Glowing in the Darkness

Sermon on Isaiah 58 Embrace AIDS

Page 1: Israel’s failure to do justice

Page 2: Our failure to see the need to do justice globally

Page 3: God hates the injustice but moves people to act justly through Christ.

Page 4: By God’s grace we can be more intentional about our stewardship.

Sermon in Oral Style:

Congregation,

“I want to give you the gift of a sleepless night or two. I’d like to ruin your appetite, but mostly I want to wreck your heart. Not in a sappy, sentimental way, but in a hearty, Christian manner. Why? Because when our hearts break for the people of the world, God can piece us back together into a new mosaic of compassion.” Those are the words Rev. Phil Reinders used to grip peoples attention as he began writing about the ongoing horror of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa and around the world.[1]

Today, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee and deacons around North America are encouraging the followers of Christ to face one of the biggest and most complex issues of injustice in our day. HIV/AIDS.

Because it is a sexually transmitted disease, it’s a problem that many Christians get a little squeamish talking about. It leaves many Christians in a lurch morally. Isn’t their own sin that made them that way? Isn’t that God’s punishment against their immorality?

Israel knew what it was like to have people in their society that became kind of the social outcasts. Like Africa tends to be the continent that we might as well just forget about a lot of time, there were people in their society that just weren’t cared for. That were avoided.

Leprosy was a big one. The people with leprosy were often shunned completely. Not allowed to be around the other people because they were afraid it would spread to others. So instead of being nurtured through their illness, they were thrown aside.

The others that you could find in Israel’s societal garbage bin were the widows and the orphans. God fights for the cause of the oppressed. As much as that might sound like a mantra of a civil rights activists group, you can’t help but notice throughout the Bible Old Testament and New, in the words of Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, whoever. God wages war for the forgotten against the ones who are doing the forgetting.

A widow could not survive in Israel. The bread winner of the family was the husband. The wives took care of the family. If a womans husband died, she would have to find a new husband very quickly, or she would face the reality of having no one winning bread for her. She would be reduced to a beggar, a scavenger, or one who turned to prostitution just to survive.

Orphans were in the same situation. With no father, no one would just take tahem in. Another gaping mouth. Less food for ones own children. Orphans were dehumanized into animals on the street or sold as slaves. Should a nation of God’s people be noticeably different in the way they treat each other compared to other nations? But they are remarkably similar. In fact they are as wicked and as unjust as all the other nations.

God hates this! In the passage we read he is angry with Israel for allowing widows and orphans to be forgotten. He is angry that Israel comes to him with their pious prayers and fasts. The good believing people want his help, but God hates that people created in his image are ignored and treated like the scum of the earth. God hates it.

Is it possible that God still hates it- it’s a strong word, I know- but don’t you think it is possible that God still hates it when his people ignore the widow, and the orphan. Would it be too big of a stretch to say today God is not one bit impressed at the way his people today take advantage and ignore the people who are in the most need? Isn’t that the way we should take a passage like this from Isaiah and use it for our own lives? God can’t stand it when we act like the people of Israel and ignore the plight of orphans and widows in our world today. Don’t you think God is still saddened by us and by the way we forget and even cause some people in our world.

As people who believe in the love and grace of Jesus Crhsti, we have to realize that world we live in makes it so that our neighborhood orphan and widow and leper are actually living an ocean away in Africa. Our community orphans and widows, some may live close by, but our global economy has made it so we are taking advantage of the figurative widows and orphans on other continents. But let’s not be to figurative.

One of the reasons why AIDS has become a pandemic in Africa and not anywhere else is because has become the continent of slaves. Historically we kidnappeds its able bodied men women and children to slaves. Today we buy things dirt cheap. I know I have done it all the time. You find a deal and can’t resist. “a dollar for thirty pounds of sugar, yeah dollar store.” Many times our greatest savings are at the expense of supporting some sort of slavery or unjust labor in another land. And in supporting the poverty we support the cycle of poverty, including the spread of AIDS.

This summer two kids on your road set up lemonade stands. Your family loves the lemonade so you are going to be repeat customers. You have the choice of spending a dollar on a cup of lemonade where the big brother sits around and does nothing until he kicks his sister around until she makes the next pitcher full of lemonade. Or are you going to spend the 2 dollars a cup to buy it from the neighbor girl who gives a cut to her brother if he will help her mix a some of the pitchers. Buying it for 1 dollar is cheap, but ever dollar is ruining that little sisters life just a little bit more. The two bucks is giving a fair cut to the brother who is working hard for his sister.

Our neighborhood big bully brothers in our world, shouldn’t we consider these to be the companies who support unjust labor practices? CRWRC tells us that cheap sugar, coffee, chocolate and diamonds are the main products that come from unjust employers in Africa. But it also includes produce like fruit and vegetables. It is all over.

To tell you the truth. I feel totally trapped, by this. My wife Angela and I talked about how trapped we feel because we don’t know where our food comes from. We don’t know the people who produced it. We don’t know how it got to our local stores. It doesn’t usually say it on the packaging. Product of an unjust company. Buy this if you like to spread poverty and ruin Africa with disease and hunger. Oh, I guess I better put that down. How can we help it but buy something that actually funds poverty in Africa and in turn funds the spread of AIDS, the spread of orphanhood, widowhood, and the spread of death before a persons time. It makes me sad that that is the culture and system that we are stuck in.

What can we do about it?

Well, first I think we need to look at the encouragement from Scripture. The greatest message from Scripture that we need to be aware of is that we are saved by the love of Jesus Christ and our trust that he saved us. Funding a child labor ring in Trenton would be unjust and sinful. Funding a group that steals food from the hungry would be sinful. Isn`t it a damnable sin when we support businesses whose operations in other countries actually destroy lives by keeping them in poverty and not stopping the cycle of sickness and hunger and death? Isn’t it so important to us then that we are saved completely by Jesus Christ? That’s the heart of Christianity isn’t it? By Jesus’ blood we are saved from the things that we didn’t even know we were contributing to.

The passage that we read tell us how things could be so much better for the people of Israel in this situation where the nation was being unjust. Verse

The reason why Israel was supposed to act justly is because that is really the kind of devotion that he wants from his people. The people of Israel have it in their mind that God wanted them to just obey some of the basic commands like fasting at the appropriate times. They believed that fasting and depriving themselves of food was the way to make there requests before God even more acceptable.

But the passage says, truly living a life of justice will be one that glows brightly in the dark world. Being a good neighbor in Israel is the way to be light of GFothe fast, the devotion that God wanted from his people is not primarily fasting at all. The kind of fasting and devotion that he wants is for the people of Israel to get busy in the world. To pay attention to the people in their community that are dying from diseases, to make sure food is provided to those who for whatever reason are starving, to clothe and give shelter to the people who are goihng to be killed just by the elements of life in a world with weather. Don’t fast unless you are fast becoming a good neighbor.

When justice was done by the people of Israel, when they were good neighbors, they were light in the darkness.

That is the promise and the hope for us as well. We are saved by grace alone, praise Jesus for that. But now it is time to shine, people. Now that we know we are God’s people because of our faith, we can shine like the sun piercing the night, bringing up a brand new day. The words of Isaiah are for us as well. We might not fast very often, but what is it that you mark as being the outward sign that you have a relationship with God. Is it because you take time to read your Bible. Is it because you pray before your meals and pray for people who are sick? Would you say the greatest way people know you are given new life in Christ is by the way you come to church every Sunday, twice a Sunday?

The kind of devotional life that truly glows through the darkness, and the kind of prayer life that breaks through the gloom of this world, it’s the life that takes up the cause of those who may not otherwise have any hope. Africa is gripped by AIDS and HIV. Is it God’s curse for the immorality of that continent. If it is I hate to see what North America has coming.

Might this pandemic of HIV/AIDS, and the whole cycle of injustice that is fueling its fire, might they simply be part of God’s way of giving his people here in Canada and across the world a place where we can let the grace and love of Jesus Christ shine through us into the whole world?

We need to thank the deacons for the work that they do so faithfully in our congregation. Every week they give us the opportunity to make a difference in the world. We give because God has given to us. But it is also one way that we can shine in the world.

We also should thank the ministries like CRWRC for what they do. They are pushing us as comfortable wealthy congregations in North America to do justice and shine in the world. They are encouraging us to not be comfortable with our simple prayers and our simple Bible readings as if we are just simple people in a simple world. In our world, God wants our prayers to begin with that actions and love of Christ.

To Embrace AIDS, CRWRC and other organizations encourage Christians to do any number of things. This pamphlet encourages Getting on your knees. Ask for passion and compassion. Ask for wisdom in how to fight AIDS. Ask for guts to do what is necessary. It encourages giving it up: people live on less than a dollar a day. You can burn that much idling at stop lights on a trip through Toronto. Maybe there are something we can give up and then give it away to help the cause of Embrace AIDS.

If you could, they suggest joining with CRWRC or other organizations to see the epidemic yourself and experience the complexity and the devestation that AIDS brings.

Another one: Shrug off the cheap stuff. Super cheap coffee and chocolate is usually subsidized. Look for items that are labeled, Fair Trade which means farmers and workers are making their fair share. It isn’t slave labor.

The also suggest being a know-it-all on the subject so that you can motivate other people to get involved in stoping the spread of AIDS and poverty. And they suggest being creative in ways to transform our lives here so that we can make a difference in the buying support.

But most of all, in what you do, remember that it is not for Christ’s love that we do it, but because of Christ’s love for us, and his love for even the poorest laborers and sickest AIDS ravaged people on the other side of our planet.
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[1] Reinders,W Rev. Phil, Ignoring an Ongoing Horror. The Banner. March 2006. p. 36