5 Epiphany (Year A) - February 9, 2020

Epiphany 5
Year A
February 9, 2020
Isaiah 58:1-9; Matthew 5:13-20

For the second week in a row, I find myself drawn to our word from the prophets. For the second week in a row, we hear a prophet wrestling with a people that are talking the talk but not walking the walk. This text comes from, what we tend to call “Third Isaiah,” the latest of three sections of the book of Isaiah, composed sometime after the Babylonian exile ended and the Jewish exiles were able to return home in 539BCE. All of that to say: this is somewhere around 200 years after our text from Micah last week. Yet the same issue is rising (as humans, we’re prone to making the same mistakes again and again, aren’t we?). They’re saying the right things, they’re observing Sabbath, they claim to “delight to draw near to God.” And still something is still off. People are serving their own interests and oppressing their workers. Their fast is leading not to a restored community but to quarrels and fights. Something went awry. There is a belief that by saying or believing the right things, they will bring about God’s favor. Yet there is still pain. There is still brokenness. Restoration and healing seem far from a reality. Though freed from exile, they still find themselves in darkness.

What becomes clear is that the darkness is self-inflicted. They had the gifts of God’s life, God’s redemption, God’s freedom – not because they earned it but because of God’s love poured out for them. They had those gifts because God is God. The people of Israel are God’s beloved people. Yet people are still living under the bonds of oppression. Workers aren’t being treated justly. The hungry are still hungry. The homeless find themselves without a roof over their head. The call to care for the neighbor and the stranger is not being lived out, despite the fasting and honest desire to be close to God.

The prophet in Isaiah today points us to this truth: true restoration and wholeness cannot be found as long as oppression and marginalization are real for our neighbors. When I was in Tanzania, I was introduced to the African ideal of ubuntu. As a concept, it comes out of South Africa, but it is a common ideal in many parts of Africa. In European/ American societies, we’re formed by individualism. We may have heard “I think, therefore I am.” We’re formed by the idea that we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps (and thus those who are suffering need to “just” do the same). My main responsibility is for me and for my family. Ubuntu couldn’t be more different from that. Ubuntu is the idea that I am because we are. I am because of who we are in community together. In other words, I cannot be whole unless you are whole. What affects you affects me. Our community does not find healing unless each member within it finds healing. We are intimately connected. That’s much closer to the proclamation of God through the prophets. The questions today, then, to the people are these: Do you live in ways that promote healing not just for you but for your neighbor? Do you live in ways that bring light to people that live in darkness? Do you see the ways in which our health/ healing is intertwined with the health and healing of others?

We hear God’s answer, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs 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.” Notice what we don’t hear: well, the poor need to find a job. If you’re treated unjustly at work, if you’re not making a living wage, find a new job. Pull yourself up. No, instead, the burden is placed on the community. The responsibility for the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed is on the community as a whole. You’re not experiencing wholeness? You find yourself in the darkness? Look at the way your neighbor is treated. Look at the way your neighbor suffers. You want to experience wholeness, healing, and light – make them real for your neighbor. For the darkness that affects them engulfs you too.

God is calling God’s people to live the kind of life that fosters healing, that fosters wholeness, that fosters restoration – not just for the individual – but for the whole. Then, they will experience the gifts and blessings that they so long for – light, healing, help, having needs met. Those gifts that already belong to them will be made real. In relationship with one another, in breaking down the bonds of oppression, in feeding the hungry, in housing the poor, they experience the presence of God in their community – in one another. As a people, they had already experienced God’s life and God’s light. This is the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt. This is the God that led them through the wilderness. This is the God that set free the Exiles from Babylon. God is calling them to allow that life, that restoration, that healing to break into their lives, to transform them, to propel them. God, through Isaiah, calls them to dwell in God’s own life, God’s own healing, God’s own restoration. The call, then today, is to live out or to participate in the life and the healing that has already been given to them. By participating in God’s life, the life and light of God becomes reality for them and for all people. By living out God’s light and God’s life, they become the people that God wanted them to be from the beginning – a people in right relationship with God and in right relationship with each other.

Today, Jesus says it another way. “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Jesus today isn’t naming a hope for us. Jesus is naming a reality. You (all) – it is plural - are the salt of the earth… You (all) are the light of the world. As we heard a few weeks ago on Baptism of our Lord Sunday, You are God’s beloved child. Because we are God’s beloved, we are the conduit or the channel for God’s light and God’s justice in the world. In Jesus, you have received the light of God. In Jesus, you have encountered God’s love. In Jesus, you have received God’s grace. In Jesus, you all become the light of the world.

As we gather here, we encounter the gifts of grace and forgiveness that spring forth from God’s love. in Word, in Water, in Bread and Wine, in this community. And nothing - neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38). In other words, nothing can take the gifts of God from you; nothing can take the gifts of God from us. Not because we earned it. But because God is God. This is a God that became human, became flesh, made godself in our image. This is a God that risked everything – even the cross – to show God’s love and to bring God’s light to all people. As God’s beloved children, we receive the gifts of liberation, of healing, of wholeness, of grace. Washed in the waters of baptism, fed by the body and blood of Christ, you have been given the light of Christ. You are the light of the world. Washed in the waters of baptism, fed by the body and blood of Christ, we have been given the light of Christ. We are the light of the world.

And yet, the world we live in is marked by darkness, by pain, by oppression, by marginalization. The question is, then, what is our response to receiving these gifts of a loving God in a world of pain. Are we going to let the salt go stale? Are we going to hide the light under a basket, hoarding the gifts for ourselves?

No, today we hear God is calling us to allow that life, that restoration, that healing to break into our lives, to transform us, to propel us into a world in need. God calls us to dwell in God’s own life, God’s own healing, God’s own restoration. Our actions are a response to God’s action and God’s promises already given to us. Eric Barreto, a New Testament professor at Princeton, puts it this way, “If we trust God’s promises, if we stand grateful for God’s actions, then we will bend our lives toward the life-giving ways God has called us to follow.” The call, then today, is to live out or to participate in the life and the healing that has already been given to us. The call is to bend our lives toward the life-giving ways that God has called us to follow – to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to share our bread with the hungry, to provide shelter to the homeless poor, to cover the naked, to break down the walls and barriers that seek to divide us from our neighbor. By participating in God’s life, by living that out in our relationship with the neighbor and the stranger, the life and light of God becomes reality for us and for all people.

The call today, then, in the words of our opening hymn is this: “You are a light on the hill, o people. Light for the city of God. Shine so holy and bright, o people. Shine for the kingdom of God. Bring forth the Kingdom of mercy; bring forth the kingdom of peace. Bring forth the kingdom of justice. Bring forth the city of God.”

Amen.