Is Not This the Fast That I Choose?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
(Isaiah 58:6-8, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

We can’t build the blessed community with thoughts and prayers.

I don’t have anything against thoughts and prayers, mind you. They play an important role in our spiritual lives, to the extent that they keep us focused on loving God (or whatever you call it). But God wants more from us than just our love and attention; God also wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves—and expects us to put some backbone into it.

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?” the apostle James (or, most likely, one of his followers) asked. “Surely that faith cannot save, can it?” (James 2:14-15) He expected fellow believers to follow through on their beliefs. As Friends might put it, he expected them to make their lives a testimony to those beliefs. And he had firm ideas about how to do that. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this,” he wrote: “to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (1:27)

James would not have seen this as a radical idea. In his letter, he addresses “the twelve tribes in the dispersion,” so he sought to connect with (among others) people from Jewish backgrounds who had taken an interest in the teachings of Jesus. Therefore, he makes a case that relies strongly upon Jewish tradition: specifically, the fulfillment of the covenant with God through concrete social action.

We see this message throughout the Hebrew Bible.

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” God says through the prophet Micah (6:8). To Amos, God said, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…”

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
    I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 
But let justice roll down like water
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:21-24)

Isaiah hits on this theme in the very first chapter. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” God asks the people of Judea (1:11), which has become a “sinful nation” whose people “have forsaken the Lord.” (1:4) 

“Who asked for this from your hands?” God demands, before really tearing into them: “Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me… Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” Judea still has a path it can follow to get back into God’s good graces, however. “Cease to do evil,” God instructs the nation; “learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.” (1:12-13,15-17)

Centuries later, the authors of the final chapters of Isaiah came back to this message, calling out the ostentatious hypocrisy of those who would “bow down the head like a bulrush and lie in sackcloth and ashes” to profess their faith. “Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” God asks, words practically dripping in scorn. (58:5)

No, God wants more from us than performative rituals.

And that means God wants more from Quakers than performative “silence.” We don’t come to meeting to impress God with our ability to sit quietly for an hour, occasionally expressing genteel liberal sentiments and congratulating each other on our peaceable natures. We come to meeting… well, some Friends would say we do it to better attune ourselves to God, so God can help us understand how we might loose the bonds of injustice in our world.

That doesn’t mean God has drawn up a precise to-do list for each of us—some people might get explicit marching orders, perhaps, but others may come to recognize the nature of their gifts and then see the oppressive yokes that need breaking in the culture around them. Yokes of enforced poverty, of discrimination, of militaristic violence… and, too, the yokes that keep people trapped in sin and self-absorption. 

Personally, I think God delights in our ability to come up with creative approaches to combatting the evils of this world. It proves that we don’t just obey the terms of God’s covenant blindly, but that we’ve signed on to raise up the blessed community with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind.