When and Then

Text: Isaiah 58:1-12

Central to Christianity as Lutherans know it is the tenet that God’s love and favor is given to us unconditionally. God is a God of grace, demonstrated in various ways that include, not the least, the presence of God among us in the person of Jesus Christ. We do not hold that we deserve God’s good favor. If we had to perform some special deeds to be in God’s good graces, then we would all be out of luck.

We inherit our stubborn defense of this idea from Luther, who was fighting a church at the time that made getting into heaven contingent on special works that the church required. Luther was a polemicist. He was in a battle. He could give no credence to good works as required by God (though good works were still good to do for the world). So, for example, he argued that the book of James should be taken out of the Bible because it said What good is it … if you say you have faith but do not have works?

This stubbornness is warranted because as soon as we allow that God’s love for us is conditional—contingent on even one thing—if it is up to us (if we do something then God will love us or not)—then we are in a mess.

We need to know without reservation that we are a loved child of God. That as Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of God. That nothing we can do puts us beyond the pale of God’s regard for us. Grace thus frees us to take radical risks.

But as soon as there is one conditional work, we can never trust whether we are good with God or not. We get trapped again. We wonder: who decides what that thing is? Who metes out forgiveness? And how do we trust that we have performed that one thing adequately? People will use that undone work to condemn us, or we will use it to condemn ourselves. As a colleague puts it, the demons of the world (and in our own heads) tell us lies.

Thus we emphasize our trust in a God of grace, and we are fearful to talk about judgment. But what, then, are we to make of this passage in Isaiah, whose verses drip with judgment peppered with conditional Ifs and Thens?

The people of Israel have returned from exile. They have been fasting and praying. Yet is seems they have some complaints about the results. Why do we fast, they say, but you, God, do not see? We humble ourselves, but you do not notice. They evidently feel that by fasting and worshipping that they ought to have earned God’s favor. This idea would not have been out of line with the widespread theology of their day (and sometimes even in ours) that acts of worship and piety are the way to the heart of God, who will reward them with prosperity and safety.

But God is having none of it. You act as if you were a nation that is doing the right thing, God says, and that you are following my commands. But you are not. You fast, you worship, you bow down to me. But you are self-serving and you exploit your workers.

Is this what I want, God asks rhetorically? What good is that? (God sounds like James.) What I want, God says, is justice. I want you to be just. I want you to share what you have with the hungry so that they are no longer hungry. I want you to take the poor into your own homes so that they are no longer homeless. I want you to free those you are oppressing. You think, God implies, that you are the victims. You think you are getting a raw deal. But in fact you are the victimizers, the raw deals are the ones you are making.

When God accuses the Israelites of hiding from their own kin, God is using an idiom that means that they pretend that the impoverished and destitute people do not exist. They have turned a blind eye, we would say, to the needs of others. It also means figuring that someone else will take care of the afflictions of others. We hide from the annoying and impertinent pleas of our own brothers and sisters. It is hard to deny that God is judging us.

God’s demand for justice is right in the middle of the message of Isaiah and the other prophets. Let justice flow like water, Amos says famously. And justice in this case does not mean criminal justice and does not mean retribution for sins against us. It means taking care of widows and orphans (seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow; so Isaiah says earlier—economic and political justice). And all that the widows and orphans represent: which is oppressed, suffering, and disenfranchised people.

God defines a new kind of fast. Not forgoing food for a while with the intent of influencing God, but a spiritual discipline nonetheless. A kind of overriding attentiveness to the demands of others, demands that call us with authority simply because the others are people. Not deserving or good or friendly or pathetic, just people.

This fast is not designed to persuade God but to transform us. If you give food to the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then, says God, your light will shine forth like the dawn. If you stop quarreling and fighting and trying to blame each other, then your light will shine in the darkness. God will be with you, God will have your back, God will guide you, God will fulfill your needs.

This sounds like a deal God is making with Israel. If you want my favor, then do these things. This is conditional. If you go about the old way: such fasting as your do today will not make your voice heard on high. In the heavens, God will not hear you. And if you fast by doing justice, then God will answer.

But these pairs of Ifs and Thens are not so much conditional as consequential. This is the judgment of physics. If you shake the apple from the tree, it will drop. It is inevitable, but not transactional. These paired statements are less If and Then and more When and Then.

When you live out your life according to the justice that God commands, then you will find God guiding you. When you care for the afflictions of other, then you will find your cities will prosper like a watered garden. You will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets to live in. And when we deny justice to the poor, as we seem to be doing, things fall apart and it appears that God is far away.

This is about God’s love, but that love is not at risk. We are at risk, and God’s words in Isaiah are warnings. They are not threats of abandonment or punishment. They are cautions about the consequence of our actions. And they are hopeful prophecies about the way things will be when we do as God teaches us. We will hear God say “here I am.”