Isaiah 58:1-14
Carl preached on this chapter this morning at Slaugham. This is mostly my responses written as he preached. Sometimes when I make notes during a sermon they are just notes, like those made in a lecture. Here they are much more my interpretation, although some bits of this are Carl’s words.
The chapter was read in a sad and reflective mood, but I feel the first half of the chapter is passionate, even angry. The second is loving and reassuring.
The significance of justice in our parish “statement of becoming” cannot be underestimated- these words from Isaiah hold up a mirror to our own failings – they are hugely challenging.
“Seeming” to be upright and godly, eager for all the right things, is not what God desires, unless your life reflects these attitudes.
This is about values that you have embedded in your life, not those that you profess with your mouth. That is what pleases God.
Treating God’s creatures with disrespect disrespects God himself. No relationship can be maintained without respect.
Praying and hoping for justice is not enough. Working for justice is necessary, not simply desirable.
Your own particular passions are where your focus should be – you cannot right every injustice, you have to pick your battles. But the passion places an obligation upon you to act. The passion also makes you the right person to act. Lots of people approach their pastor to force action in a particular area, and then are put out when the response is to put them in charge of the church’s response to the issue. They want someone else to take responsibility, perhaps seeing the issue as being too big for them. Because of this, we cannot act alone – corporate actions spread the net wider, cooperation strengthens action, mutual encouragement magnifies it.
After the sermon, as we listen to Tim Hughes singing “We must go” I realise that “Must” is not an external compulsion, it is an internal response to gratitude, to the love of God, to our sense of equality, of justice. These things are inbuilt, but our response depends on how effectively we bury our feeling of injustice beneath the selfishness of living our lives for ourselves.
