sermon preached at Monroe Free Methodist church on Feb 9, 2020

How often do we think of our faith as being a private practice, a personal relationship between me and God? Certainly personal practices are essential to our spiritual formation, our growing up to look like Jesus, but that’s not all there is. In fact, if we stop there, I think we’re at risk of being like the salt that has lost its saltiness, or the lamp that has been put under a bushel basket. This type of Christianity is worthless.

In Isaiah 58, we are being called to a Christian faith that is rooted in repentance and motivated to social action. It’s a hard-hitting, convicting kind of passage, one which we might either ignore or assume is not about us. 

But, friends, I am believing the Holy Spirit is calling us to repentance. Let’s repent of our empty religious practices and our selfishness and our prideful way of thinking about ourselves; let’s repent of the unkind words we’ve uttered and the bitterness we hold in our hearts; let’s repent of the sins we keep in secret and the sins we’re committing every time we ignore corruption in our workplaces or in our governments. 

Let’s bring to light what is festering in the darkness so that we might be healed and made whole, so that we might be called “repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

Listen in to the prophet Isaiah’s pointed words, said a bit differently in Eugene Peterson’s translation:

Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’

Busy, busy, busy at worship and love studying about God. To all appearances we look like right-living, law-abiding, God-honoring people. But what’s going on in our hearts? What motivates us? What do we keep hidden? What do we murmur under our breath? 

This past week Pastor Kevin and I were gathered with our pastoral colleagues for a two day pastors’ conference. It was refreshing for us on a number of levels, but one of the highlights was the messages we got to hear from our newly elected Bishop Linda Adams. One of the stories she told was of the way the Asbury Revival of 1970 profoundly impacted her life. During a February chapel service, students experienced the power and conviction of the Holy Spirit and they continued in prayer and repentance and worship for 144 unbroken hours. Classes were cancelled for a week for the sake of the spiritual revival that was happening in the chapel. (Seriously, I highly recommend googling Asbury Revival and reading one of the articles and or watching the YouTube documentary.) 

I’ve learned a lot about revivals throughout my studies and the thing that has always confused me is how people think they can schedule a “revival.” What power do we have over the action of the Holy Spirit? Revival is up to God. Do we play any part? I wasn’t sure. But in Bishop Linda’s accounts of the Asbury Revival she named the crucial role we must play in order to experience the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit – 

Revival starts with a wave of conviction of sin, being able to name the ways we are living out of alignment with the love God. But it doesn’t stop with the awareness. The conviction moves to confession. The Bishop said as Asbury students were convicted of sin, they confessed right then and there, and if they needed to confess to someone in the room, they went right over to them and began to reconcile immediately. No hiding, no shame. Just freedom and forgiveness.

THAT’S the shape our Christian faith must take – rooted in both repentance and social action. Remember, according to the prophet Isaiah our worship isn’t about the type of music we sing or the fancy words we pray or the amount of money we give or how rigorous we fast. True worship is about “breaking the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, letting the oppressed go free, canceling debts that are owed to you. It’s about sharing your food with someone who is hungry, bringing the homeless poor into your house, seeing these people as your family – brothers and sisters made in the image of God.” (partially quoted from the MSG of Isaiah 58:6-7) 

And Isaiah doesn’t stop there. 

“If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.
“If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God’s holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
making money, running here and there—
Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!

Did you catch the best part? Our repentance and action isn’t just about us getting right with God. It’s about bringing Jesus’ wholeness and healing to the people around us, AND it’s about being building something beautiful for our children and grandchildren to build their faith upon. 

Our repentance is for the sake of the world.