Lent Is For... Sharing Bread

Walking the cobblestone and brick streets of Thessaloniki, there are a lot of sights you'll see. The slope of all the streets downward toward the sea. Little shrines with icons and candles. Graffiti on nearly every building you'll pass. Thousand-year-old churches, still standing tall, still inviting people to come worship God. The rubble of ancient ruins, blending with modern apartment complexes and storefronts. Shop after shop after shop in the shopping district. 

But one of the most common sights you'll see – one you can't avoid downtown – are beggars. Some are young women, kids in tow, trying desperately to sell individual packages of Kleenex. Others are old women and old men, sitting by the side of the road, hand outstretched and murmuring imploringly to anyone who walks near. It's an overwhelming experience, to be bombarded with so many cries for help, so many people visibly presenting a depiction of homelessness and poverty and desperation. But you know the cautionary tales that spin through your head at the same time, don't you?

When I was there last month, I have to say, I felt profoundly torn. I knew what the Bible teaches about generosity, about mercy. When I was in seminary, I pledged before God that I would try to move in the direction of a simpler lifestyle, owning nothing that isn't needful or at least useful in ministry. That's why, the next time I move, I plan – I hope – to divest myself of most of my belongings. Just get rid of it, sell it off, and learn to live on less. 

With that in mind, you'd think I would've been eager to give to every beggar I saw, or at least most. But on the other hand, objections kept surfacing in my mind. Now, there may be good reasons not to give money to a Greek beggar on the streets of Thessaloniki – many of them, I'm told, are victims of human trafficking and are coerced into begging to make money for their slavers, and others are working for organized crime rings – but I sure didn't know that. And the confession I have to make this morning is that, while I was there, God confronted me with the tremendous gap between my heart and Christ's heart.

And that's really the goal of Lent, isn't it? That's what we've been talking about these past couple weeks. By driving us beyond our usual limits and into the realm of self-sacrifice, by pushing us to where we're at our weakest, Lent opens our eyes to that distance. It's not so that we can feel bad. It's not so that we can moan and groan and say, “Woe is me,” and that's it. It's so that we can quit standing on our own so-called strength and fall down on Christ's. 

If you've been here the past couple of weeks, maybe you remember the gist of what we've been learning together from Isaiah. At the close of February, we opened up a question: “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?” (Isaiah 58:5). Is it just about rituals, and then back to life as 'normal'? Or is God looking for something more from all our religion? 

And we found that the kind of fast God chooses means he's looking for us to forsake weighted scales, to speak up for the vulnerable, to abandon all violence, and to spread liberty to those now under oppression. “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?” (Isaiah 58:6).

But Isaiah keeps going on from there. Sure, like last week, Lent is still for combating “structural evil” like fraud, violence, and oppression – still a catalyst for challenging those aspects of law and culture and society and especially ourselves that run directly counter to God's kingdom. But Lent is for more – for things more directly in our personal power, ways we can change society that have nothing to do with changing the government and everything to do with our own actions. Lent is for personal action, to charitably and mercifully do good to people directly and make our neighborhood a healthier place.

So Isaiah continues: “Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: ...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?” (Isaiah 58:6-7). That's not something we can leave to others. It's something vital to our own souls. If we ignore the need all around us, we're turning away from our own flesh and blood – and, says Paul, that makes us “worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).

It isn't as though God ever said, “Generosity would be cool, if you happen to feel like it.” The extent of our generosity depends on what we've got and on the Spirit's leading, but the fact of our generosity is a matter of obedience and of sharing God's vision for life. It's true that “there will always be poor people in the land,” but God tells us to “give generously to them, and do so without a grudging heart.” He commands us to “be openhanded toward [those] who are poor and needy in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:10-11). 

God reminds us that “the wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously” (Psalm 37:21). And didn't Jesus outright tell the Pharisees: “Be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:41)? God wants us to “be generous on every occasion” (2 Corinthians 9:11) – that's in the Bible, I didn't write it.

For those reasons, Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, wrote: “Mercy to the full range of human needs is such an essential mark of being a Christian that it can be used as a test of true faith. Mercy is not optional or an addition to being a Christian. Rather, a life poured out in deeds of mercy is the inevitable sign of true faith.” 

In other words, the fast God chooses – Isaiah's Lent – is just what Jesus-followers do. Like Paul wrote to an earlier Tim: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).

But maybe you'll say, “Hold on, wait a minute.” Maybe if you saw a scruffy man by the side of the road, maybe if someone came to you for help, you'd have a list of reasons to keep your wallet firmly in pocket. I know I did, when I was in Greece. Maybe you'd think, “This person must be so lazy, to not be working productively for society. His whole life must be a string of bad decisions. Let's leave him to the consequences of his own actions. Every man for himself.” Not that we know his heart. Not that we know whether the trauma of military service, or robbery, or some other tragedy drove him here. Not that we know whether he's trying to hold down a job but has trouble getting there without a car.

Or maybe you'd think, “If I even start a conversation, he'll hit me up for more and more, and then I'll never be rid of him, and I'll be uncomfortable.” But real mercy is open to a life-changing relationship – one that cuts through our culture of complacency and their culture of poverty; one that calls us both deeper into the life of Christ. Why should we want to be 'rid' of someone made in God's image? Why should we look at our brother, our sister, our neighbor as an inconvenience?

Or maybe you'd think, “I'd like to give, I really would, but I just can't afford it. I'm saving up for something.” But which will last longer: what you're saving for, or the soul of that man, woman, or child in desperate need with outstretched hand? In that moment, we show what we really value and whom we truly serve. Is it the image of God, or the image of Mammon? There are valid things we really need – we do have to take care of ourselves and our families, because they're at the core of our field of stewardship – but we need far, far less than we as Americans have tricked ourselves into thinking we do.

Or maybe you've walked past a panhandler and thought to yourself, “Why should I give him this money? Who knows how he'll use it? Probably to get drunk.” Not that we can see inside his heart, but we might think it anyway. We worry about misuse. Of course, there are ways to deal with that: we can find out what we need and take care of that need ourselves, by giving in kind rather than in cash, or by dealing with their creditors directly. 

But even so, I remember a story. Who here – a show of hands, now – has ever heard of C. S. Lewis? Not just an Oxford professor, but a wonderful Christian author in his day: Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, The Great Divorce, A Grief Observed, and of course the Chronicles of Narnia series.

I heard this story from his stepson a few years ago. One day, Lewis and a friend were walking down the road, and they came across a beggar. Lewis reaches into his pocket and pulls out all the money he has on him, and gives it to the beggar, and they walk on. His friend – maybe it was Tolkien, maybe another of the Inklings – is astonished, even dismayed, tries to reprimand him. “Jack!”, he says – his friends called him “Jack,” because, come on, would you want to go by “Clive”? – “Jack, what did you do that for? That beggar is probably going to spend every last penny of that on booze!” And Jack looked into his friend's eyes, and he says, “Maybe, maybe not – but if I'd kept it, I know that's how I would've spent it!”

C. S. Lewis was brutally honest in that. We can be so concerned about the potential irresponsibility of the poor that we're blind to our own actual irresponsible stewardship of God's gifts – so consumed in judging others for the speck in their eye that the log in our own keeps thwacking the doorframes and bounces off all the pews. 

Our attitude toward our money and our belongings is meant to look less like a game of Tug-of-War and more like a game of Hot Potato – it isn't about holding on with all our might; it's about tossing our excess away before it burns us, and trusting that God will take care of us in his service.

Isn't it great that, during his darkest night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus didn't voice all our objections to showing mercy? Can you imagine a world where Jesus says to the Father, “I'm not giving up all I have for them – I'm not going to the cross – because it's too much to ask! I can't afford it, and I don't want to get hurt. Besides, look at how lazy they are! Look at how useless they are! They'll never change. And besides, many of them don't want to help others; they just want a handout. If I give them this one thing, they'll just keep coming back for more whenever they need something, and I'll never hear the end of it. That's so annoying, Father. And if I give them this life of mine, think how they'll squander it, think how they'll misuse it! That's it, that's the last straw – you can forget the cross.” 

What a dark world that would be. Thank God that his Son has a heart better than ours! He showed mercy, he showed generosity – and he calls us to be like him and help others, even in our own midst as well as beyond it, with their material, social, and spiritual poverty.

In Greece, I couldn't communicate with the beggars I saw – I didn't speak Greek, they didn't speak English. I couldn't get a sense of their sincerity, couldn't assess whether they were really hungry, or really in need of clothing or shelter or any of the other things Isaiah names. I couldn't find local charities that care for those needs in constructive ways, avoiding relationships of perpetual dependence. 

But I don't have those obstacles in America. Here, if I apply myself, I absolutely can speak with people in need – get to know them, learn about their lives and their situation; I absolutely can provide for their needs in concrete ways by buying them meals, helping them find work and get to work, funding their shelter, helping them in body and spirit. And when that gets overwhelming, I absolutely can find charitable organizations that equip people in need to reach self-sufficiency, so that they can begin to experience the joy of helping those with less. 

I may not have much by middle-class American standards, but I can do those things! And so can each of you – even if it's just pennies to start. And so can we, as a church. But one thing we can't afford to do is hoard all our wealth to ourselves, like the rich young ruler who “went away disappointed” (Mark 10:22).

You might be wondering, “Isn't this supposed to be a sermon about Lent?” You're right – it is. “What on earth does this have to do with Lent?” I promise you, it does. What biblical theme is Lent mostly about? Search for “Lent” on Google, and there's one word you'll see again and again: “Repentance.” Lent is all about repentance – that change of mind, that change of heart, that change of lifestyle, that turns us away from our old patterns and points us in God's direction again. John the Baptist was a fiery preacher of repentance “to all the people of Israel” (Acts 13:24). And he lived it – he was no hypocrite. In fact, you could say that John's whole life was Lent! He wore camel-hair clothes, he lived on locusts and wild honey, he fasted – he must have, to live like that, and the Bible outright tells us that “John's disciples often fast and pray” (Luke 5:33).

John the Baptist lived Lent from childhood to the chopping block, and repentance was his theme all his days long – after all, “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness,” writes Mark, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). And when he castigated the crowds, he told them to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). They couldn't rely on their ancestry, their background, to keep them in the covenant: “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9). 

That's why Lent is so important – because Lent is about repentance, and repentance is a matter of life or death! So it's no surprise that the crowds asked – just like the crowds asked Peter on Pentecost – “What should we do, then?” (Luke 3:10).

And do you remember what John said? “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none. And anyone who has food should do the same” (Luke 3:11). That's amazing! If you have just two shirts in your closet (I must have a couple dozen, at least), and you meet somebody who hasn't got a single one, go down to one yourself for their sake. When John thinks about what repentance looks like for the crowds – people with lives back in the city, back in their villages, back in their country huts – it looks like sharing. It looks like generosity.

John the Baptist thinks with Isaiah's brain. What John means by repentance is what Isaiah means by fasting: share what you've got with the hungry, the homeless, the have-nots – even if what you've got is so little you don't know how you'll get by, repentance means sharing. 

The kind of fasting God chooses is for us to fast from the pretense of possession – to set aside our bizarre belief that our so-called “ownership” is more than stewardship, that our “rights” over all of “our” things take precedence over God's command to share what we have. 

That's the fast that God has chosen – and it's not just outward, but stems from a real reshaping of our hearts to see in each needy person (including those with small needs from time to time) the image of God and a chance to love as Christ loved us, without condescension, without condemnation.

So this message is for Lent. But it isn't only for Lent, as if repentance and fasting were confined to a season, and then it was back to business as usual. That's exactly Isaiah's criticism of Judah's “spiritual superheroes” (cf. Isaiah 58:5)! Lent is a reset button – a time to take up new patterns of living, not so that we can go back to 'normal' after it's done, but so that we can find a new 'normal' in its aftermath. Lent makes us one step more generous – and we carry that throughout the rest of the year and into the next, until Lent comes around again.

And what does Isaiah say will happen if we observe this kind of fast the LORD approves? “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say, 'Here am I.' If you 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, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isaiah 58:8-10).

That's what a good Lent will do! The Lent of the “spiritual superheroes,” who were all about ritual, all about 'doing church' without a change in heart – that kind of religion puts no wings on their prayers. It earns them no favor in God's sight. But this kind of Lent is different. It's not about earning God's favor or deserving his attention, though. This kind of fasting is only possible within the realm of his grace to begin with. It asks us to “spend ourselves in behalf of the hungry” – a real sacrificial generosity, but one made possible because Jesus Christ was generous first to us: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). 

 And because it comes from Jesus, because it does as Jesus does, it comes with such a great gift: “The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor” (Proverbs 22:9). “Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to” (Deuteronomy 15:10). Lent is for loosing the chains of injustice, and Lent is for sharing bread. The whole gospel leads to sharing bread together at the Lord's family table, after all.

This fasting will be a sacrifice, but it comes with a promise – a promise that God will see our reflection of his Son and be pleased, a promise that he'll bring new light into our lives, a promise that he'll pour out the Spirit of revival on us if we truly follow that Spirit into transformation of the head, heart, and hands. 

That's what this message is for. It's not for guilt-tripping anybody, not for hammering you down, not for convicting you and challenging you and making you exhausted. It's not about tiring you out: his yoke is easy, his burden is light, he will give you rest, so go labor for Jesus Christ in his field (Matthew 11:29-30). 

Let's be a church of mercy. Let's be a church whom people will see and say to themselves, “Yes... Jesus is risen, and Jesus is there.” “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” beyond all measure, who has “enriched [us] in every way so that [we] can be generous on every occasion” (2 Corinthians 9:11, 15). Amen.

Lent Is For... Loosing the Chains of Injustice

We opened an important question last week – or rather, Isaiah opened it for us: “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” (Isaiah 58:5). 

The religiosity of Judah's “spiritual superheroes,” those Pharisees in the making, was all about rituals and not about the heart; all about Sunday pretense, and nothing about Monday-through-Saturday reality; all about performance, not about grace-fueled transformation. They humbled themselves outwardly for a day and went straight back to their lives of deceit, violence, and oppression by the end of it. “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high” (Isaiah 58:4). 

But then what kind of fast doesn't get in the way? What kind of fast, what sort of religious life, stamps “expedited shipping” on our heaven-bound prayers?

We've been wondering that all week, and now Isaiah opens up the answer. Here's what Lent is about: “To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke” (Isaiah 58:6). That's not how we would've expected the next verse to go, is it? It seems so strange. What are the chains of injustice? Why are they so tight? Why is loosening them up something fit for Lent? If last week's Question of Lent was confusing, the Answer of Lent seems no better! 

Well, I'd like to suggest the chains of injustice spiritually and socially keep people tied down, restraining them from living the quality of life God wants us to live. And when I read the passages we picked out for this morning, it seems to me that there are three major types of the chains of injustice.

The first set of chains are deceit and unfairness. Ezekiel tells us all about this, because even writing a few generations after Isaiah, he still had to address dysfunctions from before the exile. Ezekiel dreamed of a new Jerusalem with a massive “sacred district.” And he prophesied that, in this ideal Jerusalem, the land around the sacred district and city – land to the east and the west – would belong exclusively to the Prince, as his own personal possession. “And my prince will no longer oppress my people” as in the days of the wicked kings before him, who let the powerful get away with whatever crimes they pleased; “but [he] will allow the people of Israel to possess the land according to their tribes” (Ezekiel 45:8). And we know who the Perfect Prince of Israel is – Jesus Christ, the generous Son of David.

But other sons of David born from below – they weren't so humble. “You have gone far enough, princes of Israel! Give up your violence and oppression” – we'll get to those two next – “and do what is just and right. Stop dispossessing my people, declares the Sovereign LORD. You are to use accurate scales, an accurate ephah and an accurate bath” (Ezekiel 45:9-10). That was a major problem in Judah as Ezekiel remembered her. The kings and the nobles looked around and saw people enjoying the land God promised to the tribes. And they couldn't abide that sort of prosperity in the hands of mere commoners. So they schemed. When it came time to make deals or assess taxes, they used miscalibrated scales – one set for buying, another for selling. Joe's come to sell three pounds of grain? Let's bring out scales that say it's just two-and-a-half pounds – we'll cheat him out of that extra half-pound. Julie's on her way to buy three pounds of grain? Let's bring out scales that say our two-and-a-half pounds is three pounds – she'll pay for more than she gets. And with that fraud, the merchants impoverished the nation and stole the land.

If you read the rest of what God told Ezekiel, you'll see why that was such a problem. In cheating the tribes, the king was trying to cheat God. All because he and his minions refused to use accurate scales the way God already said in the Law: “Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight, or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:35-36). But those kings of old didn't listen – they wanted to cheat and chain those without power to resist; they wanted to bend the truth to their own advantage.

And that happens today, doesn't it? There's plenty of fraud in the world. We have laws against it, but for anything “too big to fail,” the consequence is a slap on the wrist, and we forget all about it, even if people have gotten hurt. Now, I'm sure none of us, in the lines of business we've pursued, has ever defrauded a customer or an employer like that. But what about our personal lives? 

Think about it this way: those who worked for the king used their sets of skewed scales to gain an advantage that wasn't theirs. The standard they'd apply to themselves was very different from the standard they'd apply to anybody else. And ah, that hits home a bit more. Because that kind of hypocrisy, that sort of inconsistency, is more familiar. It's one of the favorite sins of American Christianity, just as it was with the Pharisees.

Here's the tough truth: Any time we “weigh” our own sins on scales we wouldn't use to “weigh” the sins of others – any time we pretend our sins weigh less, simply because they happen to be ours – any time we make excuses for ourselves and want the benefit of the doubt – well, then we've done what the princes of Israel did. We've dispossessed our neighbors of their standing before God and pretended to an advantage in righteousness that isn't ours. We've used inaccurate scales. And we do it all the time. Oh, I got upset and shot my mouth off in the heat of the moment? Something came over me – that's not me, I swear! You have to understand! But that guy across the street dared do the same thing to me? What a rude person! So that's what he's really like on the inside! We all do it sometimes. It's second nature to justify ourselves and not our neighbors – not if their sin is against us or betrays our values. And in doing that, we tighten the chains of injustice around them.

So how do we loosen up those chains of injustice? We make a commitment to holding ourselves to the very same standard we hold others. In fact, if anything, we should take our own sins more seriously than the sins of anyone else. Their sins are between them and God – we should correct them when we can, but always see our sins as a log and theirs as just a speck. (But don't despair: Jesus is an expert at extracting specks and logs alike – and his grace outweighs all our sins on God's scales, when we follow him in faith.) 

And we also need to make a commitment to always doing our due diligence with regard to the truth. How often do we pass on stories, rumors, claims we haven't vetted, haven't researched, just because some website or magazine or friend told us it was so? I see this all the time. We read something, we don't think critically about it, and we pass it along – because we care more about its convenience than its truth. If we want to use accurate scales, that habit has to die. Because the Jesus we serve calls himself the Truth – not the Custom, and certainly not the Convenience.

Here's a Lenten challenge for you – and for me, just as much: In every “measurement” you make, ask yourself if you're using the same standard to yourself or your 'side' as you're using or approving for others. Ask yourself if it passes the review of God's word, not just of our personal tastes and our moral intuitions. It's not easy, but it's what Lent is for. Remember from last week: Lent is all about stripping away our self-deceptions, our illusions about the world and about ourselves. And that includes our double standards – our illusion that there's something about our first-person perspective that privileges us and our needs over the well-being of others.

Back to the chains of injustice. The second set of chains is violence. Remember, Ezekiel told the princes to stop their violence. But what is violence, from the Bible's point of view? Let me make a bold claim and then dig a little deeper. The Bible never once describes God as doing anything violent. The Bible never once says that the righteous Israelites do anything violent. The Bible absolutely condemns violence in every form, every type, in every situation. The Bible commands that we be completely and entirely non-violent. 

Now, that should give you questions. Doesn't the Bible say that God is a warrior (Exodus 15:3)? Doesn't the Bible record the Israelites going to war against the Canaanites and the Philistines? Jael drives a tent-peg through Sisera's skull, David hurls a stone into Goliath's head, Elijah orders the butchering of all Baal's prophets – doesn't that prove that the Bible is full of violence, that the Bible endorses violence? No. It shows that not all lethal force is violent, and not all violence is physical force.

The Bible records all these things, but is emphatic in refusing to call them “violence.” When the Bible portrays God using force, or commanding his people to use force, that isn't something that arises from the anger of their hearts. It's a cleansing action to scrub violence away from the land. It's God's judgment against violence, not an act of violence itself. As one biblical scholar, Peter Leithart, observes, “violence is unjust and sinful use of force.” Just punishment after due process doesn't count as violence – but it can be, if it isn't just or if it's pursued out of wrong motives. The same's true for military service – it can be forceful without being violent, even though, sadly, it often has been violent throughout history. 

And yet not all violence is physical force. For instance, the Bible false testimony in a courtroom “violent” (Exodus 23:1). Overly harsh words are violent – Job protests that his accusers, with just their words, are doing violence to him (Job 19:7). “The mouth of the wicked conceals violence” (Proverbs 10:11) – violence is in what passes out over their lips. Bad government is called violent (Psalm 58:1-2), exploitative commercial practices are called violent (Ezekiel 28:16), deception is called violent (Micah 6:11-12). Not all force is violence, and not all violence is physical force.

But violence was a problem for the prophets. They saw it everywhere they looked. Isaiah describes those “spiritual superheroes” of his day as being violent – as “striking each other with wicked fists” (Isaiah 58:4). And Jeremiah after him names it outright and shows how it targets the most vulnerable. Again, in an oracle given to the king of Judah, the prophet commands the king and his officials: “Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place” (Jeremiah 22:3). Some people are especially vulnerable to violence because of the resources they lack or the position they have in society.

For instance, some people are made vulnerable due to natural circumstances. Not necessarily through their fault or the fault of anyone else, they've just gotten to a precarious place. The main biblical examples are orphans and widows, just like Jeremiah said. Now, thanks to the influence of the church over a couple thousand years, the situation has gotten steadily much better than it was during biblical times – and now, even plenty better than during the Industrial Revolution. (Remember Oliver Twist? Remember “Little Orphan Annie”?) This is not a patriarchal society where only landowning adult men have a voice and all others are left defenseless. 

Even so, the Red Cross still lists “unaccompanied children” and “widows” as two of the world's major “potentially vulnerable groups.” And we instinctively know that in today's society, don't we? Studies show that the most stable sort of home for raising a child is typically one with with a mother and father both alive and present.And others besides orphans and widows are made vulnerable by natural circumstances – think of those with disabilities, those with mental illnesses, those who live to an advanced age.

And then others are made vulnerable due to the actions of others. That's why Jeremiah mentions “the one who has been robbed.” Some people have their security taken away by being victimized. Maybe they've been the target of identity theft. Maybe their houses have been burgled. Maybe they've been assaulted. Maybe they've been hit with frivolous lawsuits. But in any case, some people need their neighbors to rally around them in support as a result of the harm that someone else has already done.

And finally, some are made vulnerable by their social distance – and so Jeremiah talks about “the foreigner,” as in the immigrant, the refugee, or in our global world, literal citizens of other nations. And that's a hot button issue today, how we should think about immigrants and refugees (especially for those from troublesome places or for those who didn't have the luxury of waiting for our immigration system to help them). 

Now, we might debate endlessly what immigration policy is the most just, the most fair – what policy is most loving to both natural-born Americans and those in desperate need who come from elsewhere. Politicians will argue that 'til the cows come home (and then confiscate the cows). There are almost no issues where the Bible lays out a specific policy proposal for you, saying that this and no other is the clear mandate of God in practice. Whatever you hear from the Right or the Left, the Bible generally doesn't do that. 

But through the Bible, God does teach us what he values and why. And in the Bible, God embeds us in a story where the chosen people were immigrants mistreated in the land of Egypt. They escaped as refugees, and for the rest of their national existence, their public policy was supposed to be a reflection of their life as immigrants and refugees. And in the New Testament, hospitality is held more highly than security, and believers are depicted as migrants passing through the present world (Hebrews 11:13). Like in Derek Webb's one song, “We're all migrating to a place where our Father lives, / because we married into a family of immigrants.” Whatever the right policy is, we who believe don't have the luxury of telling our neighbors of other ethnicities, faiths, or birthplaces that they're unwelcome to live beside us, work beside us, come to Christ and worship beside us.

But what do all these vulnerable groups have in common? What made them so vulnerable in Jeremiah's Judah? One common factor: They didn't have an effective voice in the courts, nor in the court of public opinion. Think about it: Orphans, widows, foreigners – they all had no one legally responsible for their care, responsible for personally speaking up on their behalf. And the victimized weren't in a position to do much about it. 

Jeremiah is totally clear on one thing: Those in a vulnerable place are to be treated with special consideration, and not – as King Jehoiachin was doing – to be taken advantage of. The Bible portrays them as being under God's personal protection: “The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (Psalm 146:9). “He defends the cause of the orphan and the widow and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:18). And God places his curse on those who withhold justice from anyone who falls into one of these vulnerable groups (Deuteronomy 27:19).

So how do we loose this chain of injustice? We can remember that one of the three biblical tithes – yes, there were actually three of them – and one of them was reserved to benefit exactly these people, as well as the tribe of Levi, which was vulnerable by divine calling and dependent on the others for physical support, just as Israel was dependent on them for spiritual life (Deuteronomy 26:12-13). Because Israel's law recognized that God owns everything and it's just on loan to us, their law reserved a “sacred portion” of everyone's property for maintaining those who needed that 'safety net' of protection.

And with that in mind, we can consciously advocate for anyone whose human dignity is degraded or whose rightful claims are ignored. Now, that doesn't mean that we take the side of the seemingly disadvantaged in every case. God's Law taught Israel, “Do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit” (Exodus 23:3), just a few verses before God adds, “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits” (Exodus 23:6). 

In other words, give them due consideration – keep the scales of justice balanced – but without twisting justice either for or against them. And this also doesn't mean that, in those cases where sin puts someone in a vulnerable position – think how vulnerable ex-felons and those involved in drug abuse, prostitution, or same-sex sexual sin can be, especially in today's youth culture – it doesn't mean that we endorse or ignore those sins. But we are still to stand up for their dignity and to defend their rights; we are to lovingly embrace them and gently help them to turn from their sin and to be healed by Jesus.

We are exhorted to actively intervene, where we truthfully can, in favor of those who otherwise would have no voice. “Defend the oppressed; take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor” (Zechariah 7:10). “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless” (Exodus 22:22). “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed” (Psalm 82:3). That's four biblical books, four authors. How many times and in how many ways does God have to say it before we get that there's no such thing as a Jesus-follower who stands against justice for the vulnerable?

So here's a second Lenten challenge: Replace all the violence in your life – let the Spirit guide you in noticing it, identifying it, whether it's in word or deed – with self-sacrificial peacemaking, including being reconciled with and speaking up for the vulnerable. Again, that's not easy. But it is what God says Lent is for. Lent is a special season for mortifying our passions, and our passions so often tug and pull us inward. When we're safe, when we're in power, they whisper to us that the margins don't matter – that if the system hasn't hurt us lately, the system must be healthy. Our passions get inflamed when the system turns against us, but stay cold when we aren't the ones being hurt. 

Remember Martin Niemöller's famous poem? “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” 

Lent is a time to stand in solidarity with all victims of violence and with all who are at special risk. And I'm sure we'd be surprised if we knew just how many people in our own community were, in some way or another, deprived of a voice or a defense. Lent is a time to decide that we'd rather be broken ourselves than to break anyone else – just as Jesus preferred to be broken on the cross than to break us all for good at the Last Judgment.

The chains of injustice again – the third set (and I'll be brief here) is oppression. Ezekiel mentions it, and also Jeremiah mentions it, and so does Isaiah himself. The true fast, the authentic Lent, is “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free” (Isaiah 58:6). Oppression was a problem then, and it still is today. Sometimes, we're oppressed by lawlessness. Crime is oppressive! Crime is violent! When there is no law, when each man does what's right in his own eyes – well, you watch the news. Seldom a Sunday goes by where someone doesn't mention to me a story they heard that sickens or saddens them to their core. So sometimes, we're oppressed by lawlessness.

And yet, sometimes we're oppressed by an excess of law, which can be no better than the law's absence. Think of the Pharisees. What did Jesus say about the way they treated the Law of Moses, to which they appended all their oral traditions like a fence? “And you experts in the law, woe to you, for you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them” (Luke 11:46). In their system, an excess of law oppressed the people by chaining them to so many rules. 

And look at modern America. With as many laws are on the books, every single one of us is probably rendered unknowingly a law-breaker – giving the state the power to find a suitable pretext to punish anyone at any time. As the law becomes more and more intrusive in the name of new political orthodoxies, we've begun to see the progressive creep of horror stories – normal people whose lives are turned upside down for seeking to live a quiet and peaceful life in the way their parents and grandparents did before them – or, more dangerous yet, for daring to obey God rather than man (cf. Acts 5:29).

But the greatest oppression of all isn't from criminals, isn't from the media, and it isn't from any government. The greatest oppression of all is from sin itself. “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, / fast bound in sin and nature's night.” What does Jesus say? “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). And what does Paul say? The unbeliever is “unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (Romans 7:14), and being “slaves to sin … leads to death” (Romans 6:16). Sin creates slavery. Sin oppresses. Pharaoh was just a shadow of sin's tyranny. We need freedom, and Jesus offers it. If any of you haven't been “set free from sin” (Romans 6:18), you need to turn to Jesus – “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

But still, all this talk of unbalanced scales, violence, oppression – doesn't so much of it seem foreign to our church right now? And yet it's all terribly relevant, even for us, nestled out here in the countryside beneath our broken roof. To begin with, every time we vote for any office-holder, from the bottom all the way to the top, we have a hand in choosing whether the chains of injustice will loosen or tighten. 

It's a mess this year. In both parties, plenty of candidates fail miserably when it comes to consistency – to measuring others with the same standard they'd seek for themselves. That's politics as usual. And in both parties, candidates actively endorse physical and verbal violence, whether against the wealthy and the unborn in one party or against immigrants and refugees in the other. And the front-runners of neither party have a track record of seeking, in the words of the pledge we all grew up with, “liberty and justice for all” – a Christian sentiment before it ever was an American one. 

I can't tell you how to sort out that muddle – what ballot box might loose the chains of injustice most. I can't tell you, and not just because we'd have the IRS breathing down our necks. The gospel isn't about handing down a new law like the old one; it's about being led in dialogue with the Spirit deeper into the heart of the Lawgiver – the Lawgiver who tells us to forsake weighted scales, to speak up for the vulnerable, to abandon all violence, and to set the oppressed free.

But beyond participating in the political process, we can put these biblical truths into practice here and now in our lives. We can follow through on those Lenten commitments – we don't have to wait the fifty-one days until the Pennsylvania primary. We can loose the chains of injustice in Salisbury Township and the other neighborhoods around us. And we can start with our own lives: devoting ourselves to the fairness of the truth; replacing the violence of our lips with words of peace and comfort; and spreading the good news that “whom the Son sets free is free indeed” (John 8:36). Amen.

The Question of Lent: Sermon on Isaiah 58

We're now several weeks into the season of Lent – this is the third Sunday, isn't it? But we haven't had a chance to really talk about Lent until now. The first Sunday was Valentine's Day, and so we took time to focus on that instead. The second Sunday – well, that was last Sunday, I was away in Greece, and I trust Rev. Wagner gave a great sermon on the church being one body. And now here we are, confronted with addressing Lent. And what is Lent, really? What's it all about, at the heart of it?

I think we have to go back to Ash Wednesday to answer that. I mean, that's how Lent kicks off – with Ash Wednesday. Weather prevented us from really observing Ash Wednesday this year, unfortunately. And that's a great shame, because Ash Wednesday is so crucial. The first truth is pretty obvious: Ash Wednesday is about ashes. Lent is a season of ashes. And in those ashes, we're reminded of two very important things. The first one is the fact of our sin. Let's face it, we are sinners. “Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “All of you sinned against the LORD and did not obey his voice” (Jeremiah 40:3). “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

And the second thing figured in the ashes is our mortality. Each and every one of us, left to our own devices, will die. That's the harsh, difficult, very unpleasant truth. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). When God takes away our breath, we “die and return to [our] dust” (Psalm 104:29). Being dust, “to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). “All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20). We are sinful; we are mortal; we are fragile, very fragile. The tiniest thing can precipitate the departure of our breath and our dissolution back to dust. “I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust” (Psalm 109:23) – that's a Lenten confession from the psalmist right there.

If we don't think it's true – if we don't think we're fragile, and our world is fragile – then we haven't been paying attention this week. I'll be honest: this has been a hard week. It's been hard for me not to be here with you, to share in shouldering the burden. A very dear and beloved friend of ours – a mentor to me, a brother and shepherd to us, Pastor Greg – commenced his journey back to dust. And because he was so dear to our hearts, our hearts are torn and broken – a piece of them has fallen to dust as well. We know that he's departed to be with Christ, and that lets us grieve with hope – but it's still grief. That's natural – Jesus wept over Lazarus – and we have to accept that it's okay to grieve with hope. 

And then just a day later, our destabilized lives were rocked again when a tornado thrust itself into our church's life, touched our building. Look at the stained glass in the Sunday School room. Look up at our roof, our rafters. Survey the cemetery and the shed. We are fragile.

And by the way, I don't think it's a coincidence that, during my absence, we were hit by two tragedies like these back-to-back. No, I don't think that's a coincidence for a second. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Satan is active. He despises the people of God. A complacent church is no threat to him; like Mose Dissinger said, in a complacent church he'll take a snooze right in front of the pulpit. But in a church on fire for the mission of the kingdom? For a church looking out beyond its walls? The devil can't abide that. He opposes those who pose a threat. 

And I believe that the past week has shown that we are rising on his hit list because we are moving in the direction Jesus wants us to move. And so the devil took advantage of our situation to bring a disaster our way, in hopes of inflicting a setback and taking our minds off our mission, demoralizing us and derailing us.

I am convinced his scheme will backfire. We will not be demoralized, for God is with us. We will not be derailed, for God is with us! What Satan means for evil, God means for good and will use for good (cf. Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). If the devil wants to shake us, well, he's only put us more and more in the public eye. Our church is in the newspapers. I've been getting calls and e-mails from people interested in helping us. People are watching in ways they weren't before, giving us an opportunity to witness by following Christ's example. And if the devil wants to destroy – and he does, for “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10) – well, he'll only remind us of the very truths that Lent is meant to hammer home.

Because we're sinful and because we're fragile, we are unworthy and unable to live everlasting life. Everlasting life, eternal life, isn't just a length of life without an end point. It is that, but there's more. It's life that has the character of God's unshakeable new creation. It's the kind of life that would be fit for a different kind of world, a less dusty place. 

But we look around us. We look into ourselves, we examine our hearts. And we see a mismatch. The world we're in, isn't very new. It isn't unshakeable. And if it were, we – the people we are – wouldn't belong there. It'd be too much for us. We're fragile. And we'd stain that fresh, clean world with our sin. And so we fast.

That's why we need Lent. Because Lent ritually reminds us, every year, just how poor, just how sinful, just how fragile we are – how desperately we need the grace of God that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. Like Isaiah says: “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” (Isaiah 58:1). 

We are so, so forgetful. We love to think that we can make it on our own – that we're capable of pleasing God – that we can build something that will last forever, like a legacy carved in stone, a tower unto heaven. But we can't. Towers to heaven don't stand tall (cf. Genesis 11:8). They don't amount to much. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field” (Isaiah 40:6). Lent is the church's way of obeying what God told Isaiah: to announce cold, harsh reality to the self-deceived – which is all of us, from time to time.

Lent compels us to admit that we're poor and needy. That's literally what the psalmist says: “For I am poor and needy, and my heart is pierced within me” (Psalm 109:22). How did he get to this realization of his physical and spiritual poverty, his radical contingency? Because of his fasting. When we fast during Lent, whatever a good kind of “fasting” might look like, it has to be a way of honestly and truly admitting that we and our world are hopelessly, helplessly in need of grace. 

We fast during this season as a way of protesting ourselves, protesting our world. We fast in protest at a world that falls so short of God's glory. We fast in protest because we look inside ourselves, and we see the root of the problem there. But our protest can be a hopeful one, because of Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection makes a way beyond the dust and ashes into a new world and a “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:28) – no matter how fast the wind blows. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work” (1 John 3:8).

Fasting confronts us with our weakness of body and our weakness of will. It unmasks our comfort. If you've ever tried fasting for a while, I'm sure you've had a run-in with your limits – that place where it just feels like you can't hold out anymore. I remember back in college when I set a rather ambitious fast during Ash Wednesday: I decided I'd go for twenty-four hours with no food at all, no water at all – nothing. I think I chugged a bottle of water and wolfed down a doughnut at 12:01 AM on Thursday morning! I was forced to admit that my body was weak – and throughout the whole day, as I felt the lures of temptation threatening my resolve, I had to admit that not only was the flesh weak, but maybe the spirit was less willing than I'd like to tell myself. Like the psalmist says, “My knees are weak through fasting; my body has become gaunt” (Psalm 109:24). 

That's what Lent is meant to be for. It's a means of stripping off our delusions. Lent is supposed to be about a radical correction to our spiritual sight – instead of looking at ourselves through rose-colored glasses, we take a deep breath, see clearly, admit the truth, and discipline ourselves to do something about it. That's the point of Lent.

You could say that, in Isaiah's time, whatever Lent-like fasting tradition the people of Judah had, they were doing it wrong. They had no desire to take off the glasses and ask the hard questions. Now, if we had a time machine and could plop ourselves down in the early sixth century BC, if we could wipe our minds of every trace of Isaiah's teaching and all the benefits of clearer sight that the gospel's brought us, we could be pretty easily tricked into thinking Isaiah's targets were the good guys! I mean, listen to what God says here: “Yet day after day they seek me, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness” (Isaiah 58:2). To catch a snapshot of them on Sabbath morning, they're the spiritual superheroes; they're just that impressive! They're the kind of people who are in church whenever it's open – at least, so long as people can see them strolling in through the door.

To see them in those moments, everyone in Judah would assume that they hunger and thirst for God. I mean, just look at them! They seem desperate to get closer to God – they're spending all that time in church, right? Don't they seek him day in and day out? “They delight to draw near to God” (Isaiah 58:2)! And all they ask of God is just one simple thing: justice, justice, justice. “They ask of me righteous judgments” (Isaiah 58:2). Sounds like a good thing to ask!

But not so fast.  They say it has to be on their terms. See, they understand the covenant to be a ceremonial deal: they give God the right rituals, the right words, the right gestures at the right time, and in turn, God praises and honors them and treats them really well. I mean, doesn't that just make sense? Isn't that what God's looking for – for them to give up candy for forty days, and in exchange he'll owe them some favors? It's only fair! “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3).  “For all the investment we've made in this religion, aren't we owed a better result? It's like God's ignoring all their religious activity! It's unfair!” Or so they think.

God disagrees. They have not held up their “end of the deal.” Because there is no 'deal'! This is not a business arrangement! The covenant isn't signed on Wall Street; it's signed in a wedding chapel. It's about a relationship, about our souls, about our hearts, not about some quid pro quo. 

The problem with these “spiritual superheroes” of Judah is that their fasting has nothing to do with real humility. It isn't meant for confronting them with weakness of will and body. It's meant to make them feel good about themselves – or, more importantly, to make others admire them. They claim they humble themselves, but all their Lenten piety is just grandstanding to flatter their own pride. They practically admit, in so many words, that all their religion is for show.

The fasting psalmist prayed to God, “Deal well with me for your name's sake” (Psalm 109:21). The psalmist is humble. The psalmist says to God, to himself, to his community, that if God has a reason to do anything nice for him, that reason has nothing to do with the psalmist's worthiness and everything to do with God's mercy. The psalmist here knows no works-righteousness. The psalmist's prayer is a quest for grace. 

But the “spiritual superheroes” of Isaiah's Judah – the ancestors-in-heart of generations of Pharisees, including within the church – would never think to seriously pray, “Deal well with me for your name's sake.” If they prayed a truly honest prayer reflecting the state of their souls, it would be, “Deal well with me, because I've earned it from you, and you owe it to me!”

That's their mindset – that they've earned it. They've earned it through being “religious.” Now, look at how they understand being “religious” – because there's a right way and a wrong way, and they like the wrong way. To them, their religiosity, their piety, is defined entirely by rituals. They wear the Lenten outfit of sackcloth. They show up in the right place, the temple. They bow at just the right time, keeping rhythm with the rest of the congregation, maybe even setting the pace. They go up and get the ashes on their heads. They change their diet for the season, and everyone knows it. They keep all the rituals. And by Thursday night, they've gotten in a drunken bar-fight. “On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers; your fasting ends in quarreling and strife and in striking each other with wicked fists” (Isaiah 58:3-4). Because their religion begins and ends with rituals that, like Shakespeare's “tale told by an idiot,” signify absolutely nothing in their lives.

When they fast, they have no intention to mortify the flesh. They aren't looking to discipline their bodies, to keep them out of the way of their relationship with God. When these “spiritual superheroes” fast, they have no intention to mortify the passions. They aren't looking to challenge who they are on the inside – all the bundles of feelings and desires tugging them this way and that, seizing the reins of control from their hands. We know we're full of passions – the word literally means “sufferings,” we suffer from disturbance with these yearnings that lead us where we might not want to go, we suffer from being ruled by them – and when these people fast, they aren't aiming to put their passions back in their place.

When these “spiritual superheroes” fast, without mortifying the flesh or the passions, they end up with no change at all in their social and relational conduct. They don't confess the truth. They don't reform their ways. They contribute nothing toward making a less fragile world, a less sinful world. In fact, they use Lent as an excuse to go the opposite path. 

They look at Lent as being like a carbon credit – you know, where companies pay money to supposedly offset their atmospheric pollution, and then use all the cash they throw around as an excuse to produce even more greenhouse gases, like how a certain former vice-president justifies his mansion and private jet while crusading for environmental causes? That's the way these “spiritual superheroes” view their fasting: it buys them an indulgence to, well, indulge themselves even more. So instead of working toward a less fragile, less sinful world, they justify themselves in their violence, and so they keep contributing to breaking the world, breaking other people, breaking their own selves. That's what Isaiah's saying – really, that's what God's saying, using Isaiah to do it.

Reading that, it's easy to shake our heads at Judah. Can't they see? Don't they get it? We read these words, and Isaiah lays it out so convincingly, so clearly, that it all becomes so obvious. So we instantly think judgmental thoughts. But is their false fasting so different than the way a lot of fellow believers – and maybe we ourselves – live today? Does it differ so many from the way we “do church”? Is it that separate from our own behavior during Lent? 

I mean, let's take a step back and try to look at ourselves as keen-eyed as Isaiah would see us. Maybe during Lent, we pick a thing to give up for forty days. But by the end of the forty days, what's changed in our lives? Does Lent make a difference? Or is it just a ritual – a thing we go through once a year, so that we can say we did the 'religious' thing, and oh good here comes Easter, now all that's over and done with? Are we more God-focused people now than we were on Fasnacht Day? Does love fill our lives and define our character more now than on Fasnacht Day? Or was it all for show – if not to convince others of our goodness, then to convince ourselves?

Isaiah's fake “spiritual superheroes” maybe aren't so foreign after all. In the antebellum South, they were the countless men who'd go to church Sunday morning and whip their slaves half to death twenty-four hours later. Throughout more recent history, there have been countless supposedly “God-fearing” men (and women) who showed up to church every Sunday, and then spent their weeks using their twisted theologies to justify cruelty to their spouses, unleashing the belt on their kids, stealing from work, yelling at their workers, badmouthing their neighbors.

Maybe that sounds extreme – but there are a lot of little ways we show that attending church services or observing Lent hasn't really changed us, hasn't led us to face ourselves in the light of God's truth. Who here has ever grumbled insults at another driver while you're on your way home from church? I'll be honest – there've been some Sundays in my life when I've had a hard time not doing it before I even make it out of the parking lot! (Not here, of course, you all drive great.) 

Who here has ever done anything the week after church that you'd never want people to see you do on a Sunday morning at church? I know I'm not exempt. I doubt any of us live perfectly consistently throughout the week with the faith we profess on a Sunday morning. We lapse back into the same old habits – and sometimes, when we observe Lent or come to worship, we aren't even that well-intentioned. We don't mean to be challenged, don't mean to have demands placed on us, don't mean to be changed.

And through Isaiah, God says to the people of our day: “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high” (Isaiah 58:4). In other words, if this is what Lent looks like, then the only wings it puts on your prayers are wax wings like Icarus'. They'll never make it past the sun to reach God's ears. If our Lent looks like mere ritual without a heart-change, if it's soaked in hypocrisy, then God awards us no points, and may he have mercy on our souls. This kind of fasting, the way Isaiah describes it, is honestly no more helpful, no more God-honoring, then just skipping the whole thing altogether. It will not entitle us to anything. It will not bring us closer to God. It is not the fast that God has chosen.

So it's no surprise when God asks, “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen – only a day for people to humble themselves?” (Isaiah 58:5). Is that it – just a day, just a season, and then back to ordinary life without a difference? On the day of our fasting, do we do as we please, as our flesh pleases? There's got to be more to Lent than this rubbish – got to be something else. “Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?” Is it really just about the ritual, and nothing else? It can't be! But what else is there? What kind of fast really does something about our fragility? What kind of fast exposes the truth? What does it look like to have a fast that actually addresses our sin and the sin of the world? What kind of fast has God chosen? That's the big Question of Lent. And for the next two Sundays, we'll be taking up what Isaiah has to teach us.

This may not seem like a very comforting message, at a time when our church may be more in need of comfort than we've been in the past decade. What am I thinking, sticking to the sermon I believe God led me in advance to schedule for today? I wrestled with this: should I preach sometime that seems more timely? Something less challenging, less convicting, less pointed? Up through this morning, I prayed to God about that. 

But I believe that this sermon is for this season; that God knew what he was doing all along. I have to trust that. God reminded me that our suffering is not devoid of meaning. Lent is about accepting that the Christian path is the road of the cross, yes – but the road doesn't end at the crosses in our lives. It does not stop at the grave; it is not ripped away by a twister. No matter how fast the winds blow, the road of the cross goes on beyond them. “Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:13)! “For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ” – and this week, we certainly have – “so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:5). 

Lent is not comfortable. It is no easy thing to tread in the footsteps of the cross-bearing Jesus. But the fast God has chosen will lead to the feast God has prepared. That's a promise from heaven. You can bank on it. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Better Than Wine: Sermon for Valentine's Day

The Song of Songs isn't really a common one to read in church, is it? You don't hear too many sermons on it. But today's Valentine's Day, after all. We can't ignore that. Now, we have to admit: Valentine's Day as a holiday doesn't go back very far. In the late 1300s, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem depicting the feast-day of St. Valentine of Genoa, May 2, as the day when the goddess Nature would summon birds to choose their mates. He probably did that because that day – May 2, 1381 – was the date when a treaty was signed, promising that the teenage Anne of Bohemia would one day marry Chaucer's royal patron, the teenage King Richard II. 

Most of Chaucer's readers didn't get the reference to a very obscure saint, and they confused the line about “Saint Valentine's Day” as meaning the more familiar St. Valentine of Rome, a third-century martyr who was honored every February 14 – and so this became the day to celebrate love, collecting plenty of traditional practices, legends, and folk customs along the way. 

But long before either the Roman or the Genoese saint ever walked the earth, God's people have always considered it important to honor romance, sexuality, marriage, love. The Song of Songs is proof enough of that! And if you'll stick with me this morning, I'd like to unpack, or at least mention, seven key lessons that the book can teach us about what real romance, healthy romance, looks like.

First, there's the obvious. The Song of Songs shows us that real romance enshrines a love that devotes one man and one woman toward life as one flesh. The images in Song of Songs look back to Eden for inspiration about what a romantic life is meant to look like. And in the beginning, God made one man, one woman, and joined them together as one flesh – the origin of marriage. 

Today, that's a counter-cultural statement. Honestly, it was pretty counter-cultural back then, too. Remember, the age of the old covenant was one in which the Law tolerated polygamy and divorce. In the dawning days of the new covenant, Jesus waded into the Jewish debates about marriage, and he took up the argument against polygamy that some Jews had started making: that God took two people and made them one flesh; it wasn't a combination of three, four, five people. That was pretty explosive in his day.

Jesus also argued with some more liberal Pharisees who offered no-fault divorce; Jesus' view of marriage held it as more sacred than everyday contracts, not less. Jesus, and later Paul, didn't deny that there were a few legal reasons for divorce – though they encouraged people to waive those rights and press for reconciliation whenever possible, like Hosea did with Gomer. 

The point is, the Song's view of romance is the same as Jesus' view of romance and marriage: one man, one woman, united in commitments of love and support with the intent of a lifelong covenant, being joined by God as one flesh. Anything else – polygamy, serial monogamy, homosexuality and the other sexual sins banned in Leviticus and elsewhere – it all falls short of what the Song holds out. Even if the man in the Song is King Solomon, which isn't totally clear, all the other women fade into the background so that Solomon's focus falls on just one woman – and hers falls on him and only him.

Second, the Song of Songs shows us that real romance doesn't “awaken” before its time. That's counter-cultural too. Three times, the woman in the Song advises the daughters of Jerusalem: “Do not stir up or awaken love until it's ready” (Song of Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4). But sadly, so many people, both in the church and especially outside of it, do exactly that – they stir up passion and intimacy beyond what's healthy for that level of commitment, beyond what the Bible tells us. They decline the biblical counsel to be patient. And that's on the rise. It's become the cultural norm for our day. I could soliloquize all morning, draw on plenty of articles and books that unveil just how dysfunctional the modern “hook-up culture” has become. Whatever our culture's professed experts tell us, whatever the media pipes into our homes, it isn't how we were meant to live.

We like to imagine it's new, but really it isn't. During the Founding Generation of our country, single women in New England were much more likely to have sexual relations outside of marriage than they were to belong to a church – over a third of all firstborns were born less than nine months after the wedding. “A garden locked is my sister, my bride; a garden locked, a fountain sealed” (Song of Songs 4:12) – that verse didn't apply to all that many then, either. 

That's sad, because it sets the stage for some of the most beautiful imagery in the song: “Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits” (Song of Songs 4:16), she says; “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk” (Song of Songs 5:1), he answers. 

And let's be honest: studies show that devoutly religious wives – especially conservative Protestant married women – are the most likely of any women in America to report extreme satisfaction, both emotional and physical, if you catch my drift. Sociological studies are unrelenting in bearing out the wisdom of the Bible: outside of marriage, it just doesn't measure up to what's in store through what the Bible offers.

Third, the Song of Songs shows us that real romance is, at its heart, a match of equals. That may surprise a lot of people. Throughout history, there have been a lot of times that well-meaning Christians – and some whose meanings it's a lot harder to give the benefit of the doubt – have misused the Bible to portray marriage as a more one-sided affair: the husband is the boss, the head, and the wife does what he says. The wife submits to him, the wife is limited, the wife is less important, and anything the wife needs to do or say to others, she can do or say through him, if she gets his say-so.

Even today, there are segments of American Christianity that veer in that direction. Here's an example. Earlier in the last century, there was a fundamentalist Baptist evangelist named John R. Rice. I'm sure he did plenty of good things in the Lord's cause. But he was a hardline fundamentalist – the sort, I mean, who broke off ties of friendship with Billy Graham because he thought Graham was compromised. In 1946, Rice wrote a book about a Christian view of life in the home, and in it, he announced that “there will never be a case where God will call upon a wife to disobey her husband.. He repeatedly compares a wife's subjection to her husband with a teenage child's subjection to his or her parents. It's a profoundly disturbing and dysfunctional line of thinking.

So it comes as no surprise that his daughter also wrote a book some decades later. My best friend found a copy in a church library while he was on a service trip once. It's called, Me? Obey Him? – and the answer to the title is meant to be a 'yes, always, no matter what.' In it, the daughter echoes her father's teachings, proclaiming that “the Scriptures say, without qualification, to the open-minded reader, that a woman ought to obey her husband” – even that “she is to obey her husband as if he were God himself,” and that her husband's every command is as good as God's will. She doesn't say it outright, but it's hard to see what distinguishes her view of marriage from the relationship between a slave and a master.

But that's not what Song of Songs shows us. Who's the first speaker in the Song? Her – the woman. Who's the last speaker in the Song? The woman! In fact, the majority of lines in this entire biblical book belong to the woman. If anyone has the dominant role in the Song's saga of romance, it's not him – it's her! She's the one running the show, if anybody is! Does he praise her beauty? Yes – and she praises his. Does he pursue her? Yes – and in just as many scenes, she pursues him. Does he express desire? So does she. Does she submit to him? Yes – and he submits to her. 

A lot of people quote what Paul says in Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.” That verse has been so misused for centuries by tearing it away from the more universal statement that comes right before it, addressed to men and women: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). It's no surprise that John Rice began only with verse 22, selectively quoting scripture to suit his patriarchal ends.

But verse 21 is necessary if we're going to describe the sort of relationship we see in the Song of Songs. And it really is possible to work together as equals, without one always being the leader and the other always being the follower – without one being always active, the other always passive. In submitting to one another, in sharing freely and openly with each other, in finding a healthy and loving dynamic where both are active, both taking turns, the man and woman turn back the tides on the curse of hostility in Genesis 3. 

That's not to say they never argue, not to say they never bicker, not to say they don't get their feelings hurt or make mistakes. But both are equally committed to desiring one another, both devoted to resolving their issues, and in equally coming to share all of themselves with each other, they find freedom from fear and from shame.

Fourth, the Song of Songs portrays a real romance that is inviting, not demanding. Neither this man nor this woman are self-serving, self-seeking. They don't give each other orders. They give invitations. And every step of the way, each of them is thinking of how to best bring enjoyment and delight to the other one. What would it be like if you could say that of your marriage?

Fifth – and here's a big point – the Song of Songs portrays real romance as something to be savored! Can there be any doubt that both characters in the Song are enjoying themselves? Real romance isn't characterized by dry, dutiful distance, like we often imagine the Puritans must have done. (Actually, the Puritans were a lot more positive about it than we think.) In the Song, the man and the woman delight in each other, they enjoy each other, they savor each other. 

It's hard to think of a way to be more passionate than the Song portrays! The images are sensual and strong. There's no matter-of-factness about lines like, “You have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,” or, “Your lips distill nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4:9-11). When the Song wants to describe the enjoyments of love, it draws from the most luxurious and indulgent scenes available to an Israelite's senses. Experiencing the loved one is “better than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2). And it isn't for nothing that the Song says: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (Song of Songs 5:1). Maybe our prelude was a bit shocking this morning, when Derek Webb sang the line, “Take a deep breath, 'cause I feel a little drunk,” but that's from the original Song. Love is intoxicating, love is inebriating – that's the way it's supposed to be! “I am faint with love” (Song of Songs 5:8), she says.

Sixth, in the Song of Songs, real romance requires effort. The man isn't perfect. Neither is the woman. Both of them, for all their earnest trying, are sinners beset by temptation. Neither of them is destined to coast along on an easy emotional high for the rest of their lives. Our brain chemistry changes over time. The Song knows that. It isn't presenting a Disney version of marriage as just a “happily ever after” – as if, with the closing credits and the fade to black, all the hard work is done and over, and the characters can just coast from there on. That just ain't so. Love is not just an emotional high. Love is a commitment to pressing through the emotional lows. Love plunges headfirst into the messiness and grittiness of real life – the hard times. It's not always for better; sometimes it's for worse. Not always richer; sometimes for poorer. Not just health, but even through sickness, love persists. 

And no marriage is without its arguments, its hard places, its rough patches. The Song admits that. It bids the trusted counselors to “catch us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom” (Song of Songs 2:15). No vineyard of love on earth can keep all the foxes out, keep all trouble at bay, keep harmony always – but those foxes can be caught, with work. And when the embers of passion are cooling, they can be stoked again. There's always room for “new as well as old” choice fruits (Song of Songs 7:13).

And seventh, most important of all, I think: The Song of Songs depicts romantic love, the kind of romance here, as being inspired by God. It isn't something we developed by chance or by necessity. It isn't something that we invented while his back was turned! Romance is a gift. Love – love in general – is a gift. It was given to reflect the eternal life of God, which is self-giving, other-centered love flowing between Father and Son and Holy Spirit from before the universe began and with no end ever. 

The phenomenal truth is that the Song of Songs points powerfully toward God. It may not seem like it. I mean, in the text of the Song, God really doesn't seem to be mentioned, right up until the end. But that's the point: the climactic chapter revolves around the nature of love. “Set me as a seal upon your arm” – love is personal, love is permanent. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it” – love persists despite the odds, in the face of opposition. “Love is stronger than death, fiercer than the grave” – love outlasts both (Song of Songs 8:6-7). 

And in fact, 'Death,' Mot, was a Canaanite god: Love wins in divine combat with the god of the underworld. Love is “the flame of Yah,” “the flame of the LORD” (Song of Songs 8:6). It burns so brightly because it burns with God's own fire! Whoever the poet is, he just name-dropped the God of Israel – not a generic god, but the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel, of Moses and Zipporah, the God of the Exodus – in what would otherwise have been a sweet love poem like so many others. And this God, this all-consuming fire, is Love – and all human love, especially the love of a husband and wife, is his flame.

What's more, here's something interesting I learned recently. The Hebrew word for “my beloved,” dodi, the woman's favorite designation for her lover, shows up twenty-six times in the whole poem. The ancient Hebrews loved number games, and twenty-six happens to be the numerical equivalent of God's name, Yahweh, Jehovah. It isn't clear until the very end, but the presence of God is encoded into the whole story of romance! All the eager longings to spend time in the Beloved's house, the enthrallment with the Beloved's beauty, the desire to be taken into his House of Wine – the divine double meaning was there all along, hidden in secret until that clever twist is revealed. (Incidentally, the next book of the Bible, Isaiah, refers to God as “my Beloved” at the outset of chapter five.) That doesn't lessen the human meaning to the poem, a story of love, romance, intense physicality, marriage; but it means that there's something else there, too. We shouldn't neglect either.

And the rest of the Bible doesn't, when it looks back on the Song and its themes. The descriptions of the risen and glorified Jesus at the start of Revelation – those are inspired by the way the Song describes the Woman's Beloved. And all throughout the Bible, the story of redemption is portrayed as a divine love story – between God and his people Israel, or between Christ and his renewed, expanded Israel, the Church. Paul's pretty clear on that! It isn't an accident that the Bible ends with a wedding. 

And that, maybe, is why the Song of Songs ends in a way that no other ancient love poem does – not with a consummation but a cliffhanger! That last verse: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices” (Song of Songs 8:14) – shows that the story of romance isn't done after these eight chapters. Whatever these ideal lovers have, there's something more, something that transcends it. Built into the song is an open-endedness, receptive and waiting for the consummation of a Cosmic Romance when our Beloved makes haste and alights upon the mountains, returning for us.

Maybe at the start of this service, you were wondering what the Song of Songs could possibly have for you, if you aren't in a married state of life right now. Maybe you're young and unwed yet. Maybe you're divorced. Maybe you're widowed with no plans of marrying – you wait to see your departed spouse again amidst heaven's beauty. 

But even if you aren't sure what to do now with the Song's human level, there's plenty of spiritual truth that's good for you as much as for anyone else. The Song shows exclusive commitment between the lovers – and that means that, just as Jesus only has eyes for the Church, our heart is all for him. Our devotion is to him and no rival – not to Mammon, not to Success, not to Comfort, not to a car or or a flag or a house or a political party or a football team or any other so-called god or idol out there. Our Beloved is ours; let us be his, and his alone. 

The Song shows that, to use the cliché, “true love waits” – really, it does – even when most filled with desire. And just like that, Christ is eager but patient to woo us. If it takes all your life, he will woo you. If you turn away from him down some dark and desolate road to the wilderness, if you waste years in dissolute living or simply dropping out, still he's patient, still he won't give up! And just like the woman in the Song, who pined for her beloved when he was away, so we pine but pine patiently while our Beloved makes a place for us. We wait eagerly but patiently for his return, for the Second Coming, when he'll bring us at last to the wedding feast.

The Song shows its lovers as equals, both fully devoted to one another in mutual submission. And as we devote ourselves to Christ, as we pour out our love and service to him, he showers us with love and care too. Our ability isn't as strong; we aren't nearly as faithful; but he tenderly washes us, embraces us. And yes – the Bible portrays Christ, at the Last Supper but in many other ways and places, submitting to the Church. That's what “servant leadership” is all about. 

The Song shows the lovers inviting each other, pleading with each other. Just like that, Christ invites us to come to him for all we need – he'll warm us with his never-failing love; he'll rescue us from from the danger of our sins; he'll feed us with his word, his body, his blood; he'll clothe us in his own righteousness, in robes of white; he'll shelter us, he'll move us into his own house – he's off getting things ready even now, after all. And he'll never deprive us of divine intimacy. And we, in our turn, invite Christ to dwell in our hearts, to visit us with his Spirit, to be near to us as we draw near to him.

And finally, as the Song shows a romance that's meant to be enjoyed, we really delight in Christ – and he enjoys us! Isn't that a wonderful thought? Christ doesn't just tolerate us. He doesn't view saving us and providing for us as just one of his responsibilities. He actually cherishes us, actually loves us, actually desires us – even more than we desire him! Blessed assurance – Jesus is ours – O, what a foretaste of glory divine! We are the apple of his eye, the object of his passion. Our relationship with him is meant to be enjoyable. We are meant to find real delight in his presence. But since we couldn't bear his full passion, he holds back patiently, easing us into the fullness of his love. 

What we can say, even now, is this: that Jesus offers us a love that really is, in every conceivable (and inconceivable) way, “better than wine” – more joyful, more intoxicating, more fulfilling. Nothing can compare to his beauty, his grace, his love. If we're going to savor love today, and we should, let's not neglect the greatest love St. Valentine ever knew: the passionate, fiery love of Jesus Christ, our Beloved.