Isaiah 58: 1-14 (links validated on 1/15/26a)

How do we live with the mind of Christ. I found a story the other day that I want to share about a man my age who learned to do this. His name is Frank and this is how Frank woke up. I almost threw a punch in the checkout line last Tuesday. Not because I’m violent, but because at 74 years old, I finally woke up. My name is Frank. I’m a retired mechanic from outside Detroit. I live alone in a house that smells like old dust and silence. My wife, Ellen, passed six years ago. My kids? They’re busy in New York and Atlanta, chasing careers, raising grandkids I mostly see on FaceTime. I realized recently that I had become invisible. I was just “that old guy” blocking the aisle with his cart, counting pennies because Social Security doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. Every Friday, I go to the big superstore on the edge of town. It’s the highlight of my week, which tells you everything you need to know about my life. That’s where I met Mateo. He was the cashier at Lane 4. Young, maybe 22. He had a piercing in his eyebrow and tattoos running down his arms—sleeves of ink that disappeared under his blue vest. To a lot of folks from my generation, he looked like trouble. His English was heavy with an accent. He’d say, “Did you find everything okay, sir?” and most people wouldn’t even look up from their phones. They’d just shove their credit card at the machine. I watched people treat him like furniture. I heard a lady in a fancy coat huff, “Can’t you go faster?” I heard a man mutter, “Learn the language or go home.” Mateo never flinched. He just kept scanning, smiling, and saying, “Have a blessed day.” Three weeks ago, I was behind a young mother. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, a baby crying in the cart. She was buying store-brand diapers and two jugs of milk. When she swiped her card, the machine buzzed. Declined. She turned beet red. “I… let me put the milk back,” she stammered, holding back tears. “I get paid on Monday.” Before I could reach for my wallet, Mateo was already moving. He didn’t make a scene. He didn’t announce it. He just pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from his own pocket, scanned it, and handed her the receipt. “It is covered, Miss,” he said quietly. “Go feed the baby.” She looked at him, shocked, whispered a thank you, and hurried out. The next customer immediately started complaining about the wait. But I saw...

I have close ties to Minnesota and the Twin Cities. I grew up just across the border in South Dakota and went to college an hour south of Minneapolis. My sister works as a professor in St. Paul. Dozens of childhood and college friends live in the surrounding area. My husband was born in St. Paul, where his father pastored a Baptist church. Over the last few weeks, the calls and texts from Minnesota have been pouring in. “Pray for us,” one friend wrote. My friends and relatives (and their friends and relatives) took to the streets in the bitter cold. They delivered food, filmed and documented arrests, organized school patrols, and raised money for neighbors who were sheltering in place. Ingebretsen’s, a traditional Norwegian grocery store from which my friend Mara orders a yearly lutefisk, held a mutual aid drive. There didn’t seem to be any hesitation in these actions. The moment for hesitation seemed to have long come and gone. The glib little reasons for inaction had disappeared. My sister’s Somali-born student — a US citizen — called from the detention center. “I am sorry, professor,” he said with a politeness that seemed out of place in the midst of his terror. “I won’t be in class today. I was picked up driving to campus.” She called the vice provost, checked in with the student’s family, and the school spent the day trying to orchestrate his release. My friend Ellen strategized how to protect her elementary school students. Danielle recorded the arrest of her neighbor. Kyle delivered groceries. “Make no mistake, things are horrible here,” my friend Jason said last week. “But the networks of community relationships that are emerging and deepening and expanding are beautiful and breathtaking. For me they are a real source of hope for what might be when this occupation ends.”...

In 2006, South African scholar of preaching, Johan Cilliers, published his dissertation research, entitled God For Us? An Analysis and Assessment of Dutch Reformed Preaching During the Apartheid Years. He asked: what kind of sermons allow racial supremacy, division, animus and violence to continue? His purpose was to identify worship that de-forms in order to construct a kind of preaching that re-forms. One of his key findings was that these sermons centered on moralism. Sermons were littered with imperative verbs—“you need to”, “you should,” “you ought”—often aimed toward individual, familial or congregational piety. If we are good (or at least present well) then God will be for us. However, argues Cilliers, “evangelical ethics is never conditional and is never based on unreality. It is based on salvific realities in the Gospel, which are not conditional.”...

The point of the salt is not the salt itself. The point of the light is not the light itself. The point is God’s glory. Neither salt nor light makes sense on its own. Salt only works in relationship with other ingredients. Light shines so that others can see. Jesus’s metaphors are about community, not individualism. They assume connection, relationship, interdependence: an ecosystem, not a solo performance...

Some years ago many of us were troubled and saddened when a few more of the Nixon secret tape recordings were released. Because in this particular batch of tapes, one of the people heard on the recordings was the Rev. Billy Graham who was heard uttering some rather fiercely anti-Semitic remarks. Not only were Rev. Graham’s remarks at variance with his public approach to Jewish-Christian dialogue but they were, more significantly, so very, very un-Christian. To his credit, Rev. Graham apologized, and I at least have no doubt that the same divine grace he preached to millions over the years proved to be more than a match in forgiving also this sin. But I mention this not so much to think about what Rev. Graham once said but more because of the way some people reacted to this at the time...

In 1602 a Spanish ship was sailing along the coast of California when a terrible disease took hold of the crew. Their skin erupted with purple dots, their gums swelled, and teeth loosened, death came to many. After reaching port, a group of soldiers rowed out to a nearby island to dispose of the corpses that had piled up. When they came to shore, one soldier saw a fruit growing from a cactus. He picked one and ate it. It tasted good and he craved more. He began eating the fruit, wherever he could find it, and shared it with others on board. As they ate, they felt their gums tightening and energy returning to their bodies. They did not then know the mechanism, but we now understand that they were experiencing scurvy, a disease caused by fatal lack of vitamin C. Those little prickly pear fruits that the soldiers found so good to eat are chock full of it. Their bodies needed vitamin C and so they began to crave exactly the fruits that provided it. The human body, it turns out, is miraculous at craving what it needs...

Like all Americans I have been deeply moved by the tragedy of multiple mass shootings that have spattered blood all over the face of our country. I have prayed that God would stop this bloody epidemic of violence. I appreciated it when officials would say, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their loved ones.” So, I was initially stunned by the bitter words of survivors and activists who said, “We don’t want your thoughts and your prayers.” Who wouldn’t want thoughts and prayers in such times? Well, maybe God. Those bitter folks always concluded their remarks by saying, “We don’t want your thoughts and prayers. We want action. We need someone to do something to stop this senseless slaughter.” Isn’t that what God is saying to Israel and to us in our text...

I was reminded this week of a short story by science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin. The story is called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It’s the story of a city called Omelas. Imagine a place where everyone lives happy, peaceful, rich lives, a place filled with music and dancing and cultural expression, where everyone has what they need. Well, almost everyone. There is one exception. A small one. Very small, in fact. In a tiny, dark mop closet of a dank, unfinished basement in a single building within this vibrant and beautiful city lives a small child—emaciated, terrified, and alone. She has been in there for years, but you wouldn’t guess how old she is, because her development—physical, intellectual, and emotional—has been stunted by neglect and malnourishment. The only interruption to her unending empty terror comes when someone rattles the door open and slides in some meager food. At these times, she cries out, “Please help me! I promise I’ll be good! Just let me out. I’ll be so good! Just help me!” But every time, the door slams closed and she is left in the dark. Now, you might think, well, it must be that no one in Omelas knows about this child, but in fact, everyone knows. As young people come of age, they are told about her. And many of them come to see her or hear her cries for themselves. But they do not let her out...

Małgorzata Chodakowska is a Polish artist who has lived in Germany since 1991. She is renowned for her “water sculptures,” (usually nude) figures carved in oak wood and then cast in bronze and designed for water. Chodakowska creates unique paths for the water, specific to each sculpture—it might fan out from the waist like a tutu, for example, expand from the back like angels’ wings, or shoot every which way around an orb, suggesting the movement of celestial bodies.

Those who preach and teach on Isaiah 58 will want to look for examples of God’s people’s work of feeding the hungry through their own denomination or an organization with which they’re familiar. One example of such work is that being done by the Christian Reformed Church’s World Renew ministry in places like Mozambique. Mozambique’s population is growing at an annual rate of about 2.5%. That places a huge strain on the country’s resources that can’t meet that increase in demand. So World Renew is partnering with the Canadian government to share existing and appropriate agricultural technologies that increase food production. They’re also working to improve water use...

In the print here Helen Siegl illustrates Isaiah 58:7. She includes the text of the verse and a depiction of the living out of that text. It's a direct illustration of a direct instruction from God. Get rid of pointing fingers and gossiping and burdening others, start feeding the hungry and help those who are in need.

Recently research(2) has been undertaken, seeking to discover why generous people – people who seem to have a built-in capacity to give of themselves selflessly – why they are able to be that way. The story of one man in that study went this way: As a child he was terrified of the dentist. The slow-moving, old-fashioned drill, and the pain he associated with it, were too much for him. Each time he went to the dentist he was terrified. Then on one visit, a kindly dental assistant befriended him, and when he became visibly agitated at the approach of the dentist and his whining drill, she said to him, “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.” And she didn’t. A simple thing, nothing really dramatic. She probably forgot it by the next day. But the man never forgot that simple, generous act from his childhood. It became part of the story that shaped his life. Years later, working as an Emergency Medical Technician he happened upon a terrible truck accident. The highway as well as the truck and its trapped driver were covered with gasoline. Naturally, the driver was terrified, because until the fire department arrived, there was every chance that the whole scene could go up in flames at any moment. The sensible thing to do was to stand a hundred yards off and wait and hope. Even so, this man went to the driver, sat beside him until help arrived, saying, “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.” The story of generosity in his own childhood had become his life. Later the truck driver said, “That guy was crazy!” Maybe so. Or maybe he was the salt of the earth, the light of the world, who knows?...

("About ten years ago many of us were troubled and saddened when a few more of the Nixon secret tape recordings were released. Because in this particular batch of tapes, one of the people heard on the recordings was Billy Graham who was heard uttering some rather fiercely anti-Semitic remarks....")

("Do you know the singer, Bono? Chances are, if you are my age or older, you probably don’t. He is a popular singer and sometimes guitar player with the Irish rock band U2. He is a bit of a pop cultural icon, which makes his appearance to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday unusual...")

("Major Barbara Sherer, while serving in Kuwait, tells of a fire that raced through a complex of five large tents that served as the camp's central dining facility, and also the place where she and the other chaplains held religious services. Miraculously, the fire broke out at just the right time...")

One time we purchased a new steam cleaner. It looked simple enough, so I started putting it together. I had to make several trips to the tool box because I didn't bother to see what tools were needed to assemble it. I finally got frustrated because I had some parts that didn't seem to go anywhere. At one point I had to disassemble the cleaner and start over. I finally decided to give in and read the directions. In a matter of minutes I was able to complete the task. Hmm. I am sure you have heard the phrase, "When all else fails, follow the directions." It seems we humans are a bit stubborn when it comes to asking for help. We tend to rely on our own resources. We are simply too proud to ask others for assistance. Yet we make mistakes and sometimes choose the wrong path because we fail to follow the directions...