. We do it by letting the Holy Spirit change us from the inside out so that we can go and be his light into the world.

In the days and weeks leading up to this trip, it would come up in conversation a lot with people outside of this church that I was going on a mission trip soon. People would ask me where I was going for this mission trip, and I would respond that we were going to the mountains in NC. I’m sure these people had good intention but many of them reacted in a way that felt like they were expecting more. These reactions made me realize that when people think of mission work, they think of these places super far away, and it seems to me like for a lot of people there’s almost like a competition for which groups can go on the coolest or most exciting mission trip. But even as we were just two hours from home, our group was thinking and talking about all of the people so much closer than that, our very own neighbors who are in need and not getting the help that we need to give them . I think that a common realization for a lot of our youth and adults once we got home was that there are people within us, near us, who are the victims of poverty, homelessness, injustice and so much more. And while going far away and doing fun trips is awesome and so much good work gets done for people on these trips, we want to be a people who make a difference here. We want to be a people that others think of when they think of the light of Jesus shining. We want to be a people who can find needs in the community and meet them.

We want all of you to be thinking of ways that you can use your gifts to serve those around us. We want you to help us be aware of the things going on in our community that we can help with. Because we know that our faith and the work of Jesus doesn’t stop with us, it only begins with us. That in the waiting for Jesus to come and make everything perfect, we can do our part in making our community more like heaven.

Please join me in prayer:

God, we hope and we pray that we can be a people who truly honor you in all we believe, all we say, and all that we do. Transform us by the power of the Holy Spirit to be people who bring your truth and your light to the darkest places.

Amen

Benediction

As you have received the seeds of faith and hope; go now into God’s world to scatter the seeds of reconciliation and peace, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Now Go and Do, love all and serve well. AMEN