OT Reading:    Isaiah 58.1-9a         
NT Reading:    Matthew 5.13-20     
Message:   The Kind of Fasting I Have Chosen       

The Old Testament Reading in the Lectionary for today places before us a scripture reading from the later portion of the prophecy of Isaiah.  Here we are looking ahead, to the deliverance and restoration of Israel after God’s judgment upon her.  Israel is redeemed from Babylonian bondage, but it is not restored to its former glory.  And so, they are seeking God’s favor.  They want God to make Israel great again.  So, in Isaiah 58, we find the people seeking God’s favor and, in particular, fasting as part of their approach to God.  But God is not restoring the glory, and they are puzzled and disappointed, and they are asking him, “Why?”  And God answers forcefully!  He points to their hypocrisy … the disconnect between their religious piety and their daily life.  In particular, he addresses the hypocrisy of their fasting, then lays before them the kind of fasting for which he looks.  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? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Fast this way, says God, Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear.  That is how to make Israel great again! And so it is with the church.  If the church is feeling like it is being marginalized and trampled upon, says Jesus, it is because it has lost its saltiness.  But there is a way to make the church great again! It can do the fast God has chosen!  It can pursue good deeds, and in so doing be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, to the glory of God and of his church.