A True Fast

A True Fast

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

February 5, 2017

Scripture: Isaiah 58:1-12: Luke 10:25-37

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

To fast. Ah, now that to me is a great mystery. To refrain from eating food. I’ve got to be honest here. I don’t much like refraining from eating food. Yet I know that every spiritual tradition in the world teaches fasting as a powerful spiritual discipline. They say you fast to take your mind off of worldly things so it can concentrate on divine things. Christianity teaches that. So do Judaism and Buddhism. In Islam fasting is elevated to the level of one of the five basic “pillars” of the faith. During the month of Ramadan Muslims fast from sunup to sundown for that whole month. In Christianity the season of Lent that we’ll be entering soon was originally a time of fasting something like Islam’s Ramadan. I’m sure many of you remember the old Catholic rule about eating fish on Friday. The rule was actually that you refrain from eating red meat on Friday. That was seen as a kind of partial fast. Fasting has a long and honorable history in the world’s faith traditions; and frankly I don’t get it. Refrain from eating to take your mind off of worldly things so it can concentrate on divine things? I’ve got to tell you. When I’m really hungry my mind is continually on the very worldly thing of being hungry. So like I said. Fasting is a great mystery to me.

In our reading from Isaiah this morning we hear that fasting was a spiritual practice of the ancient Hebrews. In those verses Isaiah (actually probably so-called Third Isaiah, but never mind) tells us that the people of his time fast and expect God to reward them for doing so. They say “Why have we fasted, and you have not seen it?” They know that fasting is a spiritual practice that can be pleasing to God. So they do it, and they expect a reward. When the reward doesn’t come, they question God.

And that’s where this text gets really interesting. It tells us that God rejects the people’s fasting because they’re hypocrites when they do it. Isaiah has God say “On the day of your fasting you do as you please and exploit all your workers.” On their fast days they quarrel and fight. God says “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard.” They think they humble themselves. They bow their heads. They even sit in sackcloth and ashes, traditional symbols of repentance. God asks them the rhetorical question ”Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” Apparently the people think that it is. The suggestion so far in this text is that the problem isn’t that the people fast, it’s that they don’t do it in the right spirit.

Yet in this passage it turns out that the problem with the people’s fasting isn’t that they do it in the wrong spirit. The problem is that they do it at all. In this passage it appears that God doesn’t want fasting. The problem is that the people think fasting is what God wants, and they’re wrong about that. The problem is that they don’t understand what God really wants from them.

So God tells them through the prophet what God really wants from them: “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? 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?” God says God will bless the people if they “do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed.” That’s what God wants. Not that we convince ourselves that we’re righteous and God owes us one by undertaking some spiritual discipline that is for us an empty, external ritual. Justice. That’s what God wants from us. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Take in the stranger and give her shelter. Stop oppressing people, especially your workers, your employees. I suppose that means stop making them work under horrible working conditions and pay them a living wage. God says I don’t care about your rituals, rituals that are actually meaningless to you except that you do them to get some reward from me. Stop oppressing people. Care for the needy and the traveler. God says that’s the fast I want, using I guess fast as a metaphor for the life acceptable to God. Not fasting. Justice. That’s what God wants.

Folks, that passage from Isaiah was written around 2,500 years ago, but it speaks a powerful divine truth to us today. Today our nation has said to the hungry, weary traveler, to the refugee, or at least some of them: No! Not here! You are not welcome here. We won’t let you come in. We will not give you shelter. We will not be a safe place for you, for you come from the wrong country and practice the wrong religion. You’re not like us. So No! Go away! We don’t want you!

That, my friends, is a powerfully unchristian position that the executive branch of our federal government has taken. It violates the foundational ethics of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. The ancient Hebrew prophets said shelter the wanderer. Jesus said respect the hated Samaritan. The Jews of Jesus’ time hated Samaritans the way far too many Americans hate Arabs and all Muslims. In his famous parable that we heard Jesus said No! Do not hate the Samaritan because of his nationality or his faith. Look at what the does. If he does what’s right accept him. Welcome him. He can be a hero even though he’s not like you. Folks, God knows how much we need to hear that lesson today. The ones you think are righteous may be getting it all wrong. Today Christians who hate Muslims and want to keep them all out of our country are getting it wrong. Isaiah said a true fast is doing justice. Jesus said love the foreigner you think you hate.

Yes, we have legitimate security concerns, and our nation has been doing a pretty good job at protecting us. Not perfect, but then nothing human is perfect. Refugees seeking asylum in our country go through a vetting process that can take as long as 2 years. No one from one of the seven countries on President Trump’s banned list has committed an act of violence in our country. Ever. Most of the 9-11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and that nation isn’t on the President’s list. Arbitrarily banning people from entering our country because of their nation of origin is un-American. More importantly for us, it is un-Christian. It is not doing the justice Isaiah demands from us. It is saying the priest and the Levite are the heroes of Jesus’ parable rather than the Samaritan, the real hero of the story.

So let’s focus on what Isaiah says is a true fast. Doing justice. Caring for people in need. Not oppressing people. That is the fast God wants from us. Spiritual disciplines like fasting can be powerful tools in the life of faith. They can be acceptable and even pleasing to God. But they are that only if they lead us into a true fast, the fast of justice. Today more than ever we need to understand that truth. More than understand it we need to live it. May God give us the wisdom and the courage to do it. Amen.