Isaiah 58:1-12 | Matthew 5:13-20
Jeremy Richards
As most of you know, I’m currently enrolled in a two year program at the Center for Action and Contemplation called the Living School. Over the course of the two years I:
attend a number of intensives and symposiums in Albuquerque,
meet regularly with my “circle group” (a small group of 8 other students) through Zoom,
read works by historic and contemporary Christian mystics and contemplatives,
learn about the contemplative strand of other world religions,
and develop my own spiritual practices.
For the application to the Living School, I was asked to give a 500 word written statement about my reason for applying. I’m going to read a few selections from my answer, 1) because I realized I’ve never really communicated to all of you why I’m doing the Living School, and 2) it will help me explain my mindset going into the Living School and how it contrasts with some of the other students, which will, then, tie in with our Scripture readings today. So here’s part of my answer to the Living School about why I thought they should let me in (you’ve all heard some of this before):
I grew up within a Christian culture that prioritized one’s personal relationship with Jesus above all else. Jesus was present in every moment – every event – of every day. Scripture was also very personal. Whenever I read Scripture, I was taught to look for what God was saying to me right then, in the moment. The context of the passage I was reading wasn’t as important as my own personal context. What was the Holy Spirit saying to me personally through the passages I was reading? This understanding of faith wasn’t all bad. It’s good to see God in everyday experiences, to invite the Divine into the mundane, to try to find the place where the stories of Scripture intersect with our own lives. The problem was that this led to a very individualistic understanding of faith. For example, I could read a passage from one of the prophetic books confronting injustice on a social level, but instead of making that connection, I would internalize it and make it personal. Meanwhile I remained oblivious to social evils all around me.
In seminary, my eyes were opened to what should have been obvious: God cares about injustice – social, economic, environmental, all of it. Following Jesus is about more than my personal spirituality. This was important for me to realize, but it resulted in a pendulum swing. I became concerned with only the social aspects of the Gospel and neglected my own spirituality.
Through the Living School, I hope to learn how to develop a contemplative spiritual life that informs and energizes my involvement in the world. I know that I need to do the work of liberation, and I also know that I cannot do it without a deep spiritual well to draw from. If I and my congregation are going to persevere in the work of the Gospel, we must be fed, nourished, and led by the living God.
I applied to the Living School because I recognized that I needed help bringing these two complimentary strands that I knew were integral, but hadn’t yet figured out how to integrate, together: action and contemplation, justice and spirituality, inner and outer, etc. (I’ve told you all this before).
I arrived at my first event in Albuquerque, the summer symposium, in a relatively healthy place. I was loving what was going on here at Grant Park, I was excited to be a pastor, I had great support from all of you, especially the PRC and the Board. I was, as I still am, a part of a great clergy group and was and am being mentored by a great pastor, Rod Stafford at Portland Mennonite. I wasn’t in a bad place, I just wanted to be in a better place. I wanted to keep growing deeper in my life with God. I wanted to learn from the long history of Christian contemplatives and mystics who came before me.
But it turned out that the majority of students at the Living School weren’t in the same place as me. I was surprised by how much anger there was at the church. Many of my fellow students had deep wounds from their former religious communities, and their hope was that the Living School would be their new church.
While I want to respect these peoples’ experiences, and I know that they have deep wounds, it was difficult for me to hear blanket statements about “the church” thrown out that were completely untrue to my circumstance here at Grant Park, and are untrue of many of the pastors I know here in Portland and throughout the United States, and the churches they serve. At times, it was hard not to get defensive.
What was even more discouraging was that at times the teachers seemed to fall into the same way of talking about the Church. This continued in the intensive I was just at in January. At one point, during a question and answer, someone shared that they had recently lived in Sweden, and that Sweden is so post-Christian and Christianity has such a bad name there that you can’t say you’re a Christian because if you do people will assume the worst. The person seemed to be asking, I am a Christian, but should I not tell people I’m a Christian because Christianity has come to be associated with so many bad things – with bigotry and nationalism and triumphalism and greed? And the teacher who answered said, “I wouldn’t wear the label if you don’t have to.”
I immediately got a text from one of my close friends in the program, who went to the same divinity school as me and is also a pastor, that said, “WTF?” And then we proceeded to rant through text message about it. It’s very discouraging to be pastors who love the Church and are committed to the Church, and then hear someone with that kind of influence seem to say, “Yeah, just give up.” As if the best way to be a Christian is to pretend you’re not.
Jesus tells us explicitly this morning not to hide who we are. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 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.”
There has been a theme emerging in my sermons over the course of this Epiphany season, and I didn’t intend it, but it’s just kind of come up in a number of sermons and it’s that we should not be ashamed to be Christians. Jesus tells us that we are lamps, bringing light to those around us. He tells us not to conceal our faith, not to diminish our joy, not to hide a part of ourselves. But, as Christians today, we so often do. Why?
We know why. Because so many Christians today resemble the worshippers God tears into in Isaiah 58. They have beautiful worship services, they long to be close to God, they honor all the feast days (we might say they “keep ‘Christ’ in Christmas”), but they care nothing for the poor and the oppressed. They ignore injustice. And not only that, they actually participate in the injustice. “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast days,” God says, “and oppress all your workers.” They celebrate the holidays, but don’t give their workers the day off.
Just like Isaiah, we can turn on our TVs and see Christians who worship God in beautiful, large sanctuaries, who have daily quite times to draw near to God, but who at best turn a blind eye to the plight of immigrants, to the persistence of racism, to the prevalence of sexism and rape culture, to the inhumanity of the prison-industrial complex, to the cycle of poverty, to the inherent greed of capitalism, to the self-serving nature of US international policy, and on and on the list goes, and who, at worst, actively participate in those systems, knowing the harm they do to marginalized communities. When we see the Christians who seem to get the most air-time on TV, it’s understandable that we might want to disassociate. It seems like maybe we shouldn’t “wear the label” of “Christian” either.
But what does God say to do in Isaiah 58? How do we right the ship? By giving up?
Isaiah 58:6-12:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and [the Lord] will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
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.
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.
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.
The way to be salt and light, as Jesus tells us to be in our reading from Matthew, is to participate in God’s work of liberation, to give ourselves in service to others, to stand against what is wrong in the world because we’ve caught sight of God’s dream, what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven.
In her book, The Time is Now, Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister, renowned author and activist, brings together the threads I’ve been trying – and I would also say we as a church have been trying – to weave together: the spiritual and the concrete, the personal and the social, the inner and the outer…inhaling and exhaling. To bring these threads together, she uses the prophets, like Isaiah (and Jesus was, in his own right, a prophet, though also more than a prophet). She says…Read selection from pp. 26-27.
To redeem the label “Christian,” we must follow Jesus out into the world.
I realize that to a certain extent, I’m preaching to the choir. Here at Grant Park, we do care about our worship service (I’m very particular about how the chairs are set up), the Ministry Team discusses what’s working and what isn’t, we take worshipping God and growing in our spiritual life together seriously. But we’ve always, I think, seen Sunday mornings as the time that we come together to be rejuvenated and encouraged to go back into the world and continue the work God has called us to in our separate corners of Portland.
All of you, I know, are salt and light within your own contexts. As a church, we’re always looking for ways to serve others, and organizations we believe in to partner with: be it AWAB, the Cupcake Girls, Northwest Children’s Outreach, the Northeast Emergency Food Pantry, Portland Backpack, or one of the other organizations we’ve come alongside. And I would encourage those of you who can to join David, Carol, and I at the Jobs with Justice Faith and Labor Breakfast on the 18th.
At the same time, I don’t want to get too cocky. I know there’s always room to grow, and that we certainly could do more. I’m not saying we’ve arrived. But it’s important that we acknowledge and celebrate the work God is doing in us and through us, because it’s hard work trying to be “repairers of the breach.” Some of you are straight up worn out by it. I know you are. We work and we work and we work, and the world doesn’t seem much better and we’re exhausted. If that’s how you feel, then I hope you can be encouraged this morning by God’s words through the prophet Isaiah: “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and [the Lord] will say, ‘Here I am.’” Isaiah doesn’t say this life of service we’re called to will be easy, but he says that God will “satisfy you in a parched land.” God will “make your bones strong.”
This is why spirituality is so important. This is the other side of the coin. Following Jesus entails close proximity to Jesus. God calls us to the hard work of loosing the bonds of injustice, breaking every yoke, letting the oppressed go free, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and clothing the naked. We could add to that: picketing with Burgerville workers, ministering to sex workers, advocating for the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Christians in the church, and confronting sexism in the church.
We are called to that work, but God is the one who promises to give us the strength to do it. So that, in the midst of all the trouble and the suffering, in the places that seem like deserts, void of any goodness, beauty, and truth, we will be “like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail…we shall be called the repairs of the breach, the restorers of streets to live in.” Like a city on a hill, like a lamp filling the whole house with light.
If that’s what it means to be a Christian – and I think it is – then that’s a label worth wearing. Amen?