Good works

Isaiah 58:1-12

Shout out; do not hold back!    Lift up your voice like a trumpet!Announce to my people their rebellion,    to the house of Jacob their sins.

2 Yet day after day they seek me    and delight to know my ways,as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they want God on their side.

3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?    Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers.

4 You fast only to quarrel and to fight    and to strike with a wicked fist.Such fasting as you do today    will not make your voice heard on high.

5 Is such the fast that I choose,    a day to humble oneself?Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush    and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?Will you call this a fast,    a day acceptable to the Lord?

6 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?

7 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?

8 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.

9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;    you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.” If you remove the yoke from among you,  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

10 if you offer your food to the hungry    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,then your light shall rise in the darkness    and your gloom be like the noonday.

11 The Lord will guide you continually    and satisfy your needs in parched places    and make your bones strong,and you shall be like a watered garden,    like a spring of water    whose waters never fail.

12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;you shall be called the repairer of the breach,    the restorer of streets to live in.

Matthew 5:13-20

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

     17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

What, actually, does Jesus want us to be about?  What’s the vision, the goal?  

When I was a teenager I heard the message that I was supposed to be a light to my friends, to my school, wherever I went.  The burden of making a difference in the world - of letting your light shine - fell to me, though I never felt up to the task, nor did I have a lot of success I could point to.  I probably needed the light to shine on me more than I was capable of shining on anyone else.  It felt like a lonely, impossible task.  

I remember the first time it was pointed out to me that when Jesus says, “You are the light of the world”, that you “you” is not singular, but plural.  He’s not directing his statement at each individual and declaring that each of them is a separate light.  He’s saying you, all of you, together are the light of the world.  Good American individualist that I was, I had been taught that I was like a city on a hill when quite obviously this a corporate, communal image.   

Even those of us who grew up in more “socialist” type places still are accustomed to thinking individualistically, when, in fact, this way of thinking is quite foreign to the world of Scripture, where salvation, holiness, righteousness, etc. are determined not by the status of the isolated person but by the character of the community to which they belong.  

In the Isaiah passage we see a picture of a people who of whom God says, “day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God.”  This is a blanket judgment, as if everyone pretended to seek God even as they exploited the vulnerable.  Maybe there were some good people and some not so good people, but what matters is the community.  What matters to God is not so much a person, but a people.  

The vocation of Israel, especially as declared in Isaiah, is that they would be a light to the nations.   Jews then, like Jews now, don’t really proselytize; they don’t try to convert people.  They don’t so much have a message to proclaim as a way of life to live. Of course, rarely, if ever, did Israel actually succeed in this vocation.  Turns out it’s pretty difficult to do what God wants you to do.  The law existed not to create a bunch of legalists but rather to create a community set apart for the worship of God, but all the stuff like saying your prayers, making your sacrifices, fasting is the easy part.  It’s much harder to actually love our neighbor as yourself.  

The fast God desires is not an act of private piety but the “fast” that looses the bonds of injustice, sets the oppressed free, feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, clothes naked.  If you just do the “religious stuff” you remain in the dark, however much you may think you’re seeking God, but 

“if you offer your food to the hungry    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,then your light shall rise in the darkness    and your gloom be like the noonday.”  

It is when they love their neighbors - and possibly only when they love their neighbors - that they will indeed be a shining light.   And it is then that the light shines on them as well, the God they thought they were seeking now comes into view, and “The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places.”  As always, loving God and loving your neighbor are inseparable.  

Jesus declared, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Despite this statement Christians have long found themselves pitting law and Gospel against one another, as if someone other than God gave the law.  If you make religion about getting to heaven then you conclude that Christians think you get to heaven through faith in Christ while Jews think you get to heaven through “work righteousness”.  But that was always false.  Jews thought they were saved not because they obeyed the law, they thought they were saved because they were part of God’s covenant people, and law-keeping is what defined that community.   

Jesus’ statement about fulfilling the law rather than abolishing it is not so much about whether or not certain provisions still apply (is it ok to get a tattoo or to wear a cotton/poly blend!?) but instead a declaration that he is here to accomplish the goal to which the law aimed but never reached.   The prophets, like Isaiah, repeatedly called God’s people back to the weightier matters of the law.  Now Jesus is calling people to a new covenant through him, to finally be the community that is indeed like a city set on a hill that will be a light to the nations.  

To answer the questions, “What, actually, does Jesus want us to be about?  What’s the vision, the goal?”, the best answer might be that God’s intention in the world as always been to create a faithful community that will reveal God to the world. 

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven,”  Jesus said.  It’s common for Christians to equate letting your light shine with preaching the Gospel, a Gospel that typically emphasizes that faith is crucial and works futile.  But this distinction between is artificial.   Here Jesus equates letting your light shine with doing good works - exactly the kind of things named in Isaiah, exactly the sort of things that Jesus did in his life - and he expresses confidence that these good works will be witnessed by the world and that those who see will respond by giving glory to God.  

This is the church’s vocation, that just as Jesus doesn’t just have a message, he is the message, so too the church is called not just to preach the Good News, but to live it, to make in incarnate.  

It’s my hope that our church might indeed be like a city on a hill.  The goal is not to draw attention to ourselves but rather to faithfully follow Jesus in the expectation that, if we do, the world can’t help but notice.   That’s not the only paradigm for evangelism, but it certainly is the one that I find most compelling in this time and place.  Our calling is not to convince, or persuade, and certainly not to coerce.  It’s simply to be faithful and trust that the rest will take care of itself.  

Emperor Constantine famously converted to Christianity and made it the official religion of the empire.  But his son, Julian - called “The Apostate” - temporarily returned to the old religion of paganism.   He resented the new faith and wrote in a letter: 

For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see our people lack aid from us.

The church then set about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick - and not just the Christians, but all people - and this did not go unnoticed by those outside the church.  Their doctrines were weird, even detestable, but their way of life compelled respect.  

That was some 17 centuries ago, but the situation now is not so different.  Imagine that we might be the kind of community who practices the kind of shared faith that the world notices.  Rightly or wrongly, Christians are imagined to be people who are out of touch, who don’t do anyone any good, who are retrograde, who stand in the way of all that is good.  As long as we follow the well-worn religious path which Isaiah decried, we not only meet the world’s disapproval, but God’s as well.  

I know it seems hard to imagine how we get from here to there, but we should hope that one day we too we will be a community that loves our neighbors as ourselves, whose life together extends beyond these walls.  Our faith is not something we do alone, but together.