The Fast I Choose

Common English Bible Chapter 58

58 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.

He 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.

Intro- You Ruined Easter For Me

At one of my very first church jobs, I remember a particularly cranky choir director.

We had a new pastor, and on Easter Sunday one year the new pastor divided the church right down the center aisle and had the congregation call back and forth “He is risen!” “He is risen indeed!”

It was kind of almost cute, that kind of thing?

But then I overheard the choir director after the service dressing down this new pastor.

He said “You ruined Easter worship for me.”

Can you imagine?

A harmless little call and response during the welcome and announcements was enough...

It was enough to trip this guy up.

It was enough to “ruin” worshipping God on the day of resurrection.

It was enough to make him lose sight of the bigger picture, a resurrected Lord and savior

In other words, the religious aspect of this was thrown off for him, and it appears that the religious aspect was the most important that day.

Tonight, as we begin our journey in to Lent, I want to take a look at what we mean by a few words here in our church life language:

Religious

Spiritual

Righteousness

Religious

Hold together

The word “religion” comes from the root word “ligare” in Latin.

This is where we get our English word “ligament.”

We have bones, and we have muscles, but it’s our ligaments that hold us together.

So our religion is a collection of practices and exercises that hold us together.

And it turns out that many of us celebrate and participate in many religions!

Other religions

The Penguins

When I go to a Penguins game, it is unbelievably religious.

I have to go to the same food vendor every single game before I sit in my seat.

When the Penguins score a goal, everyone stands up together in unison, for the customary sharing of high fives.

I even make sure that when I get up to leave a game, I take my trash and any trash around me to the garbage can, because it’s important that you take care of your sanctuary isn’t it?

On a certain level, at least in my life on a recreational level, this is how I hold myself together.

When life gets stressful or difficult or I need to clear my head a bit, I engage with my hockey religion.

Science is absolute

There are some out there who would tell us that all this church mumbo-jumbo is bunk, and that science is the ultimate and only authority.

They would say that those of us who practice a religion are lost.

And that’s funny, because that in and of itself is a religion. It’s what holds them together.

It takes a lot of faith to believe in science alone.

It takes a lot of faith to rely on the laws of physics and biology and math.

It takes as much faith to believe there is no God as it does to believe there is one.

That world view holds folks together, and so it’s absolutely a religion.

Look out for number one

There’s another popular religion out there in our culture today that says it’s important that you look out for number one.

Only the strong survive!

You have to fight for everything you get in life.

You work hard to earn what you get, and you don’t rely on anybody else.

You are a lone wolf.

This is how so many folks are holding themselves together, to create this narrative that they are in it alone.

It takes a tremendous amount of faith in yourself to believe and practice this way.

A container

There are more religions than we could possibly name in this sermon, and like I said many of us practice more than one.

A helpful way for me to think about all of these religions is to think of them as containers.

Some are deep and wide, some are shallow, some are travel ready, some are oddly shaped.

But all of the religions of our life, including this odd and wonderful religion we call Christianity, is a container.

It’s meant to hold something.

Spiritual

Everything is Spiritual

We like to think that we can divide our life in to spiritual and secular.

Obviously coming to church and singing hymns is spiritual, while waiting in line at the DMV is not.

Obviously praying with your friends is spiritual, while perhaps my hockey religion is devoid of spiritual substance.

Obviously giving up something for Lent is spiritual, while obsessive consumer culture is not.

But the reality is is that the ancient writers of this text never had a word for Spiritual.

Jesus would never have asked his disciple how their spiritual lives were going.

And the reason for that is that for the writers of the Bible, and for Jesus especially, everything is spiritual.

The way you engage in that debate online effects your spirit.

The way you hold the door for someone at the grocery store effects your spirit.

The way you speak to yourself in your own mind affects your spirit.

If God is in everything, and God is spirit, then everything is spiritual.

Tapping in to the creative goodness of God

When it is at it’s best, our spiritual selves allow us to tap in to the creative nature of our God.

We are made in God’s image, and so what God enjoys we would enjoy.

God is a creator, and so are we.

We can be artists and poets and writers and things like that.

But we’re also tapping in to that creative goodness when we create peace where once there was tension.

We’re tapping in to that creative goodness when we create new opportunities for folks to find healing.

We’re tapping in to that creative goodness when we are as the text called it, repairers of the breach, the ones who can bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be.

That kind of creativity is when spirituality is at its very best.

It can get warped and broken and messed up inside of us, but that’s when it’s absolutely best.

Our spirituality is kind of like this liquid.

It’s hard to nail down, hard to describe, but we know it when we see it.

What the container holds

It’s vital that we recognize that our spirituality is what the container holds.

The practices that we engage in, like church or putting ashes on our foreheads or giving something up for Lent, those are all ways that we contain our spiritual lives, all ways to facilitate us tapping in to that creative energy from God.

Spiritual But Not Religious

There are some in our world who would claim to be Spiritual, but not Religious.

Essentially these folks say that they don’t need a container to hold their spiritual selves.

They don’t need ritual or practice or community, they just kind of tackle things on their own.

The problem here is that these folks are essentially trying to hold on to water in their hands.

I’ve seen it time and time again where they will do everything they can to hold on to their spirituality, but the minute that things get tough, the minute their attention is drawn anywhere else, they can’t hold it in any more and it starts to slip away.

Religious, but not spiritual

But I have also seen plenty of examples of people who would celebrate the container without ever needing to put something in it.

These are the folks who are engaged in the tired old worship wars of a few decades ago.

These are the folks who maybe have a cracked jar like this, something that is toxic or abusive or difficult.

These are the folks who Isaiah is talking about, who engage in all the right fasts and practices, but there’s absolutely nothing inside the container.

Isaiah says that these folks will wonder why they don’t hear from God.

Isaiah says that these folks might have a religious exterior, but they’re looking for a fight everywhere else they go.

Isaiah says that that these folks are walking in total darkness.

In fact, Isaiah says, when you are able to combine the two, to have a religious practice that is the container for a legitimate spirituality, something beautiful comes from it.

Religion is not bad, it just helps us hold on to our spirituality.

And spirituality is not bad, it keeps us moving toward what God calls us to.

Righteousness

Righteousness- Sedaqah

That’s why we don’t celebrate empty disciplines in Lent, but we do open ourselves up to what a righteous discipline can provide.

A discipline in Lent can bring us to a place where we practice opening our heart to the hungry.

A discipline in Lent can bring us to a place where we provide abundantly for those who are afflicted.

A discipline in Lent can bring us to a place where we can be the menders of broken walls, and the restorers of liveable streets.

And when that happens, Isaiah would tell us, it’s like shining a light in the darkness.

Take a look in the news a bit lately, and you’ll see that the world is in dire need of lights shining in the darkness, aren’t we?

You’re Gonna Die!

I was sitting at my previous job a long time ago when a new pastor was asking our boss what you’re supposed to say when you do the ashes on ash wednesday.

You have to know that this boss was super stoic and serious and stayed.

So we all absolutely lost it when he leaned close to my pastor friend and said “You say “YOUR GONNA DIE!”

But, for as goofy as that was, that’s what we remind ourselves here tonight, isn’t it?

We are dust, and to dust we shall return.

This life is fleeting.

This life is fragile.

This life is limited.

So don’t waste a second of it.

Don’t waste a second of your life on an empty spiritual but not religious life, where there’s nothing there to hold you together.

Don’t waste a second of your life on an empty container, a religious but not spiritual life that looks really good on the outside, but remains hollow and empty on the inside.

Don’t waste a second of your life wondering when righteousness will show up.

But instead, let us commit our practices to the righteousness that God calls us to in Isaiah.

Let’s commit to practicing sharing our food with those who have none.

Let’s commit to practicing providing abundantly to our neighbors in need.

Let’s commit to practicing loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Let’s commit to practicing Mending Broken Walls.

Let’s commit to practicing Restoring our Liveable streets.

May God be glorified.