As the Morning

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Then thou shalt call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am." Isaiah 58:6-8

Sometimes we feel the absence of God, a sense of desolation. Where is God? Why is he not listening to us? All we see around us are signs of trouble, a physical and spiritual famine eating away at the world. Our despair and sinfulness blind us to His presence in the world. Isaiah makes a most provocative statement in the 58th chapter: by doing the things God does, we will know His presence. The passage above bears close similarities with the Messianic prophecy in chapter 61: "The Spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD" (Isaiah 61:1-2). This is the very passage Jesus claimed as his own, saying: "This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21) after reading the very same scroll (Luke 4:18-20). James, the Lord's brother, reminds us of this duty, when he said: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).

To know God is to know Jesus (John 14:1-11). And if we are to know Jesus, to be in Jesus and have his Spirit in us, we must do the works he does: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:12). What were Jesus works and what were they for? We know that He came to teach, to show the Way, to give us faith, forgiveness, and the hope of resurrection, to destroy the distance between God and us through his being as Immanuel, but we so often forget that Jesus came to heal, to free, to take care of, to show solidarity, to feed and to love the unloveable. Isn't His grace the fact that we are able to do his works? The works of Jesus are signs to the world of what is concretely meant by "faith, hope, and love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). Unless we clothe the naked and feed the hungry, unless we listen to the lonely and share with strangers, unless we lovingly meet the Other, how will the world know what faith is, what hope is, what love is? Jesus calls us to show the world who He is.

Isaiah says that the proper "fast" or religious observance that God will accept is to live the life of love, to look after the hungry and naked. When we do this, our light will break forth as the morning, and when we pray God will say: "Here I am". And the very glory of God will be our rearguard (rereward in the old King James English). Wouldn't it be lovely to live in the glory of the Lord, to live in Jesus by accepting his invitation to follow Him and do the works that He did? Wouldn't it be lovely to show the world that we need no longer suffer the absence of God, that we can know God here and now through our lives of loving each other and loving God? Let us pray together:

Our Father in Heaven,
May all nations come to know you and praise your holy name,
May your kingdom come into the hearts and lives of individuals and communities throughout this fractured globe,
May your will be done on this earth, as it is done in heaven, that we work the works of Your Son, that we live peacefully, cooperatively, lovingly, sharing and looking after each other, forgiving each other and striving to live by your gracious commandments which reveal You to us, that we no longer treat your earth as a garbage can or an unmarked grave for the dead we have tried to ignore or forget, that we no longer treat the world as the arena of our prideful competition or the stage of our lustful and suicidal dramas, but as the fields for sowing your Word and harvesting souls to eternal bliss,
May we receive our daily bread from You Lord, so that we can share it with others, and not just the physical bread that feeds our frail bodies, but also your spiritual bread, Jesus, who came down from heaven to give us light and life.
May we receive forgiveness of our sins, Lord, as we forgive others, may we never dare to stop forgiving others and trying our utmost to remember that all of us haven fallen short of Your glory so that the Son of God died for our sins that we might be united in Him into his Body,
May we be protected from every kind of evil--from the evil desires in our hearts that defraud and do violence to our neighbors, from the greed, oppression, rapaciousness, hypocrisy and lying of corporations, governments, and tyrannical individuals who follow the first tyrant, the Devil, from all those evils that thwart the glorious radiance of your Light and the spread of the Gospel,
For the glory and the kingdom and the power are Yours, Lord, always and forever,
And where you are, there is hope for us in this world and in the world hereafter.
Amen