God Will Hear Us If… – Isaiah 58

A text – Isaiah 58:9-14

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.

¹³ If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs;
¹⁴ then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

A reflection:

The book of Isaiah is really 3 books. The first portion is written 6-700 years before Jesus’s day, the second portion is written while the Israelites are in exile in Babylon, and the final portion, the portion today’s reading is taken from, is written amid the difficulties of Israel’s return home from exile and attempts to get their lives back into order. Chapter 58 is about how they have been praying to God for help and not receiving answers. They are fighting amongst themselves, mistreating their workers (underpaying them, causing them to starve), and also going through all the religious motions hoping to hear from God.

The passage for this week is God’s answer to them. Let’s see what God says through the prophet:

STOP THESE THINGS: you remove the yoke, remove pointing the finger, and remove speaking of evil

DO THESE THINGS: you feed the hungry and give afflicted people whatever they need

STOP THESE THINGS: you refrain from trampling the Sabbath by pursuing your own interests

DO THESE THINGS: you honor the Sabbath and call it a delight

God is saying that worship practices are empty unless they are done after the hungry are fed, the overworked are given rest, the innocent who have been blamed are treated fairly, those who have been harmed by evil speech have been apologized to and done right by. God says Sabbath observance is empty unless people honor it, are delighted in it, and give up their work and other pursuits to rejoice in the Lord and the bountiful world created for us. So this passage is about the Sabbath and about how we treat people the six other days of the week. It is about how we value God first and then everything good will rain down upon us.

In North America we have mostly forgotten how slow and luxurious Sudays could be. Luxuriating in God and God’s love for us is what we are meant to be doing on our Sabbath, and working to see to the needs of others more vulnerable than ourselves is our primary job the rest of the week. I intend to see how I measure up to this scale of God-centered Sabbath and unjustly-treated-people-centered weeks.

 A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us what we need. Help us to see the needs of others and be generous, not blaming, so that when we worship you, it will be good and honorable. Amen